Hmm, can't seem to find a thread about this (then again, I've been away from the site for a while, so I might have missed it).

For those of you who haven't been keeping up: Wizards are going to stop selling randomised booster packs of D&D minis, and they're going to stop support for the D&D skirmish game. They try to put a brave spin on this, but it's down there in black and white: from now on, the D&D minis line is meant to be a series of supplemental aids to the RPG, not a separate collectable skirmish minis wargame.

What I find interesting about this situation is that, to me, 4E was the first edition of D&D designed where the designers seemed to make a real effort to cater to D&D's non-tabletop RPG incarnations. From OD&D to AD&D 2E D&D was meant to be an RPG, and was designed to be an RPG, and the computer game spin-offs weren't really a high priority and the novel lines, while important, didn't have much impact on the game design. 3E was much the same - even though thanks to the runaway success of Baldur's Gate and its sequels computer games had become much more significant, the designers seemed to have their first priority be designing a decent RPG.

I didn't have the same impression with 4E: instead, I had the impression that the designers were extremely conscious of the multimedia nature of the D&D name. Sure, they needed to make a decent RPG... but they seemed to consider the miniatures line and computer game licences to be just as important, and as a result the game felt a bit off to me - I suppose the word I'd use is "compromised". It felt as if it was optimised to translate neatly and cleanly to the skirmish game, and to be easy to produce a computer game adaptation out of. You could argue that this process began in 3.5 with the introduction of the "square" as a measure of distance, but 3.5 was a tweak, not a complete rewrite of the game from the ground up.

The thing is, I'm wondering how 4E D&D would have panned out if the skirmish game had been scrapped before 4E came out. Would 4E be significantly different if the designers had not had to keep one eye on how their design was affecting the skirmish game?

Quote from: Warthur;266316Hmm, can't seem to find a thread about this (then again, I've been away from the site for a while, so I might have missed it).

For those of you who haven't been keeping up: Wizards are going to stop selling randomised booster packs of D&D minis, and they're going to stop support for the D&D skirmish game. They try to put a brave spin on this, but it's down there in black and white: from now on, the D&D minis line is meant to be a series of supplemental aids to the RPG, not a separate collectable skirmish minis wargame.

What I find interesting about this situation is that, to me, 4E was the first edition of D&D designed where the designers seemed to make a real effort to cater to D&D's non-tabletop RPG incarnations. From OD&D to AD&D 2E D&D was meant to be an RPG, and was designed to be an RPG, and the computer game spin-offs weren't really a high priority and the novel lines, while important, didn't have much impact on the game design. 3E was much the same - even though thanks to the runaway success of Baldur's Gate and its sequels computer games had become much more significant, the designers seemed to have their first priority be designing a decent RPG.

I didn't have the same impression with 4E: instead, I had the impression that the designers were extremely conscious of the multimedia nature of the D&D name. Sure, they needed to make a decent RPG... but they seemed to consider the miniatures line and computer game licences to be just as important, and as a result the game felt a bit off to me - I suppose the word I'd use is "compromised". It felt as if it was optimised to translate neatly and cleanly to the skirmish game, and to be easy to produce a computer game adaptation out of. You could argue that this process began in 3.5 with the introduction of the "square" as a measure of distance, but 3.5 was a tweak, not a complete rewrite of the game from the ground up.

The thing is, I'm wondering how 4E D&D would have panned out if the skirmish game had been scrapped before 4E came out. Would 4E be significantly different if the designers had not had to keep one eye on how their design was affecting the skirmish game?

I honestly don't see there being much of a change.

This is solely because we differ on the source of the influence. Long ago, when 4e was first introduced, I was of the mind that MMO's and so forth would be the influence.

The more I read the game, look at the SRD, and watch my son mess around with the some hand me down yu-gi-oh cards, I'm convinced that the confluence was not MMO, but WotC's history of CCG.

I'm waiting for the announcement - might never come, but it seems ripe for the picking - of a D&D CCG. The powers, the classification of damage, the conditions - it's all there for the making.

So while the mini/skirmish game might have looked promising, I think WotC will return to their core ability. I think, to some extent, they already have.

Was the minis game as a minis game (and not a line of minis for use with 4e) selling badly?

The first answer that came to mind for me was "of course they don't need a seperate minis game, 4e is nothing but a minis game these days..."

RPGPundit

Per WotC, the minis skirmish game was a dying market.  They weren't getting any new players, and the randomized packs weren't selling so well.

Since, nowadays, most people buying minis are doing it for their RPGs, they figured they'd raise the price a bit, make them non-randomized, and hopefully sell more.

-O

Quote from: RPGPundit;266739Was the minis game as a minis game (and not a line of minis for use with 4e) selling badly?

They cite a drop in sales, a rise in production costs, and a drop in signups for official events. I suppose it didn't help that the randomised booster pack model isn't exactly friendly for people who are buying the minis as a resource for a D&D game.

QuoteThe first answer that came to mind for me was "of course they don't need a seperate minis game, 4e is nothing but a minis game these days..."

You see, I do wonder whether the heavy assumption that minis will be present in 4E - heavier than in 3E, to my mind - would still have been present in 4E if WotC had known that their skirmish game was going to tank and that the rise in production costs was going to happen. Note that WizKids have also folded their collectible minis line as well recently. I have to wonder whether Wizards don't badly regret locking themselves into producing a minis line at a time when the economic circumstances don't favour such things. Oh, they could just cancel their minis line and expect people to buy third party miniatures, but then they'll be tossing money in the direction of their competitors, and encouraging their fanbase to look at other companies' products.