Quote from: Drohem;365065See, right there- I like you Narf.  A man who can acknowledge that he was off and apologize sincerely is a man in my book.

Thanks.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;365043Read the text there, about not needing no gameboard? Are they really going to so drastically alter the minis-and-grid centric 4e so it can live up to that statement again? I doubt it.

When you look at the description, you see that there are, included in the box: 2 sheets of tokens for PCs and monsters, some cardstock character sheets and power cards, and a double-sided poster map.

That should answer your question right there.

I don't think it's intended as a mockery, but it sure illustrates my earlier point about how the game was earlier marketed as "products of your imagination", with straight reference as to how it is *not* a board game as a selling point, whereas the modern design aims at making the game more like a board game, or a CRPG, or like other media perceived to compete with TRPGs for the gamer's attention.

Which, IMO, again, is a losing strategy.

Quote from: Seanchai;365054What levels does it cover? First I heard one through five, but now I hear just first and second.

Seanchai

It's in the quoted text I posted. Charles Ryan says Level 1-3, debunking specific internet rumors that it only took characters to level two.

It's a mockery.

Quote from: The_Shadow;365120It's a mockery.

Quote from: Benoist;365074It's in the quoted text I posted. Charles Ryan says Level 1-3, debunking specific internet rumors that it only took characters to level two.

Sorry, I missed that. Then I say it's awesome! Hopefully, it's mediocre sales and the underwhelming number of new people it introduces to the hobby will silence some arguments for a while.

Seanchai

Quote from: Benoist;365034

Does that new box really say "For 1 or more beginning to intermediate players" where the original said 3?  Is expecting kids to have a real live friend or two too much to ask these days?

Quote from: John Morrow;365175Does that new box really say "For 1 or more beginning to intermediate players" where the original said 3?  Is expecting kids to have a real live friend or two too much to ask these days?

No, the idea is that the game comes with a solo-adventure, so you can start playing it before you gather a group later on. Just like in the original Red Box.

Quote from: John Morrow;365175Is expecting kids to have a real live friend or two too much to ask these days?

Well, if they're aiming it at the WoW crowd...

I feel about this the same way I'd feel about a remake of The Sound of Music in which Nazis brutally rape the Von Trapp children while Maria sings about how relieved she is that music is finally enjoyable, because everyone got it wrong before.

Thing is, I am afraid that at this point of the story anything WotC does will be met with hostility on the part of the people who doesn't like 4e. Which is quite sad, IMO, as I feel that they are comparing an actual product with a recollection of, not only another product (the former Red Box Set) but with the recollection of their youth when they met the game. And of course, memory is not objective so it's going to be the comparison between two products based only on the merits of each one, but a comparison between an actual product and an idealized remembrance.

No product can win against that one. So the question is a bit moot.

Quote from: Imperator;365189Thing is, I am afraid that at this point of the story anything WotC does will be met with hostility on the part of the people who doesn't like 4e. Which is quite sad, IMO, as I feel that they are comparing an actual product with a recollection of, not only another product (the former Red Box Set) but with the recollection of their youth when they met the game.

As they did with 4E from the start.

Quote from: Andy CollinsThe Ties that Bind

By Andy Collins

In August of 1981, my life changed forever because of a birthday present from my Uncle Ralph. I certainly didn't expect it at the time (nor, I'm sure, did Uncle Ralph), but it's safe to say that no single object has ever affected the course of my lifetime as much as that 9"x12" cardboard box with a picture of adventurers busting in on a dragon defending its piles of gold.

Months went by before the first time I actually played the game. Not only was I unaware of anyone else who played, I'd never even heard of it (or of roleplaying games in general) before opening up that box. Frankly, a youth of Monopoly and Risk just doesn't prepare you for Dungeons & Dragons. But I was already a diehard fantasy fan, having devoured The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings while classmates were still struggling on spelling tests. So I kept coming back to that little blue rulebook, trying to figure out how you could have a game without a board or playing pieces.



Finally, I just decided that we'd stumble through and figure it out as we went along. So one Saturday I sat down to roll up characters with my brother Greg and our friend Kurt, and I led them through the Keep on the Borderlands. Those old character sheets have long-since crumbled to dust, but many of the names still linger in my memory -- Bard (the character's name, not his class...we didn't have the Player's Handbook yet), Garn, Pentegarn, Lester, Krylla ... these heroes and many more braved tunnels full of orcs, hobgoblins, kobolds, skeletons, and -- of course -- a maze with a minotaur.

I remember that the adventure's rumor chart provided a (false) clue to the characters indicating that the goblins' shout of "bree-yark" meant "Hey, Rube!" which, to a 10-year-old in Olympia, Washington, was just as alien a phrase as it had been in the original Goblin language.

I remember the characters running into a (way out of their league) black dragon somewhere in the wilderness, which they managed to kill by strangling it with to a rope wrapped around its neck by the two talking ravens they'd encountered earlier ... well, it all made sense to us at the time.

Most of all, I remember nine hours of the day disappearing without any of us becoming bored, or getting hungry, or maybe even leaving the room at all. Whatever we'd stumbled through was enough to hook me (and my brother) for good.

Kurt played a few more times with us, but ultimately the game didn't stick to him the way it did to us. We don't hold it against him. But then, we also don't see him on a monthly basis like we do many of our other childhood friends who still play D&D with us.

Yeah, that's right -- I still game with folks who started playing with me 20 years ago (or more). That's one of the benefits of folks staying relatively close to home (and, I'd like to believe, of me running a kick-ass game). Greg, obviously, has been in my game since the beginning -- that's more than 26 years now. Brent joined us when we were in 5th grade together (late 1982). Greg recruited Viet and Marc in '83 or '84. I met Dennis in German class in 1987, and Kevin and Scott in '88 or so. (Until I joined WotC eight years later, they were "the new guys.")

While in college I had to make do with an entirely new group of gamers, but one of them followed me back home. Now I run a game for Neil, his childhood buddy Brian, his sister Lindsay, and her husband Mike. (That's right -- in this game, the woman brings her SO along, rather than the other way round. That's progress!)

Over the past eleven years, I've been fortunate enough to work around a whole pile of gamers, so the group's continued to grow steadily. Joe joined us shortly after I started at Wizards in 1996, and Chris not long after that. Jesse was bold enough to join us in '98 or so; at the time, he was a lowly editorial assistant with Dragon Magazine, but I like to think that our little group gave him the confidence to later become my boss. James Wyatt is the latest co-worker to join my now super-sized group (currently spanning three separate monthly games).

I met Gwendolyn through another D&D game. Of course, now she plays in my group as well. She's not the only significant other who games regularly with us these days -- we've come a long way since grade school -- so we also welcome Adrienne and Amber to our sessions.

Obviously, not every player from the old days is still around. Along the way we also had the pleasure of gaming with Charlie, Garon, Kyle, Michael (whose grandfather vouched for us when the Motel 6 in Spokane wouldn't rent to high-schoolers in town for our very first game convention), Dan (who crumpled up his character sheet and threw it across the room when the medusa petrified him -- but keep in mind he was only 10 or 11 at the time), Ken (the undisputed master of the deck of many things), and Robert ("Uh-oh, purple worm!"). Over the years, they drifted away socially, psychologically, or just geographically from the core group, but the group itself survived.

We've played Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun and Dragonlance, Planescape and Ravenloft. They've delved into just about every dark hole in the ground from the Tomb of Horrors to the Slave Pits of the Undercity. They've battled barbarians and beholders, destroyed demons by the dozen to steal the Wand of Orcus, eviscerated evil elves in Erelhei-Cinlu, and ganked giants of every flavor.

It didn't matter what the game was called -- Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Advanced, 2nd Edition, 2nd-with-Player's-Option-books, 3rd Edition, 3.5, "Andy's D&D/Alternity hybrid that nobody quite understands but let's keep playing anyway" -- it was always D&D, and it was always good.

(OK, except for that D&D Immortals boxed set. I think it was kind of metallic gold, but I've suppressed most of my memories of it. What was up with that thing, anyway?)

And now, we're playing 4th Edition. It's still D&D, and it's definitely good.

Twenty-six years ago, a simple cardboard box held my future inside. I'd like to think that next year a copy of the Player's Handbook will hold a similar secret for some lucky 10- or 12-year-old and that a quarter-century later, he or she might pen an essay just like this one.

I look forward to reading those words (or perhaps having them beamed directly into my cerebral cortex -- who knows?). I'll be 62 by then -- but of course, I'll still be running D&D games for all my friends!

Quote from: Windjammer;365192As they did with 4E from the start.

Yep. And it saddens me.

Quote from: Windjammer;365176Just like in the original Red Box.

The second original red box.

Seanchai

Quote from: Imperator;365189Thing is, I am afraid that at this point of the story anything WotC does will be met with hostility on the part of the people who doesn't like 4e. Which is quite sad, IMO, as I feel that they are comparing an actual product with a recollection of, not only another product (the former Red Box Set) but with the recollection of their youth when they met the game. And of course, memory is not objective so it's going to be the comparison between two products based only on the merits of each one, but a comparison between an actual product and an idealized remembrance.

No product can win against that one. So the question is a bit moot.

While I do agree with the sentiment in general, I wouldn't say the question is moot.  Certainly, there is a large excluded middle who can, and will, suppress their nostalgia enough to critically compare both products, once it's released.  Yes, at this point in time, it's all speculation since most people don't actually have both products side-by-side to compare them.

Also, I think that WotC is sending mixed messages with this product.  They have gone to great lengths to tell the public that 4e D&D is not their fathers' or grandfathers' D&D anymore, yet they market a product that uses the exact same cover as the original game.  I would have much preferred that they market this red box concept for 4e D&D completely using the 4e D&D brand art, packaging, and format.