I agree, it makes no sense...but the singular reaction to this idea, even when it was presented as a joke, is odd.

It's like when you talk about JFK assassination conspiracy theories. You can say it was UFOs, or Cubans, or the Mafia, or darn near anything. But one whacky conspiracy theory gets a response from the FBI/CIA/whatever...so it kinda makes you wonder.

... on the next episode of X-Files.  

Quote from: ggroy;348457Wonder which person (or persons) at WotC had an absolute say (or veto) over the final design of 4E.

I doubt it works that way. Once you get to a corporate size and WotC is a corporate size,there is a process from kick off meeting to production. There will have been approval meetings for sections of the final product but by the time the whole thing is done there is no real opportunity to reject the whole.

Quote from: RPGPundit;348456For the record, I very much do not buy the idea presented in the original post of this thread. Hasbro did not already have an RPG. The RPG came much later. And Hasbro doesn't give a fuck about the particulars of the RPG. If the WoTC people had convinced them that making the game just like D&D 0e was the best way to make profit, that's what they would have done. As it is, people at WoTC convinced Hasbro that the current 4e game was the way to go.

Im not totally sure about this. Maybe things went this way, but it is also possible that some bigwigs at Hasbro were D&D/World of Warcraft players in their free time. And maybe they were in the position to say: "This is how D&D should evolve" (exp. after the D&D 3.5 based MMORPG flopped).

It's hypothetical, I know, but I think it is wrong to assume that if someone is an higher up in Hasbro then he has no knowledge about other gaming fields (even if it is the wrong kind of knowledge... :rolleyes:)

I'd be very surprised if 4E escaped executive meddling.

I'm sure there was some Chip or Brad seeing through the design process to say, "Needs more emo!", "More Japanimation-y!, "Lizard-people!  Gen 2.0 loves lizard-people!"

Quote from: Hairfoot;348570I'd be very surprised if 4E escaped executive meddling.
 
I'm sure there was some Chip or Brad seeing through the design process to say, "Needs more emo!", "More Japanimation-y!, "Lizard-people! Gen 2.0 loves lizard-people!"

That's perfect!  Now rastafy it by 10%.

Quote from: ggroy;348457Wonder which person (or persons) at WotC had an absolute say (or veto) over the final design of 4E.

For the record, Pundit is absolutely correct, and the person is more than likely Bill Slaviscek.

For the record: There is absolutely nothing wrong, nor Gen 2.0, about big lizard people.  I've been seeing players desperate to play 'half dragons' or some variations of the same for easily 15 years, and one of the 'cool but untapped' ideas I personally remember from Dragonlance were the bad guy dragon dudes...  Hell, I'm not that into lizard dudes personally and I wanted to play one in all my youthful geeky glory.

Quote from: jibbajibba;348496I doubt it works that way. Once you get to a corporate size and WotC is a corporate size,there is a process from kick off meeting to production. There will have been approval meetings for sections of the final product but by the time the whole thing is done there is no real opportunity to reject the whole.

As the old saying goes:  the more money and bureaucracy that is put into something, the bigger pile of shit one has in the end.  

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;348035My personal conspiracy theory which seems to have now been scientifically proven is that 4E was specifically designed to infuriate the least socially capable members of society and make choads really angry. I mean, this is now an established, indisputable fact.

I just spewed my coffee reading that!

Quote from: Spike;348677For the record: There is absolutely nothing wrong, nor Gen 2.0, about big lizard people.  I've been seeing players desperate to play 'half dragons' or some variations of the same for easily 15 years, and one of the 'cool but untapped' ideas I personally remember from Dragonlance were the bad guy dragon dudes...  Hell, I'm not that into lizard dudes personally and I wanted to play one in all my youthful geeky glory.

Yeah, I've been trying to gauge the popularity of that since dragonborn were announced.  It came out of nowhere for me.  I've never wanted to play a draconian of any sort, nor met anyone who said they did, but it obviously has some traction.

I think, though that they weren't invented to capitalise on an affection for lizard-people, but that lizard-people were the least objecitonable way to make warforged a core race without cheesing off players who don't like robots in their fantasy.

The problem with the "Dragonborn" is that they ARE "gen 2.0". That presumes a 1.0, which would be, say, playing a fucking lizardman. You could already do so in D&D basic (it was in one of the mystara sourcebooks), technically in AD&D (draconians) and I would assume in 3e as well, since you could basically play any monster in 3e.

But the Dragonborn are not any of this. No. They're the ULTRA COOL EXXXXTREME LIZARDMAN!!! WOO!!!11!!!

Fuck that. Fuck some asshole telling me what race is cool. I decide that. It doesn't get told to me and then desperately sold to me with every effort (including forcefully shoving them into pre-existing game worlds) by a corporate committee just because that's what they think the kids should like.

RPGPundit

The basic D&D version was in Hollow World.

The Dragonborn debuted in 3.5 in the Races of the Dragon book.

And the only people I have ever seen..ever .. who have characterized dragonborn as "uber extreme"  have been here, and they do it as an assumption about how they are taken. Back in reality, they're like one race amongst like.. 20 or so. Heck, there's kenku and tieflings and half orcs and even two types of a playable undead PC race at this point.

My girlfriend plays a dragonborn shaman in one of the campaigns I'm in though.

Quote from: RPGPundit;348938The problem with the "Dragonborn" is that they ARE "gen 2.0". That presumes a 1.0, which would be, say, playing a fucking lizardman. You could already do so in D&D basic (it was in one of the mystara sourcebooks), technically in AD&D (draconians) and I would assume in 3e as well, since you could basically play any monster in 3e.

But the Dragonborn are not any of this. No. They're the ULTRA COOL EXXXXTREME LIZARDMAN!!! WOO!!!11!!!

Fuck that. Fuck some asshole telling me what race is cool. I decide that. It doesn't get told to me and then desperately sold to me with every effort (including forcefully shoving them into pre-existing game worlds) by a corporate committee just because that's what they think the kids should like.

RPGPundit

Who, other than people with an issue about it like you, ever called it ultra cool extreme lizardman? Who told you "this is the cool race, as opposed to all those other uncool races"?

Or is this about the monster gnome that hurt your feelings in a cartoon?

You guys make up this BS script in your head and then bash it as if someone read that script to you.  Sometimes, 4e is just one big strawman made up game to some of you that bares no resemblance to the actual game they made.

Quote from: RPGPundit;348938Fuck that. Fuck some asshole telling me what race is cool. I decide that. It doesn't get told to me and then desperately sold to me with every effort (including forcefully shoving them into pre-existing game worlds) by a corporate committee just because that's what they think the kids should like.

RPGPundit

Uh huh...so what are you saying, exactly? That D&D never gets to stretch beyond the tolkien-trope Man, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbittling races?

And if not, then at what point DO they get to expand the mythos?

Because to me, this reads like your complaint is basically that they added a "new" race without consulting you first.