Quote from: Endless Flight;752552How do we know it's a free PDF and not just pages on their website? With one, you hit their website once and you never have to return. With the other, you have to go back for repeat visits, driving traffic to their website, where they can bomb you with ads for other products.

Now that would annoy me.

Quote from: Endless Flight;752552How do we know it's a free PDF and not just pages on their website? With one, you hit their website once and you never have to return. With the other, you have to go back for repeat visits, driving traffic to their website, where they can bomb you with ads for other products.

Because they said it was a free PDF.

Quote from: Endless Flight;752552How do we know it's a free PDF and not just pages on their website?

Because they said so.

Quote from: Windjammer;752527Before then you may well have played using a pre-generated character

Right.  This is THAT game.  

This is not the Basic set.  This is a Starter set.  People have conflated the two.  And there is no longer a good excuse for conflating the two, but people keep doing it anyway.  

Which is a sign of bad faith to me - of an agenda that isn't about getting a good first game where, as you say, you play with a pre-generated character and then follow that with a different version of the game where you generate the character.  Instead, I think a huge amount of the over the top criticism is based on company-bashing or edition-bashing or just plain old Internet gadflyism and resistance to change.  It starts with the conclusion of "I will assume this new thing is bad until proven otherwise" and is followed by confirmation bias that supports your preconceived notion it is bad.

Quote from: Windjammer;752527Shame on them for promoting the idea that creating a character needs a $50 hardcover or a 48 (!) page PDF.

The document which will contain appropriately 15% of the PHB, which has never been described as 48 pages and also which has never been described as being JUST those pages from the PHB, is not dedicated to character creation.  It simply also contains those rules.

And shame on you for not knowing that, and declaring it as fact anyway.  It's one thing to simply not have the time to devote to gathering the information - it's another to just say fuck it and go ahead and make outright false declarations of fact because you're too lazy to actually click around a bit and get the information.

Excellent post.

But.

While I've been on that side of the line since damn near Day One, the unfortunate fact is that there remains two factions: those for whom chargen is essential, and those for whom it's an unwelcome chore and Not Really Part Of The Game.

Any game aimed at pulling in both sides has to address both sides.

Quote from: Endless Flight;752552How do we know it's a free PDF and not just pages on their website?

Kynewulf MacGowan ‏@Kynewulf74 1h
@mikemearls RE: The 15% PHB pdf. When will this go up? Is it freely available or require purchase of the starter kit or other products?

Mike Mearls ‏@mikemearls 34m
@Kynewulf74 freely available, launches with starter set

Quote from: Mistwell;752558This is not the Basic set.  This is a Starter set.  People have conflated the two.  And there is no longer a good excuse for conflating the two, but people keep doing it anyway.  

Which is a sign of bad faith to me - of an agenda

Stupid me! It's called a Starter Box - "Starter", not "Basic". And, retailing at $19.99, and coming from WotC that designation means - just means - that we can't have some boiled down char-gen in the box. I'm really glad you educated us about that.

Quote from: Ravenswing;752559Excellent post.

But.

While I've been on that side of the line since damn near Day One, the unfortunate fact is that there remains two factions: those for whom chargen is essential, and those for whom it's an unwelcome chore and Not Really Part Of The Game.

Any game aimed at pulling in both sides has to address both sides.

I guess 5e has to really work to pull all of the different factions back together again, even though the fracturing starts before even the first dice are rolled. I really want to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

In regards to the Starter Set, it's worth pointing out that old gamers like us don't need it to use the Tyranny of Dragons adventures.

Buy the module, use the free pdf. Done!

I literally cannot think of a single game in the history of this medium that failed to include character generation and did not subsequently fail itself.

Time Lord, Marvel Heroic, the Cliffhangers Indy game, a legion of other licensed games, almost every post-Wizards D&D boxed set ... all bombs. Many people didn't even know Time Lord existed, Marvel was on the market for all of a year before it disappeared, the Indy game is STILL a running gag decades later, and every single D&D box Wiz has ever put out has wound up in B&N bargain bins with a 50% off sticker.

This will bomb. But it doesn't matter, because it's not intended to sell anyway. Like often happens in business, a product exists because one voice in the top brass insists it must happen, while another insists it shouldn't, and so a half-assed compromise is assembled that is more or less politically destined to please absolutely no one and thus 'prove' the latter party's point while giving the former room to absolve themselves of responsibility for its demise.

D&D boxed sets are the Obamacare of gaming.

Quote from: Ravenswing;752559Excellent post.

But.

While I've been on that side of the line since damn near Day One, the unfortunate fact is that there remains two factions: those for whom chargen is essential, and those for whom it's an unwelcome chore and Not Really Part Of The Game.

Any game aimed at pulling in both sides has to address both sides.

It does.  The Basic rules, which include chargen, are free.

Somehow, this is not enough for people.

Quote from: Windjammer;752566Stupid me! It's called a Starter Box - "Starter", not "Basic". And, retailing at $19.99, and coming from WotC that designation means - just means - that we can't have some boiled down char-gen in the box. I'm really glad you educated us about that.

Apparently you are unaware that no starter box since 1983 has included chargen in it, OR if it did, it did it in a way that made the game not compatible with the full game.  You're claiming a common definition of a term, that hasn't existed for D&D in 31 years. So yeah, Starter Set should not be conflated with Basic, and it's time you became better educated on changing times...31 years is long enough for you to have figured this out.

Quote from: J Arcane;752572I literally cannot think of a single game in the history of this medium that failed to include character generation and did not subsequently fail itself.

3e D&D's boxed set.

Unless we've now redefined failure

Quote from: Mistwell;7525753e D&D's boxed set.

Unless we've now redefined failure

The boxed sets were failures. They were bargain binned almost from day one.

It just doesn't matter because the actual game they are for still sold fine. They're the $20 toaster at the endcap of the Wal-Mart aisle that you won't buy because the better toaster down the aisle inside has a bagel setting and is only $10 more.

The corebook sold better. Maybe even better for the useless box having been there.

Because it had character creation.  

It had the bagel setting.

Quote from: J Arcane;752572D&D boxed sets are the Obamacare of gaming.