http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/DNDPodcast_20110211.mp3
Wonder where they're going with this.
They mention a "dual-role" class which can change roles in the middle of an encounter, at around 00:13:00 in the podcast. (This class is suppose to appear in the upcoming "Heroes of Feywild" book).
Hmmm ... a controller turning into a striker?
Quote from: ggroy;439667http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/DNDPodcast_20110211.mp3
Wonder where they're going with this.
They mention a "dual-role" class which can change roles in the middle of an encounter, at around 00:13:00 in the podcast. (This class is suppose to appear in the upcoming "Heroes of Feywild" book).
Hmmm ... a controller turning into a striker?
You can kinda do this with Hybrids already. I'll have to check out the podcast.
Ab-so-lutely hilarious. At 20:05 Rodney Thompson relates that their newest boardgame (Wrath of Ashardalon) was actually created by Rich Baker "5-6 years ago. We pulled it out of the archives when we started to do more boardgames and it [then] got more development. So it's a game that's been in development for, gosh, 5 to 6 years ... which has now seen the light of day, thanks to our new focus on boardgames."
Or....perhaps there's a reason this project got shelved for so long? And that in 2011, WotC, lacking resources to pump into designing fresh product, combined with a short notice change in product focus ('Hey Bill, let's shelve these 3 RPG hardbacks, and let's get out 2 boardgames instead')... have to go dumpster dive in their own archives? (http://tinyurl.com/68x8rsb)
Quote from: Windjammer;439708Ab-so-lutely hilarious. At 20:05 Rodney Thompson relates that their newest boardgame (Wrath of Ashardalon) was actually created by Rich Baker "5-6 years ago. We pulled it out of the archives when we started to do more boardgames and it [then] got more development. So it's a game that's been in development for, gosh, 5 to 6 years ... which has now seen the light of day, thanks to our new focus on boardgames."
Or....perhaps there's a reason this project got shelved for so long? And that in 2011, WotC, lacking resources to pump into designing fresh product, combined with a short notice change in product focus ('Hey Bill, let's shelve these 3 RPG hardbacks, and let's get out 2 boardgames instead')... have to go dumpster dive in their own archives? (http://tinyurl.com/68x8rsb)
I have no idea why; in general, they seem to be trying to do these box sets because they look more like games. Maybe it's just an easier product to get approved.
But have a look at the Famine in Far-Go and Legion of Gold box sets: These look like boxed games..kinda. They look like adventures.. kinda. (I mean they are both based on adventures from Gamma World 2nd Edition)
But they're really not either of the above.
If you open up the Famine in far-Go box it contains 3 sheets of counters and a digest-sized book, some poster maps, and a small selection of cards. Inside the book are
20 new origins for Gamma World, the rules for stuff like Cryptic Alliances, an extensive monster manual. (The cards are the ones for cryptic alliances so you can reveal an affiliation if you keep it a secret, plus it gives you a little encounter power type deal).
Oh and in the back section of the book is a little adventure.
Open up the Legion Box and it has several more sheets of counters, several poster maps, and a little book. The book has 8 more origins, the rules for 'occupations' , and another extensive monster manual.
Oh yeah, and a little adventure in the back.
I have no idea why they are hiding rules supplements in the box sets, but it's actually kinda cool.. The books are made to fit in the box, not on a shelf. I have all of my GW stuff consolidated in a single box now.
There seems to be a conscious move from book to game.
As for Wrath of Ashardalon- I have it and I kinda like it. It comes with 42 miniatures- including 3 grells, an otyugh, and a huge red dragon. The dungeon is random. You run around and kill stuff. Each turn you lay down a random dungeon tile. I think it's ok,. Kinda hacky, reminds me of AD&D2d edition. It all wraps up in 45 minutes to an hour or so.
Depending on the scenario there's a goal.. I think it's a good boardgame type game.
The point ggroy mentions in the OP comes up at 44:40. My transscript of Rodney's penultimate sentence is garbled, so any help in clarifying it is appreciated!
---------------
Mike Mearls: Speaking of character options and stuff... I heard that this [Feywild] book was the first book with dual roles...
Rodney Thompson: That's right, that's right. I don't know how much we can say about it, but basically the character is... the class is designed so that you start the encounter with one role and as the encounter goes on you may shift to another role entirely. You don't do it at the same time, so it's not like hybrid'ing where you are, sorta, round by round shifting back and forth. This is more like: you flip a switch - and your role changes. I think this is really going to be exciting because a) that's sort of a gameplay method we haven't really seen yet in 4th edition, but at the same it also I think will help the flow of an encounter - because when you make that change to your other role, it's going to hitten[? heighten?] the encounter but also up the tension of the ability [?] of the encounter [???]. So, you know, it's an opportunity that's interesting for players but also to sort of tinker with the encounter dynamic, which I think is really fun.
Mike Mearls: That kind of segues into your next topic. We've been pulling off three print products from our schedule. At DDXP the question came up [why that was done] and I want to give you more reasoning for what's going on. So basically what we are doing - like Rodney talking about this new character [mechanic] - is going in a new direction, and hopefully something that's exciting for you guys. And that is why you see us pull back some stuff. And if you look at our schedule, you'll see that we're not doing as many books as we've done in past years. And ... it really comes down to our big commitment to quality. In the past year... we've really seen the complaints on message boards... and we want to make sure that [if] we're putting something out there it's the highest quality. And in some ways, the more product you put out, the harder it is, to do that. Like the magazine output - the method we were using wasn't doing the material justice. So we want to change how we're doing it, and want to do more planning, more long term planning. [...] As we can take more time, we can do more research, do more playtesting. It lets us be more daring, lets us be more creative, and lets us find - push the frontier outward of the game. I see a lot speculation online why we're putting back on our schedule, but really, behind that's is commitment to quality and, with that, innovation.
------
I lost interest in Mearls' spin by sentence two ("hopefully something that's exciting for you"), which only reconfirms that they don't seem to know what they're doing at the moment. Rodney's response (not transcribed) to Mearls is, in a nutshell, that after 2.5 years of 4th Edition they have run out of key material for (any edition of) D&D. First they had the two Player's Handbooks, then they had Psionics (in the third), but there's not much more you [can produce for a single edition of D&D before you start to produce fringe products]; which is why they are now "pushing the envelope", which they had started with Dark Sun. The idea (and here I add to what Rodney says) is to go for material that can't be called 'core' in any meaningful sense, but to make it interesting enough for people not attracted to fringe material.
Reminds me that 4E, because of its aggressive schedule in the first two years, got much sooner to the stage of where they could not meaningfully produce new 'core' material. And with 3.5 WotC learnt the lesson that fringe products like Cityscape or Elder Evils are not gonna attract high number of buyers, so WotC is now extra careful with putting out stuff.
Someone on some other board suggested, say, a defender who'd get angrier and angrier throughout the fight and wind up less defensive and more offensive. Which doesn't turn my crank as a concept, because I think it puts too much dependency on the length of a fight. Unless, huh, you could cue mechanics off the number of enemies left? The number of non-minions left? I dunno, I never get cranky when I hear that WotC is exploring another aspect of the design space.
Anyhow, I don't think playing with the roles system = repudiating the roles system. It's always been a guideline rather than a straitjacket anyhow.
Also, the way Rodney describes it, dual roles seem a parred down version of hybrid builds. In hybrid builds you could decide what to do "on a round by round basis" (do I pick defender powers or striker powers), whereas with dual role characters, once you've "flipped the switch" that's your change of role in that encounter. A one off.
I'm all in for roles mutability. I loved hybrids (though I'm notoriously bad at building them), and I loved the ranger builds in Martial Power 2, which were all about switching forth and back between ranged and melee combat. Also, the sample parties in Strategy Guide all featured info on PCs switching roles mid combat.
In a sense, then, what I guess we are seeing is that they port these extant mechanics to Essential builds. Essential builds are a lot more streamlined with respect to what they do, so it makes good sense to slowly increase their versatility.
Quote from: Windjammer;439719In a sense, then, what I guess we are seeing is that they port these extant mechanics to Essential builds. Essential builds are a lot more streamlined with respect to what they do, so it makes good sense to slowly increase their versatility.
Yeah -- I don't think it'll be Essentials versions of the hybrid concept, but the evolutionary niche is probably similar.
Quote from: ggroy;439667http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/DNDPodcast_20110211.mp3
Wonder where they're going with this.
They mention a "dual-role" class which can change roles in the middle of an encounter, at around 00:13:00 in the podcast. (This class is suppose to appear in the upcoming "Heroes of Feywild" book).
Hmmm ... a controller turning into a striker?
This is fantastically pirated from "Guild Wars 2", the upcoming MMORPG by NCSoft.
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
I was thinking only a few days ago how with GW2 the MMORPGs were already moving beyond the "fixed role" for each class. It would seem that Wizards read the previews and decided to catch up.
Thanlis' idea sounds pretty interesting, truth be told.
I still think this is the wrong direction. 4e has done all it can in the "make interesting characters" department...now it should focus on interesting worlds and interesting adventures.
That's an odd comment about Wrath of Ashardalon, given that it is mostly a reskinning of last year's Castle Ravenloft. That's not an insult - I have had a great time with CR and am happy to see an expansion that also works as a stand-alone game. I don't understand what they mean unless the comment means A) Castle Ravenloft was in development 5 years ago or B) they had something completely different with a Red Dragon and just tacked that vague concept from 5 years ago onto the existing Castle Ravenloft system.
Quote from: Windjammer;439708Ab-so-lutely hilarious. At 20:05 Rodney Thompson relates that their newest boardgame (Wrath of Ashardalon) was actually created by Rich Baker "5-6 years ago. We pulled it out of the archives when we started to do more boardgames and it [then] got more development. So it's a game that's been in development for, gosh, 5 to 6 years ... which has now seen the light of day, thanks to our new focus on boardgames."
The correct time-stamp for that appears to by 06:45-ish.
Your transcription is also in error. The Rich Baker game is
Conquest of Nerath:
Wrath of Ashardalon builds on the
Castle Ravenloft mechanics, which are clearly based on 4th Edition and almost certainly weren't developed in 2005-2006.
IIRC, WotC shelved quite a few boardgame designs back in that timeframe. And I don't think it had anything to do with quality -- it was yet another corporate strategy decision to abandon boardgame development.
Quote from: Doom;439806Thanlis' idea sounds pretty interesting, truth be told.
I still think this is the wrong direction. 4e has done all it can in the "make interesting characters" department...now it should focus on interesting worlds and interesting adventures.
Personally, I would have liked this to have been their focus from the get-go with 4E, though I realize that fiscally selling splatbooks to crunch monkeys is probably a lot more profitable.
Quote from: Reckall;439785This is fantastically pirated from "Guild Wars 2", the upcoming MMORPG by NCSoft.
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
I was thinking only a few days ago how with GW2 the MMORPGs were already moving beyond the "fixed role" for each class. It would seem that Wizards read the previews and decided to catch up.
Guild Wars 2, WoW:Cataclysm, Rift - the ability to switch roles is the newest thing in the MMOG world these days, WotC is just keeping their simulator up to date. :D
I think it simulates gridded Japanese "tactics" games more than it does MMOs, but that's just me.
It's also fine by me, because I much prefer the former (well, excepting odd cases like EVE Online).
Quote from: Justin Alexander;439817The correct time-stamp for that appears to by 06:45-ish.
Your transcription is also in error. The Rich Baker game is Conquest of Nerath: Wrath of Ashardalon builds on the Castle Ravenloft mechanics, which are clearly based on 4th Edition and almost certainly weren't developed in 2005-2006.
Justin, I honestly don't know which podcast you're referring to. I downloaded the one ggroy linked in the OP, and just checked again (as in, downloaded it again, to make sure). At 06:45 Mearls and company are still talking about the convention games they played at DDXP. Maybe you downloaded a different podcast? (For the record, the file I downloaded runs for overall 2 hours and 23 minutes.)
Could also explain why you think that my transcription about "Wrath" is in error: I just checked again, the quote is there in the podcast. You'd be right to point out, though, the mechanical continuity with the Ravenloft boardgame - but that I attribute to "development", not to "design". And in the quote I gave, Rodney talks about both of these. To wit, the base design is 5-6 years old, and the development is of course the current work they pumped into the product. I think that also addresses Esdagil's response:
QuoteThat's an odd comment about Wrath of Ashardalon, given that it is mostly a reskinning of last year's Castle Ravenloft.
As Justin points out, the base engine for Castle Ravenloft has to do with 4th edition, which started to get developed in 2005. Oh, hold on, that's 5-6 years ago, with Rich Baker taking a lead role next to Dave Noonan. Oh snap.
(Nevermind, I don't seriously believe that Wrath was the first 4E design. ;) )
Quote from: Justin Alexander;439817IIRC, WotC shelved quite a few boardgame designs back in that timeframe. And I don't think it had anything to do with quality -- it was yet another corporate strategy decision to abandon boardgame development.
Thanks for pointing that out. The actual provenance of Castle Ravenloft and Wrath, I'd say, is less directly 4e D&D than D&D Miniatures (esp. 2.0). Do you recall if
at that time the boardgames were intended to come out at the same time as DDM 1.0, and pushed off the schedule because WotC rather focused on the minis game?
Thing is,
right now the opposite seems have happened - WotC getting out of DDM for good (very few sets left), and onto the boardgame market. So WotC then and now would be quite consistent in not trying to provide product for the minis and the boardgame markets at the same time.
Quote from: Windjammer;439715The point ggroy mentions in the OP comes up at 44:40. My transscript of Rodney's penultimate sentence is garbled, so any help in clarifying it is appreciated!
Thanks Windy for transcribing this.
Quote from: Windjammer;439715I lost interest in Mearls' spin by sentence two ("hopefully something that's exciting for you"), which only reconfirms that they don't seem to know what they're doing at the moment. Rodney's response (not transcribed) to Mearls is, in a nutshell, that after 2.5 years of 4th Edition they have run out of key material for (any edition of) D&D. First they had the two Player's Handbooks, then they had Psionics (in the third), but there's not much more you [can produce for a single edition of D&D before you start to produce fringe products]; which is why they are now "pushing the envelope", which they had started with Dark Sun. The idea (and here I add to what Rodney says) is to go for material that can't be called 'core' in any meaningful sense, but to make it interesting enough for people not attracted to fringe material.
I agree. WotC is very much running out of viable ideas, after "blowing their wad" over 2008 -> mid-late 2010.
Mearls as manager of the D&D design & development group, is in the unenviable unfortunate situation of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to coming up with viable new ideas for future products. (Nevermind the already existing past 4E stuff with crappy implementations).
Quote from: Windjammer;439715Reminds me that 4E, because of its aggressive schedule in the first two years, got much sooner to the stage of where they could not meaningfully produce new 'core' material. And with 3.5 WotC learnt the lesson that fringe products like Cityscape or Elder Evils are not gonna attract high number of buyers, so WotC is now extra careful with putting out stuff.
Back then, I didn't bother picking up many of those later marginal 3.5E splatbooks, until they started showing up in the bargain bins at local gaming stores. Prior to that, the only 3.5E splatbooks I bothered to pick up at the time (which I ordered discounted from amazon.com), were the ones some particular players in my 3.5E games wanted to use.
For the most part, the vast majority of marginal 3.5E splatbooks I picked up from bargain bins in 2007, were never used at all in a 3.5E game or even as background reading for other games. It would have been a waste to buy most of them even at amazon discounted prices.
A 'splatbook' seldom presented itself as critical and necessary, and, dare I say it, a baseline for the game.
When "everything is core", on the other hand that makes it much easier to quickly flood the game.
Quote from: Doom;439910When "everything is core", on the other hand that makes it much easier to quickly flood the game.
Are they still using the "everything is core" slogan these days?
Don't most games blow their load on the "interesting character ideas" within two years? Then they focus on fine-tuning the ideas that work and world-building? I just don't see WotC doing anything all that different from anyone else, at least in this regard.
-=Grim=-
Don't most games blow their load on the "interesting character ideas" within two years? Then they focus on fine-tuning the ideas that work and world-building? I just don't see WotC doing anything all that different from anyone else, at least in this regard.
Or am I missing the gripe here?
-=Grim=-
Quote from: ggroy;439911Are they still using the "everything is core" slogan these days?
In a "we have nothing, so all we have is core" sort of way, I guess they do.
Found an old podcast of Mike Mearls talking about "everything is core" from DDXP 2009's new products announcement seminar.
http://hommlet.com/podcasts/adventure-14-ddxp-2009-product-announcements/
Mearls talks about "everything is core" at around 00:28:40 in the podcast.
(Paraphrased)
- "We're committed to ... if we do a new class, we'll support it."
- "When we say everything is core ... we're going to support everything going forward."
- "Once a character class appears in print, you can expect that books coming forward that deal with that class' power source, are going to cover that class in the same detail as classes like fighters and wizards."
In hindsight, this didn't happen for the Runepriest, Seeker, and Artificer classes, along with the absence of second iterations of power source specific splatbooks (besides martial power 2). Most likely PHB3 and Psionic Power were already completed back in 2009, before Gencon 2009.
EDIT: Work on 4E Essentials started in September 2009, according to the WotC July 2010 D&D podcast (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20100721) at around 50 seconds into the podcast.
EDIT2: The 4E Dark Sun manuscripts were already finished in mid-October 2009 and submitted to the editors, according to the lead developer's blog post (http://community.wizards.com/wotc_rodney/blog/2009/10/23/dark_sun_out_of_development).
Quote from: Windjammer;439830Justin, I honestly don't know which podcast you're referring to. I downloaded the one ggroy linked in the OP, and just checked again (as in, downloaded it again, to make sure). At 06:45 Mearls and company are still talking about the convention games they played at DDXP. Maybe you downloaded a different podcast? (For the record, the file I downloaded runs for overall 2 hours and 23 minutes.)
Weird. The file I got was only 45 minutes long. Re-downloading it now, it appears that it's still only 45 minutes long.
In any case, the discrepancy between our versions aside: Rich Baker designed
Conquest of Nerath. AFAICT, he had nothing to do with
Wrath of Ashardalon. I'm 100% confident that you missed the conversation transition from talking about
Wrath of Ashardalon to
Conquest of Nerath, which are both boardgames coming out in the next few months. Some quick googling will discover several places online where Rich Baker talks about
Conquests of Nerath being the game that was first being developed 5-6 years ago.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;439927Weird. The file I got was only 45 minutes long. Re-downloading it now, it appears that it's still only 45 minutes long.
Mine was 45 minutes too, and around 70 megs in file size.
Quote from: Windjammer;439708('Hey Bill, let's shelve these 3 RPG hardbacks, and let's get out 2 boardgames instead')... have to go dumpster dive in their own archives? (http://tinyurl.com/68x8rsb)
I think the "new focus on boardgames" comes from something in addition to them running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to avoid the Hasbro beancounters chasing them with cleavers.
First you have the rise of the boardgame. For adults with not a whole lot of time, "boardgame nights" are becoming more and more popular. WotC had their own boardgames that were kinda rpg/boardgame crossovers, but decided not to compete in that market, sticking with RPGs as opposed to "going Hasbro".
However, then came FFG. They have some very successful rpg-ish boardgames, traditional boardgames and traditional RPGs. The success of WFRP3, a true boardgame-rpg hybrid changed WotC's mind.
So now we're getting a whole variety of 4e-like boardgames, in which they have to do zero world-building, zero setting detail and zero rules association, they can just focus on game balance, which these days is really the only thing they know how to do.
Are they dumpster-diving for product? Maybe, but they're also testing the rpg-boardgame waters.
Looking at the original file, 45 minutes here, too.
CRKrueger - I agree with most what you said, except that I don't think you're giving 4e nearly enough credit for its own hybridization of RPG and boardgame. Almost every criticism of 4e as RPG can be understood from the perspective of its design not as an MMORPG wannabe but as a successful pioneer of exactly this hybrid (more so even than the much more recent WFRP3). It should also be noted that for boardgames, balance is always necessary but never sufficient - there's a lot more to good (or even mediocre) board game design than pure balance.
Quote from: CRKrueger;439930However, then came FFG. They have some very successful rpg-ish boardgames, traditional boardgames and traditional RPGs. The success of WFRP3, a true boardgame-rpg hybrid changed WotC's mind.
Wait wait wait.
WFRP3 is a success, as in: it sells? Serious question. I have *no* idea.
Quote from: Benoist;439946Wait wait wait.
WFRP3 is a success, as in: it sells? Serious question. I have *no* idea.
Surprised me too, but yeah it moves, at least at the FLGS's around here. They keep putting out pretty book and box after pretty book and box, you don't invest in all that quality if no one's buying.
Quote from: CRKrueger;439994Surprised me too, but yeah it moves, at least at the FLGS's around here. They keep putting out pretty book and box after pretty book and box, you don't invest in all that quality if no one's buying.
High-quality niche products like hobbyist boardgames/RPGs/crossover lines are perfectly sustainable with lower-end sales if you charge an inordinate amount of money for them.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;439927In any case, the discrepancy between our versions aside: Rich Baker designed Conquest of Nerath. AFAICT, he had nothing to do with Wrath of Ashardalon. I'm 100% confident that you missed the conversation transition from talking about Wrath of Ashardalon to Conquest of Nerath, which are both boardgames coming out in the next few months. Some quick googling will discover several places online where Rich Baker talks about Conquests of Nerath being the game that was first being developed 5-6 years ago.
Thank you. Yes, absolutely.
Quote from: Windjammer;439708(Wrath of Ashardalon) was actually created by Rich Baker "5-6 years ago. We pulled it out of the archives when we started to do more boardgames and it [then] got more development. So it's a game that's been in development for, gosh, 5 to 6 years ... which has now seen the light of day, thanks to our new focus on boardgames."
Or....perhaps there's a reason this project got shelved for so long?
I wouldn't want to read too much into that.
No game prototype is "done" when it gets solicited to a publisher. Some ideas get rejected immediately, some ideas are sent back to the designer for improvement, and some are solicited again and again across many years.
When I was playtester for German board game publisher FX Schmid (renamed Alea when it was bought by Ravensburger) we tested the heck out of The Princes of Florence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princes_of_Florence) and Puerto Rico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_(board_game)).
And we also tested several games that were later published by other publishers, eg Dschunke (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3234/dschunke), or Mexica (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2955/mexica) (and I liked the prototype's Venice theme better), or never at all.
Shelving a game and coming back to it with a fresh perspective (or when the market is ready for its concept?) is not unusual.
Quote from: CRKrueger;439930However, then came FFG... The success of WFRP3, a true boardgame-rpg hybrid changed WotC's mind...
Must you rub salt in this wound? :(
Fuckin' FFG.
-=Grim=-