Quote from: Shipyard Locked;815215All this reminds me of a question I've been mulling over:

We now have...

WotC's relatively rules-light and apparently supplement-light edition for lapsed, busy, newbie or casual players

vs

Paizo's heavy crunch, heavy supplement edition for dedicated system mastery veteran hobbyists

If one of them is ultimately victorious, what does that say about the state of the hobby?

If I had to put money down, I would go with Pathfinder winning out. I think the adventures help out immensely in keeping GMs on board with the product and I think the splat books make the players happy by making it appear that they can do anything with their characters. The books look good and are illustrated nicely, which help too. There is consistency in quality control, for the most part.

IMO, the basic 3e system is very good and this keeps people glued, for lack of a better term, despite all the excessive crunch like 1000s of Feats.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;815215All this reminds me of a question I've been mulling over:

We now have...

WotC's relatively rules-light and apparently supplement-light edition for lapsed, busy, newbie or casual players

vs

Paizo's heavy crunch, heavy supplement edition for dedicated system mastery veteran hobbyists

If one of them is ultimately victorious, what does that say about the state of the hobby?

I think the simple truth is there is an audience for both, and each will have their market.

The follow on question, though, is whether either product will have enough market to satisfy their owners? There is a question which could get a 'real answer' at some point. The Internet is littered with withered systems which only exist as 1-man-bands and fan support. And, of course, the two companies have radically different expectations in this regard.

Quote from: David Johansen;815218At the moment Pathfinder actually has an entry level product on the shelves and D&D doesn't.  A couple free pdfs hidden on their website just doesn't compare.

Huh?

Quote from: Endless Flight;815225If I had to put money down, I would go with Pathfinder winning out. I think the adventures help out immensely in keeping GMs on board with the product and I think the splat books make the players happy by making it appear that they can do anything with their characters. The books look good and are illustrated nicely, which help too. There is consistency in quality control, for the most part.

I don't have the quote handy, but Paizo created Pathfinder partly to support their adventure paths, which they say sell really, really well, and are their primary product.

Until WOTC starts headhunting adventure writers from Goodman or Paizo, this switch to 5th is just going to be them going in circles, IMO.

Duh, sorry, forgot.  Did they actually reprint the box yet?

Quote from: David Johansen;815274Duh, sorry, forgot.  Did they actually reprint the box yet?

Dunno, so technically you may be right, but I've seen the box in my local gaming stores.

Quote from: JeremyR;814616...Have you looked at OD&D? It has lots of rules, for things that no one really wanted. OD&D had rules that EGG liked and he wanted. Not a framework, but what he thought was necessary because it presumably suited how he played...

Yeah.  Gygax made a lot of rules, but he made most for GMS to use, and offered a lot of leeway to GMs.  If he was surprised by people wanting more rules, it was because those requests were mainly for PC powers and such.  That Seventies Style was a toolbox for the GM to use to keep players from having everything they wanted, proscriptive rules, mainly, for an all-powerful GM to wield as a weapon against the imaginations of the players, whose character powers were distinct from those of monsters.

Later players made the reasonable demand that by default most powers used by monsters could be matched or countered by PCs.  It's a different mindset, with a game setting that is home to PCs as much as it is trying to kill them.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;815215WotC's relatively rules-light and apparently supplement-light edition for lapsed, busy, newbie or casual players

The 5e PH, MM, and DMG total about 990 pages. That's not even relatively rules light in my book.

Quote from: RandallS;815282The 5e PH, MM, and DMG total about 990 pages. That's not even relatively rules light in my book.

Next to Pathfinder and 4e, it's a piffle.

Also, Pathfinder is denser than its already frightening page count would suggest. Obscure yet crucial rules, corner cases that change everything, circuitous synergies, trap options, small bonuses that are easy to overlook, unforeseeable interactions... and then throw in all the splatbook shit that the uberwonk players are usually way too puppy-enthusiastic to drop on already info-swamped newbies. Brrrr...

I think people are underselling the newbie friendliness of 5e. I've just brought another guy into my regular group (mostly made up of former newbies from last year's campaign) and he picked up many of the first level and long term considerations intuitively in the course of one session.

Complexity and length don't directly correlate.

I mean, if my system was:
'Roll d6 + attribute, attributes are 1-4 and are roughly in scope of things like 'Enduring strength' or 'clever like a fox,' high score wins and 3 wins means you are out.'

That's a simple system.

If there were 20 pages of examples, 3000 monsters with cool funky stuff and write-ups, a dungeon designer, a list of equipment with exotic descriptions (but minimal actual effect)...

it's still a simple system.


On the flip side, I could create a system using random fractal seeds and a list of equations to interpret during combat, fit it on a page or two, and I've created a hugely complex system in a short space.

That said, I still wouldn't subject new players to it unless they were very numbery... I'd probably go Risus or Fae or something.

Quote from: Will;815102If OGL hadn't existed, there'd be no Pathfinder and people probably would have gone with 4e, even if they weren't happy with it. Sales would still have dipped, but not as severely.

This gave me a goofy thought. What if this had happened. What if Palladium had bombarded the interwebs and everything else and it slid in filling the void? (old school, school:)) What if people started reading a blog called Runequest with porn stars? What if GURPS made a streamlined lite all in one fantasy game? Just some random thoughts that occurred to me.

In an alternate universe, Rifts is The World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game™.

I'd love to see Beyond the Supernatural revamped. Mmm.

That game was crying out for a post-XFiles (and Supernatural, and so on) version. I go back and forth whether a cleaned up/simpler system would be a good or bad idea... hee

Quote from: RandallS;815282The 5e PH, MM, and DMG total about 990 pages. That's not even relatively rules light in my book.

5e Basic PHB is 111 pages. 5e Basic DMG/MM is 62 pages. I'm very confident calling 173 pages rules medium with fluffy peaks at the very least.

Quote from: Will;815293I'd love to see Beyond the Supernatural revamped. Mmm.

That game was crying out for a post-XFiles (and Supernatural, and so on) version. I go back and forth whether a cleaned up/simpler system would be a good or bad idea... hee

Hell I know a lot of people that would be happy if the promised books (feel free to insert the words back burner in the house next door/vaporware) in the Beyond the Supernatural line ever got released.