Quote from: beeberme too.  kind of like an inverse star trek movie phenomenon.

38 and "meh."  i'm certainly no longer in the target demographic :what:  (need a doddering old man smiley!)

I'd just use this.  

I'm excited and I'm 30. I never really liked 3.5 that much, it was OK but it didn't really make me wan to play. Too much work to GM as well. Now it sounds like 4E might be more like Saga Edition SW which I liked quite a lot. Much more fast playing and easier to GM.

I'm excited to hear that kids are excited. Otherwise, not so much.

Still I wonder what it is that excited them. Are they just projecting their own enthusiasm for the game into the expectation that a new edition will be "more of whatever they like", or were they reacting to actual facts about the changes in 4e?

About tastes in stuff, I find that there's lots of good new stuff, lots of bad new stuff, and of course lots of good old stuff--much of which I haven't yet experienced. It's never too late to listen to Jimi Hendrix the first time.

Quote from: AlnagThe question is, why should there be something wrong? Does older design concepts of say cars of fashion or food not work? No, and yet we still have new types of cars, new fashion products and new kinds of food all the time. Everything proceeds forwards not because there is something wrong with the old things but just because it is human nature to switch from product A to product B sooner or later...

Raise hand anybody who always buy a new thing only if the old one is irreparably broken, please.

False analogy.

You can't just go out and buy a new 1955 Chevy, no matter how much you want to. You can buy a restored '55 chevy or a piece of junk '55 chevy, but those are high maintenance items - you are paying high prices for a refurbished collector's item. I would have happily replaced my 2003 Chevy Venture with a 2006 Chevy Venture, but I couldn't. That model was cancelled. I had to buy a 2006 Chevy Uplander instead. Not half as good a car IMO - YMMV. See what I mean?

RPGs, on the other hand, play just as well today as they did 30 years ago. Exactly as well, with no more than casual care to keep the book from falling apart.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceRPGs, on the other hand, play just as well today as they did 30 years ago. Exactly as well, with no more than casual care to keep the book from falling apart.

And since TSR printed a bajillion copies of AD&D 1e and 2e, there's plenty of them in good condition to go around yet.

Quote from: jgantsAnd since TSR printed a bajillion copies of AD&D 1e and 2e, there's plenty of them in good condition to go around yet.

This, by the way, is why I describe tabletop RPG as capital goods mislabeled and misunderstood to be consumer goods.  Consumer goods don't last generations.

Quote from: McrowI'm excited and I'm 30. I never really liked 3.5 that much, it was OK but it didn't really make me wan to play. Too much work to GM as well. Now it sounds like 4E might be more like Saga Edition SW which I liked quite a lot. Much more fast playing and easier to GM.

29 in about a month and I echo this sentiment.

Yeah, well I'm 25, and I want 4e less and less with every word that comes out of the devs' mouth.  Where does that put me in your fucking demographic?

I'm sure 4e will sell fine initially amongst the general audience that doesn't keep abreast of the changes, the folks who, as Elliot implies, don't really know about 4e, they jsut know they like 3e and want more.  

That's the way it goes with any sequel to popular product.  The writing may well be on the wall to the folks online, but the rest of the market hasn't read a word of it, and will buy on brand recgonition alone, enough to give a pretty damn big chunk of sales, and once those sales are made, a good chunk of people will still stick with it even if it isn't that great because of the general market momentum.

It generally takes a pretty healthy amount of suck to totally kill a property, and even though the design philosophy seems to be to go through 3.5 and earlier and start tossing every last thing in the trash but the class names and the concept of character levels, it may still not be enough for the present market to reject the property completely.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI'm excited to hear that kids are excited. Otherwise, not so much.

Still I wonder what it is that excited them. Are they just projecting their own enthusiasm for the game into the expectation that a new edition will be "more of whatever they like", or were they reacting to actual facts about the changes in 4e?

The kids didn't know the details of DnD 4, they were just excited that a new version was coming out. I think they were excited because they believe that "new" means "new and improved" to them.

Also, and I'll ask them about this, I wonder if they look at DnD 3.x as the last generation's DnD and DnD 4 will be their generation's DnD. The enthusiasm may be a social identity thing.

You make an interesting point there Jeff. I can just imagine those same kids, twenty-five years from now...crowded around the touchtable...

Dad: "Damn, but I can remember when the Dungeon Master was _human_, and I'm telling you, 4e is where it was at! It was all downhill from there, son."

Other Dad: *nods fervently*

Teenage Kid: "Dad, you don't play D&D Xt11 with a human DM. A human DM would cheat."

Dad: "And we had real miniatures back then! Well, we went back to them after we realised the DI was buggy as all hell. This holographic stuff, there's no weight to it!"

Teenage Kid: "Pop, just press the display and roll up your Half-Draciniakian Paladin-Assassin, the others will be here any minute."

Dad: *sigh*

- Q

Quote from: KoltarI'm usually on the other end of that 3 to 4 times a week at the game store. Some of these people need help.....at telling stories in an entertainng.
- Ed C.

I've been there, it just comes with the territory.

Quote from: J ArcaneYeah, well I'm 25, and I want 4e less and less with every word that comes out of the devs' mouth.  Where does that put me in your fucking demographic?

I'm sure 4e will sell fine initially amongst the general audience that doesn't keep abreast of the changes, the folks who, as Elliot implies, don't really know about 4e, they jsut know they like 3e and want more.  

That's the way it goes with any sequel to popular product.  The writing may well be on the wall to the folks online, but the rest of the market hasn't read a word of it, and will buy on brand recgonition alone, enough to give a pretty damn big chunk of sales, and once those sales are made, a good chunk of people will still stick with it even if it isn't that great because of the general market momentum.

It generally takes a pretty healthy amount of suck to totally kill a property, and even though the design philosophy seems to be to go through 3.5 and earlier and start tossing every last thing in the trash but the class names and the concept of character levels, it may still not be enough for the present market to reject the property completely.

Grognard. Bitchy fellow who may well be happy with what they have, but have some really irritating penchant for thinking that different opionions are personal slights or signs of stupidity.

D&D for me is a whole family of games. Each edition has its own thing to offer and you know what's great about that? You can pretty much take the edition you like and play away, and that's cool by me and the other 99% of  well-adjusted gamers out there. Only real assholes get bent out of shape because someone else somewhere is not playing their version of the game.

I totally understand that complaint is one of the primary modes of internet discussion, but most of the time I just don't get it. This is one of them. :wtfsign:

I think it's pretty ridiculous to tell me my opinion is fucking invalid because I'm "too old".  I'm hardly into walkers and Depends territory at the moment.  The core concept of this thread is pretty monumentally insulting.

And I hardly think "grognard" is even a really accurate term to describe someone who loves and enjoys the edition of a game that is still selling, on store shelves all over the fucking world.

It has nothing to do with age, it has nothing to do with anything, so much as it has to do with me exercising a little reading comprehension and reading what the fuck has been written, and realizing it's pretty clear that the approach at this point is to tear apart everything about said current edition for no other reason than the poisonous myth of "progress in RPGs".

And what gets my goat the most?  I finally found a mainstream game again with 3e that I could really get into, and now I'm basically being told, both by the new guard, and countless fans online, to fuck off.  I've gone from finally getting into a game that I could count on to find players anywhere in the world, to being ghettoized as a "grognard".

Fuck that, and fuck you, you miserable cunt.

Quote from: McrowI'm excited and I'm 30. I never really liked 3.5 that much, it was OK but it didn't really make me wan to play. Too much work to GM as well. Now it sounds like 4E might be more like Saga Edition SW which I liked quite a lot. Much more fast playing and easier to GM.

There hasn't been any concrete information that would indicate 4th edition will be significantly quicker or easier.

I was really excited when they said in the presentation that it would be more GM-friendly. But so far it seems to be the usual PR-bullshit. They're certainly moving around the layers of complexity but the complexity looks similar so far.

I'm going to keep an open mind as I would really like for this edition to work but I'm not holding my breath. Especially not with that team of designers.

I'm not surprised. At that age, I was in love with the very novelty of a new release, beyond the actual (or even advertised) content. It was New Stuff! It had to be good!

It was Rifts, I think, that broke me of this sort of consuming for the sake of consuming relationship with gaming product.