I've been reading through threads here, taking in the scenery and feeling out the what's what, the howfor and so on. This hours-long examination before plucking my two pennies forth has culminated in me feeling obliged to throw them on the table, and most likely walk away thereafter lest it seem like I've a morbid fascination with bludgeoning deceased equines.
It is my personal opinion that 4EFR is a shoddy demonstration of setting development.
My primary reason for holding this perspective has less to do with that the changes do not serve my interests (They do not, but I've been an avid fan of rewriting what I don't like anyway, so that's not really a bother) and far more to do with that it smacks of the accusation levied against it all too often in that it looks, 'tastes' and 'feels' like it should have Blizzard, not WotC, stamped on it.
I certainly don't condemn WotC for trying to make D&D more familiar and appealing in both appearance and feel to the ever-growing MMO client base; from a business perspective, tabletop gaming really is facing some seriously problematic logistics regarding competition with MMO's.
MMO's are cheaper to buy and certainly cheaper to play, in the short run; the cost of a single 4E book can just about net you any MMO on the market, and the cost of the three core books combined readily eclipses the cost of buying any MMO and all it's expansions as well as pay for a good few months of playtime (Barring, perhaps, Everquest).
This is, of course, all to say that even if there weren't any other factors (There are other factors) to consider, this factor alone makes it clear and apparent that WotC simply cannot, if it wishes to see it's tabletop gaming investments go anywhere but up in smoke, do things in the same ways and by the same metrics that worked 15 years ago, or 10...or, honestly, even 5.
They just can't, and as much as I find myself intellectually insulted by what I feel to be the thoroughly bad, amateurishly hocked-and-spat rubbish thrown together that's passing as 4E 'fluff' anymore, I do not and cannot fault them for trying.
They need to be trying, and they need to be departing from tired old traditions, and they -really- need to be distancing themselves and the whole tabletop gaming genre from not merely the niche habits many gamers venially justify as traditions out of misplaced senses of identity-by-proxy, but also the enculturated perspectives held in mainstream society where WotC's markets exist (and where they want to grow them as well) about tabletop gaming.
I noticed, and noticed keenly, that the advertisements throughout the life of 3e/3.5 cast the people playing D&D as neither being awkward fringe-nerds or unemployed basement-dwelling catpiss men in greater need of therapy than yet another escapist outlet.
The depictions of people playing D&D were of snappily dressed, decently groomed individuals that obviously had expendable income enough to afford pleasantly tasteful furniture, homes/apartments of their own and in co-ed company.
The modern gamer, by the depictions of the advertisements alone, is something WotC has 'told' me they're very aware of, in both image and context. I applaud them that.
So, yeah. I really don't like the content of 4eFR at all, and I'm not that big of a fan of 4E mechanics either. There's nothing remarkably wrong with 4E mechanics, and I certainly wouldn't decry them as being woven of fail and lose (such as I am inclined to do of the 4E FR fluff content >.>), but they're just not my thing.
Not my style, not my pace, not my 'flow'. Frankly, I like the clutter of 3e/3.5, and I like the little 'game within a game' of character building and tweaking and mixing and matching.
Most importantly, my players like that too, and so that's what we've been sticking with for no better reason than that we prefer it.
I'm not very much into miniatures either, and it -kinda-, a smidgen of a tiny bit, rubs me the wrong way that WotC's pushing the miniatures thing so eagerly...but, again, I can hardly fault them for it. Diversity within their own market's a good thing, and with the seemingly apparent market niche they're trying to get/stay recognizable and in rapport with (MMO gamers), it makes sense.
Miniatures = the shiny graphics of tabletop gaming. And if you can make it cool and fun to collect shiny things, and give them all numbers, and make some of them uncommon and rare and ultra-rare, well...'game within a game'.
So, there's my two cents. I haven't forgotten the gratitude I felt waaay back when WotC pulled D&D's fat out of the pyre of TSR. I knew, waaaay back then, that they were going to take the game in directions I probably wouldn't always like, and do things with it I would probably think were stupid at least half the time.
And also that I would be glad for the opportunity to think it stupid half the time, because that meant it was still around to think about.
D&D's still alive. It's changed, both in regard to mechanics and certainly in regard to the concurrent settings. I don't like some of what WotC's done with the old gal, and I certainly think that at least half of what they've done with any setting is razzle-frazzled gargly flargh-ftang brewha and that whomever thought this, that and that one thing were good ideas should be slapped with a salmon...but that's ok.
It's ok because -it's still here-, I can still go find people in gaming stores that will sometimes share my stuck-up, elitist views on well-wrought, coherent art in storytelling, and we can sit around a tastefully pleasant table, chucking dice and feeling very smug in that we're the ones that really know how this game should be played!
We can still do that for one rather plain reason; WotC. A company comprised largely of gamers that have busted their asses to turn a whole enculturated perspective not merely on it's ear, but fully around; to make being a gamer cool, and not a "Kick Me" sign hanging around one's social neck.
And they've bloody well done it! Maybe not so wildly successfully as that we gamers are going to be celebrated in the streets for the wonders of our cornucopic imaginations, but all you fellow vets floating around here waving your 20, 25, dawn-of-time-I-loaned-Gygax-his-first-pencil badges around ought well remember what it was like to try to be a gamer in the days when coming out of a bookstore with a D&D book in your hands could very well get you surrounded by mobs of frenzied protestors, or treated like a parriah by ignorant parents that bought into the 'D&D is Satan's Game!' rubbish.
Or coerced by your church leaders to turn your D&D books over to them to be prayed over and burnt.
Sadly, I not merely knew people that underwent crap like that, but I tasted a good bit of it myself. Here is not the time or the place to go into that, in any event.
It's all to say that WotC still has my support, and my gratitude, for all the hard work and determination the folk in it's employ put into keeping tabletop gaming not merely alive, but growing and becoming ever the more present and acceptable in mainstream consciousness.
I don't like every decision they make. I certainly don't think everything they do with settings is the best or brightest that could've been done.
But I sure have seen a lot of hate, in my perusing these forums. A whole lot of selfish vitriol spewed at fellows and neighbors and WotC alike.
I guess I just don't agree with that kind've behavior, so I'm going to take this last bit of everyone's time in closing by giving WotC a thankful nod.
If anyone from WotC actually reads this bit of business here...I don't always like what you guys decide or run with, but I sure do appreciate all of this; even this forum we're able to rant on like a bunch of bad tempered baby red dragons.
Thanks for all the hard work and dedication, you guys. It's much appreciated, at least by some of us, even if we don't always agree with you or like certain things.
Cheers!
:D
The cynic in me looks at it and Stigger's last post and says, "Wouldn't be the first time a company hired someone to post propaganda on their message boards." ;)
But if your goal was just to rant using a stream of consciousness technique broken apart to make it seem more readable... I guess mission accomplished.
I concur 100% :D
Bare in mind that most of the people your applauding have left and strated their own companies, and the guys who designed 4e are the 'leftovers'.
And I never had my 'church elders' try to burn my D&D books - if they did, I would have spilled the beens about those 'woodland retreats' the priests were so fond of. ;)
If it's moved, it will instantly become flame bait, but it doesn't really fit in this forum.
So, what I'll have to do is close the thread, BUT- I will bring it to WotC's attention. (It's very well written!)
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