This is being announced now to give people a chance to still lock-in their existing pricing going forward.
Hand-in-hand with the announcement that the Introductory pricing is coming to an end, was the announcement that subscribers will be getting early access to FINAL CONTENT from the PHB3 as it's, well, finalized.
I inquired what this means/will mean for the RPGA, and have been told that early PHB3 content should be RPGA legal.
Want to know more? I suggest you checkout the (rapidly growing) thread over here: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1191941
Well, what was actually said was that the new DDI content would be addressed in the next CCG update. Until we see that, any speculation on how it affects RPGA players is premature.
*nods*
Trevor has indicated to me that it's his understanding that PHB3 content should be allowed.
I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket yet, but it's a
Oh! As it happens:
5/19/2009 11:54 AM - The PH3 material that appears in the Character Builder and Compendium should be legal for play in the RPGA. The updated Character Creation Guide will be out in early June and it will be addressed in that update.
(bolding mine)
These are not previews - I don't believe you'll see huge articles and pages and pages dedicated to this PH3 content. It is simply going to be added to the CB and Compendium every month
So if this new information is only showing up in the CB and Compendium, that opens a huge can of worms for what is legal and what isn't over here.
I have little doubt from the comments than the new info is expected to be legal in the RPGA. I also have little faith that the CCG will be updated to reflect this without causing significant other issues. Not the first of which being that if the CB and Compendium are legal sources of character options then every typo and programming glitch becomes (arguably. Because some people are like that) legal.
Call me a cynic, but there you go. I'm really looking forward to the CCG update now. With fingers crossed that they have done it right and avoided some of the more obvious issues.
Heck, I didn't like it as a rules source until they clarified that it should be treated as secondary - if a published product and the Compendium disagree, the Compendium is wrong and the published item is right.
It's not that I don't like the idea of the tool. It's quite useful.
But a rules set for a Living Campaign should not be based on something that has, so far, a mess of undocumented changes and updates.
I should not have to wonder if I missed a rules change. Rules changes should always be documented and announced in advance, on a set schedule.
-karma
Yah, I really don't like the Compendium becoming a primary player option source.
Heck, I didn't like it as a rules source until they clarified that it should be treated as secondary - if a published product and the Compendium disagree, the Compendium is wrong and the published item is right.
With that clarification, I can't comprehend it as a rules source.
Basically, we're being told that "rules source" means that, if you don't happen to have your books on you and no one remembers what the rules actually are, you're allowed to look them up in the Compendium and use what that says.
Or, in other words, the Compendium is now just slightly more official than the DM at the next table over--if you don't know what the rules are, you can listen to him, but if you actually have the book, you ignore him.
For the narrow corner case the declaration of the Compendium as a rules source solves--a situation where no one knows what the rules are, the rules come from a book (which no one has on them) and not Dragon Magazine, and you're somewhere with Internet access--it certainly creates confusion disproportionate to its benefits.
Personally, my opinion is that the CCG suffers from the document-by-committee problem, and whoever put in that sentence did actually intend for everything in the Compendium to be usable by LFR players (perhaps without having everyone else on board for that idea), and only after the barrage of questions raised by that statement did someone in authority realize what they had done and what a bad idea that would be, leading to the clumsy back-pedaling.
I think part of the problem was that the Compendium didn't have versioned or dated entries.
This combined with the fact that the first couple updates to the Compendium were poorly sourced if the rule was different from what was published didn't lend confidence to, well, some of us here in the forums.
While this problem hasn't been resolved 100% (some of the older updates aren't dated) I note they ARE now dating their updates to the Compendium - which, for me at least, greatly increases my confidence in "conflict resolution".
Now it becomes much simpler to find the latest version of a rule - which is what we are to use.
Combined with the fact that they now only update the Compendium when rules are updated (via the Rules Update documents) it's become a far more stable system.
For me, these changes mean I'd be comfortable, at this time, with the Compendium being a *definitive* rules source - though I'd want a channel to be kept open to the DDI team so that as we spot conflicts we (the RPGA) can help corrections happen to bring the compendium in-line with other resources.
But, that's just my $.02.
[/speculation]
I'm sure the CCG released in June will cover this.
Ohhh... so confident are you. Hur hur, hur...
Now it becomes much simpler to find the latest version of a rule - which is what we are to use.
Hence, the confusion, as my interpretation of the clarification is pretty much directly the opposite of yours.
My understanding is that the actual rules we're supposed to follow our those found in the original resource (the book or magazine). If there are any changes to those rules, they'll be made by errata. If the rules as listed in the Compendium don't agree with the rules listed in the book (as errata'ed), then we ignore the Compendium.
Hence, the confusion, as my interpretation of the clarification is pretty much directly the opposite of yours.
My understanding is that the actual rules we're supposed to follow our those found in the original resource (the book or magazine). If there are any changes to those rules, they'll be made by errata. If the rules as listed in the Compendium don't agree with the rules listed in the book (as errata'ed), then we ignore the Compendium.
I have a feeling that WOTC wants that to change and we are to look to the Compendium as the ultimate rules source and adjudicator.
However, thus far the compendium has been a mess of stealth changes, undocumented and unknown.
While it continues to operate in this state it CANNOT be used as a primary source.
Players and DM should not have to worry that just because they don't go over the compendium with a fine tooth comb EVERY SINGLE MONTH that they might have missed a change.
-karma
Hence, the confusion, as my interpretation of the clarification is pretty much directly the opposite of yours.
My understanding is that the actual rules we're supposed to follow our those found in the original resource (the book or magazine). If there are any changes to those rules, they'll be made by errata. If the rules as listed in the Compendium don't agree with the rules listed in the book (as errata'ed), then we ignore the Compendium.
I side-tracked myself.
The CURRENT policy is that the Compendium et al is a secondary - because of the concerns many of us had when it was first made a rules source.
With the changes I was blathering on about, I have few misgivings about it becoming a primary rules source going forward (and suspect that to be part of the plan).
My apologies for not being clear on that.