However, a good % of the players won’t run out and buy this product. First off, the golden age of RPGs in the 90s has passed. I know I have a ton of out of print books, and honestly our group has said “Why buy new rules?” when tons of prefectly good settings and books and RPGs on our shelves?
If it offered something more than rules (by way of interesting settings) then maybe we’d be interested, but many players, like myself, don’t want to buy all new books for the 3rd time in 8 years just to have a new way to play the paladin mechanics while still role playing the same paladin we did in AD&D.;

The desire to copy everything ala World of Warcraft is driving them. Aside from the obvious mechanical similarities of the game, they want a monthly subscription fee for premium content,(DDI). Don’t be fooled, of course they say “you don’t have to have DDI to play the game” , but they are in this biz to make money so EXPECT, (and don’t tell me they won’t do this as I’ve already seen many old wotc articles get moved to the DDI section) the really cool whistles, bells, feats, prestige classes, to be for DDI people only. Anyone that thinks otherwise is going to be sadly mistaken as they eventually will pay 14.99 a month for DDI or get it illegally or chuck the game in defiance of DDI.

The advertising for 4E (the cartoons) are clearly aimed at 14 year olds and makes and old gamer like me feel like playing 1st edition just to stick it to them.

So my predictions? The young rabid fans will buy the core books in june. Sales will be good, wotc will claim 4E is a success but continued sales will slump because many gamers will choose not to play 4E, many gamers will wait to see what happens, and lack of products because of the 5,000 fee will cause the hype to dive off early. Wotc will in turn hurry to crank out crap with lots of errors and mistakes to make money quickly for declining sales. Hasbro will attempt to sell wotc while they can use the june sales to prove how successful the biz is.

From what little I have been able to gather so far (the two Preview books and the various EN scuttlebut), I am of the somewhat informed opinion that 4E is going to be very, very big.

Hundreds of retailers will end up actually playing it in Vegas this spring, and they’ll go back to thier stores stoked for the new release.

And again, this is my best guess, but as a retailer, I’m actually pretty happy with where they’ve set the bar to entry on the 4E stuff. I understand your fears of a glut anyway, but I think the companies that pony up the cash are all likely to be responsibel and market-savvy enough to know pick their releases reasonably wisely.

You have alot of internal stuff that affects this, but I do want to invoke the ‘first in last out’ lesson that seems ot have stayed true the entire rise, decline, and fall of d20.

When d20 first hit, there were half a dozen companies hwo had it together enough to release product. And for the mostpart, those companeis are the only ones whose product we ordered consistently throughout the ENTIRE cycle of d20, and in some cases (Freeport?) are still ordering, even as the line winds down.

I cant’ help but think that the ‘geek cred’ that being part of that early elite garners is really worht something, especially given just how significant I really think 4E is going to be.

The real bottom line, though, is that it would totally suck not have a Green Ronin adventure to run at our 4E launch party.

-JC @ Modern Myths

Spike Y Jones

What I wanted was WotC to try to something with the new OGL to prevent what happened last time in the d20 world. With the 5K price tag they have made it hard on the small press without doing anything to stop larger companies who can afford that from pumping out as much stuff as they want. That was my point.

Shame on Wizards for doing anything that would inhibit people from helping out the 4e launch in the same way, with great related product.

And a bit of shame on Green Ronin – that’s exactly how you got started. Now that you’re big, you want the little guys shut out more?

The common wisdom about the d20 “glut” is misguided IMO. The d20 logo doesn’t mean “crap!” to gamers nowadays in my experience, it just means d20 compatible. And having more content for your system is *good*. Some of it will be bad, and it won’t sell, and those companies will pass away. It’s like PC games – anyone can write one, which is WHY the PC is the best gaming platform. I think people are blaming the d20 glut on the RPG downturn, when they have the general economy more to blame. Saying that “oh, too many books, people can’t tell the good from the bad so they get confused and wander away” is retarded and it’s logic that doesn’t hold up in any related field. Does that frieghtening sci-fi book variety at Barnes & Noble cause the book industry to tank? No. Having three aisles full of PC games at Frye’s doesn’t make the PC gaming industry sink. This is disinformation that only feeds the interest of the guy trying to be the monopoly.

Forget 4e. Make more kickin’ M&M; and True20!!!!

Christina

$5,000.00 is a serious leap of faith for those of us without a serious commitment to that particular game, and I am not known for being a tower of faith. Oh, well.