Monte Carlo

Hey, look on the bright side. 5th Edition couldn't be any worse... could it?

Yes, the OP is a Prince amongst Men. I thank you.

* sigh * the question has been answered. The disc will be gog style DRM free if you want it. Ferg confirmed on KS.

Check out the thread referencing Ferg's KS comments --- I think that's confirmed.

^ It's tanking. 5th Ed has come around with indecent haste.

The first iteration of 3E suited me. It was the splatbook-itis and prestige class nonsense that killed it. And that has more to do with the PnP business model than anything else. Then again, I'm one of those old bastards who strips out any ruleset I come across and bends it to my will with some serious homebrewing. So the crap elements I just ignore. But 4E doesn't feel or play like D&D to me. As the man said, it's sort of soulless.

I think I might cast a like with my wife's account. She'll go WTF? (she doesn't know I have her password, heh).

I'm just interested in how the games you play back in the day end up influencing, directly or indirectly, what you like now. And to what extent. 4E is pretty awful for me personally, although I agree that 3E got too messy (and why Pathfinder is just right). I came up through 1st Ed AD&D and RuneQuest, it's definitely had a major impact on what I enjoy now. Never touched 2E AD&D, we just all had our 1E homebrew stuff and stuck with it. 4E has some trading card game vibe stuff going on, just wondered if that sort of influenced elements of 4E you found agreeable.

Out of interest Merin did you ever play Magic: The Gathering or anything like that?

I wont play coop but if it would genuinely make more money then why not.

If a vanilla mage tries to fight toe-to-toe I want to see him chopped up into hamburger. If a vanilla fighter goes up against a well-prepared mage I want to see him immolated. I don't want to see characters turned into super-hero swiss army knives.

I think Obsidian like the idea of doing romances. That has nothing to do with appeasing "Biowarians" or making more money. If anything, they'll scrap the idea of doing them to appease the anti-romance crowd. Let's not have a romance debate here, suffice it to say MCAs comments on the subject have been... ambivalent to say the least.

I think a significant number of Biowarians have backed off because the devs have been non-committal about Romances. They could sell their souls to the devil and announce them, they would make some more money out of it but at what long-term cost?

WotC/HASBRO own the rights to any video game using the Icewind Dale trademark, according to the US copyright office. And why would we want another IWD when WotC/HASBRO have to approve content and can tell Obsidian what they can or cannot do in the game, when Obsidian now has their own world and could do a IWD like game in the future, and are free to do any content in it they desire. Jaesun I was just wondering if they could bundle it as a giveaway, you know the original precursor games in a special edition?

OK, all these points are taken. What should the big, earth-shaking 3M stretch-goal be?

Pathfinder is, really, just a variant of 3E D&D using the OGL. But, IIRC, the OGL precludes any electronic media being made from it without reference to WotCs interests. So, in short, no there is no Pathfinder PC game. As for 5E, last I heard it was definitely but discretely edging away from 4E. 4E has tanked.

^ Seconded. Maybe ongoing, pledged support by fans might constitute a new part-funding model in of itself? I mean, folks pay subs to play MMOs. Why not pay upfront for the continued development of SP games?

Can I just say that I'm always wary of PC versus PnP comparisons. I'm not saying that some aspects of 4E might not fit into a computer game (after all, it is clearly influenced by them) but that as a PnP system it's poor. And as I said before, the illusive and sometimes fallacious quest for balance in all things in a games system can grind all the quirky fun out of it. So what if Class A is less of a challenge than Class B?

As I said, I tried it yesterday. Sawyer is clearly influenced by it. You have powaz you can use per encounter, per day and at will. So magic missile is at will. You can spam it. There's a spell that let's you temporarily turn someone into a frog. That's a once-a-day powa. Feats / skills for all the classes work this way. Skills are broader than 3E (there is one called, yes this is true, Dungeoneering). There are still free actions, rounds, flanking etc and some of it feels like a minis game and some of it feels like WoW. I'm hardly a pen and paper Grognard: I hopped happily from 1st Ed. AD&D to 3E and preferred 3E. 3.5 sucked. 4E sucks. God knows what the mysterious "blend of rulez" 5E will be like. I don't play much pen and paper any more, but if I did it would be Pathfinder. It has just the right mix of old-skool values, customization, style and granularity I look for in a game.

If they kept donations open I'd probably pitch in $20 a month to build up to the next tier and beyond. Lots of us would I suspect. They should seriously consider it as an option. If they dropped some of the custom content design options from the higher tiers but made them slightly cheaper after the KS then I'd be looking to aim for that. Alternatively, if I could build up credit in new Merch tiers to get themed goodies. Spring 2014 is a long time and I think all this stuff would keep interest flowing. I'm just not in the position to drop another couple of hundred dollars on this project in the run up to Xmas, but if they let me keep on donating I would.

I take your point, but from previous KS data I've looked at there is traditionally a spike towards the end of a project. Plus, like I say, we haven't been able to see the KS data (probably about 12-15000 pledges so far). So a final push in the last week might just see us get there.

I think, with the right stretch goals, that three million dollars is possible. I am factoring in PayPal donations, albeit tough because figures haven't been released. What do you think, stretch-goal or otherwise, Obsidian needs to do to hit or even surpass The Big Three? Edit: Do they own the rights to IWD / IWD2?

I like your 'loot-pack' idea though, I think that kills many birds with one stone. I also think they could maximize profit, given the interest in Europe, to set up a third party merchandising operation over here. To mitigate the shipping costs (the shipping costs on this project are very steep, verging on embarrassing).

^ I've said it before, it's a case of Video Killed The Radio Star. PC games aped PnP then, eventually, PnP aped PC games. 4E feels like you're playing pen and paper WoW. It's awful.

$20-25 for a hoodie is way too cheap.