4th Edition - Adoption Rate?
You can all go ahead thank me for not making up some wacky April Fool’s post. No, Days of Wonder has not gone out of business…
It’s getting close, isn’t it? The time when 4th Edition D&D was just this fuzzy cloud of rumor and speculation has long passed, along with the ongoing stream of hints and clarifications. Word is that it’s off to the printers, and should be here soon. You can circle June 6th on your calendars as the date for the “big three”, the DMG, Player’s Handbook, and Monster Manual. For most people that is when the 4th Edition era begins.
You can pre-order from a lot of places, and there’s a “gift set” version that puts all three books in a slipcase, and it can be pre-ordered for about $63 on Amazon, $60 after a pre-order 5% discount (with free shipping), which is a pretty good deal, all in all. 4E will probably run for over a decade, and if you ignore the online content subscription and filler supplements, you’ll never get more enjoyment out of your hard-earned sixty clams.
But my pre-order is already in. So today’s musings are on the subject of adoption rates. How and when will people come on board with 4th Edition?
I’m of that age where it was a blurry transition from Basic/Expert to “Advanced” D&D, now retroactively called first edition. We thought it would be the only one. Second edition was much more of an edit-and-repackage deal, and came at a time when the game seemed to be waning with TSR’s fortunes, and the desktop publishing revolution of the 90’s was filling our world with an embarrassment of alternative RPG riches. (Most of which failed to survive to Y2k!) I was out of regular play at this time in my life, and eventually picked up the second edition core books to help run a convention tournament or something like that. They remain in mint condition in a box in my attic, no value except for kindling for a fire. Since first and second edition were mechanically the same, for most players it was no big deal.
Third edition was something different, of course. The big overhaul at the hands of Wizards, and by my reckoning a huge success. As with many other people I know, 3E was a reboot, a reason to get back into the game, and we were rewarded with a system that was more structurally sound that it had ever been. You can cry all you want about the waning RP aspects being the fault of more complete rule systems, but you don’t blame the tool for what a bad craftsman does with it. In the hands of a good DM, 3E was downright vorpal.
Which means you could only call 3.5 “extra-vorpal”. Say 3.5 is to 3 as 2 was to 1 – an upgrade of twiddles, corrections, addendums, and balancing. Worth it, of course, but still we gripe over the financial speed bump of upgrading. These WoTC guys can’t hold a candle to the Warhammer franchise, though. Anyway, my final scorecard for this era of books was that I got the 3E PH almost right away, added the rest of the 3E core later in preparation for a DM stint that never came to pass, then added just the 3.5 PH to keep up with my duties as a player in a couple campaigns. Looking back, we’ve gotten a long and powerful run out of 3 and 3.5 and should lay them to rest with honor and praise.
So here comes 4E. All indications are that it’s a break and a big step forward: there’s no going on with your 3.5 books and trying to make it work. This time around it’s funny, because we all know the curmudgeons out there who will stand by their 1st edition over 3rd in love of the good old days (KarasDjun, we’re looking at you!), but you figure that most people who braved the new world of 3E are going to be all in on moving to 4E. Five years from now I expect there will be fewer holdovers playing 3E than there will be 1E!
I’m going all in early this time with the intent of running the flagship 4E campaign for my gamer group. They’re an eager bunch and I expect to see more than a couple other 4E books floating around the table pretty fast. Considering that we also have at least one healthy 3.5 campaign going on, I wonder if we’re going to whipsaw back and forth, or upgrade that one, too. In any case, we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll loot and plunder, sings songs of the brave, and get zapped by lightning bolts that arc around blind corners. If d21 made any money, I’d claim the 4E books as a deduction. Alas, we do it for the love of the game.
For the active D&D players out there right now, what’s your status in 4E? What will it do to your existing campaigns? Do you plan to start a new one? Who in your group is excited and who isn’t? Is June 6th going to be just another day (technically, “Friday”), or will it be the start of a new era for your D&D lifestyle? Oh, and if you’ve pre-ordered, where and for how much?