So the day of the release at GenCon will indeed be August 13th, right?
You going to be at GenCon?
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last i head they couldn't hold orders to be picked up. Last year the Beta sold out by 10AM friday, can you imagine how much business they are going to have this year? You don't want one book with your name on it to get lost in the shuffle and accidentally soldTreebore - do you know anyone else who plans to buy the RPG book, but not get a subscription? You could buy at Gen Con and sell your subscription one to them. No, I don't. I am the only gamer I know of within 50 miles. If it weren't for online gaming I would only be gaming with my wife and kids.
GRRR!! Man I JUST caught up on them day before yesterday! Oh well, I think I still got the PF subscriber discount, so I believe its the same, right? OK, I'll sign up for this, I love maps!
First, any idea when the PDF/HC deal will be offered? If its going to be offered? Second, I am going to Gen Con. So if I pre order, is there any way I can pick up the book at GenCon rather than have it shipped to me? This is because I would LOVE to get some signatures while I am at Gen Con. I know I could just buy the book at GenCon, but I want the PDF if offered. Plus, are you going to have any Gen Con exclusive release like you did the last time I was there in 2006? Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I figured this is a customer service type of question.
I agree, anyone not buying this is cheating themselves out of a great deal, both monetarily and content wise. I am looking forward to July!
Awesome! Including the news of your Kaiden project! Obviously I have known you have been doing it, but I didn't know about it eventually becoming PF compatible! Congrats! If your maps are any indication its going to be great!
All i want to see is a book that when followed will make high level games much easier to run, play, and remain fun, which means remain challenging.
Yeah, basically any time your creating a copy for your own use, within your own home/residence, or at least is kept in your control at all times, your pretty safe from being in violation of law. Now if you have a bunch of copies, and you've given them to others, or your actually selling them, then you have to worry. A printing place may wish to have you prove ownership, and as previous posters have pointed out, the watermark actually helps you prove your the legal owner. Printing out any sales receipt would just strengthen your proof of ownership. Primarily the laws are focused on keeping protected works from being distributed in ways that will create financial damage to the legal owners of the material. So as long as your not distributing their materials, for free or profit, your not someone the law is concerned about. They could also choose to go after you for receiving such items too. So make sure you bought a legally distributed copy, and make sure you don't make and distribute copies, and you can be pretty sure your being a law abiding citizen. So going and making yourself a copy of a PDF you legally bought is a safe thing to do, just be prepared to prove it so the business can be sure they are being safe too. It may seem complicated, but its actually pretty simple.
I look at it ("it" being the inclusion of 4E material) as being similar to when Dragon magazine offered up non D&D game content. I for one liked a lot of it. I certainly wasn't one of those people who seemed to think D&D purity was threatened by such content. I don't like 4E. For that matter I don't like 3E, or Pathfinder. I don't play any of them. What I do like is the ideas. Even though I don't use the mechanics I enjoyed the flavors given to several of the familiars and dinosaurs by the feats assigned. Same goes for the Maened and Kitsune. Old School gaming is much more my thing, but fortunately for me (and unfortunately for my bank account) I use a rules system that allows me to easily use material from an system. So when I look at KQ material, and their mechanics, I am always deciding what I am keeping, changing, and throwing away. I also see a lot of compatibility between 4E and 3E. Granted it requires some work on the part of a DM, and that can be a big issue for those who are seriously short on free time, but even those of us who don't like 4E can make use of the material. With regards to monsters its even easier since you don't have to decide on spell lists. So I currently subscribe to KQ and Crusader magazine and own all of Fight ON! (a completely old school magazine, that RAWKS!!) and have bought the first issues of Knockspell, Big Iron Vault, and Level Up! Now you see why C&C hurts my wallet, but I get to see all kinds of ideas and use any of them I like. All of that taken into consideration and set aside now, I totally agree with Pax Veritas about how "THAT" company has handled its relations with its customers. This business isn't normal. We are a "consumer community" in a very real sense. More than any other "market demographic" that I can think of we gamers think and act like a "family". "THAT" company's actions are akin to a parental unit intentionally causing divisions within their own family. So a number of us "children" realize this, and feel betrayed like any family member should. "THAT" company has freely admitted they are aware of the division of the family and are not only fine with it but are to the point where they are going to continue full steam ahead, and if we alienated children don't like it, get off the ship. So they get off the ship. Where do they go? Well most probably just stayed in their homes and continued to play whatever edition of D&D they liked with their group, or the groups died. Others moved into Paizo's house. Others went to other games, like C&C, OSRIC, Swords and Wizardy, Labyrinth Lord, GURPS, Savage Worlds, Spirit of the Century, Risus, etc... So what I think KQ needs to be sensitive to is the fact that a certain portion of their 3E customer base feels betrayed and abandoned by the parental unit. So these customers are going to respond like the betrayed offspring that they are. Even a fellow sibling like me doesn't directly support "THAT" parental unit, but I am willing and able to support other siblings, like KQ, Fight ON!, Crusader, et al... I am a very small part of the family, though. The question for KQ is how many of my/our other siblings are going to be offended by KQ's support of our parental betrayers? How will that effect the survival of our sibling KQ? How many straddle the line between 4E and 3E versus those who stay loyal only to 3E? ITs a tough question that KQ obviously needs to know the answer to, and I see your taking steps to try and find out. I can tell you that this sibling of KQ will keep subscribing to KQ as long as I keep seeing cool ideas in its pages. I don't care if you go fully 4E or 3E, just keep giving me cool ideas to play with. I do have a preference, though. I would prefer to see KQ be completely 3E/Pathfinder. However I accept that KQ is in a tough position. The bottom line is your a small business, and you need to satisfy and keep the largest number of readers you can. Any advertising dollars you can pull from the pockets of "THAT" parental unit by supporting 4E certainly doesn't hurt either. So make the best decision you can, I'll be able to support you whichever way you go, but you now know my preference.
These purchases will be non-subscription purchases (i.e. no PDF), because we do not have the capability for gift-subscriptions (which was they originally asked to do), but you will be getting the books.Is this something (gift subscriptions) that is being worked on? It would be nice to have.... Yeah, I'm interested too. I have some job possibilities that may up my weekly income by several hundred dollars, and I have some friends I would love to give subscriptions too as presents.
Are there any straight 3.x/OGL and general RPG mags? [url]http://www.bigironvault.com/[/url] I bought the PDF, print is on the way. This is looking to be an over all RPG type of magazine, for the whole hobby. As for OGL/3E exclusively, I have not seen one. I have discovered Fight ON! magazine, but its for old school gaming (OD&D/1E/2E) and I have greatly enjoyed it.
A friend of mine talked me into subscribing to this today. First off, let me point out I do NOT play, or run, 3E, Pathfinder, or 4E. My system is Castles and Crusades. I really liked the article on familiars. There are several variants in there I am eager to adapt and introduce as options to my Wizard/Illusionist/Runemark/Witch players. In particular the first one based on the Servant spell and the last symbiotic like one. I was lukewarm about the dinosaur article until I read the little colored in section about how they can be utilized. A extra touch that took the article to being real good, IMO. Normally I do not care about book reviews, but the Elric one caught my eye and I read that. Which I enjoyed enough to read the others. So now I have read a book review section during my life time that I am glad I read. At least until I find out how much I can get the books for. Hopefully Amazon will keep that pain level low enough to be pleasurable as well. I also greatly enjoyed the Maened and Kitsune articles. Lots of great flavor elements that I look forward to bring out in my games. The Arneson interview I had already read on the website, but there did seem to be extra elements in the magazine that I did not remember reading on the website. Either way it was an enjoyable read the second time too. So the good news is I now believe I am going to continue to be glad my friend talked me into subscribing, and I'll have my eyes on my budget and those back issue bundles and see when I can introduce them. If I am blown away by the dice set... Then I'll be a very happy gamer on that day.
Thats so cool! IS anything else done like that? Angels? Devils? Demons? 
So all you have to do is put the word Smurf in your post and your icon will change to a random smurf?
Vic mentioned to me that there was a company at a recent trade show who was touting a way to display PDFs on your screen and searching through them without the ability to copy text or download the file. This kind of tech could allow the PDFs to be shared via the DDI in a way that would make them almost as useful as the PDF version while again putting up a barrier to piracy. Of course, once your sub expired, so would your access...The documents in question were not PDFs, but the presentation was PDF-like. (And it was Windows-only.) Actually its even worse, I went back and reread what he said, and it was: "We sold 300,000 copies of the 3E PHB in 30 DAYS. I have a screen shot of Amazon with the 3E PHB in the #1 slot." I think WOTC needs to be more careful about what they claim in court documents. Then again, US Corporations aren't known for their honesty in court documents. Edit: Plus I am pretty sure in those same court documents WOTC said 4E outsold 3E. I'll go back and check though. This time I'll save them, because I bet by now WOTC is asking the court to seal their records. Edit 2: Well, wherever they said 4E was outselling 3E, it wasn't in the court documents. I didn't spot it after reading through twice, anyways.
That comment by Ryan about 3E selling 300,000 copies in 30 days is very interesting. Especially with the number range claimed for 4E in the WOTC court documents, coupled with WOTC claims that 4E is out selling 3E. IE those claims are not supported by Ryan D.'s claim and the court documents claim. It would imply 4E is underselling 3E, by a lot, since 4E is almost done with its first full year.
Let's assume hundreds of thousands core books really means hundreds of thousands player handbooks. If we limit the range to 200,000-900,000 (thereby excluding "just over 100,000" and "nearly a million"), we end up with 302,000 - 1,356,000 book equivalents in use.That assumption is probably the biggest stumbling block to actually figuring anything out from the phrase "The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies are are now in their third printing." Is he talking about each book of the three core rulebooks, or the core rulebooks as a whole? The language would lead me to believe he's speaking of the collection of books known as the core rulebooks since it's consistent with earlier language in the filing: Yes, I agree if the total sales weren't even close to being a million, say even 800,000, WOTC would probably have said "close to ONE MILLION sold!" So when working up the likely ranges and deciding on where the real numbers were likely to fall, I am confident their "hundreds of thousands" sold aren't close to 1 million. I also think they would have said, "Over half a million sold!" if they could have. I wish we could get a reliable total on just one of those 3 books, if we could the accuracy would go way up.
ENWorld is nowhere near an accurate representation of the roleplaying community. They represent the tabletop equivalent of the "hardcore" (just like the Paizo boards do). The overwhelming majority of ENWorld posters are DMs. Polls from ENWorld cannot be generalized to the gaming population at large.Sure they can. I just did. ^_^ In response to this "without any degree of reliability" comment about on line polls, that is total baloney. Whenever online polls have been "debunked" or claimed to be useless, its because they were, for a degree of error of +/-3%, or whatever error was aimed for. So those so called "useless" polls on ENWorld and such can still be useful, you just have to determine what the margin of error is. Those polls, even if the margin of error is +/-10%, or as high as +/-20%, are still useful. I don't have access to the software anymore, I haven't worked in statistics since 1999, but I would be willing to bet the error would be +/-10%, or less, for those ENWorld polls. Which would still mean 4E is tanking, on RPGnets poll too.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the number of people who bought the books and don't play is probably dwarfed by the number of people who didn't by the books but who play anyway - whether by using communally available books (the DM's, their friend's, a library's) or by using illegal digital copies of the books. Sorry, but there is no way with the number range given by WOTC in the court documents for there to be more than 2 million players, because that number is assuming a ration of 1 set of core books per group of 6. 4 million would mean 12 players per set sold. I am betting that a group is much more likely to have on core set and 3 additional PH's among them. If I were to go by what I have typically seen over the last 20 years is every player has a PH, and each group probably has at least 2 DMG's and MM's among them.
If you want facts then go read the court documents WOTC submitted. By their own numbers they only sold "hundreds of thousands of the core rule books", so WOTC is big, but they are not "6 million D&D games world wide" strong. Using estimated ratios of 1 DM to 6 players, with only one set of core rule books among them, there are at most just shy of 2 Million 4E players. If you estimate 3 players in each group have a PH with 1 DMG/MM per group then the number drops to about 1 million. IF you assume close to equal numbers of each core book owned by each player, then it could be lower than 333,333. WOTC may not have gave exact numbers, but they are good enough that my range of below 333,333 to a maximum of 2 million 4E players is accurate, with 500,000 likely being the closest. There you have my source, and my numbers are reliable estimates. If you don't want to believe me I don't care, but my range estimate is correct. My personal guess would put the accurate numbers closest to 250,000 4E players.
It would probably also be helpful to know that they have a free "Quickstart" PDF available at RPGNow, etc... that covers the rules basics so you can start getting an idea about the actual rules, etc... from that. When you fully "get" what the SIEGE engine is all about you'll find a game that abstractly handles everything, skills, things that 3E has feats for, etc... Just instead of having lists of all those things you tell the game master what you want to do, they decide how difficult the challenge level should be, and you roll. If you succeed you do it, get the bonus to a follow up action, maximize/extend/enlarge/alter your spell, etc... all without having to have books with lists of feats, skills, etc... telling you how and when you can have the ability to do all of these things.
There is a "LGS" on line, just people have refused to explore it fully. Your already part of it by being here, and any other RPG message board. You do another part if you buy books/PDF's from Paizo, Amazon, etc... Now to go fully LGS on line you need to do what I do, game on line, using SKYPE ( a free conference phone program that works via your computer) and Maptools (Free from RPTools.net that is a great mapping program, allows uploads of maps and tokens, and has pretty easy macros you can create for your specific character integrating all attacks, saves, spell damages, etc... The only problem is one of your group has to know how to do port forwarding) So my "LGS" is already completely on line, and because I game from home I have time to play in or run 5 different games per week. 2 of them Warhammer. We are doing Gear Kreig next week, and soon we'll be playing L5R for about 10 weeks. No travel times, none of the other half dozen things you have to do for a face to face game. You just sit down at your comp, open up SKYPE and Maptools, put your headset on, open you character PDF, and start talking to your gaming buddies.
Its not PDF sales killing retail stores like Titan Games, its Amazon. Always has been. Its simple, I walk into a retail store, that I have to go out of my way to go to in the first place, I have to pay full retail and taxes. Here I am, sitting at home on my computer, I can go to Amazon, find the titles I want, and usually get a nice discount, free shipping, and no taxes. Simply put Titan Games, its Amazon that is kicking your butt, always has been and always will be. Amazon isn't going away, and I am not going to pay full retail when I don't have to, no matter how guilty you try to make me feel. Simply put, Amazon is far more convenient and allows my RPG budget to buy me 1/3 more products, you aren't and don't. So you lose.
I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I for one would have been a LOT less ticked off, probably not even the slightest bit angry, if WOTC had just handled this PDF thing a little bit differently. I mean if they had simply told Paizo and RPGnow, etc... what they wanted to do, and gave everyone a week, maybe two, to buy and DL any and all WOTC PDF's they want to make sure they have, because the PDF's will be gone for an unknown period of time, with forever as a possibility, a lot more of us would likely be far happier with WOTC right now. Instead they treat us all like PDF pirates and don't give us law abiding customers a chance to get PDF's they may not make available for months, very possibly a year or more considering their performance in other electronic areas. Sure, SOME of you had the chance, but not everyone goes onto the internet everyday to see whats going on in the world of D&D. Some people don't check their e-mail multiple times a day, so don't see Paizo's e-mail until 3 minutes before the time is up. WOTC simply handled this about as badly as it could have been handled. Simple as that. IF they had given more time for people to get informed and to find money to buy the PDF's they wanted, WOTC would have far fewer people angry with them. It would not have killed them, or their court case, to keep the PDF's up for a week or two.
Here is a copy of an e-mail I sent to WOTC's customer service: Add me to the list of customers seriously angered by your companies actions. Why in the world could you not give a time frame before suspension? You know, say, "In one week we will be suspending all sales of our PDF's for an undetermined amount of time from all PDF providers. Please take this week to make all purchases you wish to make." Why can't you now say, "We at WOTC realize our abrupt cessation of PDF sales was a disservice to our legitimate customers, so we are asking our PDF providers to reopen sales of our PDF's for one week to give our legitimate customers an opportunity to legally acquire any PDF's they desire to have. Thank you for your support and we apologize for any inconvenience we have caused." This is what GOOD customer service is about. For the record I have ceased playing and buying 4E, to the point that I will not participate in the May 23rd Game Day, or buy any WOTC/Hasbro products until your company decides to treat me, a legitimate and law abiding customer with enough consideration and respect to correct WOTC's actions with regards to the cessation of PDF sales. If that means I don't look at WOTC/Hasbro for 2 years because that is how long you take to make PDF's available again, so be it. I have plenty of other RPG companies I can support in the mean time, and in all liklihood I'lll be so entrenched in their system by the time WOTC fixes things I probably won't come back. I certainly won't be in any hurry to do so.
Its amazing to me how "blind" people can be about companies. A company screws over customers time and time again, but its OK, its the companies right to do what they do. I think this time WOTC will be finding out the customer has the right to be angry and to stop being a customer. I for one know that this is WOTC's fault, not Paizo's or Drivethru's. I own everything I want from the old editions in print, and I was buying the nice legal PDF's for the digital copy I am entitled to by law, to save me the trouble of making them myself. Now I have decided on alternative means with which to "create" my digital copies of the print products I own. For WOTC products. Paizo at least is smart enough to realize I don't have to pay them for a digital copy of something I own in print, that I can "create" one for myself, for personal use. So Paizo is smart enough to offer up digital versions at prices I am willing to pay. WOTC, on the other hand, has lost out on a hundred or more sales.
Sorry, but my understanding of "believing" is if you do not believe something someone says then you think what they say is not true, which is also called a lie. So I am not putting words into your mouth, you apparently just used the wrong words. I guess "doubtful" would be better? Your doubtful that they will do it?
Well, it is definitely more of a part time job for them, but they certainly are not liars. They are waiting for the reasons they have stated. IF you chose not to believe them, that is your choice, but they are not liars. They have been very open and honest with those of us who go to their message boards, and in their posts on ENWorld. They have never lied. They have been wrong in estimated release times and opinions, but they have never lied.
I am certain. In fact it was Judges Guild who has no interest in going 4E. They are allowing OGL stuff to be done though, like AGP's stuff, which is being done for C&C. He also has permission to redo/update the Players Guide to the Wilderlands for 3E. Now hopefully, since PF is OGL, Necromancer can do the last JG product they were supposed to do. Which is Tegal Manor. Hopefully Bill will win and get the vinyl map he was so excited about doing back in GenCon 2006. So I am certain. As certain as anyone can be who isn't directly involved, and going by messgeboard posts made by the involved parties.
I already have everything Necromancer did, often in triplicate, so I would rather see new stuff, including what they never got in print before 4E. So Slumbering Tsar, Eamonvale Incursion, Tegal Manor, Sword of Air, and new stuff. Judges Guild has refused to sign onto 4E, so maybe with Pathfinder Necromancer can get Tegal Manor out after all. With that big vinyl map. I want the big vinyl map, just like what was done for Ptolus.
My children made up a song about our animals in response to the Paizo goblin Christmas song. It took them awhile but they demanded I post it anyway. Sneaking through your yard,
Now we're in your house
Theres a paper doll
Maaaaaaaaaaa
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