Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Problem of Entitlement

Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to think arguments surrounding people being "entitled" are ridiculous. Unfortunately, when it comes to 4th Edition, I think the issue of entitlement really is a strong one.

Look at the off-line character builder. When Wizards of the Coast decided (rightly or wrongly) that they weren't going to offer everyone a permanent access to all the game's rules (up to a certain point) for the cost of a 1 month subscription, they pulled it. And there was backlash. A lot of backlash. People felt entitled to it.

But, even ignoring Wizard's concerns (that range from digital piracy to just how much they're really charging for content), entitlement is what Essentials is all about. Rather, it's about fighting that entitlement. Players feel entitled to artifacts. Players feel entitled to Slidespam builds for wizards. Players feel entitled to this and that.

If you take a look at an Essentials Only game-rarity rules, no pre-essentials classes, etc-you really don't see that. And surprise surprise, there's complaints about how the content sucks. Because it doesn't live up to the pre-existing expectations. And that's intentional: the game can't meet those expectations.

Wizards is releasing a lot less crunch, and a lot more fluff these days. And that's partially because it's easier for them to catch up with that much. But in the current market, I ask all players of the game: If you hadn't been given so much before, would you really think what you're getting now is inadequate?

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Not Exactly Top Tier

So apparently Sly Flourish is a popular site for Dungeon Mastering advice on 4th edition. They realized the same things about solo monsters I did, though taking a bit less of an issue by issue systemic approach to it.

I don't qualify for their top blogs, as I haven't been releasing posts weekly (inspiration is so hard to find~) but it's worth checking out, at http://slyflourish.com