Don’t get too excited about WOTC’s support of older D&D versions, which they sorta-kinda announced at Gen Con. Rory put the pieces together:
James Wyatt slipped and mentioned that they were planning to sell a one-year subscription to the “Eberron Bookshelf” – a set of Eberron 3.5 books – for $10
When asked if they would support older editions, they said that they had something in the works. Mike Mearls then went on to talk about how Second Edition had a lot of great setting stuff which could be used by 4e players.
Our guess is that that’s how older-edition support will be done – subscriptions will be sold for Al-Qadim bookshelves, Dragonlance bookshelves, etc. If that’s true, it’s not quite as exciting as it could be.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 10:15 am and is filed under 4e D&D, legacy D&D, news, RPG Hub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I had the same idea based on what was said. I’m sure you’re right or close to what they are planning. I have learned to never expect anything exciting or inspiring from WotC however. They are perhaps the blandest RPG company around, and seem the most out of touch with their customers (and potential customers.)
With the advent of 4e, so many people have gone back to 2 or 3, not because they hate 4 (some do, some don’t) but because they’re just different games. I think if WoTC could start producing more for the older systems it would help the fans of the older editions feel welcome again. There’s a lot to learn from each edition, and I can’t understand why WoTC has chosen to become the “4e” company and leave everything else to the indies.
Producing for older games would probably be a good political move. On the other hand, it would be a departure from long-time TSR/WOTC strategy. I don’t think T/W has ever simultaneously supported two versions since Basic/Advanced. I could be wrong.
…the hell’s a ‘bookshelf’?
Not happening. No way Hasbro starts supporting pre-4e material. They may just continue to “modernize” old setting and world books by updating them to the new ruleset or by not putting any rules in them at all (and thus calling them system neutral) but no way do they start publishing the old rules based stuff. It would invalidate the whole 4E strategy and sell very little product. After all, they came up with each new edition because the previous one did not meet sales expectations. No reason that would change now.
And that is why i don’t play 4th, who needs Dungeons the gathering. I once took my magic cards and compared it to the powers for each class. They most certainly took there cue from magic.