EnerlaNET / Elven Library

Warning! Contents of this article might be fairly trivial for some readers. In fact I hope it will be trivial for most of you. Why? Even the best system is useless if you can't find a party to play with. Stores where you can play the game, conventions, clubs can be very important if you want to find players to play with. Sadly some of these places are threatened. And if they are threatened some players might lose their chances to find a party to play with.
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You heard? Wizards of the Coast said with D&D Essentials they plan to get both new players, current D&D players and people who stoped playing D&D. They claim they listened to feedback. And I think they did. Why? Mostly because D&D Essentials line will start with a friendly red box. But some people said listeining to players is counterproductive and point to many MMO games where the developer just did that and it turned into a disaster. Others can point to developers who didn't listen and how it ended up in a disaster.
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Some recent discussions about D&D Essentials led me to write an article about how some would advertise the game. Of course I don't want to discuss the best ideas, since the worst ones are far more entertaining. I think you will love some of the ideas, since they are interesting to say the least. Ohh, and they can tell you a few things about D&D, even if you wouldn't like to see it from this perspective.
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At the official Wizards forum we talked about implementing some character ideas, and it brought up a new topic: How some character typoes work in a party? Why would the party bring someone with them who isn't good in combat. I think there are pretty good reasons. If I would only speak in terms of 4E system, I would say: Skill challenges can be important. They can lead to smaller or bigger goals in the adventure, and with this they can help the party to earn XP. Of course there is a more complex version of the story.
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In D&D 3rd edition one of the goals was to limit total wealth of characters in an attempt to maintain game balance. The problem with this approach was simple: A 1st level aristocrat and a first level beggar had exactly the same total wealth. It was and still is pretty silly, but it doesn't end here. Why? Because players can buy and sell their belongings and properties so even the contents of your wardrobe were counted in this total wealth. Just as well as houses and everything else. But as you can guess there are other problems. The problem is: If D&D 4 wants to maintain game balance with controlling total wealth it faces the same choices.
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