I've been kind of amused by this as well. I would not have guessed that really excellent software would have been a primary hinderance on new rules material.
I'd make one note/point. It's easier making a level 20 character in 4e than it is in 3e. In 3e, there are more options, if only because there are more years of source material available; what's worse, you had to think harder about how they interacted. For a great reminder of how baroque 3e is, we can always go look at the villain entries in Paizo's RPG Superstar.
While there was 3e character creation software, it wasn't as good as the Character Builder. More flexible, yes. But not as good. A lot of people did their complex 3e characters by hand.
So your simply insane amount of bookkeeping time is the burden high level 3e players took on without even thinking. But that seems unimaginable now, because we've got access to a better method, which highlights how painful the old method was.
Oh, and yeah. My hope, which is based on nothing at all, is that WotC will at some point open up the CB format in a manner that allows for easy addition of new material. I think that'd be a business win; it would provide more DDI purchasing incentive for people who are heavily invested in Goodman Games material, or Mongoose material, or OBE material. I'm not sure the CB is data-driven enough for this to be an easy thing, though.
I'd make one note/point. It's easier making a level 20 character in 4e than it is in 3e. In 3e, there are more options, if only because there are more years of source material available; what's worse, you had to think harder about how they interacted. For a great reminder of how baroque 3e is, we can always go look at the villain entries in Paizo's RPG Superstar.
While there was 3e character creation software, it wasn't as good as the Character Builder. More flexible, yes. But not as good. A lot of people did their complex 3e characters by hand.
So your simply insane amount of bookkeeping time is the burden high level 3e players took on without even thinking. But that seems unimaginable now, because we've got access to a better method, which highlights how painful the old method was.
Oh, and yeah. My hope, which is based on nothing at all, is that WotC will at some point open up the CB format in a manner that allows for easy addition of new material. I think that'd be a business win; it would provide more DDI purchasing incentive for people who are heavily invested in Goodman Games material, or Mongoose material, or OBE material. I'm not sure the CB is data-driven enough for this to be an easy thing, though.
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