GTS 2009 D&D Seminar - the Rouse discusses D&D

[Cadfan]

Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid

The real change in design ethos is the move to fun-driven (opr impact-driven) design rather than task-simulation-driven design. My guess is that when one sees the Robin Laws chapter of DMG2, we'll see far more of this ethos at work.

Right. 4e design has always seemed to me to have certain stylistic familiarities with work by Robin Laws, most notably having the guts to actually analyze what it is that makes people play your game, and then to cut extraneous material.

When Mr. Laws writes a detective game, it tends to be a detective game. Not a modern-world-simulator in which its suggested you might play a detective story. When he writes an action movie game, its an action movie game, not a universal-combat-simulator in which you might play an action story. When he writes a kids game its designed to appeal to kids and anything that might confuse a child or not be age appropriate in terms of complexity is axed.

Its as if he's got that editor's talent of looking at a project and going over each piece, asking, "Alright, so what is this section FOR?" and if there isn't a good enough answer, it goes. It tends to make his games play very smoothly, and gives them a direction and a drive that lets the game actually help you play, instead of just sit there.

Of course, if what you really want is a medieval-world-total-simulator-with-magic, you're probably not going to like his stuff.

[Scott_Rouse]

Originally Posted by Beginning of the End

This would appear to demand explication. 1 in 2 people (150,000,000 in the United States alone) have not played D&D. Exactly what is the scope of this study?

Awareness does not equal play. It was nationally representative but was not a census of all US households. It was a survey among a targeted demographic (for example males 12-45 who play video games). The awareness was among that targeted audience.

Wasn't the podcast hosted on WotC's website?

It's still a nice number, but it's people specifically clicking through to WotC's website to grab Penny Arcade content linked from the Penny Arcade site. The real question is how many of those people clicked through to another page.

It was on both WOTCs website and PVP/PAs website plus iTunes. It was a successful marketing effort so we are going to do more. It did way better than most other ad based campaigns and people find them entertaining.

<snip>

[Scott_Rouse]

On the questions about D&D Insider, Game table etc..

Last week, based on survey feedback from fans, we announced that our next offering for D&DI will be Campaign Tools that provide stuff to help you run your games and ongoing campaigns. The idea is to create an integrated system that includes stuff for monsters, maps, encounters and adventures.

A while ago we talked about how we were going to focus on one swing at a time and then move onto the next thing. The first swing was the Character Builder and the next is the Campaign Tools. That means we are not actively (as we also posted here today) working on a game table but doesn't mean we won't work on it in the future.

BTW if you have seen it last night we posted new update info for Compendium and Character builder including glossary tab for compendium and XML output for Character Builder Char sheets data.

[Beginning of the End]

Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid

What supplement are you referring to?

Supplement 1: Greyhawk

Originally Posted by Cadfan

When Mr. Laws writes a detective game, it tends to be a detective game. Not a modern-world-simulator in which its suggested you might play a detective story. When he writes an action movie game, its an action movie game, not a universal-combat-simulator in which you might play an action story. When he writes a kids game its designed to appeal to kids and anything that might confuse a child or not be age appropriate in terms of complexity is axed. (...)

Of course, if what you really want is a medieval-world-total-simulator-with-magic, you're probably not going to like his stuff.

Whether by accident or design, however, previous editions were capable of catering to and delivering many different styles of play.

For example:

Originally Posted by Mallus

Strangely, this did little to deter people from taking great delight in critter-killing.

The game you're describing sounds slightly hypothetical to me, it just doesn't match the actual play experience of anyone I know.

Mallus is absolutely right in saying that plenty of people play D&D as little more than a fun little combat simulator. (He's wrong in assuming that somehow contradicts what I said. And he's hysterically funny when he claims that the style of D&D played by Gygax and Arneson is some kind of hypothetical non-entity. But I digress.)

But there were plenty of people who found that D&D also suited itself well to "Fantasy ing Vietnam", "medieval-world-simulator-with-magic", hex-crawling, dungeon-crawling, realm ruling, army-leading, and so forth. (These all notably being play styles supported directly and explicitly by OD&D.)

This type of broad support also extended beyond campaign style. The radically different class designs also supported a broad style of individual play styles at a mechanical level. Prefer daily resource management? There's a class for that. Prefer little or no resource management? There's a class for that. Prefer a mix? There's a class for that.

By contrast, 4th Edition's classes are all built on the same chassis: They all have at-will, encounter, and daily powers. This is why the complaint that "all the classes are the same" keeps coming up. There are distinct differences between 4E classes, but they're differences drawn entirely within a single box (whereas 3rd Edition had lots of different boxes and could draw distinctions).

I don't want to turn this into an edition war, but I do think it's pertinent to discuss an area where I find 4th Edition lacking: As a friend of mine says, they chose a sweet spot and designed the game with a very tight focus on that sweet spot. If that was your sweet spot, then the Laws-like laser focus they employed in their design is fantastic. Not only is the entire game catering to you, but the tighter focus also made it possible to make the classes more balanced (since they only had to worry about balancing one style of play and one type of mechanics).

But if it wasn't your sweet spot, then the game you were playing completely disappeared.

If you had to pick a single style of play to focus on, then certainly combat is probably the way to go given the history of the game. But I would make two points here:

(1) 30+ years of D&D suggest that such focus is unnecessary for the success of the game. I like tightly-focused games, but I'm not convinced that the closest thing RPGs have to a mainstream product should be tightly-focused. It should inclusive, not exclusive.

(2) Combat has certainly always been an important part of the game, so if you were going to choose a focal point then it probably makes the most sense to focus on combat (particularly since, as a company, you still want to keep selling those highly profitable miniatures).

OTOH, if you consider D&D's primary competition to World of Warcraft and other video games, then focusing on combat makes no sense whatsoever. That's the one style of play in which D&D simply can't compete with video games: They can give you the exact same gameplay wrapped in awesome graphics and delivered without the need for getting together a group of your friends (although it can support that, too).

So I go back to what I said: I think D&D's historical strength has been built on both brand strength (which is unchanged) and its broad appeal. So I think if Rouse is serious about returning some of that broad appeal to the game's design, then that's good for the game.

[Beginning of the End]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

Huh? Awareness does not equal play. It was national representative but was not a census of all US households. It was a survey among a targeted demographic (for example males 12-45 who play video games). The awareness was among that targeted audience.

Awareness doesn't equal play, but I assumed "54% have played D&D" meant "played D&D".

If it's specifically 12-45 year olds who have played video games, that narrows the scope a bit. Although based on polls suggesting 1-in-4 play video games and census data indicating 45% of the population falls in the 12-45 age range, your data still indicates 34,000,000 people in America have played D&D.

That assumes that (a) there are no D&D players who don't also play video games; (b) there are no D&D players who are younger than 12 or older than 45; and (c) the percentage of people who play video games is spready evenly across all age groups. Of course, none of these things are true so the number your poll is suggesting is even larger.

If it's true that there are 34,000,000+ people who have played D&D, that's great. But this would be the first time I've ever seen such a claim. The market research in 2000 claimed 5.5 million people had played tabletop roleplaying games. Assuming that every single one of those people had played D&D, you're claiming to have added nearly 30 million new players in the last 9 years.

That would be an incredible accomplishment.

But is it true?

[Cadfan]

Originally Posted by Beginning of the End

Whether by accident or design, however, previous editions were capable of catering to and delivering many different styles of play.

I'd love to address that, but not in this thread. I think my comments on Robin Laws' tendencies in game design in comparison to 4e design were close enough to topic, but I don't think this is.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Beginning of the End

Mallus is absolutely right in saying that plenty of people play D&D as little more than a fun little combat simulator.

I do so like being right (), but that's not exactly what I said, or at least meant. I said the players I've encounter enjoyed combat in their D&D games, and didn't seek to avoid it.

I said nothing about playing the game as if it were only a combat simulator, which obviously neglects the part of D&D that's like a 3rd-rate dinner theater troupe putting on their own version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

He's wrong in assuming that somehow contradicts what I said.

Possibly. You were saying 'the rules emphasized a certain mode of play'. I responded 'despite that, everyone I encountered played a different way'.

And he's hysterically funny when he claims that the style of D&D played by Gygax and Arneson is some kind of hypothetical non-entity.

I didn't mean to suggest that mode of play didn't exist. I should have said it was no longer the dominant mode of play by the time I started, which was during the height of AD&D, some 15 years before WotC.

(1) 30+ years of D&D suggest that such focus is unnecessary for the success of the game.

I'd argue 30+ years of D&D suggests players like the experience of killing things and taking their stuff, even if they bolt a medieval kingdom-running sim on top of it, or ensconce said killing and taking in a plot cribbed from Great Expectations -- note: an actual recent adventure in our 4e campaign.

[Verys Arkon]

The Rouse,

Thanks for the update about the DDI tools. I'm excited to see any details about the Campaign Tools (I know I know, patience!). I'm one of the ones that ranked something the CT higher then VTT, so I'm not disappointed.

As a stop-gap for the Character Visualizer, how about offering up a massive character portrait collection for the Character Builder instead? It wouldn't be customizable of course, but WotC has a MASSIVE art collection. I bet you could get hundreds, maybe even thousands, of portraits. I'm not sure what your agreements are with the original artists, though.


Thanks for your participation here on ENWorld. Being able to talk with the folks at WotC is one of the best and cheapest things (though time is precious) you can do for PR, in my mind.

Verys

[Scott_Rouse]

Originally Posted by Beginning of the End

Awareness doesn't equal play, but I assumed "54% have played D&D" meant "played D&D".

If it's specifically 12-45 year olds who have played video games, that narrows the scope a bit. Although based on polls suggesting 1-in-4 play video games and census data indicating 45% of the population falls in the 12-45 age range, your data still indicates 34,000,000 people in America have played D&D.

That assumes that (a) there are no D&D players who don't also play video games; (b) there are no D&D players who are younger than 12 or older than 45; and (c) the percentage of people who play video games is spready evenly across all age groups. Of course, none of these things are true so the number your poll is suggesting is even larger.

If it's true that there are 34,000,000+ people who have played D&D, that's great. But this would be the first time I've ever seen such a claim. The market research in 2000 claimed 5.5 million people had played tabletop roleplaying games. Assuming that every single one of those people had played D&D, you're claiming to have added nearly 30 million new players in the last 9 years.

That would be an incredible accomplishment.

So I went back and looked at the question and answer.

The question was:

Which of the following table-top role-playing games and/or electronic role-playing games have you ever played?

54% answered Dungeons & Dragons. This comes from 35 years years of table top players and 25+ years of video games. This is ever played, not currently playing. BTW we did not make that claim to begin with. In my deck at Gama it stated "54% of respondents say they have played D&D". This is used to illustrate

1) D&D has a massive amount of brand awareness
2) Lot's of people have had some interaction with the D&D brand
3) that interaction has largely been positive

thus our marketing strategy is to go after those existing "fans" to drive growth in 2009

But is it true?

It is market research not absolute fact. It is a lot of people. I don't suspect it is the number you claim above but it is a many many millions.

[avin]

Scott,

from AD&D to 3.5 there was always a CRPG for every edition. So, are you guys considering this not that the VTT was postponed (don't know if this is the right word)?

[crazy_cat]

Originally Posted by avin

Scott,

from AD&D to 3.5 there was always a CRPG for every edition. So, are you guys considering this...

Good point.

It was BG, BG2, and then NWN that got me back into D&D after a very long break forced upon me by real life considerations like having a job and relocating several times.

I've now dropped CRPGs for tabletop again - but I do definitely need a good reason to buy a better graphics card. A good D&D CRPG would be such a reason

[Scott_Rouse]

Originally Posted by avin

Scott,

from AD&D to 3.5 there was always a CRPG for every edition. So, are you guys considering this not that the VTT was postponed (don't know if this is the right word)?

Yes we would very much like a host of 4e video games including CRPGs, Action/Adventure games, Turn Based Games etc (with or with out a VTT) and we are working with our partner to make that happen

[Dire Bare]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

Last week, based on survey feedback from fans, we announced that our next offering for D&DI will be Campaign Tools that provide stuff to help you run your games and ongoing campaigns. The idea is to create an integrated system that includes stuff for monsters, maps, encounters and adventures.

A while ago we talked about how we were going to focus on one swing at a time and then move onto the next thing. The first swing was the Character Builder and the next is the Campaign Tools. That means we are not actively (as we also posted here today) working on a game table but doesn't mean we won't work on it in the future.

That's a shame, because the Game Table seemed so close and was initially supposed to be part of the starting package. I know I'd love to see it, to get a chance to game with my college friends who are spread across the country. I am aware there are other software packages from third-parties that allow for this sort of play, but my old pals generally aren't interested in semi-pro software from unknown sources but they would jump all over an official D&D online service. Sigh.

However, I trust that you guys are doing your research on what is most wanted by the player base and I certainly could use a Campaign Tools product. Overall I've been very pleased with D&DI, despite my disapointment with the collapse of Gleemax and all that was initially promised.

[JeffB]

Originally Posted by Dire Bare

That's a shame, because the Game Table seemed so close and was initially supposed to be part of the starting package. I know I'd love to see it, to get a chance to game with my college friends who are spread across the country. I am aware there are other software packages from third-parties that allow for this sort of play, but my old pals generally aren't interested in semi-pro software from unknown sources but they would jump all over an official D&D online service. Sigh.

Pretty much sums up my feelings as well. The Game Table was a major selling point for me as regards to 4E in general and DDI in particular- hearing it has been pushed way down the line is a huge let-down. I have already delayed siging up for DDI because the GT was not available and the medioocre articles and adventures seen in the first few free months.

[avin]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

Yes we would very much like a host of 4e video games including CRPGs, Action/Adventure games, Turn Based Games etc (with or with out a VTT) and we are working with our partner to make that happen

Hooray! Obsidian? Bioware? In house? pretty please?

[darjr]

From the article about the CB XML output.

XML character sheet: this export now has a new section that is friendlier to third parties, since it does not need to reference the rules engine. This should help modders create their own display options by reading the XML output.

Does this mean I could create a FULL character sheet with all the calculated data and such? Does it include the individual power rules? In other words could I use this to populate my own custom power cards?

[Scott_Rouse]

Originally Posted by darjr

From the article about the CB XML output.


Does this mean I could create a FULL character sheet with all the calculated data and such? Does it include the individual power rules? In other words could I use this to populate my own custom power cards?

I know it will allow a custom char sheet but I am not sure about power cards. I would guess the data is part of the char sheet so it might but I am not totally sure. Sorry that is beyond the functions of my brain, I am in marketing .

You may get the answer you want over here or try and send a PM to WotC_DM (Didier Monin)

[Scott_Rouse]

Originally Posted by avin

Hooray! Obsidian? Bioware? In house? pretty please?

Sorry, I don't have any thing I can talk about at this time.

[Fallen Seraph]

I may have missed your answer, but do you have any clue when the next Mailbag podcast will be? With all the new stuff from PHB2, the new stuff we are learning about MM2 and PHB3 I am sure people will have questions, including myself So do you have any info on if/when there would be the next one?

Thanks

[rounser]

Right. 4e design has always seemed to me to have certain stylistic familiarities with work by Robin Laws, most notably having the guts to actually analyze what it is that makes people play your game, and then to cut extraneous material.

Well, either "what makes people play your game" got misidentified and/or oversimplified, or Robyn Laws' theories on narrow focus deserve to stay academic, IMO.