Is 4e bringing new players to the game?

[ProfessorPain]

Yes it should. Being a public company does not mean your detailed individual sales figures are public information. In fact, they are trade secrets.

The only thing released is very general sales figures. You'd be lucky to get WOTC general figures, for example. WOTC as a division is usually barely mentioned in the quarterly reports.

I don't own stock in Hasbro so I haven't looked at their quarterly reports, but that was what I had in mind; not individual sales holders. Still there must be some mention of WOTC, especially since the Wall Street journal noted that the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons might be an ace up Hasbro's sleeve since the toy industry was so shaky. There were quite a few articles about it floating in the blogosphere.

Edit: Just checked it out. Looks like you are correct, hardly any mention of Wizards. They do mention D&D twice in the Annual Report, but just to talk about acquiring the Intellectual Rights. Either way, with the major downturn in the economy over all, it would be kind of hard to compare 4E and 3E sales fairly.

 

[Desert Hare]

Our 3E group got a new gamer thanks to 4E. He was looking into playing 4E and went so far as to purchase the core giftset and played a couple games (having never before played D&D) with a 4E group. He came back to the store and ran into my GM (known here as Superfreak) and Tad managed to persuade him to try 3E.

He's been with our group since October of last year. Yay for 4E bringing potential gamers into the 3E fold!

 

[Ariosto]

That's an interesting question. The only people really new to the hobby I have personally encountered in a 4E context are elementary schoolers without a basis for comparison even with 3E. I have heard of some other youngsters who got turned on by the pictures in the books (especially of the Dragonborn) but did not groove so much on the mechanics -- so their grownup DMs substituted other rules with delightful results.

The RPGA events at the local FLGS look pretty successful to me, rivaling turnout for the "Magic" card game tournaments. Again, it's hard for me to separate that scheme from the 4E rules set. I can't see a reason it ought to have been less successful with (say) AD&D or the old Basic, etc., boxed-set line.

One thing that seems clear to me is that 4E appeals to a different group of gamers than old D&D. There's some overlap in people who enjoy both, but WotC's new business plan obviously caters only to enthusiasts of the new game.

Another factor, at least in the RPGA context, is that one really does not need to buy more than the PHB (if even that) to step in and DM a scenario. That may be more a negative to sales than a positive to getting people to try the game in the first place.

In the latter regard, I was certainly encouraged by the impression that I did not need to be an expert at number-crunching and mini-maxing abstract game-mechanical choices just to start playing. Of course, there was not much of that to fiddle with in the first place pre-3E -- and there's still plenty for the budding systems analyst and too much for those of us with old-fashioned notions of role-playing and fast-paced adventure.

Anyway, the "game culture" I've encountered seems friendlier, less uptight than during the 3E era. Is that a reflection of everyone still being a bit out of his element even after a few months of play? Shall it wear off after a few years?

On the flip side, I have found more interest among experienced gamers in playing "the old game." The old game I DM still uses the original "little brown books," as it has for more than 30 years.

It seems some people are just taking 4E for a spin, holding back on major investment. The Pathfinder project is another thing getting a look, and I get the impression that WotC's sudden and pretty radical change of course has left a significant demographic open to "shopping around" even more widely.

So, the end result might just be a "wash," simply trading one segment for another.

And of course my personal experience may not representative!

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Yes it should. Being a public company does not mean your detailed individual sales figures are public information. In fact, they are trade secrets.

The only thing released is very general sales figures. You'd be lucky to get WOTC general figures, for example. WOTC as a division is usually barely mentioned in the quarterly reports.

Sales figues can be secret, but they are not required to be. WotC chooses to keep them secret and that is fine.

 

[Maltese Changeling]

Let's see . . .

Existing Friday night boardgaming group - This group was originally a D&D 3.0 group. The 3.0 campaign ran until 5th level and the departure of the DM to a new city. None of the remaining players was willing to DM 3.0 rules, so we stopped playing RPGs and switched to boardgames. Now we reguarly alternate boardgame nights and 4.0 nights. Our regular 4.0 DM is DMing for the first time (says this is the first rules set that supports new DMs), we've introduced the son of one of the players to the game, and we brought in another player who hadn't played D&D in a long, long time. The father of the kid is about to DM his first game in at least 2 decades. So I'd say that 4.0 was a huge success here: we went from no RPGing to regular RPGing.

New Saturday night group - I wanted to DM 4.0 as well, so I set up a Saturday night group. I have 1 player who plays both 3.5 and 4.0, 1 player who largely played other systems until now, 1 player who played a lot in her teens and is back into things, and 2 new players (one of whom has played a lot of CRPGs and MMORPGs, one of whom is an utter newbie). This campaign is my best success as a DM ever and shows no signs of stopping.

Kids' game - I've got a group of 6-7 year olds lined up to play sometime soon. None of these kids are the children of gamers. I've also convinced one of the dads to play. Everyone here has done some skirmishing using the Starter Set.

All in all, I think 4.0 has managed to sell my groups 12 PHBs and 2 Starter Sets . . . and none of us were buying any WotC product prior to the new edition's release.

 

[Badwe]

Personal Experiences with 4e:

1) brought me back to the game. I hadn't played a true D&D campaign in over 2.5 years at that point, the last one having collapsed due to lack of interest.

2) brought 3 other people back into the game, 2 from the aformentioned campaign, one who had been on a 6 year D&D hiatus.

3) I DMd for the first time. While I had attempted to get a grasp on DMing in 3.x, it always felt out of reach, especially creating unique encounters without breaking EL.

4) I introduced two BRAND NEW players to the game. Neither of them had played a pen and paper RPG before, though like all of us they had a large collection of videogame RPGs. Part of the fun was introducing them to roleplaying a character and solving puzzles in a D&D way (rather than the traditional run around and press A til you find the secret way).

5) About halfway through our play, one of the players got the urge to DM again, he being the DM of our last campaign from 2.5 years previous. As a result, we've played to level 9, that being the highest level I've ever played a campaign to. The highest I ever played to in 3.x before collapse was level 7. I suppose if you rescale for 3.5 vs 4e levels i'll have to hit 10 or 11 to be equivalent, but whatevs.


Now, has it been all sunshine? No, the nature of the two new players being used to playing an RPG for 40-60 hours for 3-4 months has meant that now passed that time limit interest is beginning to wane, and some of the older players, especially regular players of the wizard and cleric, have bemoaned not being ridiculously powerful. Also, as all of our adult schedules get tighter and tighter with people getting sleepier and sleepier, it gets harder to keep people focused, and D&D faces the ever present danger of being replaced with boardgame night. The members of the party that aren't able to make our saturday boardgame geekery would like to push D&D night off in favor of a boardgame night, but are any of those issues besides the power loss 4e specific? Maybe, maybe not.

Overall, I've enjoyed 4e more than any other edition, both in its simplicity of designing as a DM, and in the overall quality of each class's details. Of course, all I can offer is my own personal experience, and none of it will assuage the hurt feelings of people who liked the old edition better, and next month we'll be hearing statistical "proof" again about how much 4e is failing again. Still, I only know what I've experienced myself and among other D&D groups I occasionally compare notes with (both other groups have also gone 4e, and both like it), but it has been overwhelmingly positive for 4e.

 

[CharlesRyan]

In our D&D group, we had two new players join. One had played D&D in the 1E/2E era, but hadn't played in 15 or 20 years. The other had played non-D&D RPGs before, but not for 15 years and never D&D. Both had heard a lot about 4E and wanted to try it, and both are still enthusiastic members of our group now, nearly a year later.

 

[Storminator]

I've got a couple new player (tho they're unreliable!), my son has an entire new group as well as fairly regular "extra days", and my other son (he's 9) has started playing with rules, all since 4e came out.

And I have a new DM! Woot! Someone else will DM! I can play!

PS

 

[jbear]

I formed my current group when 4e came out. 4 out of the 7 players are totally new to RPG. 1 played 1e when he was young and was my biggest support in forming a new game. The other 2 have played 3.5 (which they also enjoyed), but both say they prefer 4e.

Originally, the idea was to take turns hosting; one night at my house, the following at the next person's and so on til it came around to me again where the cycle would start over again. I made a semi-NPC character that each player's wife could play when they were hosting the game if they wanted to join in, or that otherwise, I would play myself.

The success of the game has been so enormous that 3 of the players' wives now wrestle to host the game at their house. Another wants to join as well but can´t because their apartment is too small to have us all over. To resolve this peculiar, unexpected and quite wonderful problem, only those three couples take turns hosting the game now. That way their turn comes around again as often as possible.

Funnily enough one of these 3 swore she wasn't even going to play because she knew she wouldn't like roleplaying. Her husband (the 1e player) had described what it was about as best he could from his memories of 1e (pretty much his brother trying to kill them in all sorts of nasty ways). She had decide she would just sit at the table and listen for a while out of curiosity and then go up to her room and read a book. A few minutes into the game as the PC's crept through a defiled cementary she jumped into the action, had a ball and even outshone some of the regular hack and slashers with her roleplaying and lateral thinking! Now, she is the most bitter of the 3 that she has to wait her turn and miss out on all the fun!

None have bought any books except myself. I'm the only native english speaker in the group and as yet I don't believe the PHB has come out in Spanish (correct me if I'm wrong). However, they are all buying their own dice sets, and figures on-line, which shows their enthusiasm.

Actually, one of the players has even come a few times fully dressed as a Drow! Face painted, white wig and all! Now everyone is talking about getting their own costumes.
Amazing. It's not my thing, but I'm certainly not going to get in the way of their fun!

I think it's significant also that 5 out of the total 10 players are women. Very positive!

 

[qstor]

I would tend to agree that 4e is bringing in new people. I play RPGA LFR at a local game store and I've seen some new players. I don't know if they've played 2e or 3e in the past. This is probably a good thing.

A friend of mine got into a 4e in Orlando after having played 2e and 3e back in the day. After a few sessions he left because he didnt' like the system. I'm not a huge fan of it either. I've gone from rapid dislike to mild dislike. I'm running a Mongoose Traveller game now. I DM'd a RPGA 4e module the other day for a friend of mine and I couldn't 'wrap' my finger around the powers stuff. I ran 3e for the RPGA a lot and in a few home games. I don't think I'll DM 4e again.

Mike