Why the Modern D&D variants will not attract new players

[Plane Sailing]

FWIW when I decided to revamp falling rules, I decided to introduce uncertainty by agreeing that when you fell you would take 1d6 lots of the falling damage, determined by how badly you landed. A successful jump or tumble check could reduce that 1d6 by 1 (to a minimum of 1).

 

[Celebrim]

I do think Prosfilaes has a point. The primary interaction that any player will have with the game world will be through the rules, whether those rules are filtered through the GM or not.

I'll probably want to come back to this at a latter point, but I disagree. The game world generally isn't even discoverable from the rules. It's not in there. And, with the exception of a few GMless systems, if all you are interfacing with are rules and not a GM then you don't even have a game.

Player 1 plays in a system where the rules are very open to all players and he knows the books reasonably well. He comes to a pit. He knows, from the rules that this fall will not do enough damage to kill his character. His decisions about how to cross this pit will incorporate that information.

Ok. That's unavoidable.

Player 2 plays in a system where the rules are kept hidden behind the DM wall. He comes to a pit. The first time this happens, his decisions will be based on guesswork. But, after he falls in that pit the first time, the second pit trap he comes to will no longer involve guesswork. He knows the rules now and he's in the exact same position as Player 1.

No. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for a rules wall here, but you are just wrong.

Consider for example what you know after falling in the pit once under my rules. You know, for example, that after falling 20' that you took 12 damage. So, you might say, "The rule is that if I fall 20' I take 12 damage." But, you'd be wrong. You have only one data point. You as of yet have no idea what the range of possibilities are. Maybe I threw 2d6 and you got really unlucky. Maybe I threw 2d100 and you get really lucky. You have no way of knowing what the rule is, nor do you now how it scaled. For example, you might suppose that the rule is, "You take 6 damage for every 10' you fall." But if I'm using the common cummulative damage rule, the 30' fall will do on average twice the damage of the 20' fall. That's not a feature that would be obvious from the rules. Under my rules the actual damage range for that 20' fall was 0-40, and there are emergent features that might not be immediately apparant.

What is gained by hiding the rules behind the GM wall?

Let's try not to drift too much from the topic. We aren't actually discussing the utility of rules walls generally, which I wouldn't support. What we are discussing is attracting new players to the game, and in that situation an actual 'rule wall' isn't useful but it is I think quite useful to approach playing the game from something other than a rules first perspective.

After a very short period of time, the rules will be known to everyone at the table and both groups will base their decisions on that knowledge.

It probably won't be nearly so short of a time, but yes, it's inevitable and even useful that the players will eventually acquire some knowledge of the rules.

 

[UHF]

As much as I feel that my brain has atrophied and I can't handle more complex rules, I have to admit that I tried lots of other rules (when I was young and foolish), and I didn't enjoy them. I never got into 3.x because it was a leap up from 2e, and my career was just taking off. Years later I've got my built in gamers (kids), and 4e was coming out the door.

I feel that 4e is just right. Kids grok 4e fast. (I have a 6 year old daughter with a penchant for backstabbing, and a son who likes sticking arrows in things.) My friends kids (7, 8, 10, 12) all play 1e (and they all grok that), and when they come over they quickly pick up what is going on, use cards, and get playing.

On the other hand, I feel 4e is easy to understand, but hard to run. The mechanics hurt my brain some days. I don't think this issue is easily escaped.


I've taught many new kids in the neighborhood how to play D&D using 4e rules. One household I know has picked up the 4e Red Box, and I'm mentoring their father as a DM. My formative D&D years well and truly sucked. I didn't meet good DMs for a solid 10 years. I hope to improve other gamers' experiences.

I do feel that all this Paizo vs WOTC talk is misplaced. Castles and Crusades is something kids can sink their teeth into, and not get lost in the rules. AD&D is a treasure trove of material for kids to get into.


From what I'm hearing we don't so much need a basic set of rules, as a set of youtube videos clearly showing how its done. Watching a DM is very different from being one. How did you fudge that, and do the players even know? Are they being railroaded? Do they know? How do you adapt a game to your player's capabilities? Is your game satisfying their needs?

I know that if I had seen a 'how to' video 30 years ago, I would have enjoyed my games more.

 

[prosfilaes]

Look, you are talking to the guy who spent most of his 1st edition career playing a thief

You're talking to someone who played a kobold for his longest 3.5 campaign and who played a dwarven wizard for 4ed. I also tend to play things like ogre barbarians, because ogre barbarians are never sitting on the sidelines because what felt cool is completely useless in play.

 

[Argyle King]

I don't mean to point out the obvious, but there are plenty of magic items and abilities in 4E which help to make falling little more than a minor setback; regardless of what the damage rules for falling are.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't mean to point out the obvious, but there are plenty of magic items and abilities in 4E which help to make falling little more than a minor setback; regardless of what the damage rules for falling are.

One of the problems with long threads like this is that it can be very easy to forget what is being argued and why. In this case, we don't actually care that much about the mechanics of falling rules (although granted, such discussions are interesting in themselves) except to the extent that they impact the main argument.

That main argument is over the question of whether a new player needs to know the minutia of the resolution rules of an RPG in order to enjoy it. I'm arguing that in order to enjoy the game a new player almost certainly does not need to know the resolution rules, and indeed attempting to force all those rules on a new player is likely to reduce their enjoyment of the game. Others have claimed that its best if the new player does know the resolution rules. Falling rules are being used as an exemplar of this point. Or in other words, "In order to enjoy the game, does a new player need to know the rules for falling?"

The outcome of that argument is only important in as much as it impacts the question of, "What sort of game should you design to attract new players?", because the OP of the thread made the claim that, "A game that will attract new players should not be complicated."

 

[prosfilaes]

One of the problems with long threads like this is that it can be very easy to forget what is being argued and why. [...]
That main argument is over the question of whether a new player needs to know the minutia of the resolution rules of an RPG in order to enjoy it. I'm arguing that in order to enjoy the game a new player almost certainly does not need to know the resolution rules, and indeed attempting to force all those rules on a new player is likely to reduce their enjoyment of the game. Others have claimed that its best if the new player does know the resolution rules. Falling rules are being used as an exemplar of this point. Or in other words, "In order to enjoy the game, does a new player need to know the rules for falling?"

I wouldn't force or encourage a new player to know all the rules. I would, however, upon first encountering a pit trap (or the like) stop the game to point out the rules for falling--"it's 1d6 per 10', provided there's not spikes or other nasty things at the bottom"--and maybe hang a lampshade on the fact that all these monsters live right here and manage to avoid it, if it's that type of game. (And then beam with happiness if my protege immediately demanded why the footprints around the trap but not on it weren't a dead giveaway.)

And for another example, if I had a new player wanting to play a ranger, when they were making a character, I would go over what the different favored enemies were and where they'd likely appear or not in the game, in some depth.

 

[Phaoz]

One of the problems with long threads like this is that it can be very easy to forget what is being argued and why. In this case, we don't actually care that much about the mechanics of falling rules (although granted, such discussions are interesting in themselves) except to the extent that they impact the main argument.

That main argument is over the question of whether a new player needs to know the minutia of the resolution rules of an RPG in order to enjoy it. I'm arguing that in order to enjoy the game a new player almost certainly does not need to know the resolution rules, and indeed attempting to force all those rules on a new player is likely to reduce their enjoyment of the game. Others have claimed that its best if the new player does know the resolution rules. Falling rules are being used as an exemplar of this point. Or in other words, "In order to enjoy the game, does a new player need to know the rules for falling?"

The outcome of that argument is only important in as much as it impacts the question of, "What sort of game should you design to attract new players?", because the OP of the thread made the claim that, "A game that will attract new players should not be complicated."

The OP's argument that 4E or Pathfinder won't attract new players because they have rules ( or charecter sheets, as the op later argued) that are too complex dosn't really work simply because
far more complex games (champions for example)have been around longer then 3E and 4E combined

 

[teach]

The outcome of that argument is only important in as much as it impacts the question of, "What sort of game should you design to attract new players?", because the OP of the thread made the claim that, "A game that will attract new players should not be complicated."

Celebrim, I think you have forgotten my point over this long thread. The rules of the game can be in general complicated, my argument was that character creation rules, and then the rules as presented on the character sheets were too complicated.

Other people in this thread may have argued differently, but that wasn't my point.

 

[prosfilaes]

The OP's argument that 4E or Pathfinder won't attract new players because they have rules ( or charecter sheets, as the op later argued) that are too complex dosn't really work simply because
far more complex games (champions for example)have been around longer then 3E and 4E combined

But 3.5 PHB is 286 numbered pages, probably 300 with the Dragon labeled FAQ in the back. The 4.0 PHB is 317 pages. Pathfinder is 575 pages, with 396 before we hit the section labeled gamemastering. Champions is 345, sans character maker manual, 228 pages before the gamemastering section, and looks to have a larger font than 3.5 or especially Pathfinder. If we're talking about GMs, we should add in DMG for the D&Ds. (Monster Manual/Bestiary is harder to compare like with like, as Champions has no core book for monsters/enemies, but a lot of non-core material.) For sheer intimidation, I'd say the Pathfinder book beats the Champions book hands down; thicker, heavier and smaller font.

As for complexity, D&D has a lot of fiddly bits. I suspect whether or not Champions is more complex for someone depends on whether they find long, long lists of feats and spells and options harder than a smaller group of orthogonal building blocks.

And lastly, the question is not whether Champions attracts players. The number of nonroleplayers who picked up Champions and taught themselves to play without other people are around can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, and even outside that, I suspect few people had their first roleplaying experience with Champions. A game that's made for experienced roleplayers can survive, but it hardly says anything about games attracting new players.