Wizards aiming younger audience

[mgbeach]

There's your commercial: a mom DMing for a couple of kids, the kids then go on to college where one of them is DMing for a bunch of friends, then one day the kid, now grown up, is DMing for his kids with the mom, now grandmother, joining in while visiting. Generations of gaming.

Heck yeah! Grandma's Iron Hammer of Galunding descends in a flash of magical power, crushing the mind flayer's skull..the contents of which explode in a blast of sticky purple goo! Sorry little Timmy, but she couldn't get that done before the illithid had sucked your brain out.

Dungeons and Dragons: A Family Tradition

 

[nedjer]

Blah blah blah.

Without putting too fine a point on it - sounds to me like a pile of bureaucratic crap. (And I'm a pretty left-wing leaning Canadian - which to most Americans makes me a frikkin' communist!)

It certainly isn't motivated by any reasonable concern of litigation -- as there is no reasonable potential cause of action in the offing, near as my professional judgment can discern.

If a client asked me whether or not such packaging and warning MUST accompany their products - I'd say "HELL NO", in certain and clear terms.

That would be my answer within Canada, for sure. And while I'm not licensed to practice outside of Ontario, I'm pretty damned sure the same common law principles would apply in the USA and the U.K., as well.

This "protect the children" knee-twitchery is used to justify all sorts of crap. And those who would suggest such elaborate and misplaced concern is a pile of crap (that would be ME) -- are often derided for their cavalier attitude towards the health and safety of "the children".

Well I've got four of my own. One safely grown up, the other less than a year from 18, and two more
safely and happily growing. This sort of psychobabble "concern" is just pure nonsense, imo.

bureaucratic crap
frikkin' communist!
"protect the children" knee-twitchery
all sorts of crap
elaborate and misplaced concern is a pile of crap
pure nonsense

Wow!

 

[Primal]

No worries! I totally agree. Kids role play better than adults, usually! Only, we didn't call it role-playing. It was just "playing." It would be my hope that they would bring that enthusiasm for story to the table.

But explaining (in a small amount of space) what role-playing is, and where they boundaries are, to someone who is supposed to run a game, when they've never even played in a D&D game before, is actually very difficult.

It's only natural that kids don't have any problems with assuming fictional characters -- after all, in some ways RPGs could be compared to playing. Children are more receptive to new things, and adapt easily -- which is also common in playing... rules and assumptions may change very suddenly. On the other hand, children may easily perceive RPGs as too "formal", so I think certain flexibility with the rules and boundaries should be the norm when gaming with them.

As for defining RPGs, that's pretty tough with adults, too. I've seen quite a few attempts at defining explicitly what RPGs are, and how they differ from plays and other types of games (probably the best ones are Allston's definition in D&D Rules Cyclopedia and the concept of 'Diegesis' as defined by Hakkarainen, Stenros and Montola). I don't think you need to underestimate their intelligence, but most kids would likely be satisfied with "in this game *you* can be the hero just like your favorite characters in TV, comics and books".

Anyway, I think the concept is great... marketing a rules-light version for kids is what WoTC (and other publishers) should do. Apart from a couple of indie RPGs (namely, Faery's Tale and Princes' Kingdom) I can't recall other titles designed specifically for kids.

This is a nice adventure, but I'd have wanted to see more emphasis on investigation and role-playing. Still, good work there!

 

[Primal]

Do you want teenaged males, ages 13-19? Get some teenaged females, ages 13-19

I think that is THE key marketing point. As we know, the majority of players (or at least roughly 50%) in LARPs are females. In addition, most new role-players tend to gravitate towards LARPing, rather than pen-and-paper RPGs -- few of them have even heard of them.

IIRC, Fine assumed that the traditional RPGs (D&D, especially) deal too strongly with themes of violence and sex (especially abusing female NPCs; however, unless I'm completely mistaken Fine researched gamers back in 1983 when this probably WAS a real issue) to female tastes. Also, he concluded that most female gamers become gamers via their boyfriends, and gaming is something they must do if they don't want to spend their weekends alone. Also, he stated that RPGs are perceived as a male-dominant hobby as it is based on another male-dominant hobby: wargames. As such, girls don't naturally start gaming; they prefer riding or ballet (for example) because that's what other girls (especially their friends) do.

Gary Gygax, on the other hand, estimated in 1978 that roughly around 10-15% of people who play D&D are female. This seems to be a pretty reliable number, I think. Females comprised 19% of the people who took the WoTC survey in 1999, and a similar survey conducted by Kittock in 2001 (this was an internet survey open to anyone) showed that 9% out of people who replied were female.

Anyway, I think it's just as important to market RPGs to females as it is to kids; there're probably a lot of potential gamers in female cosplayers, anime/manga fans, fantasy/scifi fans, computer game fans. The problem is... publishers don't usually market the game outside the hobby circles. LARPing, on the other hand, is much more visible in mass media than pen-and-paper RPGs. In addition, RPGs are published by RPG publishers, so outside of CONs, they are more or less "invisible" to potential female gamers. Also, while I wouldn't necessarily see any "stigmata" associated with RPGs, they *DO* look pretty obscure and esoteric to non-gamers, and role-playing is pretty hard to explain so that it sounds appealing to "mundanes". Finally, RPGs may require a lot of dedication, time and effort, so they're not exactly suitable for "passive consumption".

 

[Mark]

It's only natural that kids don't have any problems with assuming fictional characters -- after all, in some ways RPGs could be compared to playing.

Indeed. In many FUNdamental ways, in fact.

This is a nice adventure, but I'd have wanted to see more emphasis on investigation and role-playing.

I have always been of a mind that the combat should be incidental to the adventuring, exploring, investigating, etc. I feel this is also the way to present any combat scenarios in RPGs to youngsters.

 

[Darrell]

This is nonsense. The stigma to D&D attached when it was described in the popular press a "game for geniuses" in the wake of the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III.

When D&D was a "game for genuises" and got TONS of free press in the JDE III case, that was the time that the game never sold more copies and became a cultural phenomenon.

I don't know. It sounds to me like you've got a set of rose-coloured glasses there, man. I was playing in '79 and '80, and I recall news reports treating the Egbert 'disappearance' as a joke. Granted , I was 13-14 years old and living in North Carolina, but every mention I heard was treated with a smirk; and Egbert himself was tagged as less of a 'genius' and more of a 'freak.'

The only people who considered D&D a 'game for geniuses' were people who were playing the game. The real 'cultural phenomenon' occurred after right-wingers and Christian fundamentalists started equating D&D with 'Satanism' and suicide. That was really as close as D&D has ever been to being considered "cool," and once the masses who bought it for its 'Dark Dungeons' aspect found out that it was just a bit of harmless fun, sales began to drop off. The fact is, there is, and has been, a negative social stigma attached to D&D among the mainstream, whether we like it or not, that has to be dealt with. Gamers were, and still are, considered 'geeks' by the mainstream. We have to accept that and get past it if we are to get past that stigma.

Regards,
Darrell

 

[ssampier]

Do you want teenaged males, ages 13-19? Get some teenaged females, ages 13-19

This.

Now how do we do this without offending anyone....

 

[Steel_Wind]

Do you want teenaged males, ages 13-19? Get some teenaged females, ages 13-19

If past history is any predictor of future performance, that pretty much narrows the genre to a V:TM style genre game.

Looks to me that if WotC had a clue, they'd license Twilight and port it straight to D&D 4E. No "new" system, just file the D&D serial numbers off and hope for the best. Fluff heavy, crunch light. All in one book.

I am being dead serious here. If your plan is to market a D&D game to recruit adolescent males by also appealing to adolescent females (all while trying to make D&D "cool" *sigh*) Stephenie Meyers' Twilight is your *ahem* Ticket to Ride, as it were.

 

[mgbeach]

If past history is any predictor of future performance, that pretty much narrows the genre to a V:TM style genre game.

Looks to me that if WotC had a clue, they'd license Twilight and port it straight to D&D 4E. No "new" system, just file the D&D serial numbers off and hope for the best. Fluff heavy, crunch light. All in one book.

I am being dead serious here. If your plan is to market a D&D game to recruit adolescent males by also appealing to adolescent females (all while trying to make D&D "cool" *sigh*) Stephenie Meyers' Twilight is your *ahem* Ticket to Ride, as it were.

haha! just saw an ad and was coming back to say this very thing. great minds, and all that. Although, I can't imagine how much $$ that license would be...not to mention all of the WotC staff would jump out the window at the idea of having to make sense of Meyers' world.

 

[Steel_Wind]

haha! just saw an ad and was coming back to say this very thing. great minds, and all that. Although, I can't imagine how much $$ that license would be...not to mention all of the WotC staff would jump out the window at the idea of having to make sense of Meyers' world.

Oh, Chris Perkins has earned the privilege - hasn't he?

Hey - do it right; could make a ton of dough. It's not like there aren't already a slew of fan generated RPG genres and pages for the setting.