D&D on CNN!

[Subtlepanic]

Nice typo.

The thing is boardgame audiences DWARF RPG audiences. By an order of magnitude. The first run of Trivial Pursuit sold in the tens of MILLIONS of copies. If you were to put all the D&D sales in a bag, for all D&D products ever, you might equal the sales of that one game.

And you want to compare it to things that are even smaller run? Like the Fighting Fantasy books (sales in the tens of thousands)?

I'm afraid you're way off there: try 15+ million.

 

[bagger245]

[article]
"The new version (Fourth Edition Rules) is about teamwork," explained Augie, who said he has been playing D&D since 1979. "I can whip up an Encounter in no time and players can be playing in about five minutes. In some ways, it plays out like a board game." [end quote]

Spokesmen like this aren't helping.

Oh come on. If I were to tell a mainstream audience on what rpgs are, I would use the boardgame reference. Telling them straight up on roleplaying a character and they will think magical tea party. The one thing good about 4e is that it is the best edition to attract the mainstream crowd. The spokesman did fine in describing D&D. At least it doesn't come off as "an immersive game of make believe where players can lead to being delusional" ala the satanic issue back in the 80s.

My mum is a staunch Christian, telling her D&D is just a normal boardgame helps sooth her.

 

[Hussar]

I'm afraid you're way off there: try 15+ million.

Well, wiki would like to have a word with you:

In North America, the game's popularity peaked in 1984, a year in which over 20 million games were sold. The rights to the game were licensed to Parker Brothers (now part of Hasbro) in 1988, after initially being turned down by the Virgin Group; in 2008, Hasbro bought out the rights in full, for US$80 million.[3] As of 2004[update], nearly 88 million games had been sold in 26 countries and 17 languages. Northern Plastics of Elroy, Wisconsin produced 30,000,000 games between 1983 and 1985. An online version of Trivial Pursuit was launched in September, 2003.[4]

I think the numbers I stated were tens of millions for the first run. Well, 20 is two tens. Ok, overstated, but, still more than your 15 million. And, in any case, it STILL dwarfs D&D, which was my point.

 

[WheresMyD20]

The theory that I was responding to was that 20 year lapsed players are going to coming back to 4e. I don't see it happening. I think there may be a handful that pick up 4e, but the vast, vast majority of 20 year lapsed players are gone for good.

The problem is that your opinion here is just that. Just because it's not your preference, and not what you think D&D is like, doesn't mean that it's a universal truth.

Not a matter a preference. Not trying to start an edition war. I actually think 4e is a pretty good game. However, it's quite different from 1e/2e. I think that 3e forms a bit of a "bridge". 3e has a lot of similarities to 1e/2e. 4e has a lot of similarities to 3e. If you remove 3e from the equation, however, it's a very big jump from 1e/2e to 4e. To a 20 year lapsed player, 4e won't have a lot in common with the D&D he remembers.

Anyway, I have severe doubts about the success of bringing out a D&D game that resembled old school D&D. I think it would appeal to a niche market, and turn off far more.

I think an inexpensive, Walmart-available boxed set similar to the old B/X edition, with a few minor tweaks, like ascending AC, has the potential to bring in a whole new generation of young players. It might turn off the hardcore crowd, but WotC already has 4e to cater to the hardcore crowd.

In fact, I think stagnation (or regression) is the best way to kill off the franchise. Gaming ideas, designs, and tastes have changed a lot in the last 20 years.

I'm not here to start an edition war. 4e is a good game. I think, though, that WotC has taken D&D down a path were it now caters to a niche crowd. Over the last 10 years, the WotC business plan seems to have been to focus on the hardcore D&D players that will buy lots of rulebooks and minis and steer the design of the game towards them.

There's a reason WotC is desperate to go after lapsed players. Their player base is the smallest it's ever been and it's probably still shrinking.

The old B/X and BECMI editions brought a large number of new players into the hobby. I know WotC is trying to do the same thing with Essentials, but I think in that case, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to release a simple version of the game that still contains all the complexity of 4e. That's a tall order and I'm interested to see what they come up with.

 

[amysrevenge]

And it's much much better than curling!

Them's fightin' words, partner.


And now we've moved beyond the childish D&D edition wars, and inot something more serious - Sport wars.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Oh come on. If I were to tell a mainstream audience on what rpgs are, I would use the boardgame reference. Telling them straight up on roleplaying a character and they will think magical tea party. The one thing good about 4e is that it is the best edition to attract the mainstream crowd. The spokesman did fine in describing D&D. At least it doesn't come off as "an immersive game of make believe where players can lead to being delusional" ala the satanic issue back in the 80s.

My mum is a staunch Christian, telling her D&D is just a normal boardgame helps sooth her.

Well then either the game is NOT the same and the ad copy is full of crap or the game IS the same and the spin is full of crap.

Which is it?

 

[BronzeDragon]

Dude, I've seen D&D edition wars erupt in places utterly disconnected with D&D, RPGs, or any various fandom online or otherwise (truly bizarre places...). It has popped up where I work, it has popped up on trips to other states both for business and for pleasure. It's not just something small and isolated to fans on internet forums, it's a yawning fracture in the community.

Precisely.

The very fact that edition wars are still going this strong after a couple of years gives the lie to the idea that this is "just another round of the same that happened after 3E was released".

 

[Mark]

The Internet wasn't as frequented a medium as it is now so I would be slow to make comparisons between edition wars of 2E to 3E vs 3E to 4E.

 

[BronzeDragon]

The Internet wasn't as frequented a medium as it is now so I would be slow to make comparisons between edition wars of 2E to 3E vs 3E to 4E.

I think Shemeska was pretty clear in pointing out it is not just about the internet. And that was my angle too.

Sure, you might argue that if we had the volume of comments in 2000 that we have in 2010 we might have seen more of a continuity in edition warring. What I tried to point out was the rapid diminishing returns on edition warring in say, 2003, compared to what happens now.

There's a better argument against my case which is the possibility that people might have just gotten older and tired of trying to fan the flames of 3Ev2E, while the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed crowd of today proceeds full steam ahead with 4Ev3.X/PF.

 

[Dausuul]

The old B/X and BECMI editions brought a large number of new players into the hobby. I know WotC is trying to do the same thing with Essentials, but I think in that case, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to release a simple version of the game that still contains all the complexity of 4e. That's a tall order and I'm interested to see what they come up with.

Well, to be fair to WotC, having their cake and eating it are both vitally important to making a success of D&D. Hardcore fans provide the revenue stream that keeps the company afloat; casual players just don't spend enough. But without a way to draw in new blood (and new blood almost always starts out as casual players), the fanbase will slowly erode away.

So WotC needs to find ways of feeding the hardcore fanbase's appetite for new shiny, while also appealing to the casual player's desire for something simple and comprehensible. It is, as you say, a tall order.