The Shaman
First Post
*snortchortlesnort*
Whatever this ad may or may not do, shouting rebellion isn't one of them.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
D&D is now in (exceedingly awesome) commercial form
- Thread starter ProfessorCirno
- Start date
Whatever this ad may or may not do, shouting rebellion isn't one of them.
Wepwawet
Explorer
The Shaman
First Post
*snortchortlesnort*Yes it does! It shouts rebellion against the use of color and modern aesthetics
"You must spread some Experience Points around . . . "
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
I don't know about it as an ad. It's kind of crappy as an ad without any further context. It's a dynamite fan-made video through and, once you know that it is one, it becomes a somewhat better ad. Your expectations shift from "This is the best they could do?" to "Cool to incorporate fan projects". But before the fan film context, I was still sitting with "This is the best they could do?"
Raven Crowking
First Post
I liked the commercial, but if I knew less about 4e and Essentials, I would have been very, very disappointed had it led me to buying the red box. Great ad for TSR-D&D, though.
In fact, were I WotC, I would be somewhat concerned about customers complaining that the red box is intentionally designed to create confusion with a different product that they might have been familiar with. It seems very misleading to me.
YMMV.
RC
In fact, were I WotC, I would be somewhat concerned about customers complaining that the red box is intentionally designed to create confusion with a different product that they might have been familiar with. It seems very misleading to me.
YMMV.
RC
Last edited:
kiznit
Explorer
Well, I suspect that very few people on this board would be able to replicate the emotional experience of "opening up the 4e Red Box after 20 years of not playing".
Who knows, maybe approaching the new Starter Game from such a wide-eyed and baggageless perspective might lead to a surge of optimistic criticism of the system rather than the same old disappointed pessimism?
I'd certainly like to see that.
I'm still confused by this idea that the product can only be aimed at one single audience. Has anyone actually said it is "entirely for new players" or solely "focused on lapsed D&D players"?
I've said from the beginning that Essential's goals were threefold:
1) Provide a slimmed down intro version of the new game that are easier for new players to quickly understand and play.
2) Use classic elements and themes to appeal to lapsed gamers of earlier editions.
3) Provide new builds and content that existing 4E players can make use of.
This commercial is aimed at the second group there, but that doesn't mean they aren't still hoping to draw in new gamers or sell the product to existing gamers. They just have other avenues of advertisement for that. (New gamers might encounter the Essentials advertising included with the Castle Ravenloft board game. Existing gamers have been offered previews and content via DDI and various gamer blogs and conventions.)
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
I had an awesome experience opening up the Dragon Age boxed set. New game, starter set, very cool. I was very much taken back to the day I borrowed my friend's Holmes edition D&D box or the day I bought the little 3-book Traveller box.
4e's got an uphill climb to meet that. It had already been widely experienced before introducing the new red box. A large segment of the potential market has already formed its impressions of the root game. The surprise round, at least for them and me, has already been expended.
Which is problematic, because that wasn't what the BECMI Basic Set was designed to do back in the day: The BECMI Basic Set was a fully functional game; not a disposable, pay-to-preview advertising gimmick.
WotC talked a good game, but the new Starter Set isn't the spiritual inheritor of the Red Box. Instead, it's yet another product taking its inspiration from AD&D's First Quest: Try to get people to pay $20 or $30 for a demo version of the game that's designed to be stuck on the shelf and never looked at again once they buy the real version of the game. (And maybe if you load it up with enough bling, they won't notice that they just paid for advertising.)
Justin Alexander talked once about the lack of a gateway product for D&D. And he recently followed that up with a discussion of how the Starter Set perpetuates that track record of failure.
As for the ad? Stinks of failure.
(1) There are ways to appeal to nostalgia which will also be accessible to people who don't share that nostalgia. This ad, AFAICT, is completely inaccessible to anyone who isn't a current or past D&D player.
(2) The ad is bafflingly incomplete. The D&D website currently has the full tagline of the advertising campaign: "ATTEND YE GODS, THE BOX IS BACK". The key element missing from the ad itself is "THE BOX IS BACK", which is kind of problematic since it's the only thing which makes the ad at all explicable.
(3) On a similar note, they seem to have gone out of their way to make it difficult for people to figure out what they're selling. (Without actually going so far as to make it mysterious enough to intrigue on a viral level.) They show the box at the end, but manage to obscure the title. And including an HTML address in a funky font doesn't make up for it.
Well, the fact that TSR decided to essentially sell two "Advanced" versions of the game (i.e. AD&D and a fully-expanded, 1st - 30th level "Basic Plus" game) doesn't change the fact that the purpose of the Red Box was to get players hooked so that they would buy more product. Ask anyone who worked for TSR back in the early 80s and I'm sure they will tell you the goal for the Red Box wasn't to make a one time sale to a customer who would never buy another TSR product again.
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