Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?

[TarionzCousin]

Well, it's possible to reach any conclusion if you just make up facts

37% of all statistics are just made up on the spot.



There is one sure-fire way for WotC to get the D&D game back to its early popularity:

Spoiler

Mazes and Monsters 2, starring Tom Hanks.

 

[prosfilaes]

Welcome to 2011. Any download is full of spyware or malware until proven safe, and that goes doubly so for executables.

So you slander the makers of PCGen with no evidence. It's 2011; anyone taking credit card numbers is a thief until proven safe. Does that mean we should eschew any RPG system that we have to pay for online automatically?

In addition, charges can be as narrowly focused as desired; say, 15 cents to have access to a single class' advanced features, rather then spending the money for a full sourcebook.

It's 2011; micropayments have been proven impractical. Seriously; the credit card companies charge too much for a 15 cent charge to be profitable, and the resistance most people have to pulling out the wallet is pretty constant between 15 cents and a couple bucks.

 

[prosfilaes]

Either way, I still think my point stands. D&D used to blow pretty much every other game out of the water. While it is still the industry leader, I do not believe the gap between D&D and other games is anywhere near what it used to be. There are even some people who claim at certain points in the year that Pathfinder edges ahead.

The way I've seen it, is that during the 90s, the World of Darkness approached and possibly passed D&D in sales (though no one has hard numbers here.) So the gap between D&D may be more then what it use to be. Secondly, I may be wrong, but I think that while Pathfinder may challenge D&D for book sales now, that just means that what was once basically a one game market has become a two game market. The numbers for all the other games are basically where they've always been.

 

[Nagol]

[threadjack]

So you slander the makers of PCGen with no evidence.

Since it's written, wouldn't it be libel rather than slander?

It's 2011; anyone taking credit card numbers is a thief until proven safe. Does that mean we should eschew any RPG system that we have to pay for online automatically?

Particularly since the ongoing subscription is being handled by a non-associated 3rd-party as a service. Who knows how thorough their hiring practices are? It takes just one bad hire over the lifetime of your subscription...

[/threadjack]

 

[triqui]

But there have been other hobbies through the decades and yet there is no observable difference in the proportion of tabletop gamers.

Never in history those other hobbies were so powerful as now. CCG and Videogames are huge. Videogames are actually a industry monster, fighting one-on-one (and winning...) with Hollywood. We are talking about billions of dollars here. In 1980 D&D was competing with, say, tabletop games like Avalon hills and the like, that's true. However, Avalon Hill was never close to be a fraction of what Blizzard Enterteiment is. Nintendo alone is probably bigger than the whole gaming industry in the 80s...

What we DON'T see is the same thing happening in RPGs. You are equating potential CCG players with potential RPGers. And that is your flaw right there.

I disagree, then. They *are* potential RPGers. What they are not, is potential RPGers in the current RPG incarnation (prep-time, complex rules, etc)

I agree that a those people don't want to do those things. But, you know what, those people also don't want to sit around a table with friends pretending to be an elf.

And there is where you are basically wrong. The millions of players that each Legend of Zelda has ARE siting around a table pretending to be an Elf. An elf named "Link", actually. MTG players are pretending to be a Planeswalker Wizard fighting other.
Blizzard has 11 millions of subscribers that pretend to be an elf, orc, gnome or walking cow.
Those players *can* be attracted by D&D (and RPG industry in general). But only if RPG aim to what they look. D&D 4e tried to do so (and I applaud), but probably missed the point. 4e R+D team thought people played WoW becouse of the shinny powers like Mortal Strike, Vanish and Cleave, and tried to copy that. But probably they failed to notice that they play WoW becouse you can build a character in 15 seconds and you can start to play from the get go.

Erase prep time, dumb down the rules and drop combat to 10 minutes and you will get a tiny fraction of those people. And you will lose a huge chunk of you existing base as a cost.

"dumbing down" is not the same as "simple to learn". Chess is simple to learn. And is not "dumb", by any extension of the word

That said, probably WotC might lose 90% of grognards, win a 10% of Videogamers+CCG gamers, and still have a net gain. That's what I think you might not be looking rightly. Videogames and CCG are a HUGE monster compared to RPG industry. A tiny fraction of that, is a huge amount of money.

 

[Nagol]

Never in history those other hobbies were so powerful as now. CCG and Videogames are huge. Videogames are actually a industry monster, fighting one-on-one (and winning...) with Hollywood. We are talking about billions of dollars here. In 1980 D&D was competing with, say, tabletop games like Avalon hills and the like, that's true. However, Avalon Hill was never close to be a fraction of what Blizzard Enterteiment is. Nintendo alone is probably bigger than the whole gaming industry in the 80s...


I disagree, then. They *are* potential RPGers. What they are not, is potential RPGers in the current RPG incarnation (prep-time, complex rules, etc)


And there is where you are basically wrong. The millions of players that each Legend of Zelda has ARE siting around a table pretending to be an Elf. An elf named "Link", actually. MTG players are pretending to be a Planeswalker Wizard fighting other.
Blizzard has 11 millions of subscribers that pretend to be an elf, orc, gnome or walking cow.
Those players *can* be attracted by D&D (and RPG industry in general). But only if RPG aim to what they look. D&D 4e tried to do so (and I applaud), but probably missed the point. 4e R+D team thought people played WoW becouse of the shinny powers like Mortal Strike, Vanish and Cleave, and tried to copy that. But probably they failed to notice that they play WoW becouse you can build a character in 15 seconds and you can start to play from the get go.


"dumbing down" is not the same as "simple to learn". Chess is simple to learn. And is not "dumb", by any extension of the word

That said, probably WotC might lose 90% of grognards, win a 10% of Videogamers+CCG gamers, and still have a net gain. That's what I think you might not be looking rightly. Videogames and CCG are a HUGE monster compared to RPG industry. A tiny fraction of that, is a huge amount of money.

I believe you are over-estimating the draw of roleplaying as a passtime. If it were just speed of play/simplicity to start that was the problem, the games with very simple start-ups would have blown past D&D years ago. There are dozens of games with very simple "pick up let's go" rulesets. Many have existed for a decade or more.

Heck, if there was a massive desire to roleplay among the general populace, the party murder-mystery games would be blowout sellers, especially since they (1) weren't connected to D&D in any way and were unaffected by the "geek miasma" that surrounds it, (2) were/are sold in regular game stores/department stores, and (3) have had a couple of decades to penetrate public awareness. They sell occasionally, but not well and with limited repeat business.

Over its span, D&D has had few non-D&D competitors for first place. None of the rules-light/prep-light systems has ever challenged D&D -- not those systems that downplay dice, not the systems that downplay DMs, not the systems that eschew formal characteristics/skills/abilities for more free-form design.

In fact, the only thing that has challenged D&D has been systems with entrenched world-views that spoke to a different segment of the general population.

The first was Runequest; not a lighter system, but more consistent in approaches and with a strong integrated world flavour that was simultaneously more mythic and gritty. The second was oWoD; not a light system made even less intelligable by the presentation style. But it also had a very strong world flavour that spoke to a different section of the population.

 

[Matt James]

I think people would be surprised to see just how small the tabletop RPG industry really is.

 

[Falstaff]

To clarify, D&D has (almost) always been a game where you get more out of it if you put more thought and effort into it. I'm not suggesting we lose that.

I'm suggesting we lose the necessity of that.

The character creation "mini-game," if you will, should be possible, absolutely, but not required. At its most basic form, D&D should be playable by newcomers in a matter of minutes, not hours. Those who want to spend hours on characters and optimization should absolutely have that capability, but I feel it should come in the form of add-ons, not the basic, core, out-of-the-box experience. Because that--again, IME--is where you lose people, both newcomers to the game and experienced gamers who just want a more streamlined experience.

In other words, and using prior versions as an example, if one group wants to play with just Basic, and another wants to play with Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master, that should be entirely possible.

Man, I wish you were in charge of the next edition of D&D.

 

[TheUltramark]

i think this has been said, but I am captain of the redundancy team

if Hasbro was sure that a 5e product would generate profit, it would be on its way to the shelves.

As far playing right away and not spending hours learning the rules and character generation, I would suggest you check out the youtube-cast of the robot chicken session. Three of the 5 players at the table had never played any role playing game, and yet, as it said in the commentary, they were off and playing within 15 minutes of sitting down.
&[URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/misc.php?do=dbtech_usertag_hash&hash=x202a]#x202aDM&#39s Commentary: D&D Robot Chicken, Part 1&#x202c‏ - YouTube[/url]

 

[TheAuldGrump]

So you slander the makers of PCGen with no evidence. It's 2011; anyone taking credit card numbers is a thief until proven safe. Does that mean we should eschew any RPG system that we have to pay for online automatically?

Yeah, pretty much what he is doing - either that or he is completely unfamiliar with Sourceforge.

Or he might be wearing a tinfoil hat, I suppose. (I used to have a roommate who thought that rental tapes for the VCR might have viruses... what they might find from his VCR I don't know, other than that he had lousy taste in movies.)

It's 2011; micropayments have been proven impractical. Seriously; the credit card companies charge too much for a 15 cent charge to be profitable, and the resistance most people have to pulling out the wallet is pretty constant between 15 cents and a couple bucks.

Pretty much. The rates that they allowed to charge now actually used to be illegal. Let us hear it for deregulation....

The Auld Grump, remember, you should move away from the guy wearing the tinfoil hat... (except for B. W., he's okay....)