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

[Argyle King]

@ Triqui


I do not discount your view. I do believe there are untapped markets for rpgs among players of other games and members of other hobbies.

However, I also feel there is a lot of untapped potential with just the good old fashioned rpg. As someone who is both an avid video game player and someone who plays rpgs, I find that video games are increasingly adding rpg elements. The drive to immerse yourself into games, I believe, is becoming stronger. Some of the most popular games over the past few years have been games which found a way to emulate some of the tabletop feel. While there are gamers who are probably unaware that some of those elements were taken from tabletop gaming, they still enjoy them.

There are plenty of people who want a deeper experience; not a more simplified one; for a while now, even games like Madden football and WWE Smackdown have included things such as being able to make your own character, take the role of a team owner, and etc. Each year, these features have gotten more in depth. So, while I do see the merit in making a game easier to learn, I also believe there are just as many people who want a game they can sit down and have a longer, deeper experience with.

I might be the odd man out, but, for me, I generally play video games for a very different reason than why I play rpgs. The deeper experience is what drew me to rpgs in the first place. I had a small dose of what a roleplaying experience could be with some of the console games I was familiar with. When I discovered there was a way to have that experience without being restrained by the confines of a computer's programming, I embraced the idea. RPGs engage me on a level that not very many video games do. More and more, as video games became able to contain more complexity, I found myself wanting to play more games which emulated the feel I have while playing tabletop games.

I support the idea of making the rpg hobby easier to enter. I see the merit in a more streamlined starting square. However, I've come to fear that 'streamlined' tends to mean cutting a lot of the details out that make me want to play an rpg. If a tabletop game gets streamlined and simplified to the point that I feel as though I am being constrained by the limits of the programming, I start to wonder why I don't just stay home on gameday and fire up the XBox instead.

Instead of chopping games down, why not build the potential players up? By all means, start with something simple, but also showcase what might be possible beyond that simple start. Play to the strengths of tabletop gaming and highlight that the game can be any world you can imagine. I do not believe people are adverse to complexity if it is presented the right way and it leads to a more engaging experience. In a society where we have young children capable of Twitter, using iPhones, iPads, and all manner of gadgets, I think adding complexity can work. The trick is making getting there not feel like work and also making people want to engage on a deeper level; making a potential gamer want to invest not just in today's session around the table, but tomorrow's campaign.

With a simple start, but the potential for a deeper experience, I think you can find a way to market to both the person who wants to be more casual, but also have products available for the person who wants to stick with the game through the long haul. I know there is some talk of this concerning D&D already. Honestly, I don't know if that's the game D&D should be. I can only express my belief that it's possible to build such an experience and have people embrace the deeper, more complex experience rather than shy away from it.

 

[BryonD]

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

Put your money where your mouth is and you will go broke.

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.

No, that is EXACTLY the flaw in the thinking. There are huge differences even in "pretending to be an elf" while playing a WOW night elf and "pretending to be an elf" during a table top RPG experience.

The vast majority of WOW players wouldn't be caught dead at a D&D table. Seeing the superficial similarity and confusing that for equivalence is a fatal flaw.

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.

You know, I gotta point out that it is really funny that 4E copied WOW is being used as a defense here.

I really don't see 15 second char builds as a benefit for what I get out of RPGs. It works great for computer games, certainly. But the depth of character experience is a big part of MY D&D fun.

I've been away from WOW for a couple years now, but I used to run an 80 Undead Priest running top raids. I loved it and I don't play now because I'm clean and sober and I want to stay that way. I know how much fun it can be. And I also know it is a very different fun.

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.

Oh no, I agree absolutely that they are massive compared to RPGS. That is because they appeal to vastly more people than RPGs. The fact, as you pointed out, that the larger hobby was never this big before is because there was never the kinds of things that appealed to the larger crowd. And when there was D&D in the 70s and 80s, there was still NOTHING in the hobby that appealed to that vast crowd. They offer something that RPGs don't and RPGs offer something that they don't. But a hell of a lot more people want what those other games offer than want what RPGs offer.

So THAT is the problem with you gain 10% scenario. If they were interested they would have been playing D&D or SOMETHING else before they had CCG or MMOs to choose. And they did, it was just that the something else was completely outside the hobby. Nothing that was in the hobby attracted them then and nothing that was in the hobby then attracts them now.

I'll assume I'll never convince you. But that is fine. I hope you live to be 150. But even if you do, you'll be on your death bed predicting that the breakthrough is just around the corner. I can't prove something won't happen tomorrow, but I can predict that it won't happen tomorrow and keep saying "I told you so" the day after and the day after.

Computer games and the like will dwarf tabletop RPGs forever.
And quickstart RPGs with simple to grab and go rules will last forever.
But the monster successes within the tabletop industry will always appeal to the target niche and will be "complex".

 

[BryonD]

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

There have been 8 different studies to support this.

 

[Matt James]

I wrote an article for Critical-Hits.com a couple years back about how WoW and MMORPGs stole the idea of roles from D&D

 

[Pour]

I wrote an article for Critical-Hits.com a couple years back about how WoW and MMORPGs stole the idea of roles from D&D

If it makes you feel any better, Guild Wars II will soon slay WoW! They even phased out the sacred cow of traditional healers! Imagine if 4e had done that, haha. Say what you will about the Warlord and healing surges, but a total phasing out of the cleric? Oh the wailing would have shaken the pillars of the internet.

 

[Sonny]

Actually, if I was to try and bring back players who fell to the wayside in 4E, (and keep 4E players) I think I would do a couples of different things:

1. Bring back the classic Jack Vance magic system.

2. Boil dailies, at wills, etc.. powers for classes down to a consolidated "Power's List" like the previous systems "magic list".

This way you can have Fighters with access to a large number of choices from the "Power's List", But none from the "Magic list". Wizards would have hardly any abilities from the "Powers List", but would have access to a lot of the spells on the "Magic List". Paladins would have access to different abilities (and not as many as the fighter) from the "Powers List" and once again have access to the "magic List" as in past editions.

etc...

A class would be: Class Abilities + Powers List choices + Magic List choices. Not to mention feats and skills. Should keep classes diverse enough.

So really, the big difference between 3.5 and this new system would be the "powers list" and the fixed math. Also keeping the monster system from fourth edition.

Other changes to bring back people, would be not making combat so mini centric. Choosing to either use or not use minis should be a valid and (very playable) option. Don't make any Planes setup default. But have two big supported choices, The Great Wheel and the 4e one. Only have the classic races in the core player's book.


Not sure how many people would actually like it, but I sure would!

 

[triqui]

I really don't see 15 second char builds as a benefit for what I get out of RPGs. It works great for computer games, certainly. But the depth of character experience is a big part of MY D&D fun.

I bolded the really important words. And, once again, I have to agree, but, once again, I have to repeat myself: what Mike Mearls hinted is not targeted to you (or me) as intended audience. So what you find interesting in RPG is of little importance here.

[...] If they were interested they would have been playing D&D or SOMETHING else before they had CCG or MMOs to choose. [...]

Now that's a funny argument marketing-wise. I can imagine people in Coca-Cola saying "hey, we might make a new Coke without sugar, let's call it Coke Zero" and someone saying "no, if consumers would like Coke, they'll be already drinking it". Or someone in Apple "hey, let's make a tablet" and someone else saying "nah, if customers would want a tablet, they'll be using a 2002 Tablet PC already". Yep, that's a nice way to self-defeat any attempt to appeal new customers.

Computer games and the like will dwarf tabletop RPGs forever.
And quickstart RPGs with simple to grab and go rules will last forever.
But the monster successes within the tabletop industry will always appeal to the target niche and will be "complex".

If Mike Mearls keep his job as R+D head of D&D, your last sentence might prove untrue LONG before I get to my death bed.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Maybe PCGen's creators are trustworthy, and maybe not. Maybe they're trustworthy and they got hacked somewhere in the process. The bottom line is I'm not going to install 200 megabytes of executable programs on any system anywhere near any sensitive data. Maybe if I had an off-network dedicated game computer that would be different, but as it is, i'm not being paid to take the risk.

This level of paranoia is perhaps admirable if you're working for the CIA. If not, you're just ranting on a digital street corner with tinfoil on your head.

Although, honestly, if you're working for the CIA you probably shouldn't be installing game software onto your work computers just as a sort of general rule. So either way you don't have anything remotely resembling a point.

My own experience is that experienced gamers loathe pregenerated characters, except for things like convention games. You and I aren't the market for this. It's for the newbies.

Make it into a softcover product like 1Ed's Rogue's Gallery or the more recent Player's Handbook Races series- $10 for 32 1st level pregens tied to the PHB stuff

You expect the newbies to spend $100 on the rulebooks and then spend another $10 for a supplement containing pregen characters?

That's a kooky strategy.

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.

You're right that it's not JUST about speed of play/simplicity to start. But those are major parts of a total picture which includes:

- Mainstream awareness.
- Making it as easy to start playing as any board or card game.
- An open table as the default play mode (so that experienced players will casually invite new players to join their games)
- A default adventure mode that's easy to create and robust in play
- An affordable/accessible price point

Even if you take mainstream awareness off the table, there are actually very few games that have achieved this particular mix of factors. Even D&D no longer achieves it.

Heck, if there was a massive desire to roleplay among the general populace, the party murder-mystery games would be blowout sellers,

Those are pretty much the exact opposite of "easy to play". The expected form of play requires significant prep and exactly the right number of people (no more, no less). In most of the significant ways, they're actually more difficult for people to start playing than traditional RPGs.

RPGs used to be casual games that you could also invest deeply in. But the industry has been moving steadily away from that... and the industry has been steadily shrinking.

I don't think that's correlation. I think that's causation. And I think it's the same death cycle that killed the wargames industry.

 

[Windjammer]

WotC (or whoever) would need to boil down every edition ... and try to isolate the most fundamental core aspects that make the game "true D&D" in the minds of the players. ...
Is that what Mike's doing? Trying to tease out the common elements of all editions in hopes of creating an uber-edition? I have no idea. I don't know if that's his intent, and I have no idea if it's even remotely possible....
It's a tall ask, and I have no idea if it's feasible, but I think even the attempt (whether by WotC, Paizo, or whoever) would produce a fascinating result.

Ehm, frankly, no. After three years of 4E where the design crew (or what's left of it) has consistently failed to fix the game's major flaws - not to mention that the initial release fell a long way short from all the design goals we were promised in the preview booklets - I don't think the extant or prospective D&D community needs another grandiose attempt at an ambitious design. What we need is some actual effort producing some actual results which are gameable, and which can give us what D&D was always best at: a solid chassis on which to peg one's own campaigns.

What we need is less hype, less spin, less Legends & Lore articles which go nowhere and are never once followed up by an ever so tiny houserule people can actually implement in their games. No, we need just plain solid design. A hard look at what boardgames do right would do well for RPG 'professionals' to finally catch up with an inkling of how games get professionally developed. As in, the final pages in this PDF (excerpts quoted more accessibly here), which makes a good case on the analogy of game to software development. Guess what. None of that happened to 4E design. 4E design was NEVER exposed to rigorous design, rigorous development, and rigorous playtesting. How do we know that? We know that because of the extensive errating the company had to undergo. Skill challenges, monster damage output, characters' to-hit bonuses... the most basic numbers in the game, you name them, they are all wrong, front to back.

Or, as this great gentleman put it upthread,

Kids want the same things adults want: adventure, inspiration, and a solid underpinning of logical rules.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think they cant make everyone happy. But they can make a game everyone is willing to play. Being the most popular game is like being the most popular movie, you have to appeal to a broad audience not a narrow demographic. 4e does a great job appealing to a narrow band of players. Any effort to be everything to everyone is probably going to anger the current base. Not sure its clear how many old players who left after 4e they can win back. I've been. D&D free (and pathfinder/3.5 free) since 4e came out and my gaming has never been better.

I think there is another thing at play here, the days of ogl are passed. Six years ago everyone was making d20 products, but now tgere is a flood of great non-d&d based games to choose from.