D&D General On gatekeeping and the 'live-streaming edition wars'

[BrokenTwin]

I feel really bad for Matt Mercier, but WotC deserves this for ignoring their fans for so long.

But they're not ignoring their fans. Arguably, people brought in by CR and other game streams are currently their largest and most profitable market. I want to see certain old settings come back too, but I'm also well aware that the setting I'd like to see come back has a very narrow slice of prebuilt customer interest compared to more current IPs.
Grognards are still fans, but they're mostly being served by the OSR movement nowadays. WotC is clearly focusing on bringing in and retaining new customers. Players who want the OD&D/AD&D experience are a secondary market for them.

The edition wars would never have happened if 4e was just a brief detour for say a few books. In fact when 5e came out it basically died to out.

I still stand by my opinion that 4E would have been recieved a lot better and lasted a lot longer if the marketing campaign hadn't been so pointlessly hostile towards the existing playerbase. Whoever okayed that ad campaign should have been fired for that blunder.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yup, if I'm WotC's primary customer demographic they're in some deep doo-doo. The hobby really does need a constant a influx of new blood and new ideas or it stagnates.

 

[Reynard]

The best part is today's bright eyed and up for anything new players are tomorrow's cranky stuck in their ways grognards!

 

[Fenris-77]

Someone needs to stick around to pass from failing hands the Grognard torch.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I'm dead in the middle between the Old Guard and the Young Blood in age, experience, and opinions.
Part of me can't wait for my turn to do the "back in my day" bit. I am definitely already feeling the sting of no longer being the primary demographic for a number of my hobbies though.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

I still stand by my opinion that 4E would have been recieved a lot better and lasted a lot longer if the marketing campaign hadn't been so pointlessly hostile towards the existing playerbase. Whoever okayed that ad campaign should have been fired for that blunder.

I know a company ought to stand behind a new edition solidly, but I feel 4e would have worked better if it hadn't been marketed as D&D 4th Edition. Call it "D&D Tactics Adventures" and make it the RPG for the tacticians.

As for Actual Play recordings...I don't watch the longer streams because I just don't have the time anymore (barely have time to play) but I do like listening to the shorter videos and podcasts during the commute to work. Stuff like One Shot, Party of One, You Don't Meet In An Inn, The Magpies, where you get a complete session, often edited down for conciseness, in 75 minutes or less.

Since I rarely have time to play anymore, it lets me experience games vicariously.

 

[gyor]

I'm dead in the middle between the Old Guard and the Young Blood in age, experience, and opinions.
Part of me can't wait for my turn to do the "back in my day" bit. I am definitely already feeling the sting of no longer being the primary demographic for a number of my hobbies though.

I'm 40 where do I fit?

Will say all the senior citizens in this fight is making me feel younger.

Side note I was born in 1979, the same year Ed Greenwood first published something on the Forgotten Realms in Dragon Magazine.

So if we count first published material as FR's birthday it and I are both born in the Year of the Goat.

 

[Lanefan]

And also, just let people come into dnd with whatever expectations and preferences they want.

Seems a bit self-defeating if they all turn around and leave again when reality doesn't live up to the expectations they've been given.

Fortunately, thus far it seems many are staying the course regardless, and making it work.

 

[Saracenus]

My basic mantra for my gaming life is... "More places to play, more people to play with." If what I am doing or saying isn't aimed at this target, it goes to the trash pile.

It informs my organizing, my DMing/Playing, and is the driving force in any social media I am running in support of my hobby.

Gatekeeping, making someone the other... well that needs to hit the trash bin and die in a fire because it closes off this hobby. It makes it small.

I do not have to like Streaming (I actually do, I just don't have time to watch it), or LARP, or this edition or the other... but it cost me nothing to welcome those that do to share the hobby space with me and my friends. It is not a zero-sum game. Someone else's thing does not make mine less-than.

So, I am standing up and celebrating a victory for all of us in this hobby, a book for a game we love hit #1 on Amazon like a rocket. There is going to be a D&D animated cartoon on Amazon. D&D regularly show's up in pop culture, not as a joke, but as a norm. Think about that. Breath that in. That is the taste of victory.

If you cannot, look inside and ask yourself... why?

 

[StormbringerAUS]

I am a D&D player and have been since 1979 (though like many with a break here or there) - I have listened to maybe half an hour of CR and enjoyed it but due to time doing other things (if only work would understand) I am not sure I count as a fan but I am a fan of the attention it has brought to the game I love - so I think that is enough to stay I am a fan of CR.