D&D General RPG Theory and D&D...and that WotC Survey

[Aldarc]

Its easier for some folks to accept this than the possibility that they are an outlier.

I find it far easier to come from the perspective that I am an outlier. Honestly, anyone posting on ENWorld is likely an outlier to the broader trends of the D&D market by virtue of the degree of online interactivity or engagement with the hobby.

 

[MichaelSomething]

WOTC isn't catering to older folks?

Then what about the return of SpellJammer? DragonLance? Natural language? The emphasis on DM empowerment?

 

[Hussar]

WOTC isn't catering to older folks?

Then what about the return of SpellJammer? DragonLance? Natural language? The emphasis on DM empowerment?

I think this is more about the fact that the last few books being released aren't genuflecting on the altar of nostalgia and thus are catering to younger audiences.

The fact that we have several freaking years of multiple releases specifically targeting older gamers doesn't matter. D&D solely belongs to older gamers dammit and how dare they try to appeal to anyone other than a 40+ year old dude. After all, don't you know that all older gamers are this monolithic group that all play exactly the same way and have zero interest in new ideas or new interpretations of older stuff? How dare they try anything new and innovative. No, we must have nothing but 10 foot poles and warmed over leftovers from thirty years ago.

Hrm.... maybe I'm a bit more salty that I thought...

 

[Aldarc]

WOTC isn't catering to older folks?

Then what about the return of SpellJammer? DragonLance? Natural language? The emphasis on DM empowerment?

Isn't that WotC catering to those hip new Generation X folks?

 

[Aldarc]

They knew going in that they'd get answers* from the older players that they didn't want to hear, and so they made sure not to hear them.

Not necessarily. If you already have a good idea of what you want to sell and how in order to maximize market impact and-or profit, excluding the voices of those who won't necessarily fit in with or support those ideas makes a lot of corporate sense.

WotC being more interested in what their target audience within the 12-35 age range doesn't mean that there was some sort of grand conspiracy to exclude or silence people who fell outside of that core group or shelter their research from inconvenient answers that contradicted the data. It means that they wanted to gather data on the group that was most likely to form their core or desired audience. That's it. Furthermore, keep in mind that the survey was not strictly about D&D. It also included (likely at the time) more profitable trading card games and miniature wargames:

A two phase approach was used to determine information about trading card games (TCGs), role playing games (RPGs) and miniatures wargames (MWG) in the general US population between the ages of 12 and 35. For the rest of this document, this group is referred to as "the marketplace" or "the market", or "the consumers".

This age bracket was arbitrarily chosen on the basis of internal analysis regarding the probable target customers for the company's products. We know for certain that there are lots of gamers older than 35, especially for games like Dungeons & Dragons; however, we wanted to keep the study to a manageable size and profile. Perhaps in a few years a more detailed study will be done of the entire population.

Also please note that Dancey would have potentially liked doing follow-up research that would have included a wider age range, which hardly would have been the case if there was some nefarious conspiracy with the intent to silence voices. It had far more to do with focusing a more manageable set of data that caught their core, target audience for their range of company products.

If WotC did market research today that focused on people aged 12-35 as part of their core audience, I would be excluded as a result of my age and I would think nothing of it because I can respect that I am not the target group of interest for them.

 

[pemerton]

If WotC did market research today that focused on people aged 12-35 as part of their core audience, I would be excluded as a result of my age and I would think nothing of it because I can respect that I am not the target group of interest for them.

But what about your human right to be the subject of market research by commercial firms?!?!

 

[Oofta]

But, this isn't answering my question. There was absolutely no question about what you want or don't want.

I simply asked, are you talking about the game as a system or the game as you play it.

But, looking at this answer, maybe you did. You are insisting that game = game as it's played at a given table. Fair enough. But, you need to be absolutely clear about that. Because a lot of times people are talking about D&D as the system only and not including how it's played at the table.

I did answer. Sometimes a game is defined by what it chooses not to create rules for. D&D doesn't try to be completely comprehensive of every aspect of the game, it's rulings over rules. I think how people actually use the game at the table is more important than trying to apply game theory analysis. The original question I was answering: "Wouldn't the essence of a thing be the same for everyone, even if the specific permutations of their lived experience of it are different?"

Because D&D 5E focuses on rulings over rules, goes out of it's way to encourage DMs to color outside the lines, what people do with that absolutely matters. This is where the academic analysis fails for me. I care more about how people actually use the game. In the case of D&D, what the rules leave out can be just as important as what they chose to include. The fact that any two games can be so radically different is a feature, not a bug. D&D doesn't establish a tone of game, it doesn't limit itself to a specific mythos even if it does provide some for specific settings. If I play a Cthulhu game I know I'm doing a horror campaign. If I play a D&D game I could play a horror game, a beer and pretzels game, a story of good vs evil or morally gray quagmire. I don't see how I can discuss the game without discussing how it's actually implemented and used.

 

[payn]

I did answer. Sometimes a game is defined by what it chooses not to create rules for. D&D doesn't try to be completely comprehensive of every aspect of the game, it's rulings over rules. I think how people actually use the game at the table is more important than trying to apply game theory analysis. The original question I was answering: "Wouldn't the essence of a thing be the same for everyone, even if the specific permutations of their lived experience of it are different?"

Because D&D 5E focuses on rulings over rules, goes out of it's way to encourage DMs to color outside the lines, what people do with that absolutely matters. This is where the academic analysis fails for me. I care more about how people actually use the game. In the case of D&D, what the rules leave out can be just as important as what they chose to include. The fact that any two games can be so radically different is a feature, not a bug. D&D doesn't establish a tone of game, it doesn't limit itself to a specific mythos even if it does provide some for specific settings. If I play a Cthulhu game I know I'm doing a horror campaign. If I play a D&D game I could play a horror game, a beer and pretzels game, a story of good vs evil or morally gray quagmire. I don't see how I can discuss the game without discussing how it's actually implemented and used.

You must understand this is a very Oberoni take on the subject. I certainly see D&D as fantasy as much as you see Cthulhu as horror. Just because GMs are encouraged to make it their own doesn't mean the system supports it. I could use the Call of Cthulhu ruleset as keeper to run a race car grand prix. That doesn't mean it suddenly supports formula one racing.

 

[Oofta]

You must understand this is a very Oberoni take on the subject. I certainly see D&D as fantasy as much as you see Cthulhu as horror. Just because GMs are encouraged to make it their own doesn't mean the system supports it. I could use the Call of Cthulhu ruleset as keeper to run a race car grand prix. That doesn't mean it suddenly supports formula one racing.

All game systems are constrained. That doesn't mean that looking at the constraints of the game, which for D&D are quite broad, is irrelevant. D&D is less constrained than many systems (i.e. Cthulhu) and more constrained than others (i.e. GURPS).

 

[Umbran]

Personally, I've maintained all along that that's exactly what it was.

You are, of course, welcome to maintain whatever unsupported positions you like.

That's still no reason to exclude their voices.

So, what I said wasn't intended to be a reason to exclude people - I was merely speaking on what the result would imply.

But, let us be clear, their choice to exclude some people was legitimate. Research (corporate or academic) is not an exercise in "giving people voice". None of us is entitled to be heard. A company making products is not a democracy, in which everyone gets a say.

Research is for answering specific questions. When doing research, you go in with those specific questions - and you then use the data that is pertinent to those questions.

You may disagree with the business priorities that led to their focus, but any such disagreement does not constitute malfeasance on their part. Any such disagreement is not a valid reason to accuse them of "manipulating the data". That accusation is what we should call an extraordinary claim, and it calls for extraordinary evidence.... which you have not presented.

Which while true is still no excuse for failing to make the snapshot-in-time as representative of the complete demographic as possible.

Again, the point of the research was not to take an overall "snapshot in time" of gamers as a whole, and the referenced piece from Reynolds says as much. The piece is honest about that. They had a target market. They asked questions about that market. That's a business choice they get to make.

Sorry - that was a busienss choice they got to make. It was 20 years ago.