D&D General Why grognards still matter

[Morrus]

and no I'm not misunderstanding that principle.

The principle is not applicable here. No matter how much you double down and explain it again at great length. You’re either misunderstanding the principle or the question; I suspect the latter. You just saw me saying something about sizes of market segments and dragged out a vaguely tangential quote without, I assume, actually reading what I said. That principle does not answer the question I asked.

But I’m not going to repeat myself or continue to discuss something that has no relevance to what I was saying. You carry on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We had wildly different experiences back-in-the-day.

I started in 1984 with B/X and quickly moved to AD&D. My brother and his group had been playing for years at that point. I remember the older, OD&D- early AD&D-playing wargamers looking down on the new kids who came in with the AD&D pop culture fad moment. When those kids got older they looked down on the incoming crop of theater kids who quickly moved from AD&D2E to things like Vampire.

If you look at the fanzines from the time they are filled to bursting with those “understanding gamers” endlessly complaining about the new kids, whoever they were.

I'll just note this was probably a different beast with people who's gaming wasn't entirely D&D-centric at both ends. I could be pretty snarky back in that day, but it was more likely to be directed at D&D purists of any age than younger players per se.

 

[Lanefan]

You have essentially just defined WoTC's target audience as people who buy WoTC products. Congratulations.

In contrast with their target audience being people who do not (currently) buy WotC products, it's a valid definition.

A company can focus on keeping the customers it already has, or it can focus on turning customers it doesn't have into customers it does have, or both.

I used to work in telecoms, and we hit this ALL THE TIME: existing customers (IMO quite validly) complaining they couldn't get the same deals being offered to new customers to lure them in.

 

[Umbran]

I'll make the statement again, but alter it slightly to be more palatable: I believe that older players still matter and buy a significant amount of product - at least enough to "matter."

Is there anything wrong with that amended statement, in your eyes?

With the logic of the statement itself, perhaps not.

With the positioning that our admittedly uninformed beliefs should be used as a criteria for judgement about anything a company does? Perhaps a lot.

There are times in which a person whose critical thinking is engaged should say, "I do not have enough information to take this idea further."

 

[Mercurius]

With the logic of the statement itself, perhaps not.

With the positioning that our admittedly uninformed beliefs should be used as a criteria for judgement about anything a company does? Perhaps a lot.

There are times in which a person whose critical thinking is engaged should say, "I do not have enough information to take this idea further."

That would taking things a bit too seriously, imo. I mean, we're talking about elfy games.

 

[Calithena]

Would you settle for.....

I used to play that and Afrika Korps with my dad when I was a kid! I'm there!

 

[Emerikol]

I'm a master grognard by your system though I played paper chit wargames long before D&D so maybe I am flirting with grandmaster.

I don't think WOTC cares a wit about us. The reason is that not enough of us are playing. If we were playing a lot we would own the space as we are in our most powerful economic years. A lot of other hobbies cater to the 45 to 60 crowd. D&D does not because while those of us still play spend vastly more than any 25 year old on average there aren't enough of us to make a difference.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If I were WotC, I wouldn't do more than a token nod to "grognards" or older TSR editions either. And I say this as a guy whose favorite edition is 1e/2e mashup. They've already been burned hard on that.

• With 5e, they made the effort to pay attention to us. They hired consultants who were bigger names in the old school sphere. Tarnowski (rpg pundit) and Zak. How well did that age?
• Since then, osr communities in social media are generally really toxic places. There are some decent osr groups, but they are few and far between. By far the majority are full of people making daily attacks against WotC and railing against anything "woke".
• Then a guy bought an iconic D&D historical icon (the DHS Museum) and started using "TSR" logos. How did that end up?
• And finally, and probably the biggest, is that since 5e came out, the numbers don't lie. The game took off, largely without us older gamers being all that important to that success.

So with all of the above, I wouldn't spend that much attention to osr or older gamers either. The survivability and growth of the game doesn't rely on us. Seems a no brainer to me. Which, again, sucks to say that because I'm one of those older gamers. But the reality is it would be an enlarged sense of self-importance and entitlement to expect them to pay more than a passing nod to us. Life moves on. I don't blame them.

 

[nevin]

The principle is not applicable here. No matter how much you double down and explain it again at great length. You’re either misunderstanding the principle or the question; I suspect the latter. You just saw me saying something about sizes of market segments and dragged out a vaguely tangential quote without, I assume, actually reading what I said. That principle does not answer the question I asked.

But I’m not going to repeat myself or continue to discuss something that has no relevance to what I was saying. You carry on.

My point has always been on this topic old people generally have more disposable income and are therefore more important to companies that sell stuff including all the gaming companies. As we are talking old people in the gaming hobby I disagree on your assessment of the relevance of the topic. Money rules in any business. Therefore if my assumption is correct (made without any internal gaming company data obviously) then it would be correct though at this point it's just a theory. Perhaps I have misunderstood the original question. I'll go back and reread the early posts. /Peace out

 

[KYRON45]

Maybe Wotc doesn't release sales information because they know that our need to be right about this sort of things keeps us angry and engaged.