D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Imaro]

Provided they accept your premise, and you still might want to consider the factor that you're basically telling people their preferences are wrong.

Some preferences are wrong.

 

[mamba]

If children are playing your game, put them on the list. Doesn't mean you're specifically marketing to them.

no one was talking about exclusively marketing to them, this started as

the game should be marketed towards college-level age people - 18-21, instead of children

and I disagree that this would make any sense at all, or was ever the target audience (exclusively)

What age group do you think this ad was targeting?

 

[KYRON45]

Which raises a tangential yet relevant question: for what level of education-comprehension-ability should the game be designed?

Should the books be written to Grade 6 vocabulary and comprehension levels? Grade 8? Grade 12? To what expected level of arithmetic competence should the game design adhere? And so on.

Put another way, should the game be designed for and marketed to educated adults* in full knowledge that kids are almost certainly going to (try to) play it anyway? To this my own answer is a full-on "yes"; IMO it should target the college crowd, and younger kids who play will benefit from gaining some added vocabulary and arithmetical competence.

* - in terms of presentation, vocabulary, etc.; not talking about "adult content" here.

The one thing that really threw me when I started playing 3e was that AC still started at 10, rather than at 0 like I would have expected.

Is “arithmetical” a real word?!?*

*the preceding question is an indictment of the quality of my education.

It depends on the type of assumptions you make. If you go with the idea that people should have a specific level of education to play the game, that's not great. Not every player is going to be old enough, for instance. Not every player has gone to college even if they're old enough to have done so. Not every player is going to be good at math even if they have amazing skills in other areas. Some players are going to be great at math and have terrible reading comprehension, which means that it doesn't matter if you have ascending or descending AC because they might not understand how you wrote it.

So making an assumption of "this should be for college students" doesn't actually have any practical use other than to keep people that you (generic you) think aren't "smart enough" from playing your game.

But! Making a system shouldn't be about "minimum education level." It should be a balance of streamlining it, allowing for nuance, and getting it to do what you want it to do.

Most games, toys, puzzles etc. have an intended age group label.
Is it gatekeeping when a game is marked “intended for ages 12 and older”? That age grouping might be for reading level, maths level, choking hazards etc. let’s choose our battles folks.

I personally don’t understand “gate keeping”. How does some anonymous entity saying “that’s not for you” keeping anyone from doing anything?

 

[mamba]

Is “arithmetical” a real word?!?*

*the preceding question is an indictment of the quality of my education.

and your ability to use Google...

arithmetical

1. involving adding, subtracting (= removing a number or amount), multiplying…

dictionary.cambridge.org

 

[KYRON45]

and your ability to use Google...

arithmetical

1. involving adding, subtracting (= removing a number or amount), multiplying…

dictionary.cambridge.org

It was a joke my friend. Simmer down.

 

[mamba]

It was a joke my friend. Simmer down.

likewise

 

[Lanefan]

I started playing at age 10 in 1989. It definitely seems that even in the late ‘80s, the target audience was teens, not college-age students.

2e (which came out in 1989) was aimed at a much younger audience than was 1e, for sure. I always saw this as a backward step, as that's the role BX/BECMI - still in print at the time in one form or another - was supposed to be filling.

 

[Lanefan]

so you think they designed it for college students, but somehow got all the highschoolers flocking to it and the '10 and up' is just an accident / meaningless?

Pretty much this, yes; at least for 1e.

Basic/BX was aimed younger.

 

[edhel]

I mean "conservatism" as in resistance to change.

That's not what conservatism is though. It's about preserving what works and what is true. I get where you're coming from but change for the sake of change isn't a virtue. From the publisher's pov it's always good because you're revising everything so much your fans need to buy everything again, but at the same time you might be losing the essence of what made the game popular in the first place. That's what e.g. OSR is about - restoring the elements and game dynamics that were fun in the older editions. There's a "feel" to D&D that's disappearing or is gone.

What I dislike about D&D's direction is the materialist philosophies that have turned formerly archetypal and mythical themes into bland corporate fantasy that caters to American political trends instead of speaking to the archetypal level in all of us on a human level. Literal reading of myth shows that the new designers are just blind to the resonance it used to have. WOTC themselves acknowledged this sci-fi-cation of fantasy in their own blog and panel discussions years ago.

It might also be that the new d&d audience is less literate in the sense of fantasy and classics, and their reference points lie in computer games. Dunno. I think D&D will far outlive WOTC and Hasbro through its dedicated fans.

 

[Remathilis]

2e (which came out in 1989) was aimed at a much younger audience than was 1e, for sure. I always saw this as a backward step, as that's the role BX/BECMI - still in print at the time in one form or another - was supposed to be filling.

I maintain that tonally, B/X and BECMI have the same divide as 1e/2e. Lighter, more heroic, no weird fantasy, demons or such. By the time the AND&D/Rules Cyclopedia came out and Mystara set as the setting, Basic was very much out of the Pulp style dungeon crawling like 2e was.