24 Million Lapsed D&D Players - Define "Lapsed"

[jaerdaph]

It is also possible that those numbers in the OP were a bit of a typo or some such. It was a live blog of the event. Granted the site that did it is generally very good about their facts, but it is still possible that they misheard or mistyped and it's just been overlooked. We should probably look for confirmation from either them or WotC before a really detailed analysis of what it could all mean makes any sense.

I don't think so, considering that site also has a photo of the slide show presentation WotC gave with those same numbers on it:

 

[ggroy]

I don't think so, considering that site also has a photo of the slide show presentation WotC gave with those same numbers on it:

Anyone figure out what that line after the title says?

It looks something like "80% ????? awareness among target audience."

 

[Guest 85555]

My first thought is a lapsed player could mean pretty much anything from someone who played the game once with a sibling, to someone who played for years then quit. Also, this is about D&D specifically, not gaming in general (as far as I can tell at least), so the number of actual gamers out there could be way higher (though I am guessing that most of the people who play other games are part of the lapsed D&D player pool). Would be interesting to see what numbers other companies have.

 

[jaerdaph]

Currently, I am running a "D&D" game using Microlite20 rules (and my vast library of pre-4e D&D and d20 era 3PP books) for both my younger nephews (ages 10 and 7), and we call it "D&D". Perhaps that makes me lapsed, perhaps that makes me active. While I'm sure this data has to do more with D&D the Brand than D&D the Experience, I still think of what we are doing as playing D&D.

Thoughts on the upcoming Red Box: If one of the things this product does is make D&D accessible to a younger age group (specifically preteen/middle school), I would have no problem purchasing it for my nephews and playing it with them. Ultimately, I want to see the TRPG hobby continue and even grow. And if the experience today of discovering TRPGs isn't exactly the same as it was for me over 30 years ago when I was young and discovered them, that's okay too - if incorporating the changes that have occurred over the last 30 years in both entertainment and technology into the TRPGs of today helps bring in a new generation of fans, I'm all for it.

 

[Shemeska]

I get the impression that WotC aren't really targeting people who noticed the 4e roll out (ie, current gamers).

My feeling is that they're aiming more for long lapsed players who haven't even thought about gaming in years, much less paid any attention to the coming and going of the last couple editions. Those people won't have any memory of 4e's release and the hooplah that embroiled the active gaming community at the time.

And you're probably right. I still find it slightly odd that WotC would have gone about designing 4e with the intention of recruiting a new demographic at the expense of some of their previous market base from 3.x, but now a year or two later they're making a push to recruit lapsed players from an older demographic still. But as you said, if you haven't played in a long time, you won't have as many/any bad impressions based of 4e that some 3.x players had from the rollout.

But -and here's a question that I'm not really qualified to answer myself- would players whose last experience with the game was 1e, BD&D, 2e or something else recognize 4e as the same game given how far it goes to deviate itself mechanically from 3.x and from 1e/2e/3e AD&D in terms of flavor and basic world assumptions? (Of course would they have some of the same disconnect with even 3.x to a lesser degree?).

What I gather from this, and I might be woefully off base here, is that they didn't snag as much of the 3.x base as they wanted (I was quoted a 30% conversion rate a year ago by someone now no longer with WotC), and while new players coming into 4e has been acceptable, it's not anywhere near the level that 3.x brought in and so they're having to look back at other demographics that weren't tapped by 3.x or so far by 4e.

We'll see how this latest marketing push and direction goes, but wouldn't it already be facing competition from retroclones and 'old school' design using other editions? Of course, starting with 3e, I have zero old school street cred, so to speak, so entirely speculation there.

 

[darjr]

We'll see how this latest marketing push and direction goes, but wouldn't it already be facing competition from retroclones and 'old school' design using other editions? Of course, starting with 3e, I have zero old school street cred, so to speak, so entirely speculation there.

I came back into the hobby at the very end of 3.5. I left the hobby at the beginning of 2e. I find things that harken back to 1e.

The simpler skill system being less like a skill system and more like in purpose to the subsystems of pre 3e versions, the tighter niche protection and more siloed classes compared to 3e in the original PHB, the simpler more abstract combat system, monsters and NPC's not being built like PC's and a couple of other things.

And thanks for finding that image with the numbers on it, I just didn't notice it, I stand corrected.

 

[Bluenose]

But -and here's a question that I'm not really qualified to answer myself- would players whose last experience with the game was 1e, BD&D, 2e or something else recognize 4e as the same game given how far it goes to deviate itself mechanically from 3.x and from 1e/2e/3e AD&D in terms of flavor and basic world assumptions? (Of course would they have some of the same disconnect with even 3.x to a lesser degree?).

I've been playing various editions of D&D since 1976. I find more that's recognisable in 4e than I did in 3e. Rules wise there's certainly a lot of changes, but there's still plenty of things that are familiar too. Perhaps the one I like most is the returned emphasis on character archetypes.

With regard to the 'basic world assumptions' you speak of, I'm not so sure that those exist. I certainly don't find much support in 1e AD&D for anything like that. The original Monster Manual doesn't go to the lengths of the 2e version in giving monsters assumed behaviour and habitat, and while I haven't done a count I'd suggest there are more adventures that are entirely self-contained than ones that exist in a particular setting. In my experience, GMs in those days were very likely to create their own campaign settings (I certainly did) without much concern for a way things were expected to be.

While 2e has more of this, it's also the heyday of TSRs campaign setting creation period. You have campaign settings as different as Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, and plenty of others. And I'm confident that even then, there were as many people playing homebrew games in their own setting as played all the published settings together. So I'm not sure it's correct to say there were any particular things that were regarded as basic assumptions in any previous edition, even 3e.

 

[Nagol]

Anyone figure out what that line after the title says?

It looks something like "80% ????? awareness among target audience."

It almost certainly Aided Awareness

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

But -and here's a question that I'm not really qualified to answer myself- would players whose last experience with the game was 1e, BD&D, 2e or something else recognize 4e as the same game given how far it goes to deviate itself mechanically from 3.x and from 1e/2e/3e AD&D in terms of flavor and basic world assumptions? (Of course would they have some of the same disconnect with even 3.x to a lesser degree?).

I don't know, either. However, I would suspect that if the real target audience is folks who haven't played in 15+ years, 4e's faithfulness to older mechanics wouldn't really factor much into that person's decision to get back into gaming. Such people likely were fairly casual players to begin with, and the mechanics are probably not of huge concern to them; the little bit of shared vocabulary should be enough to make it "D&D" for those who strayed long ago.

Another important thing about lapsed gamers: many of them are parents. I think the Essentials line-- and especially the "nostalgic" look-and-feel Red Box v4.0-- is likely being targetted at both the "lapsed" players and their kids. I've got not idea how many folks around my age (36) remember the old Basic Set D&D red box, but I suspect that number is a pretty big chunk of the 24million quoted upthread. For that reason alone, I can see a LOT of Red Boxes showing up under Christmas trees this year and next.

With that in mind, I believe the exact nature of the system is largely irrelevant to the success of the marketing program: that first sale and the those first couple sessions with a parent and a couple kids is what really matters. If the 4e ruleset is compelling enough to keep a large fraction of those kids of lapsed gamers clamoring for more-- well, that's a success for WotC. More power to them.

As one who doesn't play 4e myself, I nevertheless think this is potentially a good thing. I would hope that some fraction of those lapsed gamers and their kids will find their inner DM via 4e and branch outward to investigate other RPG genres, the retro-clones & PF, indy games, and so on.

 

[Filcher]

FWIW, I'm a fan of 4E but the term "lapsed" is obnoxious to me. It implies laziness or forgetfulness ("Oops, I let my subscription lapse.") as opposed to an active decision ("I dumped that trollop like a hot potato." "She says your relationship has lapsed.")

While many gamer may have indeed lapsed (going to college and losing their high school gaming group) many "hard core" gamers simply chose to move on to another system that scratched their gaming itch at the time.

I recall moving from AD&D 2nd ed, to R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk for a reason. And then flirting w/ White Wolf (actually, more flirting w/ female goths) before back to D&D.