DaveMage
Slumbering in Tsar
I think that was the point of White Wolf in the first place....
24 Million Lapsed D&D Players - Define "Lapsed"
- Thread starter jaerdaph
- Start date
I think that was the point of White Wolf in the first place....
Dire Bare
Legend
Really? Now the term "lapsed" is offensive? Look it up in a dictionary, it's not an offensive term, merely a descriptive one. Sheesh.
cdrcjsn
First Post
I would say that WotC is going out of it's way to reconnect with these older players as well as making 4e easier to understand for newcomers.
They're making a new basic red box that that contains everything needed to run a game. That in itself is a signal that they're trying to make the game more accessible.
I've also heard rumors that they're making a "simpler" version of the basic classes that is compatible with the more complex 4e rules.
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
I'd go for that if were on the order of the difference between AD&D and the basic of the BECMI set.
Keldryn
Adventurer
I would say that yes, those players would recognize 4e as the same game. Obviously we are talking about players who last played D&D 1e, 2e, or B/X when it was current. As much as the active D&D fanbase obsesses over every change made to the rules in every successive edition, the more "casual" or "lapsed" gamer probably won't notice that big a difference -- and more importantly, they likely won't care, as hard as that may be for some of us to believe. You still play an elf, dwarf, fighter, cleric, or wizard, you still roll a 20-sided die to see if you hit the "armor class" of an opponent and roll a different die to see how much damage you subtract from its "hit points." You still go on a grand adventure into a dungeon, fight monsters, and accumulate gold and magic items.
When I talk about "lapsed" D&D players, I think of people who played casually or semi-regularly (or perhaps even regularly) in their youth, but drifted away from the game after high school or college/university as real-life concerns demanded their attention. Or perhaps simply because gaming groups drifted apart over the years; at any rate, I'm not thinking of players who used to play (A)D&D but stopped because they found the rules too "unrealistic" or too restrictive. "Lapsed" does imply a certain passiveness, versus an active decision to stop playing.
To the majority of people who are not currently active role-players and who haven't done much serious gaming in the past 15-20 years, it's basically the same game. All of these changes in flavor and world assumptions that 4e has brought on are most likely to not even register as having changed and if they are noticed as having changed, they would quite possibly be seen as more appealing. Personally, I find that 4e captures much of the flavor and spirit of BECMI D&D, even though it does drop a lot of the traditional AD&D flavor.
I find that many of the most devoted fans of a role-playing game, video game, movie, band, TV show, action figures, etc sometimes can't see the forest for the trees, fixating on specific details that they find bothersome while virtually nobody else outside that small, devoted community can even tell the difference. To someone who hasn't played D&D in 20 years and who hasn't followed the development of the game during that time, 4e will likely not seem like as great a departure as it does for us.
I' in the position of actually playing 4th Edition with people like that (well, 18 years instead of 20, but close enough). They spotted the difference. We swapped into a 3rd Edition game. They commented on the fact that THAC0 was gone, but the rest of the game played the same for them.
Which, when you look at the mechanics, makes sense: 4th Edition is still a fantasy RPG (obviously). But the core gameplay is significantly different.
I mean, we could hypothesize the existence of someone who can't tell the difference between Stratego, Arkham Horror, and Monopoly (they're all boardgames, right?) -- but I think the average person is actually quite a bit more clever than you're giving them credit for.
I may be close to the sort of person you are looking for. I played 1E, DMed 2E, read the books for but never actually played 3E, and am now playing 4E. I definitely recognize 4E as being part of the same gaming system. Whether I would give the same answer if I never looked at the 3E books I can't say -- I think much of 4E reflected building on the strengths of and at the same time learning from the flaws of 3E, and I might have thought "WTF?" if I never saw what 3E went through.
filthgrinder
First Post
I can only know from my own experience, but yes, yes they would. I started playing D&D with the D&D rules cyclopedia, and then moved to 2E and stopped playing around 1995 or so. I then became a lapsed player. I played in one game of 3.0 when it came out and someone I knew ran it, but it was only once. I heard about 4E from an article on Slashdot, so I read a little bit about it and liked what I saw. I then got excited about it, bought the core books and the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure.
I ran the game for some lapsed players, and for some that played 3.x as well. We all recognized it as D&D. We still play. I still buy books and subscribe to DDI.
I'm not sure whats so "unrecognizable" about it to lapsed players. I think that is a fun idea that entrenched critics came up with and now can't admit they were wrong about it or they would lose some hipster credit.
I also don't get this offense to being called a lapsed player. When you do something, and then you don't, you are a lapsed player. I am a lapsed Magic the Gathering player. I played in '94 and then stopped. I played City of Heroes for a couple of months, now I don't, I'm a lapsed player. There is nothing wrong or offense. It's how you describe the loss of a customer.
Doug McCrae
Legend
I thought lapsing was something that only happened to warranties and Roman Catholics.
I can speak to similar experiences in another rpg game: Runequest.
Until recently, the last time I played Runequest was over two decades ago. Even though I haven't looked at Runequest in long time, I recently played a one-shot evening game of Mongoose's Runequest. It played similar enough to the old Chaosium Runequest that I remembered. The combat was just as deadly as I remembered. Some of the skills may have been slightly different between the Chaosium and Mongoose versions, but overall they play similar enough to be recognized as Runequest (and not another rpg).
Until recently, the last time I played Runequest was over two decades ago. Even though I haven't looked at Runequest in long time, I recently played a one-shot evening game of Mongoose's Runequest. It played similar enough to the old Chaosium Runequest that I remembered. The combat was just as deadly as I remembered. Some of the skills may have been slightly different between the Chaosium and Mongoose versions, but overall they play similar enough to be recognized as Runequest (and not another rpg).
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