MerricB said:
You've written a thoughtful post, but I think it's a lot of rubbish, Merric. No offense. It's not like everybody who got into D&D from 1974-1985 (or even later, but that's the Gygax tenure) had some kind of shared cultural fantasy gestalt. When I got my Moldvay set, I was just a kid and I hadn't read any Sword and Sorcery... but the game captured my imagination and never let go. It was not until much later that I read most of the 'source material' (though I had discovered Greek myths long before D&D, so I did have all that to go on).
Was I, as a nerdy homebody who liked, even at an early age, Greek myths and classical music and Alexander the Great, somehow plugged into some cultural zeitgeist that made me and other members of my generation, as well as the previous generation, appreciate a rules-lite traditional fantasy role playing game in a way that "kids today" cannot? There's been some kind of weird disturbance in the space-time continuum, or some inexorable march of socio-economic phenomena, that somehow disposes "kids today" to absolutely have to have a fiddly-bits skills system in their role playing game? Rubbish!
D&D when I started with it was so good that people still play it. Those very rules they still play. People who got into the game back then still play it. By contrast, how many people still give a Squirtle's patoot about Pokemon? How many still run a Tamagotchi?
See, nobody's still wearing parachute pants, but people are still playing OD&D, Classic D&D and 1e. Why? I have a little theory: they are good games. Not "were", "are".
So I don't buy any of this cultural zeitgeist stuff. Do you have any evidence of it? Oh, maybe 4E will bring in this or that elelment of some current fad. And maybe that will get it a few purchases, since somebody will be psyched that they can finally create Goku in D&D or whatever their particular interest is. But does WOTC really want to stake its product on fads? Maybe so. After all, I guess they only have to keep people interested in the game for 5 years, when they can then declare 4E to have been unfun and roll out 5E. Most of the current crowd of designers will have been pushed out, and the whole cycle of teasing, pontificating and 'innovation' can begin again. Maybe they've calculated that the bottom line is amply served by this strategy, at least within the tenure of whoever is currently at the corporate reins. If it isn't sustainable in the long run, well that's the next guy's problem, innit?
I don't how much of 4E will be dicated by pure marketing strategy, and how much will be genuine. As to the latter part, however much it constitutes, I think it's less a matter of some nebulous zeitgeist and more a matter of the designers making the game that they want to play, within the constraints of what has been dictated from above. And that isn't surprising or bad in itself. Now, when I was reading Mr. Noonan's blogs, it was interesting that he talked as much or more about World of Warcraft and "raiding" with his "guild" than he did about D&D. Clearly he is very impressed by that game. I have no doubt that it informs his design. Gary Gygax was very impressed by miniatures wargaming, and that informed his design.
See, we can explain it all without turning into Marxists, eh? No need to appeal to socio-economic forces to explain good, old-fashioned free will. In the old days, Gary made the game he wanted to play, and later also modified it in ways he thought would help it flourish (though keeping within the original philosophy of the game). Now, 4E is being made (I assert) according to the way that Hasbro marketing has decided it will sell well in the short term, and according to the tastes of the group of assembled individual designers. Perhaps I'm just not into the stuff they're into, but it isn't generational. There are undoubtedly people in my generation who listen to Ozzy. I am not one of them; we don't all think alike.
Now marketing... that's an interesting question. I suspect that the marketing outlook today is different than in the old days. In the old days, Gary and Co. produced a game that more and more people wanted to play, that was catching on like wildfire. It was so good, you'd sell a bunch of copies to a bunch of different people! Pretty optimistic (although it seems to have worked). Nowadays, the outlook is much more pessimistic: rope in a niche group of afficionadoes and milk them for all they're worth. Splat book after splat book after this and that fiddly tome of crunch. Is it a sustainable business model? I don't think so. But then, if you're making predictions about economics, that's about the point that you've run out of anything useful to say, I guess.
I will leave you with a parting thought. I have been reading and enjoying and playing Classic D&D for 24 years (not continuously, I grant)! Now that's a good product. That thing has legs like a centipede! It absolutely still holds up today.
