Are Gognards killing D&D?

[AWizardInDallas]

In such a world, the idea of a shared and communal sense of wonder was just coming to the forefront, and it was awesome. I cannot lie to you, it was one of the most awesome things I've experienced in my life, outside of love, family, travel and learning to read. It was a revelation.

You, sir, are my kind of grognard. I know exactly what you mean and tip my hat to you.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'd like to point out the personal aspect, since a lot of people seem to be glossing it over in favor of tsk-tsking people who won't accept random product shoved down their throats on the basis of a brand name.

By 'shoved down their throats' do you mean 'sold in shops'?

 

[Banshee16]

Can somebody please explain to me why this is?
What has D&D done so wrong that it is on perpetual life support? Why it is always threatened with extinction and needing to adapt or die? Why is its staying power seen to be so utterly pathetic compared to rule systems for other games?
Why can't you bring in new gamers to old rules, like chess, Trivial Pursuit, or soccer manage to do?
Are the rules for all versions of D&D just that horrible that people only play until they realize the flaws (such as at high levels)? Are gamers some breed that get bored with *mechanics* to the point where not even new and cool stories, settings, and adventures can engage them?

Why are RPGs so flawed in this manner that they need perpetual revision in a way that other games do not?

And going forward, 4e and onward... will this always be the business model? New rulesets, continual tinkering, and so on? Is it destined to be a game that its players ALWAYS look at and say "It's not good enough yet"?

These are some good questions.

My take on it is that, particularly nowadays, there is a limit to how far they can expand the game. Frankly, it is a niche hobby. It is hard to find new players...particularly when they do boneheaded things like remove the player databases they used to have. At least from my perspective, I found many players that way. Say what you want about message boards, but they're distributed all over the internet. The www.wizards.com site is a central location, by the manufacturer of the game, and all the players I know check there first....or used to. None of them know about EN World. They've all got their favourite sites they go to look at, but it usually starts with www.wizards.com. They pulled that database down (or made it atrociously hard to find) several years ago.

There is a lot of competition from online games, regular computer games, and such. The game itself has taken a pummelling in regular media, and I think that acts as a disincentive against new players.

I do think that some of the things they're talking about now with the online initiative could be good....the virtual tabletop and similar tools, for instance. I just don't know if players will pay to play. I can barely influence my players to buy some of the books they want to use. Instead, they loan books around, make photocopies of relevant pages, etc.

Personally, I do think a lot of the impetus behind edition change is simply marketing. They need to sell books to generate profit, pay their staff, etc. Thus, they have to create books. In the absence of finding some way to attract new players, I think we're just going to see the same cycle, over and over. So yeah, you're going to jetison a lot of older players, who are going to get sick of the endless cycle of buying product. I truly do not believe that every edition change is 100% improvement. I think a lot of this is perspective. Perfect rules are somewhat of a holy grail. Sure, there are improvements....but they also break things when they change rules. Which in turn necessitate changes and fixes and stuff.

I have a severe distrust of the idea that "grognards" are as harmful and useless as some here would point "us?" to be. I've spent alot on this hobby, and I'm pretty confident that I spend far more on this hobby than some 18 year old working at McDonalds. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

These "grognards" are also the ones who are often passionate about the game, posting on message boards, recruiting and building groups of players, etc. They're the die hards for whom the game isn't a passing fad, and who are likely to stick with it for 20+ years.

This is not to disparage age. It is true that, with the current business model, without an influx of new players, eventually you'll end up with a bunch of old folks in retirement homes rolling up elven sorcerors and dwarven monks, playing a game that hasn't been produced in 30 years.

I think part of the problem must be the business model. I haven't looked too deeply at the mechanics of it, but everything seems to be focused on the players....yet in many groups, from what I understand, it is the GM who makes most of the purchases. But everything nowadays is produced in hardcover, and high quality paper, colour printing, etc. I wonder why WotC can't produce old school, staple bound modules anymore. Maybe with their overhead, they can't get a return on investment? But how expensive must it be to produce black and white, staple-bound books for things like modules, which GM's aren't likely to use more than once? I mean, how often does anybody run an adventure more than once? I'd prefer having more choice in adventures, but have them be cheaper. I don't need colour and nice paper. It's an adventure. I need the content, but that's it. Sourcebooks? Yeah, it's nice to have colour printing, nice paper etc. with them.

Which brings us to sourcebooks. Generally how many times can you write about the same topic? There's likely a limit to how many topics you can cover in the game, in detailed books. Consequently, they sold us a Draconomicon at least twice....in 2nd and 3rd edition. And in 3rd Ed. we even got Races of the Dragon and that other book, Dragon Magic. That's a good example. How many books can they write about that in an edition? But it seems they're so focused on making those sales in the month a book is released, that they always have to be putting out a new book every month, to generate the revenue to keep their staff. Eventually, you run out of topics, or your players start looking at their shelves and realizing they need to stop buying new books....sales of newer books start to drop, and you end up needing to put out a new edition.

I remember a post on these boards about a year ago....it was a thread talking about the business model behind the game, and whether it was inherently flawed.

Maybe some good, well-developed, subscription based tools would bring in a stream of revenue that would allow them to offset decreased revenue from sourcebook sales. This would bring in some level of income every month, and wouldn't need to be "re-sold" every time. One could always dream.

This may be a gradually dying hobby, and nothing that is done will prevent it. When the game was in its heyday, computer games and such were really just starting out. But now they're at the point where they are a valid competition to tabletop games in many ways. There are still some limitations. I still haven't found any games with very good takes on things like scrying, or shapechanging. Shapeshifting is limited to doing something like turning into a troll to beat on something. But something like having your character turn into a swarm of ravens, and fly away, and using that as a method to travel from one location to another? That's still limited to the imagination. As is something simple like casting Alter Self to turn into a nondescript peasant, to sneak by NPCs, or even to sneak by characters controlled by other players. Characters in these online games are usually highlighted on their name, and on mouseover, so you always know you're facing another player. But because the online games are often not very roleplay oriented, there's no real way to simulate that kind of thing. And frankly, some of that non-combat related stuff is often more interesting than beating on things. Again, you can do that in a tabletop game, but not online. Yet currently, it seems like they're trying to make the tabletop game more video game-like.....and they just can't compete against video games. I think they should be emphasizing their differences, and building upon those.....because you can do some really cool things in this game. In many ways the opportunities are limitless, whereas in a computer game, you can only really do what the programmers anticipated ahead of time.

Anyways, those are just some musings. Take them for what you will. Not saying I'm correct.....

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

I agree. I also believe they no longer want us in their customer base. We're just bad for business.

Maybe there's enough of us that some smart company will pick up the ball, and deal with product that appeals to us

Banshee

 

[Ifurita'sFan]

Grognards _ARE_ D&D, which is why a goodly bit of 4e has its head up its rump. Grognards are a disproportionate part of the audience. Abuse your 'Nards and see what you get. Wotc is going to learn this lesson the hard way with 4e. 4e will sell well but not well enough.

Quoted for truth.

They've lost my purchases already, and honestly I do hope the 4e fails miserably.

Why?

Because I'd rather see Hasbro sell the rights off to someone like Kenzer and co who would do the game justice and bring the game system to a state where both new and old time gamers would be happy.

 

[AWizardInDallas]

By 'shoved down their throats' do you mean 'sold in shops'?

No, more like we're 'desupporting' you and your silly preferences. No more material for you either. You will have to either write it yourself or find a third party publisher we're also not going to support. Pardon us while we reboot. We suggest that you end all of your current un-convertable campaigns in line with our release schedule and set aside large sums of cash for the 8-10 years worth of supplements. Thaaaaaanks.

 

[Erik Mona]

Well, they've kept it alive for 33 years so far, so we'll see how well the game can do without them. In a sense, maybe they _will_ kill it.

That's assuming they don't convert anyway, which is an assumption I do not currently make, btw.

 

[mhensley]

Well, they've kept it alive for 33 years so far, so we'll see how well the game can do without them. In a sense, maybe they _will_ kill it.

That's assuming they don't convert anyway, which is an assumption I do not currently make, btw.

It will probably fare the same as when so many grognards didn't come along for 3rd edition or later left it to go to HackMaster or C&C.

 

[Cbas_10]

Please define what a grognard is.......

I see this word a lot; it seems like there is mostly a negative connotation to it....but other times it appears benign.

Here's what I am: I started playing D&D when I was a kid. We had those color-coded boxed sets: the red Basic rules, the blue Expert rules, and so on. Whatever label has been posthumously tagged to those rules, I have no idea. Then, at some point, I realized that other books were being made: Advanced D&D. By the time I realized this aspect of the game existed, they were using the second versions of the cover artwork. During these years of D&D, I was just a kid; I can tell you for a fact that I had no idea what the rules really were...nor did I care. High School came along, as did Second Edition. Nothing was really noteworthy about the game; I remember having a million questions about things that I thought were pointless or asinine (such as level limits, confusing and senseless multi/dual classing, and front-loaded powerful Kits). But it was D&D....and the genre sold itself to me. There may have been other fantasy games around at the time, but none had the name to attract me or had the coverage to make it to my FLGS.

Then 3E came along. Revolutionized the game for me, my group, and many of my other friends that were barely into gaming. I could list the reasons, but this post is not a 3E campaigning post. The short of it is: 3E was easily customizable, it was a basic framework, was able to be played with as little or as many rules as a group wanted. It was not realistic, but....breaking news: physics and reality cannot be totally emulated by rolling a d20 and adding or subtracting a few digits. With a few suppliments over the years and a refinement in the form of 3.5, my group and I had the perfect game. It was intuitive and a system that was easy for us to explain to new players. Maybe we were fortunate to have all of the geniuses in gaming...not sure. Allocating 12 points of skills or perusing all two pages of grappling rules never stumpted us. We'd never heard of the "christmas tree effect," nor had we ever had any problem with gaming in even epic levels (dammit...if the DM didn't get a promotion in Orlando, my 27th level archmage might be 35th by now...).

I realize that others had problems that we found to be trivial paragraphs, and I realize that there might be enough of these people out there to warrant a new edition. But I'm not planning on changing to exclusively playing 4e. Not because I'm some hold-back or stubborn and reminiscent ancient gamer that hates anything new....

I simply have a LOT of fun with 3.5...I'm quite content with the fact that there will no longer be support. Until the Rules Compendium, Spell Compendium, and Magic Item Compendium came out, my gaming books included the 3 core books, the Epic book, Stronghold Builder's Guide, and various Greyhawk books from across the game editions. Nobody will force me to throw away the books, so after 4e comes out....my game will still be the same fun as I've been having for the last almost-decade or so.

Why am I on these forums?.....Well, because 4e is still D&D. Whatever I may think about various aspects....we have not seen the entire package, and I may end up liking the final result. Until then, this is a forum. I'll wow at what I like and let it be known in the appropriate topic when I see something I don't like. I know 4e is not 3e, and I don't expect it to be. I know that the best way to evaluate 4e is to look at it on its own. When I say that I don't like the idea of characters having crazy self-healing-because-they-hit-really-hard powers....it has nothing to do with who or what heals in 3e; it is purely because I think (until I see the final 4e product) it is a silly idea.

Am I a grognard? If so, am I killing D&D?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Grognards _ARE_ D&D, which is why a goodly bit of 4e has its head up its rump. Grognards are a disproportionate part of the audience. Abuse your 'Nards and see what you get. Wotc is going to learn this lesson the hard way with 4e. 4e will sell well but not well enough.

I wish the mods would let me put money on these kinds of statements.