Are Gognards killing D&D?

[diaglo]

So, am I a grognard, or not?

no. grognards like me were wargamers first.
still are.
i am a wargamer first.

 

[darkseraphim]

Like the guy in this thread who said he hadn't bought a WotC product since 1998? Or the 1e boosters on ENWorld with usernames like 'GBarrelhouse' or 'TrampierFan99'? They don't make money for WotC. They never have.

I found this rather amusing, considering I spent over $20,000 on Magic: The Gathering cards from 1993-1997.

Concerning the word never - I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

[JDJblatherings]

no. grognards like me were wargamers first.
still are.
i am a wargamer first.

Dear me....am i a Grognard? Helping my older buds get the shade of mud right on their napoleonics, owing a heck of lot miniatures that look liek midgets compared to new miniatures, pushing stacks of card board counters around the room and discovering the shades on those counters that made army A look distinctly different from army B at 3PM tend to really blur together at 2AM, knowing "that guy" who had a game setup in a side room that was played just once or twice a month for 2 years and everyone probably got 10 or 11 turns in total, beign able to see nothing new in the sum of the parts for 3e (it is D&D, meets GRUPS and EARTHDAWN folks) and wondering how they are going to polish other rules to make 4e different...oh crud I could be one...

 

[diaglo]

Dear me....am i a Grognard? Helping my older buds get the shade of mud right on their napoleonics, owing a heck of lot miniatures that look liek midgets compared to new miniatures, pushing stacks of card board counters around the room and discovering the shades on those counters that made army A look distinctly different from army B at 3PM tend to really blur together at 2AM, knowing "that guy" who had a game setup in a side room that was played just once or twice a month for 2 years and everyone probably got 10 or 11 turns in total, beign able to see nothing new in the sum of the parts for 3e (it is D&D, meets GRUPS and EARTHDAWN folks) and wondering how they are going to polish other rules to make 4e different...oh crud I could be one...

diaglo "was "that guy"" Ooi

edit: and cringed when the something knocked over the setup. like the dog, vacuum cleaner, or collapsing table.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I understand that Diaglo, for one, has an impressive collection of WotC books. And his "Only True Game" predates 1e.

RC

I'm not quite a grognard, but I've been playing since about 1981 fairly steadily, with my first exposure coming in sporadic bursts in the late '70s. I also own almost every 3e product except for the last tier of stuff that I had absolutely zero interest in, the nine swords and Iron Might stuff, and about 50 or so non WOTC D20 books, yet I do not like 3e nor do I play it. But I can rob a 3e book of a prestige class and make a core class out of it for AD&D. I can take interesting mechanics from Frost and Fur or a similar product and tack them on without all the extraneous stuff that I don't like about 3e. It doesn't look like I can do that with 4e. By the time I strip out all the per encounter stuff and Wowisms, and clerics healing by hitting people with an axe, I'll be down to the forward. So I won't be buying into 4e, and if I help to kill off D&D, so be it. I see no reason to purchase a product I do not like. I do not like European football, so I could give a crap less if they do something to attract new players. Now, if they were to change the shape of the ball, and mark the field off in 10 yard increments, allow players to run with the ball, maybe add a set of posts connected by a crossbar to kick the ball over and still keep the name "football", maybe I'd watch a game.

 

[Midknightsun]

I hope the standard for when a new edition is due is not "when its needed as much as 3e was needed." Its like saying that you're not allowed to buy a new car until you're running from the wreck screaming and covered in burning gasoline.

This is soooo sigged


Grognards kill D&D?

*hysterical laugher ensues*

Naaaaah. Heck, as one of many who has played 1st edition to current, I'm generally looking forward to 4e. I got the disposable income to look it over and decide myself if the switch is worth it (And if they can deliver on faster DM prep time, they got me 75% sold).

Point is, many of us old-timers with the income to burn are just as excited about a new edition as the young 'uns. Grognards are more vocal, sure. Anyone with a strong opinion would be. But there will be a lot of people of all ages who will switch to 4e. . . and some of many ages who will not.

My personal prediction is that, assuming WotC pulls through on the majority of its promises, they will manage to attract new gamers and win over many older ones. And the grognards will still have their edition of choice to keep them happy.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

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?

D&D 3.5 = 1,000 pages of rules (three core books)
Chess = one page of rules

 

[Keldryn]

How does that jive with the immense popularity of Basic/Expert D&D? IIRC, it said for 12 years old on up on the box.

Or, how does that jive with the fact that other than a couple of fad years, 3e has at least as many players as 1e did?

If obscure, wordy writing made for good games, why did it take clear and consise writing to rescue the game from the extinction it was headed toward? Why do no other RPG's emulate obscure writing? What benefit is there to using unclear writing in a rulebook?

I was 12 years old when I started playing D&D, in 1986, with the "red box" (Elmore) Basic Set. Picking up the 1st Ed PHB or DMG may very well have been too overwhelming an experience to start out with. By the end of '87, I had mostly moved on to AD&D (though a lot of the rules got ignored because they were poorly-explained or just seemed weird), but I hadn't even hit 14 yet. If I waited until I was an "adult" to pick up (A)D&D, both BECM D&D and AD&D 1st Ed would have been out of print for several years.

I have real data to back it up, but I would bet that a large proportion of current D&D players were first introduced to the game between the ages of 12 and 16 (or thereabouts). At that age, you have the time to play an 8-hour session every weekend (and sometimes short sessions at lunch while at school!), and the time to plan out many adventures. If you first pick up the game in university/college or once you've started working full-time, it may never capture your lifelong interest the way it would have had you picked it up as a kid or teenager.

It's a generalization, to be sure, but I think it makes sense.

 

[olshanski]

This is a sorry state of affairs.

Look at what happened with all of those other games like Chess, Monopoly, Golf... once you get old people playing then you might as well can the whole thing. No game can survive under those circumstances.

 

[Ifurita'sFan]

Proof that Grognards make the (gaming) world go around.

New players ARE needed to grow the franchise. But at the same time the single largest force that keeps D&D going is its ESTABLISHED base of fans. The Grognards.

Don't believe me? Read this section of an interview with Ryan Dancey the VP in charge of RPGs.

That brings us to Open Gaming, and why we're pursuing this initiative inside Wizards and outside to the larger community of game publishers.

Here's the logic in a nutshell. We've got a theory that says that D&D is the most popular roleplaying game because it is the game more people know how to play than any other game. (For those of you interested researching the theory, this concept is called "The Theory of Network Externalities.")

[ Note: This is a very painful concept for a lot of people to embrace, including a lot of our own staff, and including myself for many years. The idea that D&D is somehow "better" than the competition is a powerful and entrenched concept. The idea that D&D can be "beaten" by a game that is "better" than D&D is at the heart of every business plan from every company that goes into marketplace battle with D&D game. If you accept the Theory of Network Externalities, you have to admit that the battle is lost before it begins, because the value doesn't reside in the game itself, but in the network of people who know how to play it.]

If you accept (as I have finally come to do) that the theory is valid, then the logical conclusion is that the larger the number of people who play D&D, the harder it is for competitive games to succeed, and the longer people will stay active gamers, and the more value the network of D&D players will have to Wizards of the Coast.

In fact, we believe that there may be a secondary market force we jokingly call "The Skaff Effect," after our own [game designer] Skaff Elias. Skaff is one of the smartest guys in the company, and after looking at lots of trends and thinking about our business over a long period of time, he enunciated his theory thusly:

"All marketing and sales activity in a hobby gaming genre eventually contributes to the overall success of the market share leader in that genre."

In other words, the more money other companies spend on their games, the more D&D sales are eventually made. Now, there are clearly issues of efficiency -- not every dollar input to the market results in a dollar output in D&D sales; and there is a substantial time lag between input and output; and a certain amount of people are diverted from D&D to other games never to return. However, we believe very strongly that the net effect of the competition in the RPG genre is positive for D&D.

The downside here is that I believe that one of the reasons that the RPG as a category has declined so much from the early 90s relates to the proliferation of systems. Every one of those different game systems creates a "bubble" of market inefficiency; the cumulative effect of all those bubbles has proven to be a massive downsizing of the marketplace. I have to note, highlight, and reiterate: The problem is not competitive >product<, the problem is competitive >systems<. I am very much for competition and for a lot of interesting and cool products.

So.. Their own person in charge of RPGs said that they believe that D&D's success is tied to it's ubiquitousness... meaning it's success is BECAUSE more people know how to play it than any other system. In short... the existence of Grognards (not new players) is what keeps D&D on top. Without that ESTABLISHED fanbase, they are just another game system.

The people in the industry know this...so why they are ignoring this in the design and development of 4e..

They have to know that changing and sacrificing too much of the core game will remove their competative advantage.

As a result, Hasbro is systematically alienating it's base of people familiar with the game, that familiarity upon which D&D's dominance is based.

Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden egg.