Are Gognards killing D&D?

[Plane Sailing]

First, let me say that I deeply respect the opinions of our most veteran players and DMs. A recent poll of ENworld showed that over 80% of members played 1st edition. This seems really bad for the hobby as a whole. If you started playing the game when it first came out, this means you would be in your forties by now. Why is this bad?

You seem to have missed out the long term plan of us grognards - we have been breeding and raising our own new generation of young RPG players!

(newsflash: despite years of bad press and jokes, gamers still get married and have kids. Yay!)

Cheers

 

[Steely Dan]

(newsflash: despite years of bad press and jokes, gamers still get married and have kids. Yay!)

The only problem is when they get married to other gamers…

 

[WayneLigon]

Well, I can tell you as someone who is 22, forty seems really old. There is a generational gap (or two) between the majority of players and people who are just now playing the game for the first time.

As with most generation gap things, it's less age and more attitude. I'm 45 and I'm ready for a new edition;if they took the True20 book, made a few changes to how damage is handled, and slapped a 'D&D 4E' cover on it I'd be a happy clam and you'd be hard-pressed to kill more sacred cows in a single blow than doing that.

I will say that the worse thing for D&D has not been the grognards per se but the long, long period interval between editions. If D&D followed the typical pattern of almost every other game out there, we'd be on 6E or probably 7E by now. TSR's long history of not listening to their customers inadvertantly trained a good chunk of those customers to not expect change .

 

[Plane Sailing]

The only problem is when they get married to other gamers…

In IT we call that a feature, not a bug

 

[Steely Dan]

In IT we call that a feature, not a bug

Ah, but we Brits rarely go for that PC action, do we…?

 

[Cyronax]

As with most generation gap things, it's less age and more attitude. I'm 45 and I'm ready for a new edition;if they took the True20 book, made a few changes to how damage is handled, and slapped a 'D&D 4E' cover on it I'd be a happy clam and you'd be hard-pressed to kill more sacred cows in a single blow than doing that.

I will say that the worse thing for D&D has not been the grognards per se but the long, long period interval between editions. If D&D followed the typical pattern of almost every other game out there, we'd be on 6E or probably 7E by now. TSR's long history of not listening to their customers inadvertantly trained a good chunk of those customers to not expect change .

Well I don't know about that. We had quite a few revisions within each edition that sought to serve as a sort of mini-coup. You had the Unearthed Arcana (1e), 2e's Combat and Tactics/Spells and Magic, 3e's 3.5 changeover, and then stuff like the Bo9S (which, after playtesting, completely nerfed the fighter). I haven't employed any of the new 3.5 rules sets since around the time of Complete Adventurer, but that was only because I felt that the earlier and the later books were out of whack and balance was becoming a major issue.

If anything, I think WotC/TSR does follow the typical pattern for most rpgs, but they have such a big market that they don't have to revamp entire editions (just smaller corrections mid-edition). 4e was due sometime soon IMO. If changing editions once every decade means keeping a tabletop vibrant gaming culture intact for my in-the-works Retirement Home Campaign, then so be it. (I'm 28 and I started D&D in 1994 with Dark Sun .... something about the cover of that first boxed set).

C.I.D.

 

[Steely Dan]

(I'm 28 and I started D&D in 1994 with Dark Sun .... something about the cover of that first boxed set).

Yeah, Brom rocks.

When Baxa started doing a majority of the art for Dark Sun it almost put me off the entire setting…

 

[DaveMage]

I think everyone that plays D&D wants the ruleset to match their tastes. The problem is, of course, that tastes vary infinitely.

And as has been said, if 4E loses a significant portion of its consumer base it could be a disaster. Attracting new players to D&D is hard because of two factors: competing leisure opportunities and a difficult ruleset to easily pick up and master. I think it's a good idea to make the rules easier to learn, but not at the cost of losing your player base.

For example, the six ability scores could potentially be changed to two: Physical Ability & Mental Ability. This could simplify things to make it easier for new people to jump right in. But then you lose the detail stuff like someone who's strong, but not very dexterous. There's no way to have that kind of character (in the rules as written) in such a simple system. If I like the detail, the new system sucks. If I hate the detail, the new system rocks.

That's where we are.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

There has been a lot of hate concerning 4E. I would say that the sides stand at about 50/50. Why has this divided our community? Because WOC is changing things to appeal to new gamers? Guess what? If you want there to be a game in 20 years, then they have to attract new gamers.

Yes, they have to attract new gamers. But they don't have to change the game to do that. By and large, the people who don't play D&D now haven't turned their backs on D&D because they don't like the mechanics; rather, they're just not into tabletop RPGs as a whole. They're not going to notice "hey, you tweaked the fighter's class abilities" and start gaming. If you show a non-gamer a great time, he might become a gamer whether you were playing 3E, 4E, or Moldvay Basic.

D&D is a game. My other favorite games, Scrabble and Monopoly, have continued to make money for their company despite being fundamentally unchanged for decades. Shiny new board games come out all the time, but these two classics are still going strong. Poker has a number of variations, but you don't need to say "Okay, we're ending Texas Hold 'Em forever and starting Night Baseball" to get new players into the hobby. WotC decided that D&D should follow the business model of computer games, with planned obselescence and a totally new version every few years.

I see D&D as more like a board game or a card game. I can play Scrabble over and over, and it's never the same game twice. I could happily play in BECM forever. As long as the mechanics are good enough to allow the story to be enjoyable, and I have a good gaming group, the game is going to be fun. There's no need to keep tinkering for some mythic perfect system.

The fact is that new rulebooks allowed WotC to sell MUCH more material. New splatbooks in particular. That opens up a much wider market than just selling campaign settings and adventures for an existing system. And I can't blame them for wanting to make more money, but it is NOT true that this approach was the only way to bring new gamers into the hobby.

You KNOW that 4E will be obselete in a few years. It will get burdened down with splatbooks, as 2E and 3E did, the power balance will be out of whack, and they'll want to wipe the slate clean.

 

[mhensley]

Here's wikipedia on grognard - it's usage here is just one of several.

That article also links to an essay by Greg Costikyan where he explains how Grognard Capture can happen to a game. I think this is one of Wizards' worries with D&D. Whenever someone brings up "New Coke" here I remember "Advanced Squad Leader."

I think this is a very important lesson to all game companies. Unfortunately, I don't think wotc is going far enough in making the game more accessible to newbies. Making the rules easier or making the job of the dm easier is not enough although it's a good start. Having to buy 3 books with over 900 pages that cost more than $90 is too high a hurdle for many people who might otherwise consider playing. Why isn't a basic set the first thing coming out? Why are we still saddled with the concept of a 3 book core system? If they really want to make the game more accessible, D&D needs a one book core like the old D&D Cylopedia. It also needs a good boxed basic set that sells in toys stores.