Are Gognards killing D&D?

[Orius]

D&D will never be as dominant as it once was. There are relatively few barriers to entry into the RPG market. So smaller companies can pop up, take a small slice of WotC's market, and there's really not a thing WotC can do about it.

I'd not say it's because of small RPG publishers, but the fact that there's many more entertainment options available. Particularly video games. They didn't exist back when Gary and Dave first worked out the original rules. Pong emerged around the same time D&D did, but of course it took many years for them to get to the point where they could seriously compete with RPGs.

While I don't believe video games will totally kill the traditional RPG (well until we get holodecks and can do LARPs the right way ), there's a lot of things that electronic RPGs and MMOs will be able to do as well as a traditional RPG, particularly the number crunching. The main advantage that traditional RPGs like D&D still have is their open-endedness. They're limited not by their programming, but by the imaginations of their players.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I can't seem to find the post now, but whoever claimed there was no backward compatibility of 2E to 1E, was absolutely wrong.

I mentioned the term "Backwards Compatibility" in my post. However, I totally agree with you... it was super easy to go from 1E to 2E. IMHO 2E wasn't so much a new edition as much as a somewhat streamlined and clarified (I use those terms loosely) version of 1E. There were enough people who liked the THAC0 system that they went to it instead of the Attack Matrices. I honestly can't remember any other major changes besides THAC0 though... the classes had a few tweaks, Rangers lost their access to Mage spells and Bards became a core character class but that was about it until the "Complete ________ Handbooks" came on the scene with the Kit options. I still don't think 3.X is all that backwards compatible and 4E looks to be somewhat backwards compatible with 3.X but forget about going back to 2E and 1E.

 

[diaglo]

I don't think Prestige Classes is the word you are looking for. In OD&D they were full character classes.

Perhaps you are thinking of another edition.

well kinda.

to be a paladin (Supplement I Greyhawk 1975) you needed to be lawful and have a cha 17.

prereqs tend to be prestige.

the only classes that didn't have prereqs were Fighting Man, Cleric, Magic User... and then Thief with Supplement I Greyhawk too.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Uhm, if you knew the rules as a consumer before release, what would be the purpose of WOtC releasing them?

IF it is true that the reason that D&D is the brand leader is because "everyone knows how to play it" THEN it follows that making sweeping changes to the way the game is played is likely to damage the new edition's following in favour of the old. Especially, if you accept the reasoning from WotC previously quoted, if non-baseline material acts mainly to advertise baseline material and make it more popular.

RC

 

[tenkar]

IF it is true that the reason that D&D is the brand leader is because "everyone knows how to play it" THEN it follows that making sweeping changes to the way the game is played is likely to damage the new edition's following in favour of the old. Especially, if you accept the reasoning from WotC previously quoted, if non-baseline material acts mainly to advertise baseline material and make it more popular.

RC

I'm not too sure about that. Most players I know are "rules junkies". The 3.5 core rules and the 3.5 core plus official supplements are almost 2 different games. I haven't even touched on the use of 3rd party supplements. Yet all these "games" are still D&D.

I am sure WotC is going to lose some players that will prefer to stick with 3.5, and who can blame them with the amount of material and resources that has hit the market over the past 8 years or so. I suspect that the number of holdouts will diminish with time... gamers are drawn to new edition releases like moths to a flame... whether or not they get singed this time around has yet to be seen.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The facts are summed up in a very simple sentence.
"All marketing and sales activity in a hobby gaming genre eventually contributes to the overall success of the market share leader in that genre."

Meaning that if everyone knows your rules and plays by them... then you're going to stay #1. But just like the old "which came first the chicken or the egg" argument...That means you NEED a support network of gamers who are established to stay #1 and who know the rules of your game. You don't stay #1 without the network of vet gamers, and you need vet gamers to stay #1.

The corollary to that is that if you alienate too big a part of that veteran base (if you alienate more old gamers than new gamers with equal fiscal assets to replace them) or change the rules to the game too much... you will diminish or no longer have a support network of gamers who do know your rules set to keep you #1... and thus become vulnerable.

This is what I was trying to get at, worded far better than my poor attempt.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm not too sure about that. Most players I know are "rules junkies". The 3.5 core rules and the 3.5 core plus official supplements are almost 2 different games.

THEN you don't accept the IF statement, which is cool. But, since the IF statement came from WotC, I wonder if they've changed their mind about it, forgotten about it, or what? More curious about what the thinking behind this one is than anything else.

RC

 

[WayneLigon]

Another term for "sacred cows" is "things that have remained in D&D because they're good and people like them". Slaughtering them en masse to appeal to an audience appreciative of wirework Jet Li films and Streetfighter video games may yet backfire.

You know that the reason we use that term is that is means 'something unreasonably immune to criticism', don't you? Many of the sacred cows of D&D were not there by any reasonable purpose or design; they 'just happened' and then no-one saw any reason to change them. Given that TSR didn't listen to it's customers, we have no way of knowing that people really were all that much in love with many of the sacred cows from '78 through '99 but I'd say that 'saw no reason to change them' is a major part of that blind spot.

Given that WoTC has a marketing department and that they solicit customer feedback and act upon it, we can reason that a significantly large portion of the D&D audience in fact does not want many of the sacred cows around any more.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I've been avoiding the 4E area of these forums recently, precisely because of topics like "Are Grognards killing D&D?"...but I just had to post to say, well said RC...I think you've hit a lot of nails squarely on the head.

Don't worry. You'll get better.

 

[tenkar]

THEN you don't accept the IF statement, which is cool. But, since the IF statement came from WotC, I wonder if they've changed their mind about it, forgotten about it, or what? More curious about what the thinking behind this one is than anything else.

RC

The thinking behind 4e is twofold I think:

1 - A perceived need to clean up 3.0 / 3.5 which has grown into an unwieldy beast with a mountain of supplements and new rules over the past 8 years.

2 - A financial need to sell more core books.

I think "1" is a justification for filling the need in "2".

That doesn't mean I don't think the 4e rules won't be a great set of rules (i don't know yet one way or the other), I just think that the driving reason for getting the rules out now is more financial then anything else.