Are people still mad about . . .

[Hussar]

This one is carrying over a bit from the other thread, but, I really gotta ask:

- Marketing the game (2e and to some extent 4e, I'm looking at you) to a too-young demographic. It's a game for adults, or close, and should be designed and marketed as such; and if younger players want to dive in that's fine, but this should not affect the game's basic design.

When was D&D EVER marketted to anything other than teens? OD&D was reboxed as Basic/Expert and said "For 10 years old or older" in big bright letters on the front. AD&D was marketed by a Saturday morning cartoon and the backs of comic books. Again, ten year olds.

What official adult themed settings have come out for D&D? Heck, when the Book of Erotic Fantasy came out, it crashed the d20 trademark, WOTC jumping so fast to distance themselves. D&D fiction has always been Young Adult lines. There's been no adult themed settings, modules, rule books, or anything else in the entire history of officially published D&D.

So, at what point was D&D ever NOT marketed to ten year olds?

------------------

On the emotional response.

Yes, I agree that you should never just dismiss someone's emotional response. That's true. But, how far does that go? Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. When the opinions being expressed are not based on facts, but rather on gut level reactions to things that may not appear, or only appear if you look at them while squinting really hard, should everyone just bow to that and accept it because it's an emotional response?

Or should we question those responses? Should we not try to drill down and find out why? Take the quote from Races and Powers. That's a three line bit from a what, 90 page book? We're talking a very, very small amount that's being pulled out while ignoring the other 99.9% of what's been written.

And, look at what it says. It says D&D is about combat. This is offensive? Really? If you think D&D is not about combat, I would point you to 99% of the published modules out there, and probably about a similar percentage of the rules. The fact that every year we got a new Monster Manual, yet never once got a 3e rule book for how to run a country speaks volumes about what the game is about.

Again, it's WOTC claiming that water is wet and people claiming offence.

So, if you were WOTC, what would you do? Would you start appologizing to those who claim offence, or do you man up, stick to what you said and realize that the people who are blazing like comets across message boards are most likely never going to buy your product no matter what you do?

Or, perhaps we should strip demons out of the game because concerned citizens groups are having an emotional response to what's in the rule books?

 

[diaglo]

What setting did 3.0 have to call its own? I don't remember anything new before Eberron.

Greyhawk was the default setting when it was released in 2000.

 

[evildmguy]

3.0 used Greyhawk as the default setting, in terms of gods and examples. But, I don't think it did as much as 4E did, in terms of what has been in the 4E DMGs for a setting.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to cite for this, but wasn't DND traditionally marketed for a younger (13-23) audience? I ask because if I am correct, that could be why Lanefan feels they aren't targeting him (or us) anymore. And, last night, I confirmed that DND is not a game for adults, at least not in the past and it's probably continued that way.

Compare Dune Trader, a supplement for Dark Sun published in '92 to Manacle and Coin, an Exalted supplement published in 2003.* Certainly, ten years separates them and they are different companies but they do deal with the same things, trading. Dune Trader, though, in a setting that deals with slavery, corruption and other "bad" elements of the human condition, so to speak, doesn't list prices for slaves. It blatantly leave it up to the DM in a footnote on a table. Further, while it mentions beer and wine, it doesn't have anything more exotic or worse. Manacle and Coin has two chapters specifically to deal with drugs and slavery. It handles them in a very adult way, talking about the drugs, what they can do and how they are grown/cultivated and traded.

I really enjoy reading the ideas in Manacle and Coin and they did a great job with the subject matter and it will fit well into my Dark Sun campaign as background information. I don't see TSR/WotC ever doing anything like that. That's not bad! I am merely using this as an example of the fact that DND does seem to be marketed to the younger crowd.

Maybe that's a good question. For those who are still mad about the marketing of 2E/3E/4E, how old were you when it came out? Are you still not happy about it?

Thanks for the responses!

edg

*I firmly realize that TSR in '91 and White Wolf in '03 are *VERY* different companies. TSR was still reacting to the backlash of the 80s and made 2E DND very politically correct. They also had a very strict set of standards for novels and at least Ed Greenwood has commented that several things he proposed were rejected and he never bothered with other adult things. In contrast, White Wolf has a company devoted to publishing R rated materials for their RPG lines. In this particular instance, though, while they considered Manacle and Coin for it, they did not use that branch to publish it, so this is a "mainstream" book from them.

 

[BryonD]

What official adult themed settings have come out for D&D? Heck, when the Book of Erotic Fantasy came out, it crashed the d20 trademark, WOTC jumping so fast to distance themselves. D&D fiction has always been Young Adult lines. There's been no adult themed settings, modules, rule books, or anything else in the entire history of officially published D&D.

I gotta say, if BoEF is your example of what is meant by "adult", heck if it even comes to mind as fitting the point at hand, then you are not communicating on the same wavelength.

 

[Aeolius]

So, if you were WOTC, what would you do? Would you start appologizing to those who claim offence, or do you man up, stick to what you said and realize that the people who are blazing like comets across message boards are most likely never going to buy your product no matter what you do?

That's it in a nutshell and I will most likely never buy into 4e, no matter what they do. If the World of Greyhawk is released for 4e, I might take a gander to see what I can retrofit.

I may get emotional about the edition(s) of D&D I prefer, but my decision not to convert to 4e is based in fact. There were plenty of omissions and changes that made the game undesirable to me.

 

[Mournblade94]

I don't see why they were insulting. Wizards listened to the feedback of its customers. Customers highlighted areas they disliked about the game, we had many threads pre-4E discussing those problems. Wizards set out to fix the problems their customers were having with the game. Not all of their customers had the same problems. I would assume that they tackled the most common problems people were having. I'm sorry you weren't in the majority that was having said problems. Even those that did share the same problems may not have liked the ways Wizards tried to fix those problems. Don't take it personally, they were doing what they thought best for the game. They didn't ask you what you liked about the game and then design against that. They designed a game based on the feedback of the majority. If I still enjoyed 3E I wouldn't be angry. I thought 2E AD&D was totally unnecessary, but I wasn't angry with TSR when they explained why they were fixing what they considered wrong with 1E.

I am very glad for you that it was not insulting. I do not remember one instance of information gathering done by the developers. There were squeaky wheels on WOTC forums. I think that was the only information gathering done.

Regardless, and though I did not run out with pitchforks, I found the tone of the leadup to 4e completely insulting even when I was ENTHUSIASTIC about a new edition.

This did not cause me to dislike 4e. I was excited. It was the gameplay I did not like.

I gave it an honest try even though I found the blogs insulting. That marketing had absolutely /0/ to do with why I dislike 4e.

 

[Hussar]

I gotta say, if BoEF is your example of what is meant by "adult", heck if it even comes to mind as fitting the point at hand, then you are not communicating on the same wavelength.

Sigh.

Instead of simply picking out the one line that is tangential to the point, how about actually answering the question.

Funny thing is, this is pretty much EXACTLY how things went with the marketing for 4e. People would pick one or two lines out of the field, and find THAT to take offense to, pretty much ignoring anything like context or actually trying to engage in anything resembling conversation.

 

[evildmguy]

3.0 had nothing new, however 4e was such a radical brake from anything that had come before:I feel it would have been better to showcase what all it could do with a new setting. Trying to shove the points of light concept into already established and well loved settings was a bad ideal. What it showed to me and others was that 4e could not handled the setting without mass reworking of the setting.

Now this might not be true, but that is what it seemed. The settings should have been updated without a rewrite and a new setting put out to highlight the "selling" points of the new system. After all the new FR is a new setting in all but name anyhow.

Actually, imo, what made it tough to make the last 3.X version of FR a PoL setting was its own history. If you compare the gray boxed set of '87 to the 3.0 FRCS, or the 3.5 version, these are VERY different worlds!

FR5 was the Savage Frontier but now we have the Silver Marches and several other kingdoms that have been forged out of those areas. While not completely civilized, certainly more so than at first! Halruaa was this exotic place, mentioned only here and there, and by 3.5 was fully fleshed out. Same for Thay, which had a supplement (FR6), a boxed set (Spellbound) and a 3.x source book. Netheril was another place of mystery that also had a boxed set and a 3.x source book!

Now, don't get me wrong. Maybe it would have been better to do an informal reset and go back to 1356 DR, the date (I think) of the gray boxed set and come out with information as if it was back then. That wouldn't invalidate anything that happened and would let them have PoL setting in FR.

Ah, hindsight!

Thanks!

edg

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I would not call it a different world, it was just a more explored world. A 20 year old setting pretty much has to change. You can't keep putting out books and boxed sets and not included changes you made to the line in updated campaign setting products

I do agree a roll back or no time jump be better then the junk they put out. That setting was not the setting I have played since 92, where as the 3.0 FRCS was still very much the greybox of 87 with more info. It was not remade, was not reconnected and a whole new setting using names and a vastly altered map. I could roll out the 3.0 FRCS and match it up with the old box, I could match it up with volo guides and the old north box set, just with more info. I can not do so with the new setting they are calling FR

 

[Windjammer]

Market research, no matter how thorough, may still miss salient points. New Coke, as I've pointed out before, is cited as THE classic example in marketing classes.

According to Coke's extensive market research, New Coke beat both Coke's traditional recipe and that of Coke's fast-rising rival, Pepsi.

What they missed was that, while New Coke would have flourished as a new product in Coke's line, most Coke drinkers didn't want their classic recipe replaced. Over time, New Coke might have wrecked Pepsi and supplanted Coke's original flavor as #1 in the market...but it wasn't given time to grow. It was just thrown out there.

An interesting reaction to the upcoming 4E Red Box seems to echo this analogy. Some people who were turned off by 4E seem to like to try out the new Red Box coming out in fall 2010. I wonder how widespread this welcoming reaction to a new game had been if WotC had started to market 4E as a basic game and only over time expanded it into a full rule set for professional geeks (so to speak). They did the complete opposite by frontloading the Core Ruleset, and offered the Red Box as an afterthought. Sure this is the traditional way of releasing editions of D&D, but by going this way they lost a huge market share to begin with, and now try to regain part of that lost share (and other segments of lapsed customers) by putting out stuff like the Red Box, the Ravenloft boardgame, and so on. Apparently they've learned the error in their ways, because in a manner the upcoming 4E Gamma Worlds could be a testdrive for the significantly more important Star Wars license to be regained in 2011/2012 for 4E, by way of testing the market's reaction.

But as far as D&D itself is concerned, WotC basically deprived themselves of exposing their product to an open market to test for wider reactions before pinning the brand's fate solely on the new baby. And while their playtest and feedback channel was extensive, reading playtester reviews like NiTessine's makes you feel they were rather "selective" when acting on feedback.*

* See here:

It probably should be mentioned that I playtested this, though you’ll have to take my word for it. No playtester credits on this one. I won’t elaborate on how many of our suggestions made it in. You can probably guess.

Given that the review mentions a lot of the faults they found during the playtest, WotC either didn't care to remedy H1 or didn't think the feedback valuable in the first place.