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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Najo" data-source="post: 4011888" data-attributes="member: 9959">Ok, lets take that one step of a time and paint the big picture.1) The first barrier to entry is awareness of the potential players of what D&D is, this spreads best through word of mouth and actually playing.2) To get those people to play, you have to simplfy complicated areas of the game (grappling, choosing spells, prestige classes and planning character builds, ECL, templates, pricing magic items, pages of rules to get started). Many gamers think this is what adds depth to a game, and they don't understand why that stuff isn't easy for casual players. Simplfying and streamline doesn't have to me dumbing it down. It just means you present the stuff to get started as easy to do, then allow the game to become more and more complicated as you play and master it. Still allow advanced players to make fun builds, complicated choices and have lots of tactical options. But, new players should be able to look at their character sheet, build a character with out help and then get the basic mechanics after being told once.3) The game has to become viral. This means it spreads naturally and contasgiously. So D&D needs to be something that a friend hears about and then they can hop in to a session and get it, and go play on their own. The DDI, the new rules, and any marketing plans for 4e will head this direction. I even bet we will see free trial DDI accounts with a free player's handbook that gives you 15 days or a month free. The worldwide online tables and quickplay rules in Keep on the Shadowfell are examples of this too. 4) The game needs many kinds of fun for all player types! It needs to also have strengths over the video games that only good roleplaying experiences can provide, and that stuff needs to come out naturally. Social game play, backgrounds and storylines attached to characters, roleplaying quests having rules, social encounters, the story attached to rules and DMs being able to easily set up games and play are all places that video games can not touch easily. Roleplaying excels here. 5) It needs to easily allow younger players in without alienating current players. This is something killing RPGS. Established groups rarely let the kid brother, or some teen who wants to play join. That is why the RPG demographic is aging. Pre-teen and teens are not being exposed to the game like the 30 somethings were. They have other distractions, like WOW. This is causing attrition and inbreeding to the roleplaying market. Every market needs new blood to keep it healthy and flushed with cash. The online aspects of 4e and its quick and fun play style is trying to correct that. 6) As for the Realms, the Realms gets the position as the new RPGA official world and it is going to the first campaign launched for 4e. That means it is the first official world (with history, maps, points of interest) to explore. The Realms already has issues for established players getting into, let alone new players, yet the novels make the New York Times bestseller list. Why don't the novels pull people back into D&D? One of the reasons is the barriers to entry. So this leads to those "fictional" barriers to entry. Doing all of these things above, the channels for new players being delievered into D&D 4e and up to Forgotten Realms doorstep are much more open. You will have new people looking at the Realms. In the current state, DMs and players have stated they don't play it because it is to hard to find a place to start and to take in all of the history and lore. So, how are those barrier ficitional then? They might not be to you, but they are for a very large number of established D&D players and for all of the yet discovered ones too. Hope that helps.</blockquote>

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