Zinovia
Explorer
Selling to a reluctant audience is a challenge for any salesman. I've found myself in the position of trying to sell 4E to members of my gaming group, currently enmeshed in a several year-old campaign that has us only at 15th level (yes, we're officially the Slowest Gamers of All-Time). Having armed myself with a few of the 4E teasers and facts, I blithely opened the topic as we were getting our books and dice out for another session, expecting some pleasant and insightful discussion.
Wham! During the surprise round, I was barraged with accusations. "They're dumbing it down!", "They're turning it into a WoW-clone!", "What do you mean there won't be as much of an emphasis on alignment and alignment based spells?!" "It's just a ploy to make us buy new books!" Knowing when the odds are against me, I made my Hide check and slunk away to renew the fight another day.
Since that time I have been wondering what marketing strategies might work for the various personalities involved, especially given that right now, all I have to show them is the sizzle, not the steak. At this point, I'm not hoping to win them over entirely. A fair playtest with all comments about the system mechanics held until the end of the session is all I'm after.
The party:
• The Dungeon Master - He's big on improvisation and short on planning, but given that he won the improvisational and extemporaneous categories on his college speech and debate team, he's *very* good at it. In fact the other players usually think he has a plan. I'm married to him, so I know better. Telling him how much easier it is for the DM to prep encounters in 4E might be a good selling point, but he spends maybe 5 minutes doing prep while the rest of us are opening the tray of vegetables and dip, so cutting his prep time in half won't exactly amount to a lot. I might be able to sell him on the chance to play a character himself for the first time in 4 years. I'm interested in DM'ing for 4E, and plan to run the playtest myself, if I can convince the others to participate.
• The Druid - She's a latecomer to our group and not an experienced gamer. She's looking forward to the end of our current campaign so she can start a character at first level. Easy sell. I think she'll be happy with whatever system we choose.
• The Cleric - Like drummers in a rock band, we've had some bad luck hanging on to our clerics. The first had 2 children in 18 months, and his wife understandably wanted him to be home on the weekends to help out. Clearly we let him spend too much time with his wife in the first place, but by the time we realized that, it was too late
Cleric number two never made much of an impression on us, since her husband was always telling her how to play her character. She hardly got a word in edgewise. Before we could present her with a suffragette sash and cry "Women gamers of the world unite!" she and her husband told us they were moving to the coast. Cleric three lent a nice air of cynicism to the party as the only neutral member of the group, but moved away last month. His character has been taken over by my 13-year old son. No problem selling 4E there. "You'll play whatever D&D system we tell you to young man, or go sit in your room!"
• The Bard - New to paper and pencil RPG's with the beginning of our interminable campaign, this character is the only one she has ever played. It's a stunningly beautiful half-elven bard with insanely high charisma. She likes roleplaying, dislikes dungeon crawls and combat (bards = boring combat), and makes us watch her while she roleplays shopping trips to the city for 2 hours. If we complain that we're bored, she makes comments about how we don't like roleplaying. She doesn't want the current game to come to an end, and is reluctant to make a new character, much less start a new system of rules.
• The Wizard - Well, we haven't had one since he attacked a hapless city guard with a maximized acid arrow, slaying him instantly. He fled the city, and we never did see him again. That player made a new psionic warrior character, who wound up getting killed but declined the rez we scraped up the money for. His third character was a fighter who used a longsword/shortsword combo but his habit of shouting "Bring it on!" to dragons, opening doors before I could check for traps, leaping into the sack with anyone who seemed amenable, and other impulsive behavior made him not fit into our old stodgy (and slow) group. We waved farewell when he went off to grad school.
• The Paladin - An experienced gamer, more in online games and MUDs rather than P&P games. He's completely unwilling to hear a positive word about 4E. I can't talk about streamlined rules without him saying they are dumbing down the game. More combat options for melee classes? That's turning it into WoW. Raising play up to level 30? That's also making it like an MMO - and why bother since we've been playing for years and are only half that level anyway. If 4E came packaged with a free t-shirt he'd complain that they are just doing that to suck people into spending more money, and that it was the wrong size anyway.
• The Rogue - That'd be me. I'm going to have to use stealth and persuasion to even get them to try out the 4E preview module that I've got on order. I'm not convinced that I will like all the changes to the game myself, but I have to present a unified front to theenemy other players.
Anyone have any ideas on how to convince people to give it a shot, preferably without the playtest turning into a stream of invective about "I can't believe they changed that!"? Given that I'll probably be DM'ing it, I'll make sure I have a sturdy GM screen to protect me from hurled dice, but poison in the onion dip might be an issue.
Wham! During the surprise round, I was barraged with accusations. "They're dumbing it down!", "They're turning it into a WoW-clone!", "What do you mean there won't be as much of an emphasis on alignment and alignment based spells?!" "It's just a ploy to make us buy new books!" Knowing when the odds are against me, I made my Hide check and slunk away to renew the fight another day.
Since that time I have been wondering what marketing strategies might work for the various personalities involved, especially given that right now, all I have to show them is the sizzle, not the steak. At this point, I'm not hoping to win them over entirely. A fair playtest with all comments about the system mechanics held until the end of the session is all I'm after.
The party:
• The Dungeon Master - He's big on improvisation and short on planning, but given that he won the improvisational and extemporaneous categories on his college speech and debate team, he's *very* good at it. In fact the other players usually think he has a plan. I'm married to him, so I know better. Telling him how much easier it is for the DM to prep encounters in 4E might be a good selling point, but he spends maybe 5 minutes doing prep while the rest of us are opening the tray of vegetables and dip, so cutting his prep time in half won't exactly amount to a lot. I might be able to sell him on the chance to play a character himself for the first time in 4 years. I'm interested in DM'ing for 4E, and plan to run the playtest myself, if I can convince the others to participate.
• The Druid - She's a latecomer to our group and not an experienced gamer. She's looking forward to the end of our current campaign so she can start a character at first level. Easy sell. I think she'll be happy with whatever system we choose.
• The Cleric - Like drummers in a rock band, we've had some bad luck hanging on to our clerics. The first had 2 children in 18 months, and his wife understandably wanted him to be home on the weekends to help out. Clearly we let him spend too much time with his wife in the first place, but by the time we realized that, it was too late
Cleric number two never made much of an impression on us, since her husband was always telling her how to play her character. She hardly got a word in edgewise. Before we could present her with a suffragette sash and cry "Women gamers of the world unite!" she and her husband told us they were moving to the coast. Cleric three lent a nice air of cynicism to the party as the only neutral member of the group, but moved away last month. His character has been taken over by my 13-year old son. No problem selling 4E there. "You'll play whatever D&D system we tell you to young man, or go sit in your room!"• The Bard - New to paper and pencil RPG's with the beginning of our interminable campaign, this character is the only one she has ever played. It's a stunningly beautiful half-elven bard with insanely high charisma. She likes roleplaying, dislikes dungeon crawls and combat (bards = boring combat), and makes us watch her while she roleplays shopping trips to the city for 2 hours. If we complain that we're bored, she makes comments about how we don't like roleplaying. She doesn't want the current game to come to an end, and is reluctant to make a new character, much less start a new system of rules.
• The Wizard - Well, we haven't had one since he attacked a hapless city guard with a maximized acid arrow, slaying him instantly. He fled the city, and we never did see him again. That player made a new psionic warrior character, who wound up getting killed but declined the rez we scraped up the money for. His third character was a fighter who used a longsword/shortsword combo but his habit of shouting "Bring it on!" to dragons, opening doors before I could check for traps, leaping into the sack with anyone who seemed amenable, and other impulsive behavior made him not fit into our old stodgy (and slow) group. We waved farewell when he went off to grad school.
• The Paladin - An experienced gamer, more in online games and MUDs rather than P&P games. He's completely unwilling to hear a positive word about 4E. I can't talk about streamlined rules without him saying they are dumbing down the game. More combat options for melee classes? That's turning it into WoW. Raising play up to level 30? That's also making it like an MMO - and why bother since we've been playing for years and are only half that level anyway. If 4E came packaged with a free t-shirt he'd complain that they are just doing that to suck people into spending more money, and that it was the wrong size anyway.
• The Rogue - That'd be me. I'm going to have to use stealth and persuasion to even get them to try out the 4E preview module that I've got on order. I'm not convinced that I will like all the changes to the game myself, but I have to present a unified front to the
Anyone have any ideas on how to convince people to give it a shot, preferably without the playtest turning into a stream of invective about "I can't believe they changed that!"? Given that I'll probably be DM'ing it, I'll make sure I have a sturdy GM screen to protect me from hurled dice, but poison in the onion dip might be an issue.
