Changeover poll

[Ruin Explorer]

It’s very strange to me that the results on the ends have gotten the most votes and the ones in the middle the least.

I think you're a bit silly to be surprised by that. Most D&D players don't have the time or energy to be playing multiple systems, so they go with the one they like, whether it's 4E, 3E, C&C or whatever. It's not some "lol ur system sux" thing, it's just pragmatism. I'd love to play every edition and see the highs and lows, but that'd mean ridiculously more effort from all the people involved, and inevitably, some systems will be less fun for some groups.

For my group, we've switched over to 4E, and we aren't going back in the foreseeable future. The players are having a blast and feeling much more engaged by the way the 4E rules work. It's not for everyone, but I really do think any group of D&D players for whom combat and mayhem is the main objective will enjoy 4E a huge amount (no diss on 4E, but it's SO good at making that more fun for everyone).

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

We have 300 votes now. Cheers!

But we need more. We could easily get 10 times that many votes on this poll, and it only be a fraction of the ENWorld base. And ENWorld is, as you pointed out, only a part of the D&D base.
Results are still extremely preliminary.

Dawg? Hehe. : ) (Sings from an old ad: Here Dawg! Come on Dawg! Me and Dawg want ya to go to Te-le-graph Road! Right now! Get a good deal!)

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

(bumping this, as promised. Bump 1)

 

[Hussar]

ByronD - You are confusing a lot of issues I think. The whole "Wait until it's out" response was in response to criticisms about mechanical issues. It had nothing to do with switching over or not.

I highly suspect that there are a number of players who are still playing a campaign and just haven't made the switch. Same as happened in 3e. Out of curiousity, I'm going to fork this into my own poll.

 

[RFisher]

Or, even simpler, they don't have more gaming time than for one campaign.

Most D&D players don't have the time or energy to be playing multiple systems, so they go with the one they like, whether it's 4E, 3E, C&C or whatever. It's not some "lol ur system sux" thing, it's just pragmatism.

I only get to play one night a week†. And that’s Monday night. We all work regular M–F schedules, so we can’t game too late. Plus, some of the group work later shifts, so we usually don’t get started until 8–8:30pm.

Now, I realize that some people only get to game bi-weekly or once-a-month, but I still figure I’m below average for how much gaming time ENWorlders have. But maybe I’m wrong.

I always wonder about these things. I’ve never been in a group that only played one game. Am I and my friends the outliers or typical?

†I actually have just gotten more free time that I can devote to gaming, but that has been my situation for the past eight years.

 

[Delta]

Given that most polls here show about 60% for 4e and 40% against that would mean 0.24% pro 4E and 0.16% against of the player base.

You misunderstand inferential statistics. This is common. (I'm a part-time statistics professor).

The incredible beauty of the math behind the field of statistics is that -- amazingly -- it doesn't matter how big your population is. The percentage in the sample generally follows the percentage in the population, regardless of the relative sizes between sample & population. That can be a mind-bender for a lot of folks.

For example, our poll is currently over 400 votes. Standard polling "margin of error", at the 95% confidence level, is computed by E = 1/sqrt, where n is the sample size (notice that population size has no effect on this formula). So for our poll you'd calculate E = 1/sqrt(400) ~ 0.05 = 5%.

In particular, the poll now says that 31% of respondents play all 4E now. Our analysis would say that in the larger population (regardless of how large it is) there is a 95% chance that the percentage of people playing all 4E is within 31+/-5% = between 26% and 36%. So it's an excellent bet that the population percentage is within that fairly narrow range.

Look closely the next time you see a political tracking poll. They usually poll right around 400 people (for that margin of error = 5%), even though they're making inferences for a voting population in the hundreds of millions.

Now, there are other legitimate critiques that can be made about our poll. It is in fact likely to be biased and reflect the opinion of people who attend ENWorld and like to vote in polls on the issue of 4E, for example.

But that's a separate, distinct criticism. The issue that we've got 300 votes and the larger population is in the millions has actually been proven to be a non-issue by the mathematics of inferential statistics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error

 

[SSquirrel]

No earlier versions of D&D but I would still consider OGL games like M&M and Arcana Evolved.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That means that even with my overestimated 1 million that is a paultry 5% of the consumer base.

Well, if you really look at RW stat collecting and the math behind it...

Oh wait- Delta said it all, and infinitely better than I could have!

 

[Gothmog]

When 3e came out, I waited about 6 months before I tried to run or play it. We were still having fun with 2e, and after a readthrough of 3e, there was enough I didn't like I put it on the shelf for a while. After about 6 months, my players decided they wanted to try it for a while, so I ran it for about 3 years (and I played some). We all found gameplay in 3e unsatisfying after trying to make 3e fit with our gaming preferences, and we dropped it completely about 6 months after 3.5 came out. We mostly went back to 1e/2e, Savage Worlds, and WHFRP2.

With 4e, we got on board when it came out. For me and my group, 4e is leaps and bounds better than 3e, and I'd never go back to 3e. I looked at Pathfinder too, but they exacerbated all of problems I had with 3e, and then added more problems- no thanks.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

(bumps this up)

We have 350 votes. Need more.
Hey, ENWorld has 76,000 posters. Would never consider 350 votes to represent ENWorld! : )