D&D “Essentials” as a product line = making it less daunting to get into the game?

[Stormonu]

Here's a question. What do the TSR character sheets look like for 2e? Anyone know? What information is included on the official character sheets?

I have copies of the 2E character sheets (though I generally found them so lacking I used Armory sheets). The ones I'm looking at are from the character packs (one for wizards, priests, rogues & warrior) from 1994. I've probably got a book of generic 2E sheets around somewhere.

The basics on the sheet are the six abilities, weapon/type/speed/attack bonus, the 5 saves, hit points, AC and an attack table on front. The back had a space for cleric turning/thief skills/spells per level, weapon proficiencies, nonweapon proficiencies, equipment, racial abilities, wealth, encumburance and move rates.

---------------
Also, as a side note, I remember when I went to the TSR/WotC writing seminar (the year's getting fuzzy, but I think it was '98), that the Dungeon guidelines required you to assume that players only had access to PHB, DMG & MM*. That was considered "core", though not by name. If you were to include anything from any other book, it had to be fully explained/statted, so they generally would not let you include more than one such item (Perhaps except for campaign-world specific adventures, and then you could expect they had the core campaign set, at least). Only exception I know was when they published one (as far as I remember) Player's Option adventure in Dungeon.

* Note: they didn't even assume Tome of Magic or access to any of the Completes; NPCs in Dungeon and the standard published adventures didn't even have non-weapon proficiencies listed, and I don't recall seeing kits being applied to most NPCs either.

 

[S'mon]

S'mon - could I take a stab at that?

If you go, say, levels 1-5 with a full game, you might as well go 1-30. What do you actually add to the game after 5th level? I suppose you get paragon and epic paths, but, that's about it. All of the rules are front end loaded. Going with a "complete" game from 1-5 means that you only reduce complexity a very small amount. There's really very little at 15th level that you can't see at 3rd.

I'm more interested in why they don't sell it as a complete game in a box, with however many levels they want - could be 10, could be 30, the #levels doesn't matter except inasmuch as too few would make it feel not-complete.

Edit: I'm guessing that the AD&D multi-book model is believed to extract the most $ from existing gamers, but having no one-box product like the '83 Red Box seems terrible for any attempt to grow the market. I was hoping the new Red Box would be that, but it turned out to be just another starter set in Mentzerite clothing.

 

[billd91]

But, billd91, there is no definition of core in 2e. In 3e, it was specifically called out. Relics and Rituals and Creature Catalog 1 were both core. (I kid, I kid.)

<snip>

There was no actual delineation of "Core" in 1e and 2e. That was a 3e invention. To me, the Complete books were so commonly in use that they may as well have been core. I don't think I ever saw a 2e table that didn't use them.

That there was no formal definition of core like 3e's doesn't mean there wasn't a concept of what was necessary or expected rather than optional or supplemental. If Stormonu's memory is correct that would indicate that the concept was there.

 

[DEFCON 1]

but having no one-box product like the '83 Red Box seems terrible for any attempt to grow the market. I was hoping the new Red Box would be that, but it turned out to be just another starter set in Mentzerite clothing.

But here's the question... did anyone actually use the Red Box as their only D&D product? To consider an rpg that only goes to level 3 a "complete" product to me is a bit of a fallacy. Sure, you could play levels 1-3 over and over again... but how many people actually ever did that? Didn't people move onto the Blue Box so that their games could continue?

And once you do that... then voila! You're now talking about a two product game... which is just one product less than a Heroes book, the DM Kit, and the Monster Vault. And if consider that the Heroes book goes to level 30... you'd need to buy the Aqua Box and the Black Box to get to that in '83.

So to decry Essentials because you can't match the '83 Red Box in playing the same 3 levels over and over again (something that I would be willing to guess would encompass less than 0.1% of the kids who played it) is a bit silly in my opinion.

 

[S'mon]

Yes, I'm not sure why Basic D&D didn't cover say 10 or 20 levels, rather than 3, in 1 book or box. That's how almost every other game does it.

 

[Stormonu]

But here's the question... did anyone actually use the Red Box as their only D&D product? To consider an rpg that only goes to level 3 a "complete" product to me is a bit of a fallacy. Sure, you could play levels 1-3 over and over again... but how many people actually ever did that? Didn't people move onto the Blue Box so that their games could continue?

Well, that'd be at least me and my grade school group, for about 3 years. Due to financial limitations, the Moldvay box set was all I had to run my game from 6th-8th grade. I had two groups (both w/ 3 players). I did eventually get the whole (Meztner) BECMI set and the AD&D rulebooks, but oddly enough, all this time later levels 3-5 are my favorite in D&D. In fact, I never did use the Companion, Master and Immortal set even once I had them.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, I'm not sure why Basic D&D didn't cover say 10 or 20 levels, rather than 3, in 1 book or box. That's how almost every other game does it.

Every other game did it after Basic did it. Basic was a first guess as to what would work (both for players and for economics)

 

[deinol]

The difference between the classic red box and the new one is, the original just has more game. This isn't really about the level range, but the support for that level range.

Try building 5 characters using the new red box. You'll tear your hair out. I think the 'walk through a character creation' is great, but they should have included a few pages of a more standard character building process. Old red box had a 'how to play' walk through, but you could skip it and just go to the character creation section. Plenty of replayability, even with only a few basic classes.

Second, how many monsters are included in the new red box? How many magic items? Does it have tips on creating your own dungeon?

Classic Red Box was a game. It can be expanded, and often was, to either the Expert box or AD&D. Essentials Red Box is a demo, with limited replayability. For that you need the DM Kit and a Player's book.

I can say when I was young I only had the B1-9 collection, and I don't think I played D&D beyond 3rd level until 3rd edition. (I did wander off to play other games including Palladium Fantasy, Warhammer, and Talislanta in between.) I still remember each of those old adventures fondly.

 

[Beginning of the End]

And this was their point: They wanted to CHANGE everyone's definition. Because everyone's definition of "Core" did not sell as many books!

Except it's not WotC's term to do with as they please. They weren't even, AFAICT, the first company to use the term to refer to their core rulebook(s). (Nor was TSR.)

Coca-Cola might want to change the term "juice" to include soda pop because it means people will drink Coke at breakfast and they'll sell more cans of their product. But if all they do is start printing the label "juice" on products that the average consumer has never considered juice before, the only thing that's going to happen is consumer confusion.

The exact type of consumer confusion that WotC's representatives have admitted that they created and which they say they're specifically trying to correct with the Essentials product line.

Anyway, bottom line:

(1) It was incredibly unlikely that WotC would be able to take a term of art that (a) wasn't created by them and (b) is used by the entire industry and change it to arbitrarily mean something different. And they did, in fact, fail to accomplish that. So all they accomplished by taking a term which means "these are the rulebooks you need to play the game, everything else is optional" and slapping it on every book they released was to (falsely) claim that you needed to buy EVERYTHING in order to play D&D.

Two years later they realized this was a mistake and have taken steps to correct it. (Although, ultimately, these steps appear to be flawed since they've to decided to repeat the exact same mistake with the "Essentials" label that they had made with the "Core" label.)

(2) Even if they HAD succeeded in redefining what the term "core rulebook" meant, you would STILL have a need for a term which means "these are the rulebooks you need to play the game, everything else is optional". (That is, after all, why the term "core" was created in the first place.) So even if you managed to redefine the common understanding of the term "core", you'd still be faced with the exact same dilemma and the exact same customer confusion.

This is why it was, indisputably, a stupid idea: Even if the idea had worked, it would have still failed.

Finally, the entire scheme you're hypothesizing relies on the assumption that your customers are idiots of the grossest variety. You have to assume that the people running "core-only" games aren't doing so because they want to minimize the number of rulebooks (due to balance, budget, taste, or whatever reason they might have), but because they have instead invested the word "core' with some kind of irrational mystical significance. And/or you have to believe that they're stupid enough to think Player's Handbook 3 isn't optional because you've slapped the word "Core" on the cover.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Uh.

I'm pretty dang sure the whole "everything is Core" thing was made to emphasis that most if not all classes would be getting new content as time went on. contrasted to 3e where you had classes like the shugenja that were literally never seen from again after their initial book, while arcane casters seemed to have some kind of contractual mandate that a new wizard spell would appear in everything that was published.