Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 5349412" data-attributes="member: 60075">D&D “Essentials” as a product line = making it less daunting to get into the game?According to WotC’ remarks surrounding the introduction of the “Essentials” product line (both in Ampersand and on GenCon presentations), one rationale for the new product line is to lessen the confusion created by a myriad of products on someone completely new to the hobby.   Of course, it was a clever marketing strategy to put the label “Core Rules” on many a hardcover, but the effect on a complete outsider who first glances at a shelf of 4E books in a gaming store is a daunting one…  Should he get PHB 1, 2, or 3 first, simply depending on his class? (Not that he knows yet which class is where, or even which class he would like to play.) Does he even need all of them?  And if he wants to start DMing, how many DMs and Monster Manuals should be buy? Which ones are fully up to date and work especially well with other books?  So to make it easier for these people, WotC introduced Essentials.  What I want to ask people here is, whether in your estimate WotC has- succeeded to cut down on the product proliferation and - rectified the sometimes unclear labeling of products (e.g. Adventurers Vault 2 as a “core” rules book) with Essentials.I’m particularly interested in the experience of people working at FLGS's who could observe the effect of the products on people walking into the store who’ve never heard of D&D before. (I'm sure any helpful conversation between store clerk and customer can instantly clarify any confusion, but that was true of 4E prior to Essentials too. I am interested in the above rationale for 4E to make it easier to understand what a newcomer needs without having to resort to clarifying talks with store clerks or internet forum users.) And just to clarify, it's not about whether the clarity or quantity of rules texts in the book has made the game easier to get into. There's already a couple of useful threads on that question running next door - but this thread ain't it. This one is about Essentials as a product line. Thanks for your thoughts.  As a PS, there's an image that, while polemical, does (I think) raise a legitimate worry:<a href="http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/9396/basic.jpg" target="_blank">http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/9396/basic.jpg</a></blockquote>

Verification