D&D General D&D 3E Style Guide Peeks Behind The Scenes

Alex Kammer of Gamehole fame, the convention and the wonderful museum of every TSR D&D product and game room also has a copy of the D&D 3.0 Style Guide!

Interesting parts include the 3 million active monthly players, the primary and secondary target audiences, the list of "do's and don'ts" and cursing!

The primary audience was college students ages 18-24, with a secondary audience of young people form 13-16 and adults 25+.

"Dos and Don'ts" include "do show monsters as fearsome, evil creatures. They're not misunderstood--they're EVIL!", and "don't show the game being played by children or pre-teens".

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[Parmandur]

What you've been told is that the over-35 crowd was not consulted for input through the marketing surveys.

Why does this matter? Because those who were over 35 then would have been 20-ish years younger (i.e. college age in many cases) during the heyday of 1e, and their experiences from that time - plus their experiences from the intervening decades - would have been useful data.

(note I say 35 rather than 30, as 35 is noted in Dancey's write-up as being the cut-off point for discarding responses)

Well, if the primary market is college students, and the secondary market is middle schoolers and high schoolers (I picked up 3E and D&D as I entered their primary demographic, interestingly enough), then it follows that the over 35 crowd is tertiary at best. Current demographics for the game still bear that out.

 

[Parmandur]

If you're not, clearly you aren't D&Ding correctly.

No True D&D Table, eh?