D&D & Comic Books Share A Similar Problem

[Umbran]

However, the reason I'm here is to correct you on a very important point: Conan.

Conan, as written by Howard, is a highly moral character.

The reference isn't really to Conan, as written by Howard, because not all that many folks have actually read the original. It's to the more common perception of Conan, a perception based on second and third-hand information - more as he'd depicted in the artwork, where it's all about skin, sweat, and swords. Morals are a distant concern.

But you're right - the examples are muddled.

Conan D&D would have more emphasis on items, and gaining power and money, and presume the PCs want to go on an adventure *to amass power*. Like Superman and Spider-man, it's a power fantasy for kids.

When have you ever seen Superman or Spider Man seeking to amass power for the sake of amassing power or money? These guys are all about adventure using power, sure, but with a major focus on the morality of using the power you have. This is about as far as you can get from the self-serving image you paint of Conan!



Setting that nitpicking aside, you have a point.

I can get behind the idea that the different audiences have different wants and needs. I am not sure you need highly different rules for the two groups, though. Most game rules sets will serve either audience - what you probably need is a different presentation, focusing on the desires of each group. Youd' want adventures for each group, and settings focused on each group's needs, not a whole different book of mechanics.

 

[Mournblade94]

I have seen one area where old and new gamers converge. I am a high school teacher, and I discuss OBLIVION, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect with them often.

I do not discuss D&D with them, but I do see MANY of them play WARHAMMER. Very few ever play D&D.

This is an anecdote that I think contributes to why 4e went more to the gamist miniature combat style game.

 

[Spatula]

During the height of its popularity, the early to mid 1980s, exactly the same period as the rise of the comic book store, D&D was played by, appealed mostly to, teenagers. Let's say 6th grade to college aged.

Players at that age, I think, want the kind of game AD&D was. Your character was motivated primarily by enlightened self-interest. You weren't out to try and save the world, you were basically Conan.

Huh? Kids don't want to play in good-guys-save-the-world stories? Is it just some freak accident that all of the races and creatures (and even a class) from LotR ended up in D&D? Are you familiar with the general formula in genre fantasy fiction? Have you seen Dragonlance? Forgotten Realms? 2nd edition AD&D? I'm guessing that you have, so I'm not sure how you can claim what you claim here. From the earliest days, D&D has drawn heavy influence from both S&S and epic fantasy. D&D's strength, I think, has been its ability to cater to both crowds, which are not separated by age, from what I've seen.

But *those* kids all grew up and while most of them stop playing after they've left school, the ones who keep playing start expecting more from the game. They want to be heroes. They want to save the world, rescue the princess, kill the Dark Lord and overthrow the Empire.

Wow. As an adult, I couldn't imagine a more boring, uninteresting idea for a game.

I would say that your overall point has some merit, but you distract from it with the bizarre, sweeping generalizations. It also ignores a few factors. Many kids, teens especially, don't want to play the "kids version" of anything. They generally want to experience the "real thing."

On top of that, it's not clear where to draw the lines. Good-vs-Evil and Shades-of-Gray are stylistic preferences that have nothing to do with age or maturity. You could instead focus on rule complexity, but out of mechanically complex or mechanically simple rulesets, which is the kids' domain and which is the adults? Kids have more free time, so they're more likely to delve into complex rulesets. But younger kids might have trouble grasping the intricacies, whereas adults would not. And so on. There's no one right answer that I can see.

 

[the Jester]

D&D is now designed by that generation of gamer and, I submit, the game they designed is meant to *appeal* to that generation of gamer. The problem with this is; it leaves no place for the kids who just want to kick down the door and kill the orc and steal the Apparatus of Kwalish.

Because the current version of the game changes your motivation. Items are no longer that big a deal. Adventures are now meant to interconnect and reveal a great badness at the end manipulating everything. Instead of being a series of unconnected episodes. Characters are expected to rect to evil, instead of take the initiative for the sake of self-aggrandizement.

Well, maybe in your campaign.

Mine still supports Conan-style adventures just fine. The kid who wants to kick down the door and kill the orc and steal the Apparatus of Kwalish? No reason he can't do just that.

I submit that your problem my have been a lack of a dm willing to stretch himself. 4e works fine for everything you claim we need a "Teen D&D" for, at least in my neck of the woods.

Rather, I submit that we need *two games*. One for teens, one for adults. And, of course, there will always be folks in one category happiest with the game from the other category.

These two games need not be "simple" and "complex," that's not the issue. The issue isn't the rules. The issue is; what do the two games assume about the PCs?

Conan D&D would have more emphasis on items, and gaining power and money, and presume the PCs want to go on an adventure *to amass power*. Like Superman and Spider-man, it's a power fantasy for kids.

Luke Skywalker D&D would put more emphasis on being a Hero, saving the World, longer, more coherent narratives. Power coming from your character and the choices you make during play, rather than the loot you plunder. This is D&D4. We have this game, it's perfect for this.

Splitting D&D into two games (again!) would be a terrible move from a business perspective. This was discussed ad nauseum before the release of 3e and I don't think it's necessary to rehash it in detail, but basically- making twice as many products to sell half as many of each makes no sense at all. Where's the money to create these products coming from? You think the editing in WotC products leaves something to be desired now, you'd be amazed what those same editors would let slip by if they had twice the work load without any extra income.

Also, I just don't see the need. I disagree with your premise fundamentally.

If you want to play a Conan-style game, as long as you have a dm that isn't going to force-feed you a railroad, all you have to do is play your character a certain way. If your fellow players want to play this way too, it can happen- all you have to do is do it.

 

[pawsplay]

D&D should be aimed neither at older players, nor at younger ones, but at geeks with pocket money. Geeks create fan communities, which attracts slackers, joiners, and nerds, and then you have a hobby industry.

The comic book analogy is flawed because comic books are largely a literate medium these days. There are children's comics. There are also mainstream films, cartoons, and toys. Without an aging fandom, comic books wouldn't have any spirit. Intergenerational amnedia would leave us with "marketing" instead of a hobby.

RPGs come from a sophisticated hobby for sophisticated people. They are not easily accessible to the mainstream public. Rules-lite games? Even less accessible! Playing rules lite requires a fairly tough skill-set that incorporates improvisation, the ability to benchmark and visualize, and understanding meta-goals of play.

 

[Qualidar]

D&D should be aimed neither at older players, nor at younger ones, but at geeks with pocket money. Geeks create fan communities, which attracts slackers, joiners, and nerds, and then you have a hobby industry.

"Geeks, sportos, motorheads, dweebs, dorks, sluts, buttheads...they all adore it."

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

I don't think two games are needed. I play both styles the OP is talking about and find that any game can do both fairly well.

I run a game for a bunch of comic book dudes who don't really fit the gamer stereotype and our games would fit the "supers" for kids model.

I also run a game for history and science majors, so the play experience tends to be a little heavier in the details but the mechanics are still the same.

 

[delericho]

But that boom was just that, a boom. It didn't result in more and more young kids getting into comics as the years went by. Instead, you had this big bubble, the first generation to come of age with comic book stores, and as that generation aged the publishers keep chasing them. Trying to get lapsed readers back, trying to find new ways to get current readers to buy more.

Of course they keep chasing that same core audience! The thing is, in order to keep D&D going at all, they need a certain level of sales to be maintained. It is far, far easier to get those sales from the existing customer base than it is to draw in large numbers of new players.

The fundamental problem, though, is that once a group has the core books for the system, they never need to buy anything more in order to game forever. This was true with BECMID&D (as soon as I got my Expert Set, I never needed anything else), 1st Edition (PHB, DMG, MM), 2nd Edition (same), 3e (same), and 3.5e (same). It's true of Pathfinder (Core Rulebook + Bestiary).

It's a bit less true of 4e, but only because the perception has become that D&D must include Barbarians and Monks and Bards, and is "incomplete" without these elements. Even so, once you buy the 10 Essentials products (or even some subset of these - some aren't really essential), you need never again spend any money. One could choose to play 4e forever with just the PHB, DMG and MM... though I suspect it would start to feel very limited quite quickly.

I think that WotC (and Paizo, and ENWorld for that matter) have actually found the solution to this already - subscriptions. Whether it's to the DDI, or the monthly Adventure Path, or a Community Supporter account, if they can get enough people to sign up on a monthly basis, they can basically become assured of getting that "certain level of sales", and have a guaranteed and predictable revenue stream, thus securing the future of the line and freeing them to be a bit more creative.

So what we need, WotC, Mike Mearls, is Conan D&D back. The market needs both, because the Adult Gamer, like the Adult Reader, wants different things from his hobby than the teenager. Even when that teenager is 34.

I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that Conan = kids, Skywalker = adult. They're just different tastes. I also disagree with your call for two different games. In fact, having a 'kids' version of the game would guarantee it would never get a sale, as the kids would all want to play the 'adult' version.

As for your statement that 4e is the best designed game ever... well, that's true only for certain definitions of 'best'. It is, frankly, utterly unsuited to my preferred mode of play. (But, see, even that's just a statement of taste!)

We have now Essentials and I think the mistake WotC is making is that they think they need to make the game *simpler* to appeal to new players. Well, maybe that would help, I'm not sure. Certainly AD&D did well in that demo and it was full of weird rules.

I think you're badly wrong here. I have long felt that D&D sets up a huge barrier to new players getting into the game. The buy-in is just too great. A new player coming to the game cold is faced with the purchase of three core rulebooks ($105 RRP), then 832 pages of reading (sure, the player only needs to read part of the PHB, but someone needs to read all the rules), then the generation of an adventure (2+ hours of work), then the generation of a bunch of characters (40 minutes each, being generous). And then they finally get to start having fun.

It's no wonder the game is in trouble!

Now, of course, this is mitigated somewhat by in-game demos. It is mitigated somewhat by the use of pregenerated adventures (at yet more expense), and pregenerated characters, and this, that, and the next thing.

But I can get a WoW subscription for a fraction of the cost (most of us already have a PC that can run it, especially those who might be potential gamers), and I can get up and playing in, what, an hour?

So, 4e was a step in the right direction, by simplifying the rules and going exception-based (much as I personally dislike it). Essentials is another step in the right direction, especially in bringing in an easy entry route with the new Red Box. But the game still needs to go further.

Now that doesn't mean I think we have to go for simplicity at all costs, and as others have mentioned, going rules-lite doesn't actually help the novice DM control the game. But I do think WotC need to dramatically lower that first hurdle to entry.

(FWIW, the new Red Box still suffers from one of the biggest problems that has plagued the entry set since the cancellation of the old Red Box. If you like the game, you play it for a few weeks then have to throw it away and buy in to the "real" game, thus wasting the money you spent. Of course, if you don't like it, you've wasted the money. We need an equivalent of the old "Blue Box" Expert Set. And if the current rules structure can't support that (and it probably can't), then the current rules structure needs changed.)