Mercurius
Legend
PrefaceL This was much longer and more meandering than I had originally intended, so please bear with me. I touch upon a lot of topics with a secondary focus on D&D Next, but I have prefixed this with "Any D&D" because the primary focus is on what I'm calling the "D&D Family" as a whole ( (a term I'll use for all games that are directly based upon one version or another of D&D, from OD&D to 4E to Pathfinder to the various retro-clones and more). On to the entree...
So I've been out of touch with all things RPG-related for a few months and haven't played in about six. My work schedule hasn't allowed for me to DM and no one else in my group has the experience (or chutzpah) to pull it together, but around the New Year I might be able to run a campaign again so I'm thinking about what I might do. I might post on that later to get some ideas, but for now I wanted to share my perspective as someone stepping out and then stepping back into the "the fray" of D&D Next, EN World, and RPGdom on the internet--especially D&D/Pathfinder (I already shared some thoughts on Next here).
Just about everyone that participates on this site is a serious fan of role-playing games, especially the D&D Family. If you've been here for awhile you may have noticed that while there are over 135,000 members, probably only a few thousand contribute semi-regularly, and only a few hundred are daily participants (or something like that). When you step out of regular participation on a forum like this and then try to step back in, it is sort of like trying to catch a moving bus - it takes awhile to get a sense of where it is, what is going on, and so forth.
One thing I've realized in this process, my attempt to "catch a moving bus," is just how convoluted the whole D&D Family is - with more than a dozen significant variations of the game, and no base-line that is simply called "D&D" to start with or fall back on. Someone new to the game, or someone returning to the game, has so many choices - or rather, no clear or easy decision to make based upon all of those choices.
For me, having played 4E on and off for the last four years, my temptation is to play 4E, but there is a quality about 4E now like it is the game of choice for those on the Titanic, and I peer over at my Pathfinder books, including the massively lovely Rise of the Runelords hardcover, and I think about running that. But then I think, "But I don't want to (re)learn a new and very complex game." Then I start thinking about retro-clones and simpler version of the game, but think: "I don't want to play a re-fitted version of the game from thirty years ago." Eventually I find myself wandering back to 4E because it is what I know best and am most comfortable with.
That's from the perspective of someone who has played multiple versions of the game over three decades. What must it be like for someone new to the game? A 12-year old whose imagination lights up when they hear of the game for the first time?
One thing that has become clear is that RPGs are produced by serious gamers who have no sense of what it is like to not be a serious gamer. It is not unlike a car mechanic who knows so much about cars that they have no clue that most people don't know what a gasket or alternator is, or the stereotypical Radio Shack Guy who tries to explain to you why some uber-calculator is the best one to buy because it can do quadratic equations and sense quantum fluctuations. Now of course not everyone can or should be everything, and most people that are good at game design may not--or are probably not, to be frank--good at other aspects of RPG production: like public relations, communication, marketing, even big picture stuff like line development. So the problem isn't that people can't do everything, but that people try to do everything, especially some things that they aren't good at.
Many have noted, I think quite rightly, that WotC has not been very proficient at the running of the D&D division of their company, that they seem out of touch - especially when you compare them to Paizo's thriving Pathfinder, which has for many thousands of long-time D&D players, because the edition of D&D to play. The folks at Paizo seem to get it; they developed a formula that works - that allows them to produce a full line of game products, including setting books, adventures, and various sourcebooks - and to do well with all of them (my one concern for Paizo is that their approach may, at some point, get kind of old - they've been doing basically the same thing for what, four or five years now? At some point they might need to "shake it up" and diversify their approach, but I digress from my main line of inquiry).
But I'm not simply blaming WotC for the state of the D&D Family, but they're just easy to pick on because they are (or were) the most prominent part of the "family," and thus probably the party most responsible for the current state of affairs. The above issue just complicates matters further - but it isn't the same thing as what I started with, which is the enormously confusing, complex and--most crucially--impenetrable state of the D&D Family as a whole.
The Holy Grail of edition design, at least from the business perspective, is how to bring in a new generation of players? 4E didn't really do that, at least nowhere to the extent that 3E did. As Ryan Dancey has pointed out, the more editions that exist, the more the market is splintered - and there becomes a kind of law of diminishing returns where each new "official" edition has less carryover from the previous edition, which makes appealing to that new generation all the more important. In prior iterations of the game--really up through and including 3.5--this was primarily a problem with the product cycle, but not it has spread to a wider domain, that of editions themselves.
WotC tried to appeal to a new generation of players with 4E, but the results, as we all know, were disastrous (to be fair, they couldn't have predicted to what degree or how popular Pathfinder would become). WotC seemed to focus their marketing sights on the computer game crowd, creating a game system--and, more importantly--a tonal quality and presentation that was more World of Warcraft than World of Greyhawk (compare, for instance, 4E post-Spellplague Forgotten Realms with the old gray box from the late 80s). They might have gained a few new adherents to step on board but they lost far more, mainly because the "feel" of the game resulting from a design approach heavily influenced by computer games and the above-mentioned qualities of presentation, distanced many of the old guard.
It is my opinion that what WotC forgot, lost, and/or willfully ignored, was that the engine of D&D, if you will, is the serious fan base - the folks that buy every book, that spend hours on message boards and reading obscure passages in game books that will never see the light of day but are just fun to read. That without these folks, the game will perish (as 4E seemingly has, at least for many). But the other, more crucial, part is that they forgot that what makes D&D great is not what it has in common with video games, but how it differs. Tabletop RPGs rely upon the play of the imagination, video/computer games do not - they are simulative experiences that people "plug into" and engage in without an active use of imagination.
But I am veering away from my initial thread, so let me come back to it in an attempt to wrap things up. Because trying to get back into the stream of the D&D Family is difficult, even for a "serious gamer" coming back from a hiatus, I've wondered: What must it be like for someone trying to break into the hobby, with a mild interest? What must it be like for that proverbial 12-year old first discovering the game? It would be daunting to say the least, perhaps even entirely off-putting.
There is no easy answer, but if there is one thing that, I believe, could best "heal" the fractured D&D Family and bring coherence back to it, as well as soften the ghetto boundaries so that it is more easy to come into and try out, it would be to do away with the notion of editions of the game, and create a Core/Basic D&D game that is the starting point, the baseline, of all other variations of the game. This is pretty much what WotC is trying to do with D&D Next, which I applaud them for. I don't know if it will be possible, but I think their best bet is to be very, very careful about not over-complicating the core game. It is the tendency of game designers to over-complicate things. Both 3.x and 4E were supposed to be simpler, easier to play games than AD&D because of the core mechanic, but the secondary effect of having a simple core mechanic is that it is easier to hang all sorts of complicating modifiers onto it.
So for D&D Next, I hope that they keep this in mind: a truly simple, core game. Imagine OD&D but for the 21st century, with 40 years of game design innovations in-between. If I were the designers at WotC I would ask this question: If we had to make D&D Next a fun, playable game in a single, inexpensive product no longer than the equivalent of a 96-page book (think three booklets of 32 pages each: player's guide, DM's guide, adventure & encounter book), what would it look like? Beyond that you can do whatever you want. Certainly if the first box set covered the first "tier" of the basic game, the second could cover another tier, etc; and then you could have hardcover books for the more advanced modules of the game - with a Player's Handbook, DMG, etc. In other words, imagine combining the best of BECMI and AD&D, but as one compatible game.
But the point is, that foundation stone - the introductory product for D&D Next - is so important; it may even make or break the game and the D&D Family as a whole. Certainly Pathfinder is on its own course now, and older editions and retro-clones all have their tried-and-true fan-base. But if we want to see the D&D Family not merely "survive but thrive" (to paraphrase an early Pathfinder add), then WotC really needs to get back to basics--and I mean really, not car-mechanic-ubergeek "basics"--and provide a product that can be sold in Toys-R-Us and Walmart, that can be given for Christmas and played out of box by eleven year olds, or that can be bought by teenagers and adults alike who are interested in getting (back) into the game that has brought so much joy, and inspired such imagination, for the last four decades.
So I've been out of touch with all things RPG-related for a few months and haven't played in about six. My work schedule hasn't allowed for me to DM and no one else in my group has the experience (or chutzpah) to pull it together, but around the New Year I might be able to run a campaign again so I'm thinking about what I might do. I might post on that later to get some ideas, but for now I wanted to share my perspective as someone stepping out and then stepping back into the "the fray" of D&D Next, EN World, and RPGdom on the internet--especially D&D/Pathfinder (I already shared some thoughts on Next here).
Just about everyone that participates on this site is a serious fan of role-playing games, especially the D&D Family. If you've been here for awhile you may have noticed that while there are over 135,000 members, probably only a few thousand contribute semi-regularly, and only a few hundred are daily participants (or something like that). When you step out of regular participation on a forum like this and then try to step back in, it is sort of like trying to catch a moving bus - it takes awhile to get a sense of where it is, what is going on, and so forth.
One thing I've realized in this process, my attempt to "catch a moving bus," is just how convoluted the whole D&D Family is - with more than a dozen significant variations of the game, and no base-line that is simply called "D&D" to start with or fall back on. Someone new to the game, or someone returning to the game, has so many choices - or rather, no clear or easy decision to make based upon all of those choices.
For me, having played 4E on and off for the last four years, my temptation is to play 4E, but there is a quality about 4E now like it is the game of choice for those on the Titanic, and I peer over at my Pathfinder books, including the massively lovely Rise of the Runelords hardcover, and I think about running that. But then I think, "But I don't want to (re)learn a new and very complex game." Then I start thinking about retro-clones and simpler version of the game, but think: "I don't want to play a re-fitted version of the game from thirty years ago." Eventually I find myself wandering back to 4E because it is what I know best and am most comfortable with.
That's from the perspective of someone who has played multiple versions of the game over three decades. What must it be like for someone new to the game? A 12-year old whose imagination lights up when they hear of the game for the first time?
One thing that has become clear is that RPGs are produced by serious gamers who have no sense of what it is like to not be a serious gamer. It is not unlike a car mechanic who knows so much about cars that they have no clue that most people don't know what a gasket or alternator is, or the stereotypical Radio Shack Guy who tries to explain to you why some uber-calculator is the best one to buy because it can do quadratic equations and sense quantum fluctuations. Now of course not everyone can or should be everything, and most people that are good at game design may not--or are probably not, to be frank--good at other aspects of RPG production: like public relations, communication, marketing, even big picture stuff like line development. So the problem isn't that people can't do everything, but that people try to do everything, especially some things that they aren't good at.
Many have noted, I think quite rightly, that WotC has not been very proficient at the running of the D&D division of their company, that they seem out of touch - especially when you compare them to Paizo's thriving Pathfinder, which has for many thousands of long-time D&D players, because the edition of D&D to play. The folks at Paizo seem to get it; they developed a formula that works - that allows them to produce a full line of game products, including setting books, adventures, and various sourcebooks - and to do well with all of them (my one concern for Paizo is that their approach may, at some point, get kind of old - they've been doing basically the same thing for what, four or five years now? At some point they might need to "shake it up" and diversify their approach, but I digress from my main line of inquiry).
But I'm not simply blaming WotC for the state of the D&D Family, but they're just easy to pick on because they are (or were) the most prominent part of the "family," and thus probably the party most responsible for the current state of affairs. The above issue just complicates matters further - but it isn't the same thing as what I started with, which is the enormously confusing, complex and--most crucially--impenetrable state of the D&D Family as a whole.
The Holy Grail of edition design, at least from the business perspective, is how to bring in a new generation of players? 4E didn't really do that, at least nowhere to the extent that 3E did. As Ryan Dancey has pointed out, the more editions that exist, the more the market is splintered - and there becomes a kind of law of diminishing returns where each new "official" edition has less carryover from the previous edition, which makes appealing to that new generation all the more important. In prior iterations of the game--really up through and including 3.5--this was primarily a problem with the product cycle, but not it has spread to a wider domain, that of editions themselves.
WotC tried to appeal to a new generation of players with 4E, but the results, as we all know, were disastrous (to be fair, they couldn't have predicted to what degree or how popular Pathfinder would become). WotC seemed to focus their marketing sights on the computer game crowd, creating a game system--and, more importantly--a tonal quality and presentation that was more World of Warcraft than World of Greyhawk (compare, for instance, 4E post-Spellplague Forgotten Realms with the old gray box from the late 80s). They might have gained a few new adherents to step on board but they lost far more, mainly because the "feel" of the game resulting from a design approach heavily influenced by computer games and the above-mentioned qualities of presentation, distanced many of the old guard.
It is my opinion that what WotC forgot, lost, and/or willfully ignored, was that the engine of D&D, if you will, is the serious fan base - the folks that buy every book, that spend hours on message boards and reading obscure passages in game books that will never see the light of day but are just fun to read. That without these folks, the game will perish (as 4E seemingly has, at least for many). But the other, more crucial, part is that they forgot that what makes D&D great is not what it has in common with video games, but how it differs. Tabletop RPGs rely upon the play of the imagination, video/computer games do not - they are simulative experiences that people "plug into" and engage in without an active use of imagination.
But I am veering away from my initial thread, so let me come back to it in an attempt to wrap things up. Because trying to get back into the stream of the D&D Family is difficult, even for a "serious gamer" coming back from a hiatus, I've wondered: What must it be like for someone trying to break into the hobby, with a mild interest? What must it be like for that proverbial 12-year old first discovering the game? It would be daunting to say the least, perhaps even entirely off-putting.
There is no easy answer, but if there is one thing that, I believe, could best "heal" the fractured D&D Family and bring coherence back to it, as well as soften the ghetto boundaries so that it is more easy to come into and try out, it would be to do away with the notion of editions of the game, and create a Core/Basic D&D game that is the starting point, the baseline, of all other variations of the game. This is pretty much what WotC is trying to do with D&D Next, which I applaud them for. I don't know if it will be possible, but I think their best bet is to be very, very careful about not over-complicating the core game. It is the tendency of game designers to over-complicate things. Both 3.x and 4E were supposed to be simpler, easier to play games than AD&D because of the core mechanic, but the secondary effect of having a simple core mechanic is that it is easier to hang all sorts of complicating modifiers onto it.
So for D&D Next, I hope that they keep this in mind: a truly simple, core game. Imagine OD&D but for the 21st century, with 40 years of game design innovations in-between. If I were the designers at WotC I would ask this question: If we had to make D&D Next a fun, playable game in a single, inexpensive product no longer than the equivalent of a 96-page book (think three booklets of 32 pages each: player's guide, DM's guide, adventure & encounter book), what would it look like? Beyond that you can do whatever you want. Certainly if the first box set covered the first "tier" of the basic game, the second could cover another tier, etc; and then you could have hardcover books for the more advanced modules of the game - with a Player's Handbook, DMG, etc. In other words, imagine combining the best of BECMI and AD&D, but as one compatible game.
But the point is, that foundation stone - the introductory product for D&D Next - is so important; it may even make or break the game and the D&D Family as a whole. Certainly Pathfinder is on its own course now, and older editions and retro-clones all have their tried-and-true fan-base. But if we want to see the D&D Family not merely "survive but thrive" (to paraphrase an early Pathfinder add), then WotC really needs to get back to basics--and I mean really, not car-mechanic-ubergeek "basics"--and provide a product that can be sold in Toys-R-Us and Walmart, that can be given for Christmas and played out of box by eleven year olds, or that can be bought by teenagers and adults alike who are interested in getting (back) into the game that has brought so much joy, and inspired such imagination, for the last four decades.
