D&D Family Problems (and the Impenetrability of the Game for Newbies)

[gamerprinter]

Honestly, when I first looked at AD&D in the early 80's, it was pretty complicated, and there were no other games to compare it to - at the time. Still, just in my rural area of northcentral Illinois, a lot of D&D gamers and tables came into existence.

I know some people want simpler games than D&D, and nothing wrong with that. That said, making a greater emphasis on a simple game, versus a comprehensive game (which D&D has always tried to be) is the wrong way to go. If you need a simple game call it D&D Lite, no need to further confuse newbies with one name fits all, as seem to be the attempt with DDN.

Incidentally, I'm a solid Pathfinder gamer, and personally have no need, nor great expectation for DDN. I don't feel that WotC needs to be the leader and wouldn't be disappointed if it never again was in that position. I'm a fan of the game D&D, not whichever owner it happens to be at the time. I have no more or less loyalty to WotC as I did for TSR.

 

[Stormonu]

I've got to say that if my first encounter with RPGs had been 3E, Pathfinder (!) or 4E, I would have never picked it up as a hobby.

I think there really, really needs to be an intro boxed set - something lite, and not much more complicated than a board game. Most of all, something with a good replay factor. The Pathfinder Beginner Box comes really, really close, but it still feels a bit hefty somehow.

I miss the old BECMI/BX Red box set. It was truly the D&D game I cut my teeth on (whereas the Holmes set went over my head). And at the time I got it, I was truly 12 years old.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I agree that the simple core does matter, and that starting with a less complex game is a good idea. It lines up well with the fact that there are two needed entry points to the game: A basic box set with the entire core game (not just levels 1 through 5), and a Rules-Cyclopedia-like book that is a full superset of the basic box.

The exact form of the advanced book could be the classic trio, a rules compendium, or whatever. The important point is that the advanced form of the game is just a set of options for expanding the core.

 

[amerigoV]

I never know quite what to think about these threads. Have a "D&D Lite for new players" always sounds good, but D&D has been successful in the past with a myriad of complexity. To me, if anyone is going to actually read the rules and learn the ins and outs its probably someone new to the hobby versus us grumpy old folks that have been through 2 or 5 edition changes.

I watch my stepson (18, into sports games) and detail / complexity are not things that put him off a video game. I have seen him sit there for hours customizing his player, his team, roster, and all sorts of other things (sometimes I wonder if he ever plays the actual game ) Sure its one data point, but the fact that Madden Football/other sports games have all these things a player can fiddle with tells me many people love to dig into this stuff. I played WoW for a bit and the stuff you needed to know to effective raid was dumbfounding to me (of course, I am an old man so I do not have time to commit to that).

To me its not the complexity, its the elegance of the rules that matter. Do the fiddly bits actually add to the game or are they just fiddly? Let me give an example: I recall in 3e the suggested modifier for a DM to use when they were in a gray area was +/-2. Makes perfect sense and it "feels" right. But if that is the case, why have a bunch of +/-1 fiddlies riddeled throughout the system? Cut the number of things and just have a lesser number of +2 things floating around. You still have a fairly complex system but not so mind numb(er)ing.

In other words, does the game have a natural flow for the GM and players, or is everyone stuck looking in a book the whole session? Personally, I find Savage Worlds to balance that elegance with tasty crunch darn near perfectly (but that is IMO).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I never know quite what to think about these threads. Have a "D&D Lite for new players" always sounds good, but D&D has been successful in the past with a myriad of complexity.

Bingo.

 

[Mercurius]

I never know quite what to think about these threads. Have a "D&D Lite for new players" always sounds good, but D&D has been successful in the past with a myriad of complexity.

I'll address this to [MENTION=50895]gamerprinter[/MENTION] as well. My response is, well, rather simple: If the choices are between both a basic and advanced game that are compatible with each other, and only an advanced game, why not have both? Best of both worlds and the existence of the former need not take away from the latter in any way, shape or form.

To phrase it differently, are any of your concerns about having both impossible or even all that difficult to get around? Is there anything inherently problematic about having both that takes away from an "advanced only" approach? If not then the issue a few people raise is only a matter of possible challenges to work around, rather than deal-breakers.

To put it one more way, having basic and advanced versions of the game (or a simple core and modular options) pleases both those that want a simple OD&Dish or Castles & Crusades-esque version of D&D, and those that want 3.5 or 4E or Pathfinder at their most complex - and potentially everyone inbetween. I mean, why not?

 

[S'mon]

I think the excellent Pathfinder Beginner Box covers the need for an introductory D&D set very well; it's 64 pages for players & 96 for GMs, but you don't need to read all of that to play. It blows the socks off everything since Mentzer.

 

[amerigoV]

I'll address this to [MENTION=50895]gamerprinter[/MENTION] as well. My response is, well, rather simple: If the choices are between both a basic and advanced game that are compatible with each other, and only an advanced game, why not have both? Best of both worlds and the existence of the former need not take away from the latter in any way, shape or form.

To phrase it differently, are any of your concerns about having both impossible or even all that difficult to get around? Is there anything inherently problematic about having both that takes away from an "advanced only" approach? If not then the issue a few people raise is only a matter of possible challenges to work around, rather than deal-breakers.

To put it one more way, having basic and advanced versions of the game (or a simple core and modular options) pleases both those that want a simple OD&Dish or Castles & Crusades-esque version of D&D, and those that want 3.5 or 4E or Pathfinder at their most complex - and potentially everyone inbetween. I mean, why not?

In an ideal world where money does not matter, sure. I have no problem with what you said. IMO, it all comes down to brand dilution and price point. 4e's worst point had to be when you had 4e, Essentials, and the Red Box all going at once. What do you buy if you are just getting into it? 4e had a real brand identity issue going there. By all accounts 4e was producing some good stuff before the end but the brand had become very confused.

For Pathfinder, I am sure the Pathfinder Beginner Box is very good (from what people have said). But you start out paying $35 list price for the beginner / basic game. If you love it, you then shell out another $50 for the "real game"?

For us hobbyists, neither of those are that big of a deal. On the branding, we will figure it out. On the price point - well, we are going to spend the money anyway.

I look at Savage Worlds (my go-to game) and I see a very tight brand identity. They have a streamlined version of the rules that you can try for free (they re-released them with an adventure, pregens, figure flats and the Test Drive rules as part of the FreeRPG day). You can buy the full rules for $10. Heck, I can go get 4 of them for the price of 3 on Amazon and basically have the rules for a new group of players for the price of a "typical" gaming book. Its a heck of a lot easier for me to get someone to give SW a good run because of the price point for THEM (not me - I bought their full hardbound book at the $30 price point).

On your third example of simple core plus complex modules -- I really think that is going to be a clusterf*ck. That would just result in Basic, Advanced Options, Maur Options!, You Cannot Live Without These Option!, and so forth. If you just wanted to run Basic, you are fine. If you want to run them all, you are fine. But I suspect the hobbyist will want to cherry pick stuff from all the books. Then we are back to 3/4e with all the tonnage.

D&D needs to find its Soul (tm) again and focus on that. D&D is part rules system and part genre. Trying to be all things to all people is just going to result in people wander off to find what they really want to play.

 

[Hussar]

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.

I'm curious actually, how you can categorically state this. How can you simply state that they lost more gamers than they gained? How do you know? How do you define "gamer"? I mean, how many thousands of people are now playing Encounters or ... what's that other one they've got running... Dungeon Crawl, or whatever?

The only thing we "know" is that at brick and mortar stores, Paizo is selling better than WOTC. Everything else is conjecture and guesswork. You, I and anyone else have zero clue how many 4e, 3e or whatever gamers there are out there. Never mind whether that number has gone up, down or stayed constant over time.

These kinds of threads always make me shake my head. Hey, you could be right. I dunno. But, at least I haven't made up my mind on the "state of the industry" based on pretty much zero evidence.

 

[n00bdragon]

I stopped reading at the WoW comparison. How is this tripe STILL being tossed around four and a half years after it was total nonsense?

4e has more in common with miniatures wargaming than with video games. It's exception based design would be immensely difficult to work into a video game and it's simplification of many table procedures which eat up time and minimization of dice rolling endear it to being played at a real table with real dice. It is absolutely, categorically, nothing like World of Warcraft. The only legs this charge stands on is "well, your powers come back after a certain amount of time" which is just about as baseless as saying it's just like WoW because it has classes and levels.