Dancey and Tweet on growing the hobby

[Belen]

We can help grow the hobby on our end too. There are several ways, including forming our our professional society, but also by sponsoring games at stores, schools etc.

 

[hong]

"Baseline" fantasy is what D&D is, and what attracts many gamers to it, IMO. Trying to expand into other areas too much by slapping the D&D logo on other genres may simply dilute D&D as a fantasy/sword and sorcery RPG.

To offer an example for comparison--Levis tried to use the Levis brand to sell non-jeans products a while back. The result was the image of Levis jeans was tarnished, people didn't have the same feeling of Levis jeans when you could also by Levis corduroy trousers.

Well, the obvious (?) parallel is with campaign worlds. Each theme is basically a different world, just like FR is "baseline" D&D, Al-Qadim is D&D with an Arabian theme, Birthright is D&D with a rulership theme, Ravenloft is D&D with a gothic horror theme, Planescape is... well, Planescape, and so on. I have no idea whether the conclusion is that it's therefore a good or a bad idea.

 

[buzz]

This might be taken a bit out of context or something, but I sure hope this isn't going to dominate WotC's direction too much.

FWIW, neither Dancey nor Tweet actually work for WotC anymore, so this is all hypothetical.

 

[johnsemlak]

Good point. However, I'd say that all of those campaign settings, except Ravenloft, don't stray too far from standard D&D, not nearly so much as D&D anime (IMO). Arabian Adventures and Planescape, for example, really just focus on stuff that already exists in 'baseline' D&D.

 

[Dareoon Dalandrove]

It's a good idea in theory, but not very practicle. Changing the "curtains" so to speak gives people who might play a prompt to buy the book. In practive it wouldn't work. Entertainment compaines do this all the time. Changing the cover of a cd or dvds. The might increase sales slightly but I think that they would end up with to much back stock. In stead they might print some "art books". maybe the size of a collectors comic book with the different characters drawn in different styles. Maybe a layout page of the different characters drawn in the different styles in the phb. Heck they could even use them in ads.

 

[Faraer]

Ryan also says,

If the rules become too simple, people will lose interest. D&D is aimed at a particular psychographic - a person who likes solving puzzles, strategic and tactical thinking, and demonstrating mastery. Rules complexity is an important part of satisfying that person's desires.

Backing up what I said on another thread, many people outside this group would also enjoy D&D and other RPGs if they were exposed to them.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Different "flavors" of D&D boxed sets is a great idea, but having them contain different rules (like super-leaps for the manga-style flavor) is not.

Variant rules is what Open Gaming License (and to a lesser extent the d20 license) is for. The great strength of core D&D is that it provides a core or default rules set, encouraging compatibility and not driving away people who don't want to tinker with the rules.

I was a huge fan of the Holmes blue-box Basic D&D set (I've managed to hang onto my original copy from when I was 10, and am using it still; my Porttown campaign started out exploring the dungeons beneath Zenopus's tower!).

My best friend bought the red-box Basic a year or so later. I wasn't aware of any difference in the rules, just that it had the Erol Otus cover and a different presentation. But this was enough for Brian and I to have enormous arguments about which one was cooler! (I'm now ready to admit he was right, but only because I know he doesn't read this forum...)

From this perspective, I can easily see why different people would buy one Basic set but not another based on appearance alone. But if Brian and I had to agree on whether we'd use the rules from his box or mine, we never would have gotten any playing done and our argument would have stopped being fun.

 

[diaglo]

The big problem with this is the same one that TSR had: too many similar books means buyer confusion and paralyzation. If there are four similar books and you don't know which one to buy, you buy none of them.

i agree.

there are sometimes reasons people call him Twit on other sites.

i would hate to see some of these theme products.

 

[Ghostwind]

One point that I think some folks are missing is that this WAS a plan drafted by Ryan et. al. Since he hasn't been with Wotc for quite some time, this is a plan that will not be implemented at any level under the current management structure and heirarchy. As Buzz said, it's all strictly hypothetical, and therefore moot unless a third party publisher wants to adopt the strategy like, say Mongoose?

 

[Dogbrain]

Expansion is expansion.

Tweet's silly little idea isn't "expansion", it's just window dressing. No new rules, no new settings, no new genre directions, just different sets of window dressing on the exact same books.