Dancey and Tweet on growing the hobby

[HiLiphNY]

Whenever I hear of "The Box," I start to tighten up and think of how relatively useless it is/was. Then, I come to my senses and realise that in fact, the first thing I bought to self-teach the game was the old blue box, for "Experts." Laff - Isle of Doom, here i come!

Think what you may of the box, but it really does seem to be a solid gateway into the hobby.

 

[Clint]

i agree.

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

i would hate to see some of these theme products.

Remember, a product like this would not be aimed at you. You're already in, and these are gateway products.

In my experience, these products would be useful for adults who wouldn't consider D&D and also would categorically pass on any product that has the words: "For ages X and up" on it, like most gateway products are for D&D. They'd be for my girlfriend or work friends who have never played, but aren't kids. These people aren't going to be roped in by art and packaging created primarily with teenage boys in mind. (I say this as a late twenties guy who loves the hobby, but it's true.) If my girlfriend is into anime (and she is), then anime packaging might lure her in by using something she already likes (anime art) and then using it to draw her into something else (gaming). In her case, it was the female soldier on the cover of Shadowforce Archer, who reminded her of the lead character in Alias, her favorite television show. And now my girlfriend is a happy Spycraft player.

I can't say if the adult market is even worth targetting, though, because I didn't do any research on this. I assume that it isn't, since WotC isn't doing it.

-Clint

 

[buzz]

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

But are any of them good reasons?

There are a lot of stupid people in the world. Tweet is not one of them.

I'm not sure how I feel about the theme idea. On the one hand, I agree with PCat that it could cause confusion if all the different types were introduced concurrently. OTOH, if WotC released a theme PHB every GenCon, and maybe followed it up with some theme-related products over the course of the year, I might be interested. It's certainly more palatable than doing an actual revision every other year.

Of course, it'd be a PITA if the page references changed with each theme.

Player 1: "The spell description is on page 223."

Player 2: "I don't see it."

P1: "Oh, well, page 223 in the Victorian Cthulhupunk '07 PHB."

P2: "Crap. I've only got the Disturbing Furry Anime '05 PHB."

DM: "Are you people ready to play yet?"

 

[Greatwyrm]

I think one good way of expanding the hobby would be a resurgance of Choose Your Own Adventure books. They were one of the things that got me interested in D&D in the first place.

D&D already supports a large amount of fiction, why not make CYOA books for FR, Eberron, Grehawk, etc.? The last couple of pages in each book can basically be a teaser to get you into D&D. Explain how CYOA books give you options to a path, while D&D is only limited by your imagination.

 

[Davelozzi]

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

Are you sure that Tweet doesn't? I thought he still worked there but was just on some other projects besides D&D.

 

[buzz]

Are you sure that Tweet doesn't? I thought he still worked there but was just on some other projects besides D&D.

Hmm...

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/3e_bio_JonT.asp

This bio is old, but it does say that he's a senior designer there. I was under the impression that this was either no longer true, or that he doesn't work on much D&D product any more. The P&P db shows that, barring the Minis HB, he's not doing a lot of D&D product. (Sure, he's listed as part of the 3.5 design team, but I thought that was just a credit, and it was Andy Collins et al who worked on 3.5).

I'd be happy to be wrong though. Tweet r0xx0rs my s0xx0rs.

 

[d20Dwarf]

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?

It seems to me that things like OGL Horror and Cybernet, etc., are close enough already. They reprint the majority of the core rules and rewire them to reflect the new genre. They might add more than what is proposed by Tweet, but OGL games are pretty close, in my estimation.

 

[Monte At Home]

Jonathan still works at WotC. He is a manager of the Miniatures Game.

Some context: Jonathan's idea was actually proposed for 3.0, before it came out. He mentioned it while we were developing the "look" of 3rd edition, when different people had different ideas of what that "look" should be. His idea was that the rules were actually general enough so that with only small, entirely nonsubstantive tweaks to the text (or perhaps even no tweaks to the text), we could give the rules as a whole a very different feel.

This idea, for example, would have intercepted and prevented all the long threads I've seen here about the "spiky armor 3E look" that some people really hate, because there would have been a classic fantasy version of the rules they could pick up, where the fighters look like arthurian knights and the halflings look like hobbits with hairy feet.

His point was, and I agree, that a lot of the feel of the game is defined by the presentation, not the text. Once you've done the work of putting the rules together, giving it a different presentation is a simple matter. It would be like different flavors of candy or different colored school notebooks. Everyone would have their favorite, but in the end the actual content would be the same, and it was the content we were trying to sell, not the "feel." Our agenda (speaking only for the designers) was to create a new rules system, not to give D&D a specific look or feel.

(In other words, individual groups should give the game their own feel, and no one should feel put off from adopting the content because they didn't like the art style that had been chosen.)

 

[francisca]

I think one good way of expanding the hobby would be a resurgance of Choose Your Own Adventure books. They were one of the things that got me interested in D&D in the first place.

Those were great. Still have about 6 or 8.

Do you also remember the
one-on-one books?

Take the O-O-O or the CYOA idea and bundle it with minis and tiles, and I think that would be a great gateway product. Why this in addition to the Basic Boxed set? Because with the boxed set, somebody has to DM, and I think that finding a decent/willing DM is a barrier to entry-level play. Hell, a bad DM can put even an experienced player off of the game.

 

[buzz]

Everyone would have their favorite, but in the end the actual content would be the same, and it was the content we were trying to sell, not the "feel." Our agenda (speaking only for the designers) was to create a new rules system, not to give D&D a specific look or feel.

Isn't this sort of what the d20STL/OGL accomplishes? Granted, the products we've seen so far do more than just change the cover art, but are the various d20-based fantasy RPGs really so different?

FWIW, I like the dungeonpunk look for the most part, but if I had been able to choose between that and a PHB that had a more traditional look (actually, sort of like WoT), I probably would have gone with that. Heck, if someone could make me a PHB filled with art by Dave Trampier, I'd buy it and never look back.