Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3044380" data-attributes="member: 2067"><s></s><s></s><s>Point 1: I accept that you believe it exists, but reject it's actual existence. It has no value outside of your own mind. I believe there is a "common stereotype," but I believe that D&D's interpretation of the stories is part of the reason this exists -- it's why dwarves, elves, and gnomes are all different.</s><s></s><s>Point 2: It would actually NOT make commercial sense to adhere to these steotypes. D&D3e has changed or violated or revolutionized or tweaked a number of their creatures and concepts to better fit the game and the modern audience, and has been the best-selling edition ever. The only way it would make commercial sense is if WotC's brand of halflings sold less than hobbits -- if their version negatively impacted sales and the common stereotype positively impacted sales, then this would be true, but throughout D&D, the opposite has remained true. D&D dragons, for instance, are really nothing like classic medieval dragons, yet books on D&D style dragons continue to be one of the best-selling subjects in 3e.</s><s></s><s></s><s></s><s>That's a pretty unfounded assumption, there. I don't think anyone can attribute D&D's success either in whole or in majority to any one aspect of D&D, but I can definately declare that it isn't because D&D was more true to the stereotype. Heck, even the NAME of D&D comes from things that aren't taken very much from the stereotype -- dungeons (which are a game environment) and dragons (which, in D&D, don't resemble any real-world myths whatsoever). That (and many other examples, such as 3e being the strongest-selling edition yet, despite changing much of 2e and 1e, the fact that old myths are inconsistant, etc.) shows that only a small part, if any, of D&D's success was because of familiarity with the elements of it's fantasy.</s><s></s><s>Your point about Spelljammer and Dark Sun is not attributable to one point of either of these settings. Rather, the history on the issue suggests that these settings splintered the buyer base, which is too small to be splintered successfully. So it's not that they weren't successful, it's that they didn't make D&D as a whole successfull because the people who played DS wouldn't buy SJ. </s><s></s><s></s><s></s><s>You're confusing comfort with enjoyment. People are comfortable with what they're familiar with. It's safe, it's known, it's controllable. If people payed for that, then horror movies and roller coasters wouldn't make economic sense.</s><s></s><s>But D&D has never been marketed or designed with other people's comforts in mind. It's a game that relies on one player to throw dangerous challenges at the others, after all -- comfort is not part of it's offerings, and never has been. </s><s></s><s>Not only that, but comfort only panders to a market interested in comfort -- the old and tired, by and large. WotC's strategy is to grow D&D by hooking youth on it, and youth goes to see horror movies and goes on roller coasters, so it's not comfort they're interested in -- it's excitement, danger, change, and difference. They don't want what they've seen before, they want something fresh and thrilling.</s><s></s><s>A very small but indicitive part of which is removing the hair from the halfling's feet, pulling up their hobbit roots and making a race that desires to go out and have adventure, rather than one who would sit at home and smoke pipeweed 'till they died of old age. A little more Tookish, to use a bit of ol' T-bag's lingo. </s><s></s><s>It only needs to be familiar enough to be relatable, and the idea of a small stealthy thief is definately familiar enough to be relatable.</s></blockquote>

Verification