Essentials: which new players?

[Jhaelen]

I assume that's a specific reference but it escapes me.

I basically copied the Wikipedia description for the 'Magic: The Gathering' collectible card game, hence my reference to the different colours...

 

[ourchair]

I think that people who can't get, or dislike, the concept of exception based rules are the ones for whom this game is not a good fit, and probably are more likely to be a 3.x/Pathfinder fan. These are the people who like an explanation in the rules for every ability a creature can have, how that fits into the overall mechanism of the game. Players who like extensive understanding over how the system works, and how their characters interact with that world. 4E throws that all out the window.

I didn't mean to suggest anything 'against' 4E. I'm an ardent 4E addict, after all.

I'm just trying to explain how trying to extrapolate an intended audience for Essentials ('old new players' vs' new new players') based on the mechanics (were they conceived as 'The Return of the Old School Mechanics' or the 'Less Exceptions-Based Resource Management, More At-Will Empowerment!') is a mistake, since it assumes that all players of a given demographic think/learn rules the same way, when they don't.

(/BA Psych degree talking)

 

[JohnSnow]

I didn't mean to suggest anything 'against' 4E. I'm an ardent 4E addict, after all.

I'm just trying to explain how trying to extrapolate an intended audience for Essentials ('old new players' vs' new new players') based on the mechanics (were they conceived as 'The Return of the Old School Mechanics' or the 'Less Exceptions-Based Resource Management, More At-Will Empowerment!') is a mistake, since it assumes that all players of a given demographic think/learn rules the same way, when they don't.

(/BA Psych degree talking)

So, not specifically addressing you, but I'm amazed at the number of people here who assert without evidence that the Essentials approach is just not going to acquire new gamers. I'd be interested in knowing what these people suggest instead, but maybe they have no suggestions. Which is fine, because it's not their job to get more customers. It IS WotC's.

Tying character class choice more directly to narrative makes the game more accessible to people who aren't already D&D players. There's a target audience for D&D that is, essentially, "people who read or watch fantasy or play other fantasy games." What they need is an introduction to how D&D works, and how choices in play create a story. Hence, the solo adventure.

It's set up as one gargantuan version of: "Imagine you're in a forest when monsters attack. What do you do?" As you make those choices from an intuitive understanding of fantasy fiction and what you'd like to do in a fantasy story, you create a character and the game is explained. Equating in-game choice with the more familiar structure of a narrative makes the game more accessible to most people than does explaining the rules FIRST.

Regardless of D&D being a team game or not, new people need some sense of the flow of the game. Relying on existing players to introduce new ones will limit the reach of the game. The height of D&D's popularity with the general public was ALSO the heyday of the Red Box. Does that tell people anything? It should. And yes, those people are still out there, so if you can reacquire some of them, you should try to. Moreover, many of them now have kids themselves, or their friends do. And they'd be far more inclined to give a $20 Red Box as a gift than $90 worth of hardcover books. The solo adventure also conveniently and quickly explains to the nostalgia (or veteran) player the difference between the current rules and those of whatever old edition of D&D they used to play.

Similarly, broadening the number of options for new players to include those that appeal to different personality types means people will have less trouble rounding up enough of "the right kind of player" to get a game going. Your group includes just one narrator, one gamist player who loves resource management, and a bunch of more casual types? No problem. They can still play a game together. It is rather convenient that many of the same design aesthetics that will appeal to brand-new players also tap the nostalgia of old gamers.

Broader appeal = more chance at acquiring new gamers. Or reacquiring old ones.

Trying to do that is just a smart strategy for the brand. Pure and simple.

As an aside, Wizards ignored one red flag when they made 3e. I remember a quote something to the effect that if they could have packaged Jonathan Tweet (or was it Skip Williams?) with it, the game would have been perfect. As a marketing person, that ought to have been a screaming, blaring, flashing red sign that the game had become too damn complicated. But back in 2000, everyone was all about network effects and how the internet was going to eliminate them from consideration. So they decided it wasn't a big deal. Now, 10 years later, we have learned that's total crap. Both network effects and learning curves still matter. Transparency isn't something you can ignore or dump on the internet and expect it will just "get solved." If anything, the internet has led to a proliferation of entertainment options that has made a short (ideally solo!) learning curve MORE important than it used to be, not less.

(/MBA talking.)

 

[ourchair]

In my honest and very long time opinion, I don't believe Essentials is going to bring any more new gamers to the table than normal 4th edition has.

Seems to me that Wizards is grasping straws here and it almost seems like they are desperate for customers.

There is nothing that an Archer Ranger nor a Two Weapon Fighting Ranger can't do with regards to teaching younger kids how to play the game that the Essentials can do better.

Most people need a group to play D&D. This solo crap is what it is in a nutshell. Having a group and using trial and error is how the game is learned. I'm sorry but there is no gaming group on this planet that has played any RPG perfectly right out of the box. Perfection is something that Wizards is trying to reach and I'm afraid that will never happen.

Sticking some books in a "Red Box" isn't going to make a difference. Wizards bringing out the "Red Box" "again" should be your clue as to which crowd they are gearing this toward.

Another thing I want to know is what happens when a new DM that starts with the Essentials suddenly has people coming to their table bringing Pre-Essentials characters to the table?

I think this is going to be a train wreck and I can't help but watch. If I am wrong then good luck to Wizards and if I am right well then Wizards is going to need all the luck they can get.

I agree entirely and wholeheartedly with your premise, but not necessarily with your supporting statements.

For me, I feel like it is going to be easier for 4E DMs with moderate experience to teach newcomers how to play 4E with Essentials classes, than without. And I say this as someone who teaches a lot of total non-gamers how to play 4E.

In theory, you can teach without Essentials just as well as with it: Distribute the mechanics at a measured pace for optimal learning, restrict access to the entire character sheet until 30 minutes in, that kind of thing.

But there're way too many smart asses who think that this approach is condescending to them, when in fact it's a way of managing the learning process and not reducing every first session to a single encounter bloated by rules discussions.

 

[ourchair]

So, not specifically addressing you, but I'm amazed at the number of people here who assert without evidence that the Essentials approach is just not going to acquire new gamers. I'd be interested in knowing what these people suggest instead, but maybe they have no suggestions. Which is fine, because it's not their job to get more customers. It IS WotC's.

But it was Festivus talking? *confused*

Well IMHO, I think Essentials is definitely going to acquire new gamers and agree with the many alls of your premizes, that is to say the way narrative and mechanics are tied together to make things more accessible.

Also, by MBA do you mean 'Melee Basic Attack'?

 

[JohnSnow]

But it was Festivus talking? *confused*

I picked your quote 'cuz I agreed with you and liked the (/BA psych degree talking) line, not because I disagreed with you. Less confused?

I also agree with you and think it's totally true that an experienced DM can guide a new player through the game with the pre-existing 4e books. But, there's two problems with that approach:

1) For the player who might find the PHB class structure too complicated, there's no simpler alternative. You certainly have the right to decide you don't want "that sort" in your game, but in my experience, you're keeping out some great players simply because they have a different aesthetic sense of "fun."

2) Who guides someone into the game if they don't have a friend who already plays? Who introduces the 14-year old kid? If the only way to play D&D is to be taught to play by someone who already does, it's never going to be more than a niche hobby. And the reason its still around is that, at one point in the '80s, TSR decided it could be learned "out of a box." Did those people learn as well or as quickly as those who were shepherded into it? Of course not, but they DID learn. Many of the game's current players come from that era.

Yes, some smaller fraction of people are unintimidated enough to have been able to grok the game out of the 3e and 4e books, just like some were able to pick the game up from the 1e books. But without those old boxed sets, our numbers today would be MUCH smaller than they are.

Presentation matters. The three D&D hardcover rulebooks scare off a LOT of people. And the further into an edition you go, the more intimidating it gets. We may know that you only NEED the PHB, MM, and DMG in order to start play. But how is a new player to know that? How is a parent contemplating a game to buy for their kid supposed to know that? And, oh yeah, you need maps and minis and dice and...

For maximum accessibility (and that's what we're talking about here), what you want is a complete, playable game in a box. And some guidelines of "what next?" The Red Box supplies ALL of that. And the rest of the Essentials line provides a pretty straight-forward "what next." It also provides varying degrees of complexity in character class - again to improve its accessibility.

D&D Essentials is what BECMI D&D should have been: the same game presented in a more user-friendly format. The only flaw back then is that TSR made the mistake of supporting two different, but similar, games (D&D and AD&D), and essentially fighting an edition war with itself.

They also fell victim to the belief that every new game had to have its own new system, rather than just being built on the engine that ran D&D. Sticking to the basic engine for Star Frontiers, Boot Hill and Gamma World would have improved the system MUCH faster (and probably cemented TSR's early competitive edge). That would be a separate topic, but the new Gamma World boxed set means that they now see at least one of those properties as bringing value-added as a rules-supplement to D&D. So it speaks to the consistency of their current marketing.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

So, not specifically addressing you, but I'm amazed at the number of people here who assert without evidence that the Essentials approach is just not going to acquire new gamers. I'd be interested in knowing what these people suggest instead, but maybe they have no suggestions. Which is fine, because it's not their job to get more customers. It IS WotC's.

Not sure if I'm lumped in with those people or not, but I want to make a subtle distinction. It may well acquire plenty of new gamers. The presentation, vis a vis box, price points, etc is clearly aimed at the actual newbie. But that is quite distinct from the rules changes. In my mind, taken together, the presentation and the rules changes represent two steps forward and two steps back. Alas, there may not be any coming together, as opposites don't really attract in this situation.

IME, the 4e rules were already doing a very good job with new gamers. It was my assertion in a couple of threads that 4e is pretty intuitive to a new gamer, possibly, IMO more so than what we've seen of the martial classes in 4eE.

If WotC has solid data to prove me wrong (i.e. lots of newbies who can't grok the rules), that's fine. If they've decided that lapsed gamers are as big or bigger a target, that's also fine. I'm just speaking from my experience, which is that 4e has been far easier to bring to new gamers than 2e or 3e ever were. The creeping return of old and busted D&D memes to 4e isn't going to make it easier to keep new people playing, IMO. YMMV and all that.

Besides, the kid who goes out and buys the set or gets it as a gift is a different customer than the ones I'm talking about. I'm thinking about all the cats who I've watched get into D&D using WoW or tactics games as a gateway drug. The martial classes in 4eE, at least, are moving away from a successful model for netting those players, IME.

 

[Scribble]

IME, the 4e rules were already doing a very good job with new gamers. It was my assertion in a couple of threads that 4e is pretty intuitive to a new gamer, possibly, IMO more so than what we've seen of the martial classes in 4eE.

If WotC has solid data to prove me wrong (i.e. lots of newbies who can't grok the rules), that's fine. If they've decided that lapsed gamers are as big or bigger a target, that's also fine. I'm just speaking from my experience, which is that 4e has been far easier to bring to new gamers than 2e or 3e ever were. The creeping return of old and busted D&D memes to 4e isn't going to make it easier to keep new people playing, IMO. YMMV and all that.

I'm not sure it's so much an intent to bring back lapsed gamers as people argue (though I'm sure they wouldn't mind that as well.)

I'm guessing that while the rules for 4e were/are easy to understand, there are probably a lot (many of them on this board) that can't get past the "why can't my fighter retry that encounter power???" thing.

So while they understand quite readily "how" an encounter power works, they can't (or in some cases don't enjoy) aligning it to their imaginations.

I don't think it's fair to say that's an issue only "lapsed players" have.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I'm guessing that while the rules for 4e were/are easy to understand, there are probably a lot (many of them on this board) that can't get past the "why can't my fighter retry that encounter power???" thing.

So while they understand quite readily "how" an encounter power works, they can't (or in some cases don't enjoy) aligning it to their imaginations.

I don't think it's fair to say that's an issue only "lapsed players" have.

Sure. But again, we're back to dueling anecdotes and IME here, but... IME, the best sources of new PnP gamers are people who are accustomed to using powers, cooldowns, etc. They are completely aware that D&D is a game, and many games work that way for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with balance and playability.

No one who plays WoW, for example, thinks that having no cooldown on their Rogue's Sprint movement ability would be at all reasonable, or that they should be able to use their hardest hitting or most debilitating attack over and over and over again without cooldown, penalty, or set-up. Game constructs like combo points and cooldowns keep the playing field level and fair and provide options and depth of choice. Same thing with cooldowns, coordinated multi-character attacks, and dozens of other game methods of limiting attack options in tactics games, which are HUGE on those handheld systems that every other kid in the industrialized world is currently lugging around like a security blanket.

These people are also very good at looking at the relatively simple and abstract things happening on a screen (or table) and investing them with much greater pizazz. After all, looking at the back of your Fury Warrior while you maintain your dps rotation isn't actually all that exciting. It gets repetitive, in fact. But when those same people describe the fight later, it's EPIC.

Lapsed players, OTOH, are more likely to view D&D less as a game and more as a simulation, IME. Those people are more likely to have problems with the obvious game constructs of 4e. My opinion and experience, again. Reports vary, obviously.

 

[JohnSnow]

Sure. But again, we're back to dueling anecdotes and IME here, but... IME, the best sources of new PnP gamers are people who are accustomed to using powers, cooldowns, etc. They are completely aware that D&D is a game, and many games work that way for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with balance and playability.

We may be at dueling anecdotes, but I can guarantee you that WotC isn't basing this decision on anecdotes. What they've based it on are customer surveys - also known as market research.

We can throw dueling anecdotes all day, but if WotC is taking this direction with Essentials (and, hey, look, they are!), they have a business reason for it. So, for everyone saying "If WotC has data to support this direction is needed, then fine," (like you did Canis), then congrats. They do.

Professional businesses don't generally make decisions like this in a vacuum. It's one of the things that separates Wizards from companies like Green Ronin and Paizo. The latter have to rely on anecdotes and online feedback. WotC (Hasbro) is big enough to do real market research. Which will give you information you might not have expected. Like, for example, that as simple as the 4e classes are, some people want simpler ones.