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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5278280" data-attributes="member: 32164">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.)</blockquote>

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