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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 3501254" data-attributes="member: 697">There's an interesting paradox in listening to customers, particularly when it comes to RPGs.There are basically three customers for D&D: people who play lots and lots of D&D, people who play some D&D, and people who don't yet play D&D.The problem you run into is that, of your three groups, the first one is by far the most vocal and most demonstrative. They drown out the other two groups. The key is, if you listen only to that first group, you lose the other two groups. Soon enough, your game is dead.Take a look at a game like Champions/the Hero system. Way back in the early 1980s, on the day before the first Champions boxed set came out, there were (effectively) zero Champions fans. By definition, the designers had to "listen" only to people who didn't play Champions when putting the game together. The result was a rulebook that clocked in around 80 pages.Over time, as Champions built up fans, I imagine that the designers started listening to their fans when it came time to release the next edition. The established gamers, the guys who knew Champions inside and out, wanted more, more, more.With each new edition, Champions swelled from 80 pages to, IIRC, 400+ pages in the latest edition. The book I own, I think it's 4th edition, is over 300 pages.In many cases, the needs of your most established fans contradict the needs of the other two groups. It's a hard lesson to learn, and a hard path to pursue, because almost every venue of communication you have available is dominated by the first group.You can't ignore the hard core fans, hence the changes to how we handled existing monsters in MM V, but you can't cater to them exclusively, either.As a potentially interesting side note, the stuff I see via email is much different than message board talk. For instance, with the monster makeover series I received probably 50 - 100 emails for each column. About 80% of them were positive, 20% were generally positive but took issue with a specific decision or idea, and 3 were screechingly negative. I think it's the public nature of message boards, along with the greater perceived anonymity, that makes people more negative on boards.</blockquote>

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