Is D&D 4E too "far out" to expand the market easily?

[The Little Raven]

Why does coming from D&D discount them?

You answered that with your next statement.

a) we were talking about recognizability in the mainstream culture

D&D gnomes aren't recognizable in mainstream culture because they've never hit mainstream culture. You know why? Because they've never had an iconic, consistent portrayal in the game for even D&D nerds to agree on. They're like dwarves, sorta, and like elves, sorta, and short like halflings. They've never really had a strong characterization aside from "I'm not an elf, dwarf, human, or halfling."

The most recognizable gnome to mainstream culture is the garden gnome, upon which David the Gnome was based. Warcraft gnomes would be a distant second (and are based on Dragonlance tinker gnomes), but the others have not come anywhere near to tickling the mainstream into noticing them (Harry Potter gnomes are barely a footnote in the second book).

 

[AllisterH]

I think a large part of the blame for the gnome's lack of traction among players rests firmly at the feet of TSR (and not WOTC of the 3e/4e era).

Seriously, what does it say to the players when even TSR in two campaign settings actually kicks the gnomes to the sides (Birthright and Darksun).

No other "core" race in 2E got treated as badly as the gnomes did.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nope. It's not too far out. If non-Tolkien-esque races were a deal breaker for the public, then Runequest with its Ducks, Jack Vance's Dying Earth with its Pelgranes, Buffy with its 'good' demons, Farscape with its amphibious, diminutive, multi-stomached, deposed monarchs and so forth would have utterly failed to capture an audience. As it turns out, it seems that most people want more 'new' and 'different', rather than more of 'the same old thing'

See J. to me, you're exactly right in a sense. None of these, except Buffy, were particularly successful with "the public". Runequest, whilst allegedly "challenging D&D" in sales at some unknown point in the '80s is pretty much a footnote in RPG history with absolutely zero presence in the "public consciousness" (and hell, not that much presence in the RPG player consciousness!) and, I would suggest, little to know appeal to a casual fantasy reader or viewer. Similarly, the Dying Earth books, whilst classics, are not well-known outside of specialist sci-fi/fantasy circles, and not well-read. Farscape was reasonable successful, I agree, but that's science-fantasy, which I think appeals to a rather different selection of people. Not that they're not worth appealling to, but I do think it's success was more of a "Star Wars" deal than a "LotRO" deal, as it were.

None of the properties you mention remotely compare to the success of more "standard" fantasy (with humans firmly at the center, other races peripheral at best), such as LotRO, Harry Potter, Narnia and Pirates of the Carribean. In TV, Buffy has humans firmly at the center again, with just vampires (who are essentially humans) and the odd demon or semi-demon (most of whom either act or look completely human, and certainly don't have alien cultures or the like). Sci-fi can go both ways, though I suspect human-o-centric stuff like Stargate or BSG is generally more successful than Farscape or Babylon 5 (indeed we know it is). Still, maybe Star Trek can be argued to the contrary (Star Wars is harder to, have only the Droids and Yoda as major non-human characters - the other non-humans are largely scenery).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not telling D&D what to do, but I do personally think that by going the "out there" route, towards sort of '70s fantasy imagery (floating mountains, everything is epic and glowing and so on) and near-Farscape (one of my favourite shows ever btw) levels of non-human-ness, they're directing themselves very much towards a "gamer-ish" audience, and completely ignoring a larger audience who are interested in fantasy, but not into this whole "ROCKIN' FAR-OUT FANTASY DUUUUUDES!" deal that for me, 4E seems to have.

Maybe that's the right decision. Or maybe they have plans for a non-D&D FRPG to reach out to the HP/Narnia/LotRO/human-o-centric literary fantasy audience. Certainly there's a whole generation of kids out there, growing up on fantasy via the above films/books (and Spiderwick etc.), but very much not the kind of fantasy 4E is full of. Perhaps this is what 5E will be about.

No other "core" race in 2E got treated as badly as the gnomes did.

GNOME POWER! <does gnome power salute>

I mean what...?

You're writing like they have some kind of "duty" to a particularly insipid fantasy game race. They don't. If gnomes don't innately "cut it", it's totally righteous to kick them to the curb. It's not treating them badly, it's being rational and reflecting what your customers want.

 

[mmadsen]

From a practical hands-on-the-rules standpoint it is. From a managing player expectations standpoint, it's not.

Really? I feel exactly the opposite. It's very, very hard to set a non-over-the-top tone once expectations are set for wahoo, but you can obviously keep introducing more and more magic, more and more intelligent races, etc.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The OP defines traditional fantasy as Tolkien and Harry Potter, so by this definition gnomes aren't traditional. Half-orcs sort of are except no half-orc is a protagonist in Tolkien.

I don't know if I said "traditional". If I did, I apologise and I misspoke. I'm talking mainstream, which may or may not (and is not in this case) be the same thing as traditional at any given time. Harry Potter, LotRO, Narnia, and Pirates of the Carribean are pretty much what I'm talking about. Human-o-centric tales where magic and magical items play a significant part, but which are clearly not '70s-style high fantasy, nor Star Wars style science-fantasy. I think it's a different market.

If by traditional fantasy we mean knights, distressed damsels, wizards and dragons - King Arthur stuff - then any non-human protagonist is non-traditional. Merlin is a half-demon, so he's actually closer to 4e, except that he's a mentor, not a protagonist, so not a PC analogue.

But what counts as traditional fantasy changes over time anyway. More and more I'm thinking we need to kill Tolkien dead and move on.

No disagreement here, except I'm not sure the road forward for most fantasy leads to the realms of floating castles, a multitude of non-human races, and a heavy emphasis on magic items and tools.

I do, however, say that you may be right that it's no bad thing to chase SW and WoW instead of other fantasy. I just think that with either a less extreme-fantasy D&D, or perhaps with a different product, WotC might be able to chase both markets. Perhaps they feel they've attempted to chase the "mainstream fantasy" market and failed, though.

On Merlin, though, I think you're pushing it a bit. He's of allegedly semi-demonic or fey ancestry, sure, but looks and acts human in pretty much all regards. He's not be-tailed and be-horned red-skinned, gold baubles for eyes (with no pupils) monstrosity from a distinct culture with it's own names, history and traditions. He's no more "4E" than he is 2E or 3E.

 

[SSquirrel]

I wonder because most popular non-gaming fantasy, whether it's LotRO, or Harry Potter, or what-have-you, posit human-o-centric universes, and previously D&D very much did this.

Considering TSR/WotC have never released a setting that didn't have humans as the dominant race, I don't see how it has stopped being humancentric.

I look at the art of 4E, though, and I very much do see Star Wars, and a world that's extremely distant from ours, almost incomprehensible on any level other than as part of game.

Yeah I keep geting pissed at our High Elf neighbor and his loud parties, not to mention teh Dwarves down the street always siting around singing songs while they get drunk, then hoping they don't take a mining pick to my car.

I guess what I'm saying is that the basic level of fantasy in D&D 4E seems so high that I can't really get a handle on how life would be in such a world, and I suspect that it's likely to actually kind of shock any non-gamer coming to D&D.

Adventurers aren't normal people and their life doesn't reflect it. Maybe the actual setting books will show more what their worlds are like to live in, altho there is a sample town in the DMG and between the PHB fluff and Worlds & Monsters, the world is spelled out to a reasonable degree.

What are your thoughts? Did 4E hit exactly the right level of fantastic-ness? Too much? Too little, even? Does this really matter to 4E's long-term success? Is 4E even likely to meaningfully expand D&D's market anyway, I guess is perhaps another valid question. I wonder perhaps if there's room for a more human and grounded, but equally playable fantasy RPG out there. I think 4E's general rules design makes it wildly more capable of getting new players in and having fun than other RPGs (including 3.5E, Pathfinder, Runequest etc.), but just as much I wonder if the setting is helping or hurting.

The shook things up a bit, gave us some new races and classes to play with and I'm glad. The races and classes they left out compared to 3.5 fell into one of the following categories typically:

a)broken in an overpowered way (Druid aka CoDzilla)
b)broken in an underpowered way (Bard, Monk)
c)one of the least popular options (Barbarian, Sorceror)
d)no real niche in D&D (Gnome)

The implied setting is just sort of there, I don't think they expect people to be running it much per se, they expect people might run a few things there until they can get their hands on FR or other settings. I may not be typical tho as I enjoy seeing some things change and feel that it has enough interesting things going on to draw new people in.

Oh and someone made a comment that people coming from Harry Potter might feel there isn't enough magic in D&D, I would agree for any pre-4E D&D. I ended up playing Wizards often (largely b/c no one else wanted to deal w/them) and got annoyed that I could only cast a few spells and then it was crossbow the rest of the day. I can toss Magic Missile or other at wills and cantrips all day long now, which definitely feels more magical to me.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I dunno what the preview books say but according to the DMG the default world in 4e is human dominated, or at least the last great empire was. DMG, page 150.

 

[The Little Raven]

You're writing like they have some kind of "duty" to a particularly insipid fantasy game race. They don't. If gnomes don't innately "cut it", it's totally righteous to kick them to the curb. It's not treating them badly, it's being rational and reflecting what your customers want.

Ruin Explorer, I must warn you that this continued insistence on having the same point of view on several issues as myself will only lead us to destruction!

 

[Storminator]

I think that people that believe kids today have an understanding of medieval mythology is pretty deluded.

There is none of that common historical pseudo-European background. There never was back in the day, which is why D&D has always been a niche hobby, and there sure isn't now.

PS

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ruin Explorer, I must warn you that this continued insistence on having the same point of view on several issues as myself will only lead us to destruction!

Yeah, seriously, don't cross the streams!

Ssquirrel - First off, you need to re-read the second quote you've used and edit your post accordingly. You seem to have taken the opposite of what I actually said.

Secondly, the PoL, does not, to me, seem to be very human-o-centric. All the races live together, and are seen on a daily basis, by default. It's not like Tolkien, were seeing a member of a non-human race is something of an occasion, and as the setting-design book says, the philosophy in 4E has been "Why use a human when a non-human could be used instead?". Time will tell how deep that goes. I have to admit, it seemed like 3.5E was going pretty much the same way, at the end, but that's beside the point. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying there's a whole lot of people out there who like fantasy, but not this kind of fantasy (imho).

Doug - Absolutely, but that's just one fallen empire among many, albeit the most recent one. Every town and city is full of the player races, in varying numbers. Eladrin, supposedly magical beings who exist partially in another realm have y'know, houses and stuff. I don't not dig it, it's just it doesn't seem like it's got much appeal to what I would guess was perhaps the majority of "fantasy enjoyers" (I mean, WoW seems awesomely popular, but it only has 2.5 million players in the US - The success of fantasy movies and books seem to suggest the total audience is a lot larger than that).

I just need to make it clear, by the way, that this is not about what I like, or what you like, it's about the market, or specifically, a potential market that doesn't ever, to me, seem to have had much attention focused on it.