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

[CountPopeula]

The illusion isn't good enough.

I see this in some places in 4E, one of the things I didn't like. Things like "daily, encounter, and at-will" and "healing surge" seem like placeholder names that someone forgot to change.

But as for the races being too far out, the topic at hand... the most popular role-playing video game franchise of all time has main characters to the tune of a sasquatch, a moogle, bunny-girls, and whatever the hell Freya in FF9 was supposed to be... some sort of white dragon-rat.

On top of that, the humans are all pretty weird. No one really cared about all the odd races in Final Fantasy, and in fact, they made it more interesting than "oh, elves and dwarves and hobbits."

With D&D trying to establish itself as a brand, the move is going to be away from the classical and into the off-beat.

 

[AtomicPope]

Boy you're a fun hate.

I mean date

 

[GnomeWorks]

Boy you're a fun hate.

I mean date

Say what?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There's this god in the DMG for jailers and torturers. It sort of implies that jailers are worshippers of this god by default, and I don't get why any good king would employ a jailer anymore. For an occupation like jailer, it's just weird flavour, and a poor design decision at that IMO. Prison screws are people too.

I might have bought it in some specific world like Dragonlance, but the implied setting is more all-encompassing than that, so the "doesn't make sense" comes home to roost all the more.

Okay... I really feel like this is blowing things out of proportions, but if that's how you think, what could I do to "help" you? Maybe it helps to remember that jailers in a medieval setting are probably not nice guys, and that their alignment indicates that the default world assumes that trying to redeem a person is better then punishing him.

 

[rounser]

Maybe it helps to remember that jailers in a medieval setting are probably not nice guys

True, but that's never stopped D&D from employing modern morality virtually everywhere else...apart from the genocide and manslaughter stuff, natch.

I guess I don't look to torturers and jailers as natural villains for a D&D campaign. For a Disney fairytale, maybe, or as an obstacle to be overcome, definitely...but there was no default stigma against jailers, alignmentwise, that I remember. Torturers are definitely more shadey by profession, as are assassins. With enough thought I think you could come up with unaligned examples of both, though.

It just seems to be flavour text with these repercussions that don't really jive with what I'd expect of a D&D world.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Huh? What are you referring to?

He's talking about Torog, the evil God of the Underdark; it's mentioned in the fluff that he's worshipped by jailers, for example. IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably. Nobody's easier to please than someone who wants to be displeased...


Edit: Like a lot of other posters in this thread, I don't see 4e being too "far out", by any means. As much as I love Tolkien's works, there's plenty more to fantasy than him (and the innumerable hacks producing tons of EFP influenced by his work).

 

[rounser]

IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably.

That's why I edited that part of my reply out - on second thought, I thought it a bit petty. It didn't help my personal saving throw versus disbelief, though, even though I may seem to be reaching there.

 

[AtomicPope]

The entire idea that they're targetting young people is absurd. The fact is ever since I was a kid I played D&D with people older than me and younger than me. That hasn't changed a bit. D&D doesn't focus on "the youth." They tried that during 2nd Edition and TSR went bankrupt (granted the company was run on a shoestring but still ). D&D markets to fantasy genre lovers. Right now it's competing with so many role-playing games they really need to recarve their niche in the fantasy genre. As is stands there are many RPG's that are drawing away the D&D audience and I put the 3e system at fault.

The "aggregate bonus system" of 3e is just as unrealistic as 4e but forces to players to make choices based on system limitations as opposed to guided/intentional designs. I'm currently DMing a group of hard core 3e gamers in 4e. After two sessions they were hooked. The oldest is 49 while the youngest is 14. Their praises all focused on making effective characters at 1st level. I'm happy to say, "there's a trait which is very un-D&D like."

Ever since I'm approached by the bandwagon haters that are now asking me to run a game for them. After hearing praises from the others they want to give it a try. Fourth edition is just trying to take the work out of gaming. Not market to a new audience.

 

[Snoweel]

Actually, I quite like alignments. A Good-Unaligned-Evil system would suit me fine, so "Rip out LG and CE!" would be more accurate in my case. What they've done in just cleaving 4/9ths of it away seems rather random. If they're gonna gut Chaos and Law (and it did indeed have it coming), at least get the job done, don't leave it there bleeding.

I ended up treating alignment exactly the way they've done it in 4e:

NG and CG were so similar they were combined
LE and NE were so similar they were combined and
LN and CN were essentially pointless - they're more personality than alignment so I got rid of them

Hey presto! 5 alignments.

It works mate.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

IMO, he's (again) reaching for something about 4e to dislike, and succeeding admirably. Nobody's easier to please than someone who wants to be displeased...

Yeah, I agree; people have the right to dislike an entire game line because of a couple of throwaway lines of flavor text, but I also have the right to snicker at them for being so picky.