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

[Doug McCrae]

Purely in terms of the PC races, yeah, D&D has taken a step away from Tolkien and Harry Potter, and a step towards WoW and Star Wars. Is that a bad thing? WoW and Star Wars are pretty popular. And there are still elves and dwarves and hobbits and wizards for people who like that stuff.

One could argue that 1974 D&D was taking a step away from traditional fantasy, which in those days would be King Arthur, Dunsany, Conan and Leiber towards weirdo modern crap like Lord of the Rings and Moorcock which had non-human protagonists and wizards as heroes, not just mentors or villains.

 

[AllisterH]

Purely in terms of the PC races, yeah, D&D has taken a step away from Tolkien and Harry Potter, and a step towards WoW and Star Wars. Is that a bad thing? WoW and Star Wars are pretty popular. And there are still elves and dwarves and hobbits and wizards for people who like that stuff.

You could argue that 1974 D&D was taking a step away from traditional fantasy, which in those days would be King Arthur, Dunsany, Conan and Leiber towards weirdo modern crap like Lord of the Rings and Moorcock which had non-human protagonists and wizards as heroes, not just mentors or villains.

This may sound silly but other than D&D fiction, do ha;f-orcs and gnomes show up in the "staples" of what is the influences for D&D?

I mean, if you asked anyone what a gnome is, you're getting either the lawn gnome or the harry potter house gnome (both far from their D&D depiction). Similarly, I don't think the Uruk-Hai could be considered half-orcs so where do they come from?

So again, I'll ask. Where exactly do gnomes and half-orcs get any attention from?

 

[Doug McCrae]

So again, I'll ask. Where exactly do gnomes and half-orcs get any attention from?

Good point. Gnomes probably come from Hugi in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions. Hugi is called a dwarf but he looks just like a D&D gnome, he's three feet tall and has big ears and a big nose. Half orcs are from Tolkien.

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.

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.

 

[mmadsen]

This may sound silly but other than D&D fiction, do half-orcs and gnomes show up in the "staples" of what is the influences for D&D?

Tolkien introduced the idea of a mixed party of wizard, elf, dwarf, etc., so it should be no surprise that we don't see many other "demi-human" races in fantasy fiction (as just-like-human protagonists) from before his explosion in popularity -- and since his explosion in popularity, fantasy fiction has generally followed his lead, with one or two tweaks "to be different".

To reiterate, most of the "staples" that influenced Gygax had no "demihuman" protagonists; that was a trope he lifted from Tolkien to help the popularity of the game.

Anyway, half-orcs and gnomes do seem to be the least popular races. Half-orcs are dumb, ugly brutes, and gnomes have always overlapped with hobbits (pardon, halflings). Everyone does know what a gnome is though...

 

[mmadsen]

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.

Of those, only Buffy captured a large, more-or-less mainstream audience. I love Vance's Dying Earth, but I wouldn't suggest basing D&D on it.

I think we're seeing the gulf between hardcore sci-fi/fantasy geeks and not-yet-jaded demi-geeks, who haven't become bored with elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, unicorns, etc.

 

[hexgrid]

Is my experience representative of the entire generation? No, probably not. But it doesn't appeal to anyone my age that I know. It's more a question of, why do they think it will appeal more to people my age, when my experience says it doesn't?

Yeah, well I don't personal know anyone your age who plays D&D at all, so you obviously don't exist.

But seriously, whenever it comes up, there doesn't seem to be any constancy at all regarding age and 4e opinion.

 

[mmadsen]

Personally speaking I would have preferred if PHB 1 was more traditional, with only slight adjustments on the usual array of races and classes and with a PHB 2 including more "exotic" races and classes, perhaps coming out sooner than later (say, six months after 1) so that WotC could still showcase their "new look". This way you start out with the core D&D we all know and love, and then can add-on and adapt it however you want (which you can do anyways, but I'm speaking in terms of WotC supports).

That makes perfect sense to me as well. You can always up the "wahoo" in supplements, but it's harder to ratchet down expectations.

 

[Mallus]

D&D 4e isn't too far out for any likely player of a fantasy role-playing game. Conversely, any edition of D&D is too far out for people not likely to play fantasy role-playing games (for instance, my wife ).

Fortunately, the current pop-cultural indicators (films, games, anime and manga) suggest a fairly significant number of likely role-players out there.

However, the fans of 'traditional fantasy' are a vocal lot known to conveniently forget that D&D was never traditional fantasy in the first place (hint: Dragonborn are not as strange as gelatinous cubes or Kwai Chang Caine palling around with knights and Conan --who shouldn't be palling around either, come to think of it).

 

[Turanil]

deleted

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

wahoo

4E is pretty wahoo, but no more than say, the Arduin Grimoire was in the 70s.

The difference is, the Wahooness is core now. I would prefer it be optional.

I think Hasbro did this for one reason. MERCHANDISING.

They're probably hoping that they can develop 4E IP into something mass-marketable. They are thinking of D&D as a movie franchise, and hoping that in the future they can make it popular enough to spin off action figures, cartoons, and the like.

But for this to work, they need for D&D to have a very distinct look and feel, so that its look will constitute a distinct and protected piece of intellectual property, much like star wars is.

Ken