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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pickaxe" data-source="post: 3308011" data-attributes="member: 10812">Black Moria, your perspective is very interesting, at the very least because it runs counter to the standard interpretation of the RPG "generation gap": Old School = story-driven, heavy roleplaying; New School = rules-driven, heavy combat, tactics and character power. Monte Cook had an interesting article dispelling the notion of the "munchkin" and this division in general. His interpretation matches my own experience: differences in how people play are more a function of how long they've been playing then what year they started. You begin just thinking that all the new stuff that you encounter in the game (e.g., monsters and magic for me) is extremely cool (the "sense of wonder" phase), then you get into notions of character power and how you can optimize the rules (the "munchkin" phase), and finally, your appreciation of the game focuses away from the rules and more on setting, story, and roleplaying (the "nostalgic for first level" phase). (All phase names my own invention, and not Monte's fault.)The counter-argument to this usually comes from those who think edition X was far better than X+. When I switched fro Basic/Expert to AD&D, I did it reluctantly, thinking that more rules were not such a good thing (mainly because I was lazy and didn;t want to read them all). I then played a lot of 1e with a tight group of friends, and we all went through the "curmudgeon" phase when 2e came out, and we never switched over to it. Some of my group feel similarly about 3e. The main complaints? Too rules-oriented, not enough flexibility for the DM to emphasize a story line, too "video-gamey," etc. Personally, I think most of these problems were present in previous editions, but we already had to house-rule so much that we effectively house-ruled our way out of these problems.The interesting thing about the OP's story is that it shows that the undoubted original audience of D&D was "rules-oriented." Roleplayers and story-tellers came later.Knowing a number of wargamers myself, I would contend that it's not so much that wargaming has fallen out of favor as the fact that the wargaming community has a deliberately weak relationship with the RPG community. Wargamers are interested in historical battles and re-fighting them. Most wargamers are adults who think of their hobby as a scholarly endeavor; fantasy settings and roleplaying are of no interest to them.If there is a real generation gap, then there is probably more than one gap. D&D has essentially had four incarnations, starting with Chainmail/Basic/Expert and going through the three editions. Each reincarnation has been a response to the previous incarnation, both in terms of what was good and bad. Sacred cows were retained, rules were expanded or stream-lined. And each incarnation has its devotees who have invested too much to change to the next edition.So, to finally address the OP's question. I do not think that D&D will move towards simplifying rules, at least not in the sense of reducing the number of options or even the variables; I imagine that combat will still revolve around rolling an attack and rolling damage separately. The rules might become simpler in the sense of becoming more stream-lined or more internally consistent, which was a big part of 3e and the d20 system in general. But players want that complexity, because that is what makes it possible to create characters that you think are special. Even though it still takes a long time to play, D&D still gives you more options than a MMORPG.I also think that the question of marketing is beyond any generation gap, simply because people will play D&D for their entire lives. The base of the market for 4e will be the same as that for 3e, which was essentially the people who played 1e and 2e. The difference between the 3e market and the previous editions is that it brought in some new demographics, CCG players and Vampire: The Masquerade players in particular. (The former CEO of WotC talkes about this market analysis on his BLOG.) The question is where WotC can find new buyers for 4e; the most obvious place to my thinking is MMORPGs, but I don't think that crowd will want less complex rules or a killing of sacred cows.Just my 2cp.--Axe</blockquote>

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