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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 8077633" data-attributes="member: 6776259">D&D is a complex game. Far, far more complicated than even the most complicated popular boardgames. Like the boardgaming hobby, D&D is growing dramatically, and that growth is almost all coming from the more casual end of the market. So there's a tension between the system and the capabilities and expectations of newcomers.Even keeping the system as-is, WotC does a terrible job presenting those rules. You shouldn't have to memorize hundreds or even dozens of pages of rules to play the game. But someone at the table (typically the DM) does, because of how the rules are presented, in walls and walls of text. So even I, a grognard who has been playing for 40 years, has to carefully parse paragraphs of text to find out how many spells my Wizard knows at level 1.I'm a technical writer. My job is to present complex technical information to a non-expert audience in the most clear and concise manner possible. Rule one of technical writing is you do not present complex procedures (and most of the actions you take in D&D are procedures) in walls of narrative text. You present them in numbered lists. In steps. Using the most concise and clear language possible. And you do not present lists of options in walls of narrative text either. You present them in bulleted lists. Or in tables. This is all basic, basic stuff.WotC could condense the core mechanics of D&D down to 8 or 10 pages of procedures and lists. So why don't they? I suspect it's because:A) WotC fear that a concise summary of the rules would eat into sales of their core product - the PHB. They don't want a 10 page rules summary to be available (even a nicely formatted one they sell) because they want people spending $50 on the PHB instead.B) They know that half the audience for their products doesn't actively play. These customers buy D&D books as reading material, not rules references. And WotC probably feels these customers prefer discursive walls of text over numbered lists and summaries. And their dread of anything that smacks of 4E (which was the first edition of D&D that looked like professional instructional designers or technical communicators were involved*) means the WotC braintrust have swung dramatically in the opposition direction.There are entrenched interests and norms at WotC that work against making the game easily accessible and digestible as a game system to new players. I could see how that would be very frustrating for someone tasked with new player onramping.* The 4E Essentials Rules Compendium might be the most practical and effective book ever published by a D&D license-holder. Not only is it a marvel of concision and clarity, but the fonts, the layout, and the soft-cover digest format make it incredibly easy and pleasant to use at the table. Whatever else the D&D community feels about D&D 4E vs 5E, there's no question that 5E was a huge step back in document design and usability.</blockquote>

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