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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6365491" data-attributes="member: 996">Wow, are we having a non-linear conversation or what?  I wonder about the nature of this 'wall' around the hobby  /that you brought up/ and how it's clearly been up since the end of the fad in the 80s, and all you an focus on is the last 6 years and trying to get back offended players with the fiction of a 'simple' (actually just familiar) game?  The 'high wall around the hobby' is not keeping Pathfinder or AD&D fans out, it's keeping /new/ fans out.  Appealing to grognards is not the solution - it may well be part of the problem."We seem to have had trouble getting new players for the past 30 years.""That's terrible, it must all be due to something we did 6 years ago, lets try to get old players back!"??? That's not much of an alternative.  We've got a hobby that was briefly huge, then turned insular with that 'high wall' you mentioned.  D&Ders didn't just stop making new friends in 1987.  And the game, itself, didn't change much for 20 years, then took on a distinct 'system mastery rewarding' character.  I think tradition and elitism account for a lot of the stones in that wall around the hobby.In the past, I always assumed D&D was held back by the 'geek' stigma, but that doesn't hold water anymore. Of course, those new/young players were all attracted and retained by 4e & Essentials.   Those last two are pretty nearly mutually exclusive.  The things that make the game familiar and 'really D&D' to us old-timers (and lapsed players) make it weird and less-approachable to new players (old or young).  The /attitudes/ of grognards don't help, either.  I'm going to be doing my bit to be the change I want to see in the game and make the effort to give new players at Encounters and conventions the best play experiences possible, in spite of the system, itself.  But that's just me.  That's about as positive a spin as you can put on "give up on an IP but, let it slide for a while instead of shelving it outright."  Frankly, between the tanking of Essentials and the announcement of 'Next' shelving still seemed like a very real worry.  In retrospect, it seems, the transition was about adjusting the franchise to a much lower level of investment.  You can get acceptable RoI with big investments and huge growth, or by slashing costs and divesting.  5e looks like the latter - much less risky, so we can at least not worry about the franchise being shelved right away.</blockquote>

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