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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6366594" data-attributes="member: 996">Nonsense.  The Essentials 'Red Box,' was, just like the 5e basic set, a simultaneous attempt to appeal to nostalgia for the longtime/lapsed player, and 'simplicity' for the new players.  Before that, the Encounters program was clearly targeted at casual players, and was much better-supported than it is now, with, like, actual printed adventures and poster maps, instead of expecting you to print out the module or keep it on your tablet.  Going back 20 years, OK, in 1994, 2e was not really doing anything to appeal to new players, I'll grant that.  But 3e had quickstart rules available for free, and it consolidated a lot of very unintuitive mechanics into the much more straightforward d20 core mechanic. The only way someone can see AD&D as simple is by conflating familiarity with simplicity.  AD&D was positively baroque.   Do boardgamers love TotM and callbacks to the idiosyncrasies of D&D in the 80s?   Because unless they do, WotC ain't reach'n for them with 5e.  You said: So, yes, that's what you chose to focus on.   It's not a new problem.  More people played the game in 1983 than since, getting them back has been the holy grail of D&D marketing, and hasn't met with any more success than seeking new players.  Each edition has shed players who preferred the ones before, or who just finally grew bored with it, or who finally found another game & a group willing to play it.And, while that may seem like a different problem from the equally-enticing and almost as unsuccessful attempts to attract & retain new players, it's entirely likely that they're related, in that it's virtually impossible to chase both at the same time (and trying both, as with the Essentials Red Box, for instance, seems particularly unsuccessful). That's not far off the mark.  4e /was/ a bid to expand the revenue of the franchise to unprecedented levels.  Grognards and edition warriors can't take much credit for ruining it - the bid was mostly focused outside the game itself, on the on-line DDI/VTT as a means of getting an MMO-like revenue stream, and that rather thoroughly crashed and burned in development. They really do.  I don't know how many new players you've introduced to the various editions.  I've run introductory games and convention games for decades, and Encounters for most of it's run.  The way 4e - and even Essentials - retained new players compared to prior eds was a remarkable thing to see.   Well that's why the game has been attracting so many new players for the last 24 years - oh, no, wait, it hasn't:  new players flocked to M:tG and LARPs all through the 2e era, while D&D was ridiculed as the poster-child for "ROLLplaying."When old-timers think about what would attract or please new players, we tend to think about the things /we/ liked about the game when we first tried it.  Thing is, we're often wearing some serious rose-colored glasses as we do so.  I skim through 5e and see a delightfully familiar game, with little details that take me right back to 1981, and being the youngest player at the table as we prowl through a dungeon the DM is randomly generating out of the back of the DMG as we go.  We Encounters DMs have a little less freedom this time around, but one thing I didn't find any prohibition against was using the more restrictive encumbrance rules, which seemed like a /great/ idea, at the time, when we were building characters.  For me, carefully tracking your gear & treasure to avoid encumbrance penalties was something I found engrossing as a kid.  Last night, when half the party was trying to drag the unconscious other half of the party to the Keep, I kinda had to relent a little bit... I suppose.  Or some people could just be inclined to find something to complain about, regardless of what WotC does.   Sheesh.  Every generation seems to get the idea that the ones following it are screwed up and undeserving. It's also funny because you're effectively blaming 'kids these days' for not liking their fathers' D&D, rather than blaming the game for not appealing to them.  (And yeah, go ahead and turn that around and say I blamed edition warriors for taking up arms rather than blaming the game that provoked them to do so.  I totally do. Unreservedly.) You don't have to take away from D&D to enable casual gaming.  You have to add to it.  D&D has long been fantastic for the dedicated/obsessive D&Der.  It's complicated, vague, and just tempts you to try to fix it up into some ideal perfect system that you'll never get right but have a lot of fun tinkering with.  All those 'fantasy heartbreakers' produced over the years illustrate the phenomenon.  As do all those variants and house rules of the 0D&D and 1e AD&D eras. And how many even enter the hobby vs just trying it once and walking away?  Remember that "high wall" around the hobby?</blockquote>

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