Now is the time for Enworld to expand into an untapped market!

[Jer]

What do the over 55 crowd want?

If I look at my friends in that cohort, they're playing 5e with their grandkids and are using Wizards material to do it, so they seem to be covered actually.

(Snark aside - I think aiming at age demographics is a fools errand here - aiming at play experiences is a better approach. The OSR folks are definitely aiming at older style play experiences and those products cross age demographics. I've had discussions with 20 year olds who love OSR stuff but my 50 year old friends wouldn't play a campaign in an edition published before 4e if you paid them at this point. Trying to lump the over 55 crowd into a monolithic target audience doesn't seem like a good idea to me.)

 

[Blue]

You're not officially part of that crowd until you've received an unsolicited invitation from the AARP to become a member.

AARP sent me an unsolicited invitation to become a member when I hit 50. It's not an exclusive club.

 

[MichaelSomething]

What do the over 55 crowd want?

I was hoping we could hash that out here in this thread...

Art direction and writing tone seems to be a pattern in demand...

 

[John R Davis]

I was hoping we could hash that out here in this thread...

Art direction and writing tone seems to be a pattern in demand...

Oh ok.
-Art. Absolutely. The new stuff from WOTC hurts my eyes. Tone the colours down, so they are mostly B&W.

-Less Anthropomorphism. Every sentient thing shouldn't be a pc race.

-Maps. Less busy. Almost like Dyson logos but not quite.

-Snappier box text.

All this brings a 128 page book down to 60 or so. Much more likely to give it a go.

 

[MGibster]

Matlock the Role Playing Game: Players take on the role of lawyers and private investigators as they vigorously defend their client against false accusations in a game filled with courtroom drama, detective work, and putting younger people in prison. (The Game Master is called Andy.)

Murder, She Wrote: Players take on the role of friends of Jessica Fletcher as they assist her in solving murder mysteries and putting young people in jail. (The Game Master is called Jessica.)

We're Still Relevant, Dammit: The Role Playing Game: The premise of this game is torn from the headlines. In WSTD, players take on the role of dinosaurs trying to survive as a younger, newer class of creature emerges from the primordial ooze. This new class of younger animals, these so-called Mammalias, don't cotton to dinosaur traditions and refuse to lay eggs, feed their children "milk" produced from the bodies of their mothers, and constantly refuse to wear a jacket no matter how cold it is because "We can regulate our own body heat, so get off my back, Mom!" Will the newer generation get along with the older? Or will one or the other end up in tar pit? It's your campaign, you decide.

 

[RangerWickett]

New Monster: Phonebound Zombie - it staggers around holding its phone in front of its eyes so it's effectively blind, and can't hurt you. But somehow it's destroying everything that was good when you were growing up, and it's lazy, and probably a socialist.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I think there's a market for Gaming-Focused Retirement Communities opening up. Honestly I'd love to spend the last decades of my life just sitting around playing D&D with a bunch of friends.

 

[payn]

I think there's a market for Gaming-Focused Retirement Communities opening up. Honestly I'd love to spend the last decades of my life just sitting around playing D&D with a bunch of friends.

I'd strongly consider something like this.

 

[MGibster]

I think there's a market for Gaming-Focused Retirement Communities opening up. Honestly I'd love to spend the last decades of my life just sitting around playing D&D with a bunch of friends.

I've joked with a few of my friends about this. It'd be just like summer when school was out and we'd just pass the time away gaming. Maybe we could even bring bad Star Fleet Battles and Car Wars?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I know I laughed at the OP, but, thinking about it, it's not actually such a far fetched idea.

What would it look like though? In my mind, some of the biggest changes wouldn't be mechanical but physical. I made the mistake of opening up my 3.5e PHB the other day and my eyes started to bleed from trying to read that tiny, tiny black text on a yellowy background. So, I would think that actually aiming books at people who need reading glasses isn't a bad place to start. Let's get up to 10 or 12 point non-serif fonts with high contrast so the older of us out here aren't going bloody blind trying to look up a rule.

Perkins has mentioned in some of the videos that 2024 D&D is planned to be printed with bigger fonts with our (and their) aging eyesight in mind. So WotC hasn't entirely abandoned us olduns!