D&D 4E Paizo and 4e.

[Sundragon2012]

Here's the psychology of it.

Those who are hard-core anti-4e, those who are calling it the "New Coke" of D&D are just like everyone else, beholden not to reason but to viceral emotional responses. All people, myself included, react to change emotionally first and this reaction is based on an emotional connection to the product in question regardless of its merits. The only thing that can shake this is a dispassionate analysis of the issue and it is very hard for fans to be objective about their fandom.

D&D is king of the hill because it was first. It is a pop-culture icon. For the vast majority of people, RPing is D&D for many people and that is unlikely to change. Marketing 101 states that the first brand in a customer's consciousness is king even if it is a sub-par product. Brand recognition defeats quality unless the product quality is abysmal and even then there is no guarantee a superior product is going to unseat it.

I know people who would not buy an xbox360 despite their desire for a next gen system because Sony isn't the Debbil the way MS is. They stuck to their crappy PS2s and now have PS3s. They could care less whether the PS3 is a superior system. What matters to them is that it is a Sony. Irrational as hell, but human nature nonetheless.


I am lookihng forward to 4e because I dumped 3.5 long ago for Conan D20 and True20. I am looking forward to 4e because they are getting rid of some antiquated D&Disms and sacred cows that have IMO nothing going for them except nostalgia. I love D&D as a rule set, not as a cllective mythology of some kind. If I want mythology I will go to the rich traditions of the past of our real history which is far, far deeper than anything in D&D.


Sundragon

 

[Shortman McLeod]

D&D is king of the hill because it was first. It is a pop-culture icon.

Pop culture icon? Hardly. Most people don't even know what the hell an RPG *is*, and even if they've vaguely heard of the term "Dungeons & Dragons", they have little, if any, idea what exactly it is.

Pop culture means *popular*. Dungeons & Dragons is a niche product. It's hard for those of us steeped in RPGs to realize just how completely, totally, and utterly *irrelevant* our beloved hobby is to the vast majority of people out there. RPGs are comparable to model rockets, or historical re-enactment societies, or WWII hobbyists who build and paint tiny scale model tanks.

I would agree that D&D is a tabletop RPG icon. But pop culture? Not even close, except perhaps in the early 1980s, but even then, not really. Pop culture is something that surrounds us. It is everywhere. Pop culture is Britney Spears and hip hop music, NFL football and the HD DVD vs. Bluray format war. Pop culture is Michael Bay's latest adrenaline-charged popcorn movie and the insane success of the Nintendo Wii. Pop culture is iPods and iPhones and Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Dolls and Lego, Lego, Lego. Pop culture is Harry Potter and Survivor and Dancing with the Stars.

Dungeons & Dragons? Only in WotC's wildest dreams.

 

[Orcus]

Shortman, you must not have been around in the 80s. If you list cabbage patch dolls and beanie babies, believe me there was a time when D&D was that popular. It had its own cartoon. Schools had D&D clubs and some even had D&D classes. I'm not kidding. Maybe not everywhere, but it was a phenomenon for a while. Then it quickly went back to being "that thing that dorky kids did". But there was a brief shining moment when it was popular. But people knew what it was and regular kids wanted to play it. I'm not kiddinig.

Clark

(And frankly, it sucked when D&D was cool; I hated seeing the cool kids trying to join in to my hobby because now it was cool; they didnt really like D&D, they liked it because it was cool; which is the reason that so many "dorky" kids hate cool kids--dorky kids may be dorky but we love what we do and that is why we are dorky, cause what we do isnt considered "cool" but the "cool" people but at least we have the integrity to like what we like because we like it as opposed to the cool kids who just like it cause its cool and when it isnt cool anymore they like something else. of course there are plenty of dorky kids who choose to like dorky stuff not because they actually like it but because they hate the cool kids and want to affiliate themselves with something that those kids dont like....ok, i am getting way far afield on this....sorry)

 

[Veander]

Paizo will support 4e provided that we think the system is cool, that the OGL allows us to do so in a way that makes sense for our business, and if we think the switch would be in the best interest of our readers. I am personally excited by a lot of what I've seen and heard about fourth edition, and I hope to get to use the cool new rules at my table and in products that support the game we all love.

But I've got to see the rules and the SRD before I can say one way or another. That's just common sense.

Paizo is a serious business. We have 26 employees and support a network of freelance writers and artists. We have the largest mail order hobby shop on the internet, and we are in for the Long Haul. It's an important decision, and it's one that's still in the making.

We absolutely are not staking out ground as the "anti-4e." I have the utmost respect for our friends at Wizards of the Coast and wish them the best of luck with the new edition. Their success with the new game breeds success for the whole industry.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing, LLC

That's just some brilliant words on the 4e matter. It wholly encompasses how I feel. Nice, man and here I wasn't sure about you all these years.

I'd also say most folks I've mentioned Dungeons and Dragons to know what it is in general. They know you sit around and roll dice and that's it's medieval in some way. When I was getting into D&D in 1988, it was certainly not some popular game, but I was one of the cool people who played and loved the game. Sadly I just ignored some of my geeky friends when I was at school. That changed over time and I was able to straddle the geek/cool line. I suppose my only claim to coolness was a good sense of humor and abilities in sports.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Pop culture icon? Hardly. Most people don't even know what the hell an RPG *is*, and even if they've vaguely heard of the term "Dungeons & Dragons", they have little, if any, idea what exactly it is.

Pop culture means *popular*. Dungeons & Dragons is a niche product. It's hard for those of us steeped in RPGs to realize just how completely, totally, and utterly *irrelevant* our beloved hobby is to the vast majority of people out there. RPGs are comparable to model rockets, or historical re-enactment societies, or WWII hobbyists who build and paint tiny scale model tanks.

I would agree that D&D is a tabletop RPG icon. But pop culture? Not even close, except perhaps in the early 1980s, but even then, not really. Pop culture is something that surrounds us. It is everywhere. Pop culture is Britney Spears and hip hop music, NFL football and the HD DVD vs. Bluray format war. Pop culture is Michael Bay's latest adrenaline-charged popcorn movie and the insane success of the Nintendo Wii. Pop culture is iPods and iPhones and Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Dolls and Lego, Lego, Lego. Pop culture is Harry Potter and Survivor and Dancing with the Stars.

Dungeons & Dragons? Only in WotC's wildest dreams.

Maybe you're right. Pop-culture icon maybe not, but THE iconic representation of what people think of when they think tabletop role-playing game certainly so.

D&D cannot be unseated within the tabletop RPing arena and 99% of D&D players will, due to the nature of human psychology, migrate to 4e for good or ill. Nothing is going to change that and this is my point.

Paizo, Necromancer, Green Ronin, Inner Circle, Paradigm Concepts, Mongoose, Fantasy Flight, etc. all of them will either go to 4e or create their own competing system. 3.5 will be dead as a viable buisness vehicle within a year of 4e's release. Its already dying due to the announcement of 4e. Green Ronin was wise to create True20 (damn good system). Mongoose was wise to produce OGL Runequest and Conan D20 (both damn good systems). The wisdom lies in the fact that none of these games is dependant on WoTC. These games have their own fan bases and will allow these companies to weather the 4e storm. Make no mistake, none of these games will ever be as huge as D&D, but if properly promoted and marketed they can be the next World of Darkness.

Necromancer was brilliant in its capacity to plug-into and thrive by accepting the inherent grognardism of old-school D&D players and DMs. Utter genius actually. Take the new system and make it feel as close to an older system as possible within the boundaries of the rules. I have a feeling that the companies who are considering a 3.75 edition will toss that bad idea into the garbage bin where it belongs and take a page from Necromancer by saying that they are "D&D as it was meant to be played." It doesn't have to be true, it just has to catch on.



Sundragon

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Everybody knows what Dungeons and Dragons is.

They may not know the details (and in some if not most cases may have the details entirely wrong) but I guarantee it has 80-90% brand recognition.

If you say to someone, "I play Dungeons and Dragons!" they are more likely to say, "You play that?" than they are to say, "You play what?"

 

[Shortman McLeod]

Shortman, you must not have been around in the 80s. If you list cabbage patch dolls and beanie babies, believe me there was a time when D&D was that popular. )

I was there. Which is why I mentioned in my post "except for a brief period in the early 80s".

EDIT: Although I just realized, upon re-reading my post, that I went on to say "and even then, not really". Guess I was up too late or something. But I'll agree that D&D was a part of youth pop culture in the early 80s. As I said, I was there (I started playing in 1980 at age 9 with the Moldvay basic set).

 

[see]

A fact: New Coke consistently beats Coke and Pepsi in taste tests. The reason it failed? Coke grognards.

The same taste tests that had New Coke consistently beat Pepsi had Pepsi consistently beating old Coke. Yet replacing loses-to-Pepsi Coke with beats-Pepsi New Coke caused Pepsi sales to increase 14%.

Fact: Market research said New Coke tasted better than Coke and Pepsi. The reason it failed? Market research is nonsense.

 

[Aage]

The same taste tests that had New Coke consistently beat Pepsi had Pepsi consistently beating old Coke. Yet replacing loses-to-Pepsi Coke with beats-Pepsi New Coke caused Pepsi sales to increase 14%.

Fact: Market research said New Coke tasted better than Coke and Pepsi. The reason it failed? Market research is nonsense.

Excuse my ignorance but there is a new/old coke? Have I missed something or are you talking about things that happened many years ago, before I knew what coke was?

 

[Gumby]

Excuse my ignorance but there is a new/old coke? Have I missed something or are you talking about things that happened many years ago, before I knew what coke was?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke