Pramas on 4E and New Gamers

[I'm A Banana]

C) D&D is an easy game to get into, but it can be ramped up in complexity (perhaps with the right splatbooks) without too much additional effort.

 

[Treebore]

Simplicity not wanted?

I want simplicity. Its why I quit 3E. ITs why I won't be going to 4E. Its why some people love the OD&D boxed sets or Rules Cyclopedia.

Simple and gets the job done will make D&D appeal to far more people than keeping it complex because "real gamers will take the time to learn it".

People want minimum time investment for maximum fun. 3E and 4E don't have optimum ratios. 3E and 4E are for people who like complex games and have the time to invest in them. There are far more people who would like to play a fun game, but not one they have to spend hours learning in order to run it.

Thats the real reason there are so many DM's and so few players. IF the rules were easy and manageable there would be a lot more DM's.

Biggest reason players give or not DMing? "I don't know the rules well enough."

Even though they have been playing for 5 years. Or 8 years. Or 1 year. When the rules are the reason a person doesn't feel they can DM after a few gaming sessions, the rules are too complex. Let alone after years.

 

[BryonD]

People want minimum time investment for maximum fun. 3E and 4E don't have optimum ratios. 3E and 4E are for people who like complex games and have the time to invest in them. There are far more people who would like to play a fun game, but not one they have to spend hours learning in order to run it.

I think you are making something a a false image (for any edition).
You make it sound like "learning" is this tedious academic chore that one must endure until they can pass the final exam and only then are they allowed to start "having fun". I recall learning 1E as a kid and the learning was every bit as fun as the playing. Yeah, there are probably plenty of people out there who wouldn't agree, but for the great bulk of them liking the game learning process and liking pretending to be an elf come in a package. Proportions may vary, but the two go together. And yes, there are certainly exceptions in both directions. I just really don't believe that there are enough exceptions in either direction to make a real profit in net gamers.

I think the success of 3E demonstrates that there are tons of gamers who like entire experience. 3E didn't need to retire because no one was willing to play it. Quite simply, it had gotten old enough that some players were just moving on, and for those that stayed, the fields of books to be published had been very well plowed. It was time to rotate the crops. 4E has a new martial book coming out soon. All the low hanging fruit is back. Another 3E Complete Warrior book would be trapped in a major diminishing returns situation regardless of how great the game itself was and how outstanding the supplement was.

 

[Rechan]

B) D&D is a intro game for new gamers. For those who would like a hardcore game, play Hackmaster, or some other cool indie game.

What I find funny is the talk of the "Great Wall". Try HERO. The book is a textbook - 450+ so pages, and creating a character is literally an exercise in calculus; it's a point buy system that requires you to multiply and divide to figure out how much a power costs by itself, then how much it costs inside a power framework, then you determine how much Endurance it takes to use it, and so on.

 

[Treebore]

I think you are making something a a false image (for any edition).
You make it sound like "learning" is this tedious academic chore that one must endure until they can pass the final exam and only then are they allowed to start "having fun". I recall learning 1E as a kid and the learning was every bit as fun as the playing. Yeah, there are probably plenty of people out there who wouldn't agree, but for the great bulk of them liking the game learning process and liking pretending to be an elf come in a package. Proportions may vary, but the two go together. And yes, there are certainly exceptions in both directions. I just really don't believe that there are enough exceptions in either direction to make a real profit in net gamers.

I think the success of 3E demonstrates that there are tons of gamers who like entire experience. 3E didn't need to retire because no one was willing to play it. Quite simply, it had gotten old enough that some players were just moving on, and for those that stayed, the fields of books to be published had been very well plowed. It was time to rotate the crops. 4E has a new martial book coming out soon. All the low hanging fruit is back. Another 3E Complete Warrior book would be trapped in a major diminishing returns situation regardless of how great the game itself was and how outstanding the supplement was.

I am talking about getting new blood into the game, your talking about recycling old blood.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Why is it that this conversation about bringing in new players keeps ignoring the 800 lb gorilla sitting in the corner? The way I see it, the only way that tabletop RPGs is ever going to truly make a comeback and attract new players is to find some way for the experience to be more gratifying than video games.

Now I'm one of those guys who rarely sits down and plays them, but when I do play video game RPGs, there are certain things that I get out of them. One of those things is that I can adventure with a group and get into 20 or so combats per hour. By the end of the hour, I've probably found something useful, or explored someplace cool, and I've moved on to something else interesting and cool.

D&D is kind of like this, only without the good graphics or the rapid play. When you come from the perspective of the kid who has spent the last 10 years (more than half his life) playing MMOs as the default way of playing RPGs, tabletop looks like nothing better than a crappy slow way of doing the same thing without dynamic moving characters and neat looking terrain. Heck, had I not cut my teeth on tabletop, I might not even be interested in it.

The way I see it, the only thing tabletop has to offer that computer games don't is the ability to sit around a table with your friends and be limited only by your imagination. You aren't confined by premade maps, you aren't confined by a set number of character races, or a metaplot that you don't want to adopt. We see this as tabletop players, but the MMO people don't seem to care. Expansions make it possible to adventure in sub-settings, and anyone can go out and buy another game to change the genre.

So the way I see it, no matter what WotC does, attracting new blood to the hobby is a losing proposition unless they can find a way to make D&D actually competitive with video games. I have no ready answers on how they can do this. DDI seems like a step in the right direction, but if I were an MMO player, I would still be puzzled why I would want to play on a virtual tabletop where I had to buy minis rather than play an MMO with my friends in a dynamic environment where all the graphics you need to play are included.

 

[pawsplay]

What I find funny is the talk of the "Great Wall". Try HERO. The book is a textbook - 450+ so pages, and creating a character is literally an exercise in calculus; it's a point buy system that requires you to multiply and divide to figure out how much a power costs by itself, then how much it costs inside a power framework, then you determine how much Endurance it takes to use it, and so on.

I think you mean "literally an exercise in 3rd grade arithmetic," but I'll give you the rest.

As for being a textbook... HERO 5e is well organized, has a good glossary, uses very little jargon, and provides numerous examples, both walk-thrus and finished products. So yes, it is like a textbook... informative, accessible, helpful, and enlightening, if perhaps a little dry to digest in one sitting.

Power Frameworks are not something I would inflict on a new player without reason, and it's easy enough to hand-hold someone through it.

I started playing HERO with 4th edition... I literally picked it up in the store after reading the description of Energy Blast and going, "Man, that's easy! I wonder why more superhero games aren't like this." Later on, I discovered there was more to it than I thought, but the basic framework was intuitive, even simple.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I think he is spot on about it being to much for new gamers. And yes for the first time ever I grew bored while trying to read the PHB..it was soooooooo boring When I started gaming I would never have picked this up.

 

[pawsplay]

The way I see it, the only thing tabletop has to offer that computer games don't is the ability to sit around a table with your friends and be limited only by your imagination. You aren't confined by premade maps, you aren't confined by a set number of character races, or a metaplot that you don't want to adopt.

RPGs allow you to do anything. MMOs don't. The flipside is, of course, that MMOs do a lot of the work for you, RPGs don't.

To be a competitive RPG and get new blood, RPGs need:
1) to simplify prep time
2) keep in-game calculations to a minimum
3) offer lots of interesting things to do
4) provide a good framework for resolving issues that aren't specifically covered by the rules

IMO, 4e is decent at 1), poor at 2), neither good nor bad at 3), and terrible at 4).

 

[Darrin Drader]

RPGs allow you to do anything. MMOs don't. The flipside is, of course, that MMOs do a lot of the work for you, RPGs don't.

To be a competitive RPG and get new blood, RPGs need:
1) to simplify prep time
2) keep in-game calculations to a minimum
3) offer lots of interesting things to do
4) provide a good framework for resolving issues that aren't specifically covered by the rules

IMO, 4e is decent at 1), poor at 2), neither good nor bad at 3), and terrible at 4).

I agree that those criteria help, but you still have to ask yourself if you would be interested in a tabletop RPG if you were a sixteen year old kid, even if you accomplish all of the above. I think you might get a few, but more than likely they're only going to find any amount of love for it if they're introduced to it by someone who already plays.

As for your assessment of 4Es strengths and weaknesses, I agree on all but point 4. The DMG does offer a lot of suggestions for how to resolve issues not specifically covered by the rules. The thing is that with 4E, you're back to actually listening to what the DM has to say rather than trying to overrule him in your attempts to powergame.