Pramas on 4E and New Gamers

[Amphimir Míriel]

"WOTC has let us retailers know that the launch of 4E is aimed at veteran gamers.

New players will be targeted in a separate marketing campaign in the fall, likely coinciding with the new starter game in November."

Having the intro primer come later may not be a bad thing. Assuming the primer doesn't have different rules, only less rules, I think it makes sense to have a strong base of happy veterans players available with whom new players can game.

In this day and age, I personally think large majority of new players are going to come to the game through the veterans, whether directly ("Hey, guy, you wanna try out this new game") or vicariously (through reviews and comments). I'd think only a small portion of new players would arrive by browsing the shelves at B&N, seeing the PHB cover and thinking "Hmm, this looks interesting. Let me try this." In this context, positive word-of-mouth buzz is worth far more than any artificial marketing buzz they could pay for.

Therefore, the goal of the initial release was to get a respectable, happy veteran player base which could generate that buzz. If the PHB was a stripped down version of its current form, I think a lot more of the "veterans" would have been PO-ed. As it is, there are already complaints from some veterans of DnD being "dumbed down" or what have you. My personal observation has been there is more positive buzz than negative (for whatever that's worth), which may not have been the case with an even more simplified version. In that respect, the release was a success.

But, and this is a big but, they have to deliver on a simplified, accessable, and compatible primer (no "one-off" rules in the primer that don't apply to the real game). And Jeff is right, in the past 20 years, there has not been an especially successful primer for new players. And to be honest, I'm not sure they will be successful this time around either. Here's hoping I'm wrong ...

I don't see a problem w/ loving 4E and conceding that it is complex.

Fortunately, the Basic game is coming out in November. This version is for us. The next one is for new folks. Nuff said.

This.

I really think that Hasbro could take a "basic" version of D&D, with less rules and less options. For example, the basic game could be limited to 6-10 pre-generated characters, each one pre-statted for levels 1-10, with some basic options like those described by Kamikaze Midget on post #99

Put this in a big box with some minis, tiles and a set of dice. The instruction booklets would eventually direct already-hooked players to the core rulebooks so they can "get levels 11-30".

Then they can put this box on the boardgame section of toy- and bookstores, right next to Cranium and Risk (other Hasbro products).
This, combined with some smart advertising and product placement (which is something that Hasbro can do for a fraction of its ad budget), and voilá, a new generation of gamers.

 

[Intense_Interest]

Surely this must have been considered, and then ditched...probably for reasons of not confusing new players? Maybe if you named the 11-20 and 21-30 books in a way that didn't mislead people into thinking they were buying the core of the game...hmm.

Oh gosh no.

Playing a character from beginning to end is the core of the game.

 

[rounser]

Honestly, I think the mistake that's being made here is that D&D is the gateway game. Has it been the gateway game for a long time? Personally, I don't think so.

Pramas agrees. His point is that it should be, he was hoping that this edition would be, for a change.

 

[rounser]

Oh gosh no.

Playing a character from beginning to end is the core of the game.

But WOTC have given you an incomplete game anyway. There's no rules for making traps, for goodness sake. You will be buying more books anyway to get a full campaign out of this thing, unless you turn homebrew game designer.

Why not get a complete 1-10 game, a complete 11-20 game, and a complete 21-30 game?

Because WOTC doesn't want to give you a complete game. They want to sell you more books. That's another "shooting self in foot" moment for this edition, except from the perspective of if you're balancing the books at Hasbro.

 

[JoeGKushner]

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.

But Hero is built on a single system. D&D is built on an exception system. Huge difference between the two. Once you've got Hero down, you've got it down for multiple genres, power levels, etc... Once you've got D&D down, you've got D&D down.

Not saying this is a bad or good thing but Her ois built around many different assumptions than D&D.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think D&D should remain focused on tactical combat and have elves, dwarves and wizards kill monsters to take their stuff...

One of those things is not like the other. I don't need opportunity attacks and minor actions and shifts and blasts to be an elf wizard who kills monsters to take their stuff.

Heavily tactical combat is a complicated monstrosity at the core of D&D, and simplifying it, whatever else it would do, would go a long way toward making the game easy and accessible for newbs who don't want to fiddle with math and little plastic toys.

D&D should not try too hard to become something that is not.

That's when you get into trouble trying to define what D&D really is, when its boiled down to its raw essence. In some peoples' mind, 4e is D&D trying to become something its not, because D&D is lawful good gold dragons and the plane of Concordant Opposition and strongly simulationist.

I'm more willing to stretch D&D to just being: "A game of fantasy storytelling." For that, you do not need complex combat.

Now, others might say that D&D is actually "A tactical combat game with fantasy trappings." They'd be right, in their own way. But certainly there are milages that vary.

By the time someone gets around to picking up a PHB, unless they're being inducted into the game by an experienced gamer, they're likely fairly familiar with most of the mechanics that you find in D&D. If they come from Magic, they have a rough idea of how spells work. If they come from DDM, they know most of the combat mechanics.

By Gygax's beard, why would I bother picking up D&D if I already had all those things eating up my happy fun time?

"Hey guys, wanna read 900 pages of hardcover books and play that game?!"

"Dude, we've got our Magic decks right here. No."

 

[IanB]

You know, the diagram of the planes in the back of my 1e PH doesn't have any Concordant Opposition plane in the middle...

 

[pawsplay]

D&D as an entry game into TT RPG's hasn't been true for years. Other than the B/E/C/M/I series, which ceased to exist about twenty years ago. And, let's face it, back then there wasn't any other options for getting into RPG's. There was no DDM or Magic, or MMORPG's to teach the basics. So, you needed a basic set. But, anyone who's played MMORPG's will likely immediately grok 4e.

A couple of times a year, somebody's mom will stop me in a book store and ask me some questions because Timmy is interested in D&D and mom doesn't know anything about it except she knew some people who played it back in college. Regardless of how they end up in RPGs, D&D is still likely to be the first.

And, like an analogy which I won't elaborate on, you hope your first time will be fun, exciting, and handled with gentleness.

Basic D&D was my introduction to D&D, and apart from the race=class thing, I generally preferred it to AD&D until well into the 2e lifecycle.

 

[Jasperak]

People are saying, the first time they sat down with the 4e PHB, that they get to page after page of very similar powers, the effects of which and the differences between which they do not yet comprehend, and their eyes glaze over. It's informational overload. It's also boring as hell to read little blurbs of attack after attack that all do just about the same thing. I hit this when I first saw the PHB and ended up just skipping the walls of text. A friend of mine made a similar comment after trying to read the book.

Once you have a feel for the system, the powers make sense, and they're easy to digest in little levelling-up chunks, as you're never looking at more than 4 at a time. To read through 80 of them in a row is a different matter.

My first group of friends that played D&D picked up the Red and Blue boxed set and learned to play on our own. I remember playing that first solo adventure and wishing there was some way to save Aleena. My friends and I took about a year but we finally killed Bargle. Aleena was avenged. We learned how to play the game together and Bargle's head was our reward.

Then I bought the 1e PH. We poured through it and salivated at all of the new options. Our party Magic-User left stains in the book. And we played for years, well into the birth of 2e. We eventually all graduated and some moved away; I joined the Army and continued to play.

I introduced some people to the game, and some stayed; others went. I always used either the 1e PH or after the change 2e and found it quite easy to get people involved and playing. A fighter swings; a mage casts a spell; a thief backstabs.

But for my wife, I started her with the Red boxed set; the original one that I had used, tattered mess that it was. She had as much hate for Bargle as we all did over a decade earlier, and she eventually killed him too. (Has any other NPC died as much as he did?)

We (My wife, the group, and I) eventually moved on to 3e. It really wasn't much different; actually better in almost every way. We got to pick feats but otherwise the feel of the game was the same. We could continue to play with our 1e/2e mentality, and I think the game better for it. We didn't bother with all of the splats, but did amass a large miniature collection.

I had kept up-to-date on 4e with all the previews, and while I was not overly impressed with some of the changes, I gave it a shot when KotS was released. I had a very good time. Unfortunately I cannot make the next session on Wed because the wife and I are going to see Blues Traveler. That makes me sad that I will miss the game.

A few Saturdays ago my wife and I went to our FLGS so I could show her what the new edition was all about. We got in at a table; I played but she watched. It started off good and all of us were interested it what was going on. Until combat started. She was confused. After the first combat ended she left to go see the DDM demo. After awhile she came back and told me why she left. It was too confusing, too complicated, too much going on. She likes watching me play the original Final Fantasy and most of the Legend of Zelda games, but not Final Fantasy Tactics. This game wasn't for her, and if I had introduced the game to her with 4e, she would not have been playing for the past decade. She would have never had the satisfaction of killing Bargle.

I think Chris had it exactly right; a good game, but not for the beginner roleplayer.

 

[Hussar]

Pramas agrees. His point is that it should be, he was hoping that this edition would be, for a change.

See, now I disagree that it should be. Could you imagine the screaming from fans if they stripped 3e down to the point of Basic D&D? Or even Basic/Expert?

No, you keep the core rules nicely complicated and come out with boxed sets in addition and then try to draw on existing gamers (but not RPG gamers) for your new blood.