Pramas on 4E and New Gamers

[hong]

Don't get it. What do you mean by combat?

It's the bit where you kill the monsters. It's usually a precursor to taking their stuff.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So imagination or storytelling are important points of attraction for you to buy the product. See?

But I wouldn't have gotten into it if there weren't also rules to play the character I wanted to play. See?

 

[xechnao]

But I wouldn't have gotten into it if there weren't also rules to play the character I wanted to play. See?

I do see. I am not sure you do too:
-"the character I wanted to play" is your desire in your message here.
-"also rules" is a secondary additional condition.

Your imagination comes first since it is a power more broad and generic. The rules of a game come second since they are more specifc and limited.

There can be other specific and limited conditions that can take the place of your current specifc condition. But nothing can substitute the generic base : your imagination.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I do see. I am not sure you do too:
-"the character I wanted to play" is your desire in your message here.
-"also rules" is a secondary additional condition.

Your imagination comes first since it is a power more broad and generic. The rules of a game come second since they are more specifc and limited.

There can be other specific and limited conditions that can take the place of a specifc one. But nothing can substitute the generic base : your imagination.

I can make up characters all the time. I did a lot, even as a teenager I was still creating characters and worlds. (Nerdy stuff like building my own space-ships from Lego!).

Role-playing added a new option. And that wasn't the story-telling part, because I already did that all the time, alone, in my room.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

See, I think this is brilliant document design. Or at least competent document design which is way beyond what you find in most of the hobby.

Skipping the walls of text is what you're supposed to do. As a new player you don't need to read anything more than the first two pages of any class description, and the section is nicely arranged by tabs so that you can skip between sections.

Once you've picked your class, you bookmark that section and you live there. No need to flip more than 15 pages to understand any aspect of your class in play. When you level you move a few pages over in either direction to do feats or the general levelling table.

The only other section you need in play is the combat section which is nestled right up next to the back cover making it very easy to reference.

My problem with Pramas' review is that it relies on a fairly simple analysis of document design. On a basic level a game manual should not be designed to be read, it needs to be designed to be used.

I think this is really more a problem for old hands at DnD who are too used to be brutalized by horrible document design to recognize how the book is actually asking to be used.

I agree with this - complaints that the Classes chapter is so long kind of miss the mark for me. Why on earth would you wade through page after page of powers before you need to?

The class descriptions give you all the information you need to describe the class - the powers descriptions are for later detail.

I agree with Chris that the book could be laid out better in other ways - but not with this criticism.

 

[xechnao]

I can make up characters all the time. I did a lot, even as a teenager I was still creating characters and worlds. (Nerdy stuff like building my own space-ships from Lego!).

Role-playing added a new option. And that wasn't the story-telling part, because I already did that all the time, alone, in my room.

Agreed. Rpg rules are now a specific plus. But you have to communicate in a coherent way to people where and how this plus adds. Hence present and introduce the base again along with it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I agree with this - complaints that the Classes chapter is so long kind of miss the mark for me. Why on earth would you wade through page after page of powers before you need to?

The class descriptions give you all the information you need to describe the class - the powers descriptions are for later detail.

I agree with Chris that the book could be laid out better in other ways - but not with this criticism.

My experience thus far is that this book has made 4E the easiest edition to teach* to new players, but I'm not a good counter-example to Pramas's over all argument for a couple of reasons.

1.) I'm an experienced player teaching new players, which isn't the model he wants to see from the PHB

2.) The new players I'm teaching have already experienced bridge and introductory products like boardgames or WoW.

Point 2 could be used as a counter-argument in that I think that's actually the best base for new recruitment considering that WoW has around 10 million players worldwide and the gaming experience as a whole is much broader than WoW. 4E might be exceedingly well positioned to capitalize on this new recruitment base. Heck, I can even see Chess as a potential bridge to DnD now through the medium of DDM.

* - I've had a really hard time with a few players who are not so resistant to 4E that they don't want to play but are resistant enough that they don't want to read. The problem here is that they transpose a lot of 3E assumptions so that while unlearning old habits isn't hard generally, it's becoming difficult for them.

 

[delericho]

I guess they would prefer to be criticized for a lack of an index than endless jokes about "see page XX" like White Wolf still gets after almost 20 years.

There are several instances of "See page XX" in the DMG. So it seems they want both.

 

[delericho]

I have long been convinced that for D&D to attract new players (and, more to the point, new groups where an existing DM is not readily available), the 3-book core rules paradigm has got to go.

The current core rules have an RRP of $105, clock in at 832 pages of text, and are very big, heavy and intimidating. Put them in front of a typical 14-year-old, and you have roughly 0% chance of getting a new gamer out of it.

D&D also has a long history of failure with the "Basic Set" (ever since the Red Box was retired, really), probably because the box has "Basic Set" on it, and then the next step up is those same expensive and intimidating core rules. (Plus, the current Basic Sets aren't good value for money - if you don't like the game, you've wasted your $40. If you do like the game, you get to spend a further $105, and retire the previous set, effectively wasting that $40.)

What I think they need to do:

1) Compress the core rules into a single book, no more than 250 pages in length. This will require taking a very ruthless view to which options are presented. I recommend four races (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling), four classes (Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard), and only covering levels 1-10.

2) Shortly after the "Core Rulebook" is released, publish a set of books pthat build on top of that book to give 'us' the 'rest of the game'. There might be as many as five of these - "Advanced Players Handbook", "Advanced Dungeon Mastery", "Monster Manual", "Tome of Treasures" and "Grimoire". However many books there are, between them they should cover the rest of the races, classes, powers, levels, and so forth.

3) Produce a boxed set version of the game, in the vein of those Warhammer starter sets. Include the Core Rulebook (the same book as in #1 above), several quick-start guides, an adventure book, pregenerated characters, adventure maps and/or tiles, miniatures (perhaps just for the PCs, with "Carboard Heroes"-esque tokens for the rest), spell templates, blank character sheets (and/or a CD containing some nice electronic resources), and all manner of other nice things. The price point they need to aim for is equivalent to that of one of the Warhammer boxes.

4) Each year, replase the boxed set with a new version containing the same Core Rulebook, but updating everything else.

5) With other supplements to the game (beyond those in #2), they need a modular rather than serial approach. Rather than having "PHB2", "PHB3" and so on, giving the impression that you need them all in order to play (or get up to speed with the experts), they should give each year a code-name (or somesuch), so that you get "PHB: Legends", "PHB: Antiquities" and "PHB: Ice Age". These can all expand the game, but they do so in a manner that doesn't intimidate new players into thinking they have to spend thousands of dollars on their game. (They should also 'retire' books from the line as time goes on - dropping them out of print, stopping referencing them in adventures and other support venues, and so forth.) Indeed, a little power creep here might not be a bad thing - "get the core set and the latest 'set' of upgrades, and you're good to go".

The other thing they badly need to do is get new players playing right away. I don't know how things are in the States, but in the UK Games Workshop draw in a massive number of new gamers through their stores - the stores are almost all dominated by big game tables where the staff are more than willing to show you how the game works, play a few rounds, and so on. Unless the store is busy, in which case there are loads of people there playing games, painting miniatures, and basically having fun. (Of course, the GW games also lose players at a very high rate, but by that time they've generally bought their 2,000 point army they'll never use, so GW don't care.)

I have no idea how Wizards might emulate any of that. Perhaps if they made WWDDGD a quarterly, rather than annual, event?

 

[hong]

I have long been convinced that for D&D to attract new players (and, more to the point, new groups where an existing DM is not readily available), the 3-book core rules paradigm has got to go.

The current core rules have an RRP of $105, clock in at 832 pages of text, and are very big, heavy and intimidating. Put them in front of a typical 14-year-old, and you have roughly 0% chance of getting a new gamer out of it.

Put them in front of a typical 25 year old, and they see it as a couple of console games.