Pramas on 4E and New Gamers

[Fenes]

Which brings me to another drawback, players vs. DM's. The DM has to read all three books (or at least have an understanding of them) and if sales are anything to go by, I think most people coming into D&D would rather play than DM. With WoW that's possible, all your friends can team up and there is no odd man out... with tabletop that's not really possible. The page count also discourages new people from DM'ing instead of just playing and this definitely adversely affects the hobby. Player's can introduce as many people as they want to the D&D rules, but unless they have a DM they aren't playing... A DM can actually introduce players to the full experience of the game.

DMs are a special breed, and I dare say that anyone who doesn't want to read hundreds of pages also won't DM for long. So, while there's a need to lighten the load for the DM - and from what I hear, 4E did that well - there's also a minimal amount of required reading left. But since that won't put off anyone who will keep DMing, that's not a real problem.

 

[xechnao]

You really think it's that easy to market videogames...?

Yep. If they are good games what they needs is some trailer or a demo. Why that? Because it can show very easy what it sells.

Their marketing problem is video game competition. Not another market.

 

[Fenes]

How about they start selling rpg ideas with comics or even novels and then expand the gaming experience from there?

Novels and comics already are RPG ideas. I doubt there's anyone who hasn't read a novel, and thought "what should the character do here? What would I do?". And, given the proliferation of computer games, they already know about RPGs.

Game novels such as the FR novels help with that, of course.

 

[hong]

Yep. If they are good games what they needs is some trailer or a demo. Why that? Because it can show very easy what it sells.

Their marketing problem is video game competition. Not another market.

Don't call Microsoft, baby.

 

[hong]

Which brings me to another drawback, players vs. DM's. The DM has to read all three books (or at least have an understanding of them) and if sales are anything to go by, I think most people coming into D&D would rather play than DM. With WoW that's possible, all your friends can team up and there is no odd man out... with tabletop that's not really possible. The page count also discourages new people from DM'ing instead of just playing and this definitely adversely affects the hobby. Player's can introduce as many people as they want to the D&D rules, but unless they have a DM they aren't playing... A DM can actually introduce players to the full experience of the game.

So it would be a good thing, then, that the 4E DMG has been lauded as being possibly the best how-to-DM book ever published.

 

[Fenes]

Yep. If they are good games what they needs is some trailer or a demo. Why that? Because it can show very easy what it sells.

Their marketing problem is video game competition. Not another market.

Which can be even harder than another market, since people tend to judge products relative to similar products. If you're buying chocolate, you'll buy the product that tastes best to you. But you won't skip buying soda for the second best chocolate.

 

[xechnao]

Which can be even harder than another market, since people tend to judge products relative to similar products. If you're buying chocolate, you'll buy the product that tastes best to you. But you won't skip buying soda for the second best chocolate.

Yes. We are not comparing D&D versus other tabletop rpgs here. We are comparing tabletop rpgs and especially D&D with other markets. In this respect -across market marketing- video games are far easier to market than tabletop rpgs. If it were not the case the tabletop market would be bigger than the video game market.

 

[xechnao]

Don't call Microsoft, baby.

Your point is?

 

[hong]

Your point is?

I think you misunderestimate the pitfalls of marketing videogames.

 

[xechnao]

I think you misunderestimate the pitfalls of marketing videogames.

Then I think you misunderstand what we are talking about.