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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 4302688" data-attributes="member: 7394">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.</blockquote>

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