Roleplaying since the 80s and I'm really tired!

[Nellisir]

Wizards/Hasbro has this idea that many people don't play the game because they haven't marketed it more towards them. Marketing has nothing (well, almost nothing) to do with it. People look at it and see dozens of books around a game table and think to themselves "Do I really need to buy all this just to play a game?" And gamers can argue or explain that all they really is one or three Core books all you like behind your stack of "optional" material. You know they're thinking to themselves, "So why don't any of you have just those books??"

Mike Mearls mentioned a few weeks ago that a LOT more people try D&D than we think (or something similar). So D&D doesn't have a problem attracting an audience, it has a problem retaining one. And they know it.

 

[Nellisir]

It seems that you feel you have to buy every book that gets published - well you don't. Get the 2-3-4 whatever amount of books you feel comfortable with and stop there. I am currently playing 4e and none of the other players have any grasp on the character creation process. There is just too much information. The DM has some grasp of it, but not great.

I use to own far more d20 & 3e books than exist for 4e. Far, far, far more. I never felt I "had" to buy a book, though. Never bought the Epic book, for one. I bought them because they were interesting, because I hoped they would add something to my game, and because in many cases I wasn't completely happy with what had been available. I bought them out of optimism. That doesn't mean I liked having the rules change, or material in one book replacing another, or that I ought to just suck it up and be silent.

In the case of 4e, WotC put many people in an uncomfortable position. I like gnomes, for instance. Not putting gnomes in the first PHB meant I had to a) drop gnomes, b) buy PHB 1 & PHB 2, or c) create my own gnome race, different from the official race, and go through the effort of creating the house rules and material to support it. That was annoying, and it was part of the reason I didn't buy 4e for several years.

 

[Aeolius]

I like gnomes, for instance. Not putting gnomes in the first PHB meant I had to a) drop gnomes, b) buy PHB 1 & PHB 2, or c) create my own gnome race, different from the official race, and go through the effort of creating the house rules and material to support it.

"Im a monster! Raaarrr!"
[video=youtube;4UqFPujRZWo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo[/video]

 

[GX.Sigma]

In the case of 4e, WotC put many people in an uncomfortable position. I like gnomes, for instance. Not putting gnomes in the first PHB meant I had to a) drop gnomes, b) buy PHB 1 & PHB 2, or c) create my own gnome race, different from the official race, and go through the effort of creating the house rules and material to support it. That was annoying, and it was part of the reason I didn't buy 4e for several years.

Great point. Not a great example, since 4e had PC stats for the gnome in the back of the Monster Manual.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Great point. Not a great example, since 4e had PC stats for the gnome in the back of the Monster Manual.

And since when was that ever an acceptable substitution?

 

[n00bdragon]

Since the PHB was already clocking in a mighty 317 pages and they only had room for the races they figured would be the most popular. Just in case you were wondering dragonborn and tieflings tend to be far more popular than gnomes.

 

[D'karr]

And since when was that ever an acceptable substitution?

Since 1981 for my group when one of the players wanted to play a goblin. We had to make do with our own conversion. We had no gnomes in basic D&D either, and I guess 2e players didn't get half-orcs, or the assassin class.

In 3.x we had Savage Species to play all kinds of other races (broken in more than one measure). And in 4e the gnome was not in the initial PHB, but an alternate was provided until the book with a full write-up came out (9 months later IIRC). It's not like this is unprecedented. Certain things don't make it into every book.

 

[Nellisir]

Just in case you were wondering dragonborn and tieflings tend to be far more popular than gnomes.

WOW! Really?? OMGOMGOMG!!! That's so awesome! I never would have guessed!!!! Thank you, I feel so much better!! I was worried gnomes were the NUMBER ONE RACE and WotC was IGNORING them, but it turns out THEY'RE NOT COOL so it's OK and I should just use DRAGONBORN instead, because EVERYONE loves DRAGONBOOBS, I mean born, and I'll just take my 20+year campaign setting and SHOVE IT where the gnomes don't shine because DRAGONBLEEPS and CAMBIONS, I mean ALU-FIENDS, I mean HALF-DEMONS, I mean DEMONBORN, I mean FIENDBORN because DEMONS are bad so we'll say tanar'ri and baatezu, instead except not for long haha, I mean TIEFLINGS are FAR MORE POPULAR! I WAS REALLY WONDERING!!!

Thanks, dude. I appreciate the 411.

:facepalm:

 

[Nellisir]

Great point. Not a great example, since 4e had PC stats for the gnome in the back of the Monster Manual.

Well, y'know...I didn't buy 4e until 2011, and I sold it after 6 months, so....

 

[Nellisir]

In 3.x we had Savage Species to play all kinds of other races (broken in more than one measure). And in 4e the gnome was not in the initial PHB, but an alternate was provided until the book with a full write-up came out (9 months later IIRC). It's not like this is unprecedented. Certain things don't make it into every book.

Oh, I know. But the initial point was that one should get the 2-3-4 books we are "comfortable" with, and my point was that, with 4e, and to a lesser extent with 2e, there were deliberate design and presentation choices made to spread what had been core material over a number of different books. Gnomes, unlike dragonborn and tieflings, have a roughly 30-year history as a "core" race in D&D. WotC wasn't eliminating them (unlike the assassin in 2e, which was just axed outright); it was spreading core material over several books to boost sales (and as a first stab at a "modular" game system from the ground up). You could go from 1e to 2e to 3e relatively painlessly*, at least as far as races were concerned, but you couldn't go from a 3e core ruleset to a 4e core ruleset in the same campaign without a major reset or rewrite, which I think really dissuaded a number of people from making the jump at all.

I don't dislike dragonborm or tieflings, they just don't fit my campaign setting. The Elves/Eladrin split actually worked fine for me. I mean, I would ignore a lot of the backstory, but the idea was sound.

*True, there was no half-orc in 2e core, but you could at least continue to use 1e rules for the race without difficulty.