Ryan dancey hints that DnD will become a board game....

[Jawsh]

Would you play if he is correct? Keep in mind he is an important figure in dungeons and dragons and not just some opinionated person.

Ryan dancey...
I think that commercially successful TRPGs of the future will be constructed more like a family game – something that can be unpacked, learned quickly, and played with little prep work. These games will give people a lot of the same joy of “roleplaying” and narrative control that they get from today’s Hobby Game TRPGs but with a fraction of the time investment. Wizards is already experimenting with this format, as is Fantasy Flight Games. It seems like a good bet that there is a substantially profitable business down this line of evolution.

[MENTION=69155]Layander[/MENTION] you failed your Read check.

A couple of things:

Dancey is not granting that WotC's next moves will be successful. He points out that 4E was not considered a success. It's not a foregone conclusion that 5E will be successful.

Further, the various editions of D&D don't have to go away if something else is more successful. WotC is already publishing board games. If they continue to do so, and if Ryan Dancey is right about board games being the future, then the market will eventually tell WotC that the board games are outselling D&D, and D&D will quietly get less and less support.

I don't agree with Dancey's vision of the future, but he's not saying D&D as we know it is going away any time soon. Just that it might be less profitable than other things WotC might try to do.

 

[hanez]

Very recent December 2011 I will show the whole article.

Great article. Thanks for posting it, very interesting read.

 

[Umbran]

Purely my speculation, but I cannot imagine them moving towards "board game" for 5e without alienating the huge majority of the fan base.

People talk as if "D&D boardgame" and "D&D tabletop RPG" are mutually exclusive.

Imagine a world in which WotC does put out a good D&D boardgame, and they also have a full-fledged TTRPG in the market. I would not be altogether surprised if the boardgame were, by some measure, considered more "commercially successful" than the TTRPG.

 

[Felon]

One of the big problems with our cummunity is that a great many of us are stuck in our ways. We're okay with rolling dice and adding that random number to other fixed numbers. However, if a publisher adds other physical components to a game, then somehow it's no longer an RPG. It's been bastardized into becoming a board game or card game.

For instance, there was an edition of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG where there were no dice. Instead, players used a hand of cards to play out battles. And many folks rejected it out-of-hand for that perceived perversion.

Probably the most extreme example today is Fantasy Flight's Warhammer RPG. People keep calling it a board game, even though there's no board. There are cards that are chiefly for reference purpose, and you have some little trackers that you move pieces up and down. I quite like it, and would even say it's fairly brilliant in some ways. But go to, say, Amazon and look at reviews, and you'll see how all the little bits just turn some folks right off.

And of course, there are those folks who can't using a battlemat or miniatures when they play the current editions of D&D. It's all gotta be in your head, or it's just not an RPG.

Of course the community is contracting. That is the fate of any group that is slow to adapt.

 

[Matt James]

A lot of the commentary comes from camps trying to keep their way of gaming--which is fine--but, it's political in nature. As for predictions, I never really put too much credit into them. It's easy to be a Nostradamus of the gaming industry. If you even clip a little bit of truth (which is easy to do), you are seen as prophetic and knowledgeable. Tarot cards and astrology signs, my friends...

 

[thedungeondelver]

DESCENT: JOURNEYS IN THE DARK is a very good game for what it does, and it even has a campaign mode that effectively makes it an RPG of sorts. With that said, I don't think that's where D&D is headed. I think there can be a D&D DESCENT-like game (hell, there already was one - DUNGEON!), but I don't think that will be the end-all of D&D. Not in the foreseeable future, anyway.

 

[TheFindus]

Mr. Dancey did not mention board games. He mentioned family games. And there is a difference. There are a lot of family games that are not board games, but, for example, card games. Like Mafia (Werewolf), Dixit or Dominion. There even is a Settlers of Catan card game (very good on travels).
You can play 4E with the powers printed on/as cards. The board would then be the battle mat. And that is all good, my players have only made very positive experiences with this, since it does not take anything away from the roleplaying, which we do extensively.

And I think Mr. Dancey is right about that. In order to draw in new players, rules have to be easy to understand and the introductory phase to the game needs to be short. Like in a family game.

 

[grimslade]

I think the better insight from Dancey is the fact that there are few new trpg players being brought into the fold, so to speak. The last new rush of players was in 3rd edition and they are staying put or going to PF. 4e seemed to be adopted by multiedition long term D&D fans. People who had adjusted to an Ed. change before. New blood is not coming in to the hobby to replace attrition. So trpg have to cannibalize from each other for players. 5E will have a tough row to hoe but they have a huge amount of IP with built in fan bases. Paizo has to harken back to Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Planescape, WotC can deliver the actual IP.

 

[P1NBACK]

I think more importantly than the actual pieces is the presentation and distribution that "family board games" have.

So, a price point that curious parents might buy into, presentation that offers family-friendly art and back of the box text, packaging that seems robust and easy to get into (not 100s of pieces to put together), sitting on the shelf next to games like Risk and Settlers of Catan (which is in Target now).

The actual game can be as deep of roleplaying as you want, while keeping the mechanics light and elegant, and the presentation and distribution drawing the attention of someone who doesn't frequent hobby stores or search Amazon for D&D.

A better-built Red Box style core game would be close.

 

[CleverNickName]

D&D: The Board Game?

Humor aside, they already had a board game. It was fun, I guess, but it wasn't exactly what comes to mind when I think "classic D&D."