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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5624259" data-attributes="member: 7006">I think the big split between the need for a game store plus D&D product for said game store, and a fully online digital Dungeons & Dragons... comes down to the idea of getting people involved with the hobby who have no idea or help to do so.Draco is correct when he says that you need a place to go to get all of your acoutrement to run a game (or to actually get the game itself).  Jan is also right in that you can get everything you need for a game online (either through actually online tools like dice rollers and VT... or just being able to order the physical product from online stores.)So the question becomes... who goes to either place, and which one will give you the highest benefit to cost ratio?For those most part... any 'experienced' RPG player already has access to most (if not all) of what he or she needs to play ANY rpg.  Dice, mats, pencils, pens, character sheets... all that stuff is already either in their possession, in the possession of other friends that can be borrowed, or is easily acquired online through online stores.  So right now there is a huge swathe of players who are all set for '5E' (or whatever the next iteration will be called) even if it got released completely digitally through DDI and e-readers, with no physically product whatsoever.However... by doing it this way, WotC would pretty much be conceding the fact that they would only be gearing their game to people already "in the circle" as it were.  Only those people who were already gamers or gamer-adjacent (family or friends of gamers).  At that point it would just comes down to making a game so universally good accessible that it gets gamers of all walks to pick it up.Now that would be a very big concession-- acknowledging that getting kids who have no connection to the tabletop gaming industry is a virtual impossibility and it's not worth spending money to try.  I would not put it past WotC to actually come to that conclusion (depending on ultimately how successful or not successful their last attempts like the Red Box and Essentials actually were)... but if they did, that'd be a big deal.  But perhaps in this day and age, the tabletop circle just can't get any bigger, regardless of the money you spend and the product you make to try?Perhaps we have come (or will be soon coming) to a time when having physical game product in a location that is meant to be an impulse buy by someone who doesn't already have access or know how to acquire it, is no longer fiscally responsible to produce?  It'd be sad to think that, as we'd lose one of our great institutions of nerdom... but eventually the arcade went virtually extinct as well.</blockquote>

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