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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 5259356" data-attributes="member: 4720">Well, that's a pretty unfounded assumption.I hang out with many people who aren't gamers.  And even some who've never played a video game that didn't come pre-installed with Windows.  Most of them don't have any interest in D&D.  Most people who don't find the idea boring, vaguely unsettling, or even repellent are the ones who already game in one form or another.  So I've had more luck getting people who've had a bout of "Final Fantasy Tactics" addiction to a gaming table.BUT... I have had non-gamers try one edition or another out.  Never seen one turned off by the complexity.  In fairness, most of my non-gamer friends are academics of one stripe or another, so they're good at complexity.However, I don't run exclusively with academics, either.  I've also sprung D&D on home schooled farm boys who've never played a video game, a guy who spent 12 years running rafting trips in Colorado, and several members of a club hockey team.  None of them were turned off by the complexity.Incidentally, my 86 year old grandmother plays Flash games.  That doesn't make her a "gamer."Now this I've seen.  People who just want to get started and don't want to deal with the front-loaded complexity of building a character before they even understand what most effects do in play.  But you do that by pre-determining the starting state and slowly introducing options as they level.  Throwing out the power system more or less entirely seems like a "baby with the bathwater" issue. I rather liked the way they threw out some of the front-loaded complexity with the cleric builds, but left the guts of the system intact.</blockquote>

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