The fragmentation of the D&D community... was it inevitable?

[shadzar]

2) Work to get your players to enjoy and embrace change, in general.

Unfortunately (1) is a bit of a flop as a business, and (2) is difficult, as it runs rather contrary to human nature.

I would say that it more impossible, and even more so insulting. Take the 4th edition video as an example of this at it's highest.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbqMoEwDqc]YouTube - Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Teaser[/ame]

As well the marketing that blatantly said "you're doing it wrong" if you played D&D prior to 4th.

We can all see how easily that insults many customers and makes them move away. That said, any thing done that tries, even passive aggressively, to force the customer to accept change because you want them to change to buy the product is down right foolish and insulting and deserves the same response. You lose customers.

It is your job to produce a quality product that makes people want to buy it. The customer decides how to spend their money. This whole thinking the customer owes the company something of this new age marketing crap needs to die and die fast.

You want to sell product to the customer, you don't blow smoke up their , you kiss their .

Some people like change for the sake of change, but then theur are smart people, ones that know they make their own decisions. Kenmore doesn't make a washer that suit you anymore and you need a new one, you own no loyalties to Kenmore, you paid for their continued service; so you are free to buy a MayTag when your Kenmore is no longer serviceable due to discontinuation/whatever...such as the same goes for D&D in any edition. Except you will not be out of D&D books for older editions until their are no longer usable, and even bad condition books in today's world are easily repaired with a little bit of money, lamination, mold removal, hole punches, etc so that you can continue to use them for a long time to come.

I would reword that to something closer to "Make changes in accordance with what the players will enjoy and find acceptable".

The American Civil War was the result of "working to get people to accept change".

 

[Dungeoneer]

Dude, that video is hilarious, not insulting. I think you're taking it a little too personally.

Of course they're going to try and rev the fan base up for a new edition and make it look shiny and cool. It's not an eff you to fans, it's business and marketing.

If marketing is all it takes to divide the community the community is already in trouble.

 

[shadzar]

Dude, that video is hilarious, not insulting.

To you.

I think you're taking it a little too personally.

And there is another problem that creates fragmentation, insults like this that demean anothers POV because it is not exactly aligned with the one stating it, such as the video which MANY found insulting.

I could insult you back for this portion, but wont. I will just tell you to learn that you have no right to force your opinion on others, no matter what you think,individuals are what humans are and have every right to fel a certain way about anything.

Which is the crux of what I was saying, that too many people trying to force anothers views to change, only causing more fragmentation of society and communities in ALL parts of life.

What you seem to miss is that marketing does have an eff you component in the way it is done, because they want to say you are not using the correct product unless you are using theirs. Watching Pitchemen now in Discovery Channel, you can see clearly how there is a difference in putting something or someone down as inferior, to when you just say "this is so good i can't believe it".

One you are putting something down and purposefully trying to insult it, which in turn insults those that believe in it. Mudslinging is what it is.

The other you are just showing off your product rather than trying to compare others to it, and saying how well this works, and letting people know about it.

Sham-Wow first came out as a product that was better than paper towels, cloth towels, work rags, etc. It didnt say using those was bag, but it did say that it could perform better, and did so that many believed it so. The companies of those other products never really made claims to do all it could, so couldn't complain, and Sham-Wow cannot be used after a bath, you don't wipe your face with it and throw it away, and you didn't put it under your oil-pan when you changed the oil in your car.

It was a similar, not competing product, that had qualities of all the others, but did some function they all did, better. It didn't seek to replace them as it wasn't made to do all the things those other products were meant to do.

So while it was laughed at, like you laugh at the video, people took notice, and still buy all the others, but also have a Sham-Wow now added to them to handle what the Sham-Wow does, while still having the other products for what the Sham-Wow doesn't do.

Others like Oxy-Clean tell you to throw all those other products away and use just it. That can be insulting, but it is what marketing is for to get you to buy OUR product not theirs.

You will never See the Oreck guy saying, "Last year model was crap you should jsut throw it out cause using it was wrong, so get this year's model". What he does is just show how this years model has advantages and improvements over last year's and lets the customer decide if they need those features.

Marketing for 4th edition D&D, pretty much said "If you aren't playing D&D with 4th edition you have been playing it wrong."

They attacked the product and the followers. Had they jsut shown how better a newer bersion could be, without saying the old version wasn't good, then it wouldn't have insulted anyone.

Marketing CAN and DOES have a huge impact on how a new product or piece of marketing is concerned at to what customers stay with the product or which ones leave to a new product that may have morals closer to the consumers own.

"Procter and Gamble wa founded by people that worship Satan." Attitudes and morals can easily guide the market into which products its buys.

Baatezu and Tanar'ri anyone?

Something as simple as that can insult people, as well as divide the market.

Want more examples, I will just give you one.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone v Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The reason for the change to the US titled was to Americanize it and in part prevent culture shock from causing the book to not sale, no matter how you look at it and which reason you believe. There was no reason to do so. Scholastic just wanted to change it is the only reason.

That has been debate and cause for much insult to the intelligence of the American fans since, and even Scholastic's own forums has heated debates about it form time to time.

 

[Dungeoneer]

"I think you're taking it too personally" is an insult?!?

If you feel that that is insulting, I'm guessing further discussion of this topic would be fruitless.

 

[shadzar]

"I think you're taking it too personally" is an insult?!?

If you feel that that is insulting, I'm guessing further discussion of this topic would be fruitless.

Well on most forums you discuss the topic the poster is making, not the poster themselves. So the poster is out of bounds, lest it be one is making a personal attack.

You could have approached you disagreement with the video interpretation in many other ways.

Would it be right for me to say, "If you cannot see how that video is presented in an insulting manner, then I think you take/live life too much like a joke"?

No, and thus why I didn't say such and didn't come up with a good retort because I wasn't trying to insult you with the example, rather just trying to come up with an example in opposition to your remark, that is also off-topic and could benefit discussion in no way, unless we were talking in general in which discussing the psychology of marketing. But you used "you" meaning me personally in your comment, so not easily seen as you making a general examination of psychology of marketing.

I hope that helps understand the difference I am talking about, and CAN see where it may not be insulting to you, but you should also see where the video could, and rightly so, be insulting to others even if it does not insult you.

Also that kind of remark, HAS caused fragmentation of the D&D community. Check the WotC forums from around the time of the announcement of 4th and that video came out and you will see two camps, those who just thought it was funny, and those who found it insulting.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dude, that video is hilarious, not insulting. I think you're taking it a little too personally.

Of course they're going to try and rev the fan base up for a new edition and make it look shiny and cool. It's not an eff you to fans, it's business and marketing.

If marketing is all it takes to divide the community the community is already in trouble.

As someone with a Masters in Sports & Entertainment Marketing, let me just say that my profs could have used that video as an illustration of how NOT to launch a new product or service. It doesn't matter how bad you thought it was, you don't mock past purchasers of your product, even in jest- too big of a chance of backlash. ESPECIALLY when you're talking non-essential products that are likely to have generated some kind of emotional attachment.

As happened in this case.

Instead of trashing what went before, you play up the strengths of the new.

For instance, instead of depicting the arcane nature of the 3.5 Grapple rules, you'd say something about "streamlining combat" or come up with a slogan like "Less Reading, More Fun!" (Or some such.)

 

[pemerton]

Dausuul, some interesting posts.

As regards narrative-driven metagame mechanics, I don't think it needs to be a big deal. A few powers like "Come and Get It" would need to be rewritten or deleted. We'd see more Essentials-style classes and fewer Vancian casters in drag. Healing surges and full daily healing might be replaced with something else, or they might just get a facelift to make them more palatable to the simulationist.

My own view is that it goes further than that.

For example, the mock-play example skill challenge in the Rules Compendium ends in the following way: the players fail their third skill check - a streetwise check to investigate a building. As a result of this failure, not only do they not learn much about the building, but the GM has them attacked by some thugs (whom they had earlier scared off with a successful intimidate check) as the consequence for failing the skill challenge.

Although the rulebook doesn't actually call this out - part of why, in my view, it continues to be a badly written set of skill challenge rules - this example is very telling: it reveals that, as part of the resolution of a skill challenge, the GM has to be prepared to make things happen that don't follow the causal rules of the gameworld itself. In the example, for instance, failing a streetwise check not only causes the PCs to remain ignorant of a building's history, but it also causes them to be attacked by thugs - even though, within the gameworld, there is no causul link between the thugs and the PC's attempt to learn about the building.

4e is full of this sort of thing. Come and get it may be a very obvious example, but like you say it is marginal. But skill challenges are not marginal to 4e's design. They are central. (Their viability also depends, at least to some extent, on the +half level to skill rule - another thing disliked by many non-4e players).

Healing surges are also central - not the one-day recovery aspect, which you could drop or change without affecting much besides adventure pacing (and I think it would be sensible for the game rules to flag the possibility of changing this to get a particular style of game) - but the way in which healing surges and healing powers, as written, cause recovery of hp during a combat to be an important and engaging part of the tactical play. Dropping this aspect of surges would be a huge change to the dynamics of 4e combat.

Needless to say, therefore, I think it is a bigger task than you suggest to try to integrate 4e and 3E approaches to play.

a lot of these different preferences could be accommodated in one system, if the system were sufficiently modular.

Some sort of modularity seems a natural way to go. But the experience of Rolemaster suggests it can also be a problem - if the use of house rule is itself no longer a house rule, but an official part of the ruleset, than publishing modules, running organised play, etc, becomes an even bigger hit-and-miss affair than it already is.

A variant on modularity is to try to build in something similar to what HeroQuest does with simple and extended contests - a quick combat system that resolves with far fewer checks, but produces roughly the same sorts of outcomes with roughly the same sorts of probabilities - which is to be used for most combats, and then the full system for those which merit that sort of treatment. So the modules become a type of pacing device (presumably under the GM's control, or at least with the GM having the last word on whether a given combat is done fully or quickly).

Hopefully such a system would also help integrate combat and combat powers into skill challenges - at the moment this is a pretty ad hoc area of the rules.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

Mod Edit: Foul language is foul language, even if you mask it. Please don't use it on these boards. Thanks. ~Umbran

Umbran, I apologize. Won't happen again.

 

[Umbran]

It is your job to produce a quality product that makes people want to buy it. The customer decides how to spend their money. This whole thinking the customer owes the company something of this new age marketing crap needs to die and die fast.

You vastly oversimplify the issue. The classic example is... New Coke.

They did the research, made the product that the research suggested the public would like. They did the testing, and proved that the public liked the new product over both the old product and the leading competitors. By what you say, New Coke should have been a slam dunk.

But, the product was rejected, not upon it's merits, but essentially upon the fact that it was a change, and the public didn't want change. And they didn't market it as Classic being bad, just that new was new and better. Humans, and the markets made up of them, often resist change even when presented with a product they themselves admit is better. Building a better mousetrap does not mean the world will automatically beat a path to your door.

Thus, you can be forced with a choice of letting the product die (because it doesn't meet your revenue stream needs), or somehow convincing the public that the change is good.

Oh, and the war analogy is so hyperbolic as to be silly. Really, keep it in perspective, please and thank you.

 

[shadzar]

It is your job to produce a quality product that makes people want to buy it. The customer decides how to spend their money. This whole thinking the customer owes the company something of this new age marketing crap needs to die and die fast.

You vastly oversimplify the issue. The classic example is... New Coke.

They did the research, made the product that the research suggested the public would like. They did the testing, and proved that the public liked the new product over both the old product and the leading competitors. By what you say, New Coke should have been a slam dunk.

You have the right example but wrong reason, so they have been removed. people wanting to read them can follow back and do so.

New Coke is JUST like that video in regards to marketing and research.

D&D advertising decided that all D&D players, based on their small sample, were people just sitting around putting each other down all the time. That must be what the research showed since people on the internet also do it all the time to each other, because they are the best of friends right?

Like New Coke its research failed, which means it did NOT put out a quality product.

Like 4th edition, New Coke was an unneeded change that did nothing for the product. People didn't like the change. The taste wasn't what people wanted, and it caused people to switch to Pepsi to find something that tasted better; like those that moved to Pathfinder rather than 4th. Coke Classic returned but it wasn't the same formula and when sold against New Coke, New Coke was outsold by Classic and Pepsi, meaning it wasn't jsut people didn't like change, but the changes made were just bad due to bad marketing and research.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

New Coke used the new age marketing thinking they could do anything and the consumer would just blidnly buy in, well that didn't work. They thought the consumer would be loyal for any change, and found out that people weren't buying Coca-Cola name brand, but buying Coca-Cola soft drink, and it was because the formula was what they wanted. It all came down to a matter of taste, one of the reason it relates so closely to D&D.

Trying to force New Coke on people would have only had the company die, not the product. You have some very bad misconceptions of how things work.

You try to force your customers to do anything because you think they owe you, and you will be looking for a lot of new customers to replace the ones you tick off. Other companies have tried to force a change the company wanted on people from services, to physical product, and the backlash for the company has always be astounding.

Your method leads to even more TARP funds needing to be spent and tax-payer money having to prop-up these businesses because they fold otherwise.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Consumers are not the loyal little lambs ready for you to lead them off to slaughter that you think they are. They owe no loyalty to any company. WotC needs the players, the players do NOT need WotC. The company is the one that should be loyal to the customer, and it is them that owes everything they have to the customer.

You fail in your research and collect bad data, you cannot call that making a quality product. New Coke and WotC proved nothing because of bad data. They made a product based on that bad data.