The hobby and 4e Forked Thread: So...How are Sales of 4E Product?

[xechnao]

You contradict yourself here. You say its not a preference or opinion, and then you reply with a preference/opinion.

You seem to believe that the RPG hobby revolves around you and your opinions.

I was trying to explain you by making clear the distinction regarding personal preferences of types of fantasy (you seem to think I was talking about) and the relation of the growth of the rpg hobby to fantasy generally (I was trying to talk about).

Regarding the second part... well, I can only interpret things the way I see them and communicate it to you so we can have a discussion. Is there a problem with that? You seem kind of inflammatory about it...

 

[Fifth Element]

No. It is not a question of preference regarding type of fantasy. It is a question regarding the potential of growth and expansion in the gaming style each of them tries to achieve.
OD&D's philosophy is more directly about the "exotic" that fantasy can invoke. 4e is more about a game within a fantasy environment.

I daresay 4E is pretty exotic by itself; that's one the common complaints, that dragonborn and tieflings are too "out there".

If I can dig down into your argument, you seem to be saying that OD&D promotes imagination, while 4E does not. If this is the case, I heartily disagree.

 

[CardinalXimenes]

I've never seen a really conclusive discussion about the "real spirit of <prior edition of choice>". Especially particularly antique editions. People like to imagine that their impression of prior editions is induced chiefly by the printed material. I have to believe that's almost never the case. D&D is at root a fundamentally social phenomenon and can't be pried out of the group and context you gamed with any more than you can credit the quality of a banquet to the tableware.

Old editions are tools that evoke memories that are highly positive for most of us. Sometimes other people will pick them up today and create equally satisfying memories with like-minded groups, but I think objective numbers suggest that fewer such happy accidents will occur with OD&D than will happen with 4e.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I was trying to explain you by making clear the distinction regarding personal preferences of types of fantasy (you seem to think I was talking about) and the relation of the growth of the rpg hobby to fantasy generally (I was trying to talk about).

Regarding the second part... well, I can only interpret things the way I see them and communicate it to you so we can have a discussion. Is there a problem with that? You seem kind of inflammatory about it...

What you were doing was transferring your own preferences to the hobby as a whole. I find it arrogant for somebody to decide he speaks for all of us.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I can't say how well it sales. What I do wonder is how many of them sold books now lay gathering dust like the 40 at my books a million.

 

[RFisher]

I keep thinking it’s not worth posting since all I have is anecdotes, but it seems too often that’s all we have in this hobby. (u_u)

The question I’ll choose to answer is: Is D&D currently the gateway RPG?

The few gamers I know who got into the hobby since about the mid-1990s didn’t start with D&D.

I disagree. Why? Because when I mention that I play "RPGs" to most people, they look at me blankly. When I say "D&D," 100% of them know exactly what I'm talking about. To get people to understand my playing Vampire: the Masquerade, I often had to describe as "D&D, except you play a blood-sucking demon of the night."

D&D is to RPGs as Kleenex is to tissues.

See, I’ve been very surprised about this in recent years. For many years that was my experience. These days, however, I find that, if someone recognizes “D&D”, they recognize “RPG”. I’m constantly amazed at how many people today don’t recognize the brand and how those that do actually have at least a decent knowledge of what it is.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I can't say how well it sales. What I do wonder is how many of them sold books now lay gathering dust like the 40 at my books a million.

Hey, go back to the original thread from which this one forked - we're already busy trying to make sense of xechnao!


Let's play pretend:
Gary Gygax didn't create D&D 1974. There were no RPGs around, nobody thought of it before, or at least nobody bothered to sell it.
But 2008, some company creates a new game that will be the first role-playing game ever. And they come out with something that looked like D&D 4E (maybe they are influenced by computer game design and the state of the fantasy as it is now - minus RPG influence). Could this game be the gateway to new and other role-playing games? Could it start an entire new genre? I think it would.

But back into our reality:
Will D&D 4 serve as a gateway to other RPGs today?
Yes, I think so. New players will be introduced to the hobby, and most of them will be faced with some kind of D&D, and very likely this will be D&D 4, since that's the current edition and possibly what most people play eventually. It will serve as a gateway to other RPGs if D&D 4 doesn't give this new player everything he wants - or he just wants to try something new or different at some point. Of course, if D&D 4 is just that incredibly good that it satisfies all customers - no, it won't be a gateway. People will just keep playing D&D 4. But as much as I like D&D 4, I doubt that it's that good.
Or it is so bad that the players never figure out what the point of RPGs is and just give up entirely. But I doubt that, too.

 

[Jhaelen]

You can also tell them that you create and play something like WoW with a pen and paper.

Except that wouldn't tell them anything about what I am doing.

That's actually the most frequent problem I encounter when I tell someone that one of my hobbies is role playing games. They only ever think of the computer rpgs which happen to be completely unlike 'real' rpgs because the latter are actually about role-playing!

Imho, WoW is pretty much the antithesis of a roleplaying game - but that's a different discussion, I guess.