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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 5482370" data-attributes="member: 4348">I would tend to agree the systems are TOO complicated for a general audience these days.When AD&D was actually played by everyone and their dog for those two or three years way back before many of the people here were born, and when I was much younger, MANY of the rules such as wpns vs. armor tables and such weren't actually used all that much.  In essence, the game played was MUCH simpler.  Because of that, it was EASY for Joe down the street to pick up the game, for Jill up the way to pick up the game, and Don the guy across the road to pick it up as well.Simplification and streamlining is normally the way to appeal to a broader audience.You have the same difficulties with Wargaming, or other games with complex rules.  People take one look and throw up their arms and walk away.  This is one reason Monopoly is so popular (and people don't even read half the rules with THAT game).  It's simple and easy to learn.  You take a very LIGHT step up...simply to Risk, and you suddenly have a LOT of people that think that game is too complex, too long, and too heavy for them to play or learn.You get it shaved off even more with a game such as Axis and Allies or Acquire.  Sure, they aren't the heaviest boardgames out there by FAR, in fact most big time boardgamers consider those games actually rather light in relation to other games...and yet that's about the limit where the general audience says...this is WAAAAY to complex.  Even those games have a limited audience simply because they are more complex than Monopoly or Risk.D&D the original was actually pretty simple at it's core...where it probably appealed to those who could play at the level of Axis and Allies...or maybe even Risk.  They'd shave off a lot of rules (aka...houseruling, but many times simply because they didn't want to bother with such things as wpn initiative or wpn vs armor types...etc) and stick with a simpler type game...but when the fad was on, it wasn't a complex game that most were playing.Now days, if you consider A&A or Acquire complex...you're going to simply faint when you see all the rules D&D has.  It's not as easy to simply say...hey we're ignoring feats, skills and other items because of how closely integrated into the system they are.It's good for the niche that it appeals to, but for the general audience (beyond the fact that the fad has been over for over 20 some odd years, going closer to 25 years) they are probably going to view someone who can grasp all that as someone who tends to be more into numbers, heavier rules, math, etc. (sometimes they may refer to that type of person with a sort of derogatory remark in regards to how smart they actually feel someone would have to be to actually comprehend all of the stuff in the D&D books of today).In some ways, you DO have those who are rather inclined more towards a LOT of math, a LOT of number crunching, and who prefer rules heavy games with a lot of options as the main audience of the 21c D&D, as one would put it.That can actually be a good thing for those types of people, as they now have a game more to their style of play, more to their desire for multitudes of options with game based rules, and more to their wishes in what they are looking for.The downside is that the common Joe will probably never look twice at the game since they consider it too complex...unless they have a friend that somehow convinces them to play and introduces them to the game in a way that they understand...and then actually enjoy it and want to play some more.</blockquote>

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