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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5486029" data-attributes="member: 42582">Agreeing with Hussar, a basic game is not needed to teach concepts. So I in part disagree with giant.robot - a basic game isn't needed to get people familiar with absolutely core concepts. But I agree with giant.robot in a different respect - D&D, especially in its current versions, presupposes players who are willing to engage with incredibly complex rules that are also mathematically heavy (in the same way that accounting is mathematically heavily, wheras keeping a diary is not) and presuppose the spreadsheet as the basis model of presenting information.I therefore think EW is right. A good basic game wouldn't primarily be a teaching tool. It would be an RPG that was (i) fun to play, but (ii) didn't presuppose that its players all longed to be accountants in their next lives.Basic D&D succeeded in being such a game, because it is so simple in the required maths. It still presupposes exploration and combat as the focus of play, however, and I think Hussar was right when he suggested upthread that computer gaming will dominate this sort of market.HeroWars/Quest is a completely different attempt at a maths-lite game, which focuses on something other than exploration and combat, and therefore isn't easily replicated by a computer game, but is obviously lacking in the market presence that would enable it to lead a recovery in RPGing.The notion that 4Essentials is in any way an introductory game, or a game that would lure new (and non-accountant) players to RPG, I think is pretty implausible. I assume that WotC see Essentials as selling to lapsed RPGers, and or to the children of RPGers, and or to the handful of young would-be accountants who haven't yet discovered that they can pursue their occupation with much more interesting flavour text!</blockquote>

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