Too old for the first time?

[Mouseferatu]

I reject--absolutely, wholeheartedly, and completely--the notion that age or generation has any bearing on this.

Any.

I'm 33. Been playing since I was 9, with the red box set. I like classic fantasy. I'm not a fan of Final Fantasy, or anime fantasy.

The same holds true of the majority of my gaming group, in terms of general age range. (We're roughly split on WoW; some of us love it, some of us [like me] avoid it like the plague.)

Everyone one of us likes almost everything we know about 4E. And none of us feel that it's moving away from "our kind" of fantasy at all.

Preferences? Sure. Traditions? Sure. Both of those may come into play. Age and generation? Not even remotely. And I believe any attempt to cast the 4E "issue" as a generation gap is misguided at best, and in some cases (not talking about the OP in this thread) deliberately disingenuous.

 

[Henry]

D&D should be molding, rather than chasing, the tastes of its audience, now just as it did in the 70s and 80s.

While it's a laudable goal, to expose others to those tales that were at the forefront of the modern fantasy genre, I think it's an atypical result. In the majority of cases, people won't be molded, they'll purchase what they already like and know. As much as I was brought up on similar tales (I was a buck rogers TV / he-man / Transformers baby, myself) I never sought out its influences until DECADES later - it modeled some of the sword & sorcery movies I saw on TV and movies (like Ladyhawke, wizards & warriors TV show, etc. - my parents wouldn't let me watch Conan movies) and that was enough for me.

I think if D&D wants to gain more gamers, they do need to include elements of popular fantasy, JUST LIKE Gygax did with D&D. In the 1970's, Leiber, Howard (thanks to Conan comics), and Tolkien were hot; Gary added Ents, Hobbits, and dark gods to the game as a result. He went where the market was, whether he intended to or not.

 

[ivocaliban]

For the record, Dark Horse is rereleasing all of the Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser stories. The final book will be out in December. If you know someone who's never read these, the four-book set will make a nice Christmas/Hannukah present.

You can also get the stories (not the Dark Horse set with the fancy art, of course) through the Science Fiction Book Club, where they're collected into two volumes: The Three of Swords (containing Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, Swords In the Mist) and Swords' Masters (containing Swords Against Wizardry, The Swords of Lankhmar, Swords and Ice Magic).

 

[Brown Jenkin]

While it is good that WotC is trying to get a younger audience in the long run it may bite them in the short run. Right now the people who are buying thier products are primarily out of college with good disposable incomes. I know myself and several people in my group are this way and we started dropping $1000 plus a year on the hobby with 3E. Now we are no longer the target audience and hopefully 4E will be something everyone will like but unfortunately I have seen allot of of folks saying it isn't what they wanted and that they must be grognards now and that is fine but they are out now. Well those new grognards are the ones dropping $1000 a year on the hobby and to alienate them that is a good chunk of revenue going with them. I just hope that there are enough of the new target audience with enough disposable money for this new business plan to work.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm 37. As a 3.5 player, I think I'm in the front line of the target audience for 4e. After that would be other D&D players, then other roleplayers, then general geeks, freaks and nerdoes. Aged 12+.

 

[Doug McCrae]

We may be the defacto audience, but for many of us we certainly don't believe that we are currently targetted or even listened to by WotC.

I hope WotC aren't listening to me. If they were that would mean they're listening to rest of the bile spewed on to the interweb.

 

[WyzardWhately]

I begin to suspect what is really needed is some sort of Gritty/Swords & Sorcery Sourcebook to be released for 4E. It could include the switches, dials, and optional rules that many of us will crave, and not step on the toes of those with more new-school sensibilities. All the things we've been arguing about, like the magic item economy, Name level, hordes and armies and castle-building, some Conan-esque material on starting out broke due to things that happened off-camera, degenerate races of snake-people, all that good stuff. It wouldn't even have to be a setting, so much as a kit.

Also, they could have all the artwork for that book done in, ah, a different style. More Brom and Royo and so forth, less...well, there doesn't seem to be a non-inflammatory term for the newer art styles, so I'll just say more like the best of the stuff from 1st & 2nd than the stuff from 3rd.

 

[Irda Ranger]

What's striking is that--for the first time, for a D&D edition--I'm not the target audience.

You may not be, but that has more to do with personal taste than age.

One of the odd things about the world we live in today is how tastes and preferences are spanning across all decades. The old assumptions about "This stuff is for kids/grownups/boomers/codgers etc." is just going away. There are Peter Jackson and Jackson Pollack fans in every age bracket.

You know what I really think it is? Conan d20. I'm serious. There's a lot of competition tabletop in gaming out there right now (more than just Conan), and D&D can't rely on just superior marketing and retail channel access to hold their own. They have to do some stuff that really sets them apart from their competition. They have to play to their strengths (or what they believe them to be).

D&D has always been the biggest of the tabletop RPG's, but that doesn't mean they can't be supplanted. There's no law that says "D&D must outsell all other games 10:1." If they don't do their best to appeal to a customer base (which may or may not be you), they'll die.

So far 4E sounds promising (from my point of view, YMMV), but it may in the end not be for me. I'm sanguine with that though because there are so many alternatives.

If I was able to overcome my lack of familiarity with the inspirational material in 1984 and still learn to enjoy and appreciate the game on its own terms, there's no reason a kid today shouldn't be able to do the same (especially since he can acquire the same Gardner Fox or A. Merritt or Fritz Leiber novels with a single mouseclick that I spent years scouring musty used bookstores all over half a dozen states in search of). D&D should be molding, rather than chasing, the tastes of its audience, now just as it did in the 70s and 80s.

"Teaching" consumers what they want and should play. That's always fun & profitable.

Relatedly, I flatly reject the idea of "Coke Zero." If I was able to overcome the flavor of apartame and learned to enjoy the flavor of Diet Coke, there's no reason kids today can't as well.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I begin to suspect what is really needed is some sort of Gritty/Swords & Sorcery Sourcebook to be released for 4E. It could include the switches, dials, and optional rules that many of us will crave, and not step on the toes of those with more new-school sensibilities.

Iron Heroes?
Conan d20?

 

[WyzardWhately]

Iron Heroes?
Conan d20?

Iron Heroes is grand, but a touch messy in places. I've played both those games. The existence of S&S-style books for 3E doesn't obviate the need for them in 4E. Especially since I'd like something a little more closely tied to core, rather than an entirely new game that's just d20. Something WotC could actually conceivably put out.