What D&D can learn from spaghetti sauce

[resistor]

Yesterday on the train ride home, I was musing about some comments I'd read around here about how the changes in 4e were in response to preferences noted in customer surveys, etc. I think the particular comment I read said that people usually identified finding new magic items as something fun, but that identifying them was sometimes too difficult.

Thinking about this process of customer survey, I was reminded of an interesting talk I saw a while ago about spaghetti sauce, and I realized that it might be applicable to this situation. To begin, a short parable:

In the early 1980s, a major US spaghetti sauce brand was struggling. Their sauce met all the assumed requirement (quality ingredients, good adherence to pasta, competitive price), but it just was not performing in the market. They performed surveys and held focus groups to collect opinions on what made a good spaghetti sauce, and invested tons of money in tweaking their recipe to match the most popular response.

In desperation, they finally turned to an outside consultant, who had a crazy idea. He cooked up 45 different varieties of spaghetti sauce varied on every imaginable parameter, and performed extensive comparison tests across the country for months. Then, after collecting a mountain of data, rather than trying to find the most popular sauce, the instead did a clustering analysis.

He broke the data down to find out that spaghetti-sauce eaters fall into roughly three categories of preference: regular, spicy, and extra chunky. And, while the company had always produced a spicy variation on their sauce, not a single brand on the market offered an extra chunky variety. They put it into production, and went on to make $600 million in the following years.

----

Now, there are a few morals of that story. The most obvious is, of course, that an average doesn't necessarily please everyone. Equally important, however, is the fact that people are, in general, really bad at pinpointing what makes them happy. In all the focus groups and surveys, almost nobody had identified extra chunky as what they wanted from their sauce, and yet it went on to take over almost a third of the industry.

I obviously don't know anything about what kinds of market research went into determining the direction of 4e, but I have to wonder if similar forces might be at work. How many distinct preference clusters are there among D&D players? Was 4e designed with that knowledge, or just an average over everyone?

If not, it might explain why notable subsets of the population feel that it does not appeal to what they find fun.

EDIT: I really don't intend this to be a flamewar thread. I'd be genuinely interested to hear from any WotC'ers about the validity/falsity of my theory. I'd also love to hear reasoned responses. Please, no flaming.

 

[pogminky]

With the number of rpgs out there, I'd imagine every cluster group is catered for - there's all flavours of sauce already.

That said - keeping it D&D specific - I guess there's a number of play styles that a rule set might favour/disfavour.

 

[jdrakeh]

Well, first and most notably, preliminary sales reports indicate that D&D 4e is doing tremendously well in the RPG market, so we don't have the hypothetical situation you describe. Not currently, anyhow. It may come to this, it may not, but until it does, predicting the worst is an exercise in pessimistic projection, not reason.

Second, there is no proof that forum posters compose a majority of the consumer market and, in fact, there is much strong anecdotal to suggest the opposite (incidentally, this is why RPG companies rarely make business decisions based solely on this subset of fandom). Also, I don't see any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) to suggest that a majority of forum posters hate D&D 4e, either.

Third, RPGs aren't spaghetti sauce

I think that the more likely explantion for some people not liking D&D 4e despite record sales is much more simple than what you posit. Namely, I think it's about probability -- you simply can't satisfy everybody all of the time. I posit that you're overthinking things in an attempt to rationalize the behavior of radical pro-4e and radical anti-4e fandom, both of which are completely irrational by nature.

[Edit: It is worth noting that D&D fandom experienced this same kind of bitter split between AD&D 2e and D&D 3x (see the old form archives at RPGnet for details), as well as between AD&D 1e and AD&D 2e (though internet access wasn't widely available at this time, so the CrAzy wasn't getting pumped straight into your living room in Stereophonic ).]

 

[Phlebas]

I've seen it argued (and argued it myself) that the biggest factor in the love it / hate it 4e debate was the WOTC decision not to support 3,xE going forward. (and to use it as an example of all that 4E was trying to fix...

Instant problems with the chunky people even if the spicy people were catered for..

I'm not arguing that every company can afford to support a wide range of play styles - and there is a commercial risk in spreading yourself , and there are lots of alternative games, but if any company was big enough to support 2 editions for a period of time it was WOTC.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Actually there are some things along these lines that are known. The problem is that WotC is already aware of the variations, and they have accounted for this in the 4th edition DMG. The types of RPG players out there include the following: actors, explorers, instigators, power gamers, slayers, storytellers, thinkers, and watchers. They DMG goes on to talk a lot about what the specifics are of each group, but I think they're relatively self explanatory, given their names.

Now D&D, frankly, doesn't cater to every group equally. The actor, the explorer and the storyteller might feel that they take a back seat to the instigator, the slayer, and the thinker, meanwhile the watcher couldn't really care less, as long as you order pizza and have those nifty little prepainted miniatures he likes looking at so much.

Is it possible to make a version of D&D that is better suites to the actor, explorer, and the storyteller? Sure, you just won't focus so much on tactical combat, you'll make the rulebook talk a lot more about things like character interaction and development (incidentally, this game exists already and is called True20).

I don't see a way to make both camps happy, to be honest, and splitting the D&D brand down the middle doesn't make a lot of sense. Instead, what you get is a game that is weighted a little more in one direction than another, but is still centered enough that it is playable by all types of gamers. If you want to get your chunky spaghetti sauce, you pretty much need to go into one of the other games that are designed to cater to a specific group, and we all know that there are plenty of them out there.

 

[rounser]

Well, first and most notably, preliminary sales reports indicate that D&D 4e is doing tremendously well in the RPG market, so we don't have the hypothetical situation you describe.

I think it's far too early to say. The D&D name and some nice artwork are on those covers, and that alone guarantees one heck of a lot of sales automatically. 3E built D&D up, and 4E benefits from that (for now).

As someone pointed out, the proof will be in the pudding of whether people keep buying past the initial core books.

And yeah, I agree with the initial poster's point.

 

[rounser]

Actually there are some things along these lines that are known. The problem is that WotC is already aware of the variations, and they have accounted for this in the 4th edition DMG. The types of RPG players out there include the following: actors, explorers, instigators, power gamers, slayers, storytellers, thinkers, and watchers. They DMG goes on to talk a lot about what the specifics are of each group, but I think they're relatively self explanatory, given their names.

That doesn't cover DMs, though, and with no-one willing to DM you have no game.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I'd love to see some market analysis of this. I don't know if it's been done or if WOTC would be willing to make an analysis public, but I would certainly find it interesting.

 

[jdrakeh]

I think it's far too early to say.

Far too early to say that preliminary sales reports indicate that the game is doing tremendously well? Maybe you missed all of the official quotes about print run sizes and sales figures (or you simply don't want to acknowledge them). This is, however, exactly what the preliminary sales reports indicate. Thus, it isn't too early to say so.

Having said that, as I myself noted, it may be too early to say that this will continue to be the case. It is most certainly the case currently, however. I'm totally open to the possibility that this may not continue to be the case, which is why I already mentioned it. Again, though, that's a possible future, not a current reality (and, thus, totally irrelevant).

As someone pointed out, the proof will be in the pudding of whether people keep buying past the initial core books.

The final tally of success will be made in the future, yes. In the future. I'm talking about what we know right now, real facts, not about some bleak, dystopian, future that I glimpsed in a conspiratorial crystal ball. I mean seriously, any argument that starts with "I think D&D 4e is screwed based on future sales figures!" is horribly flawed right off the line.

 

[Tervin]

Now, there are a few morals of that story. The most obvious is, of course, that an average doesn't necessarily please everyone. Equally important, however, is the fact that people are, in general, really bad at pinpointing what makes them happy. In all the focus groups and surveys, almost nobody had identified extra chunky as what they wanted from their sauce, and yet it went on to take over almost a third of the industry.

I obviously don't know anything about what kinds of market research went into determining the direction of 4e, but I have to wonder if similar forces might be at work. How many distinct preference clusters are there among D&D players? Was 4e designed with that knowledge, or just an average over everyone?

I like your analogy, and what you got out of it. I hope you don't mind if I run with it a bit?

First of all: I have never, and I don't think I ever will, bought ready made spaghetti sauce. It is just too easy to make one yourself, that will be as spicy, chunky and different as you want it that particular time. I buy pasta though - the pasta maker is still living in its box in a cupboard. And I can take all sorts of shortcuts when I make my sauce, but I still make it myself.

For the same reasons I don't run somebody else's campaign, and I prefer to make my own little world to run it in even - but I don't feel that I need to make my own RPG, and things like maps, enemies and even whole adventures can be picked from all over the place because I like them and they fit what I want to do.

Having this outlook (which I think is common among DMs and pasta cooks out there) I can focus on the good parts of a game, and am ready to ignore and tweak the parts I don't love - as long as I know that my dinner guests/players will like it that way.

On the other hand it annoys me when a game limits itself for no apparent reason. Just because many people will want to run D&D as straightforward casual good vs evil bashfest mixed in with a bit of exploring and socializing, doesn't mean that the rules should only make that option possible. That is why the alignment changes rubbed me the wrong way. Not a huge deal though. That is a spice I will have to add myself when I need it.

Naturally the game system needs to be limiting, otherwise the DM's job would be impossible. But sometimes it is too easy to get caught in how you and your group like things, and lose the mindset of letting the DM and players have their own preferences.

Thinking about it, I see the rules as the pasta and the campaign/adventures as the sauce. And I want to be able to use different sauces at different times - and make sure that my players can add their own favourite spice to their plate at the table. I hope that future articles and PHs/DMGs will not only give us more stuff that works just like what we already have, but also support for games that take on other directions and play in different ways.

D&D is heroic fantasy. Just like pasta is pasta, not rice. But heroic fantasy still has a lot of variations in it - depending on which environment it takes place in, what style the story is told in and what kinds of heroes and villains you use. As it happens, I am doing groundwork on an article on fantasy heroes right now, mostly to help my head sort out which ideas and thoughts are running around in it. My notes talk of twelve different types of hero right now. Looking at it, the D&D books I have before me seem to have taken most of those into account - but the rest could easily also have fit if the designers had opened a few more doors.

The new edition have made important improvements to make the game play better. From a heroic fantasy point of view the important improvements are IMNSHO:
Differentiation between powers and rituals
Special abilties to use at all times for all characters
Spotlight on the heroes, not items or NPCs
Healing surges
Minions
Paragon paths and epic destinies helping the hero's development

Areas where I think they might have limited more than they perhaps should have:
Alignment - Just a few suggestions of alternatives in the DMG would have cost little work and made a lot of people happy.
Point of Light - I like the concept, but when everything is pointed that way it makes a lot of extra work for DMs who want something different. I would have kept that perspective in the relevant parts of the DMG (with suggestions of other directions you can take) and taken it away from all other places in the rules.
Enemies not following rules - Yes, by giving the DMs the right to do whatever they want with NPCs and monsters the job is made a lot easier. But a few things could be added in the DMG to help us DMs with our ideas, and make us feel that we have set the levels of certain things right. Evil rituals for curses, undead creation, pestilence or famine for example. They are great plot devices, hinted at all over the place, but very few such rituals are given a level and a description for the DM to use.