What D&D can learn from spaghetti sauce

[xechnao]

WotC surveys show that most gamers don't care about system. They stick with D&D because it's what they know. There are plenty of players around and they don't have to learn a new set of rules.

Perhaps true.

In fact I think the surveys showed a lot of them didn't even know other rpgs existed, which is unthinkable to an ENWorlder.

Hard to believe this. Very hard.

That also answers the point about Paizo and Green Ronin. They're not catering to a worldbuilder sim preference. They're catering to inertia.

Everyone and everything is catering to inertia somehow. Inertia is one of the fundamental laws of the universe.

 

[Remathilis]

And further, what qualifies for Wizards as not removable? Personally, I'd prefer a different combat system and a different character system. Will these be offered?

Depends on how different you want it. If you want rip out 4e's d20 system and replace it with Thac0, then no. Similarly, I wouldn't hold my breath for a point-buy based classless creation method. However, I think an Unearthed Arcana style book might come down the pipeline 3-4 years into the development cycle...

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I have a friend who hasn't even read the actual 4E rules set, and stated flat out that he plans to never play 4E based soley on the fact that a few people here were talking negitively a couple months ago about rules that weren't even out yet.

I think this is just proof that the Zombie apocalypse is starting. Now whether its me, the guy who loves 4E, or him, they guy who hates 4E with no proof and is mindlessly following a mob who IS the zombie right now I can't realy tell... but just to be safe I bought an infinite ammo shotgun with auto-head targeting.

 

[xechnao]

I have a friend who hasn't even read the actual 4E rules set, and stated flat out that he plans to never play 4E based soley on the fact that a few people here were talking negitively a couple months ago about rules that weren't even out yet.

I think this is just proof that the Zombie apocalypse is starting. Now whether its me, the guy who loves 4E, or him, they guy who hates 4E with no proof and is mindlessly following a mob who IS the zombie right now I can't realy tell... but just to be safe I bought an infinite ammo shotgun with auto-head targeting.

There is no zombie apocalypse you are seeing here. Just a zombie war. Among zombies. You still want to arm yourself?

 

[Thunderfoot]

In MY day, generic food metaphors used peanut butter and ice cream, and we LIKED it.

You forgot chocolate your heretic!!!

 

[resistor]

This is your mistake. You're making an assumption about large numbers of D&Ders based on a handful of opinions expressed on an ENWorld thread. ENWorlders are highly atypical.

I wasn't making a serious assertion. I wouldn't presume to without having real data. I was rather offering an illustrative anecdote to suggest that there might be something there.

WotC surveys show that most gamers don't care about system. They stick with D&D because it's what they know. There are plenty of players around and they don't have to learn a new set of rules. In fact I think the surveys showed a lot of them didn't even know other rpgs existed, which is unthinkable to an ENWorlder.

Did I ever say that it had to be a mechanical preference?

More importantly, neither you nor I (unless you're secretely a WotC market researcher in disguise, which seems unlikely) knows what their data might or might not show. You don't have the data to disprove it, and I obviously don't have the data to prove it. That's why it's currently a hypothesis.