What is THE NEXT BIG THING?

[Mighty Veil]

revamping the lines

5 pages already! Forgive me if this has been mentioned already.

If it's Wizards:

4e, that has a pen+paper element. The miniatures line, and the rules to with them for regular play, mass combat play, quickie lunch hour play, and solo/1 on 1 play. Cards, both a basic set, and add-ons. Things like feats and spells would be done with them. Splat books could be in the form of a set of cards, miniatures, and the invite to come online to the 'members' section of the web site. The site might have also a download with the new rules for character creation programs and the MMO. You could also purchase the splat book MMO update at a hobby shop too. The new ADD line.

There would still be a revised D20 system product lines available too. 3.75e, maybe D20 Modern Revised, and movie tie-in products under it's own production line. Stuff like Star Wars, Indy Jones, and any Hasbro toys that got a film franchise like Transformers and GI Joe.

Maybe they'd get smart and have developed for them a MMO engine that they could license off to others and use themselves for their products. Not saying they'd dump DDO. Maybe start a second D&D MMO. A Transformers one. A GI Joe one.

Magic's line.

Sell books, T's, and licenses for video games. Maybe produce a mini-series of a well-known fantasy book (like Stormbringer), and in its title have the Wizards logo. Teach people that the Wizards logo means good stuff. That way when people spot it on books, video games, MMO, RPG products. They trust it. Have line developers appear on TV and in print as "experts" on anything fantasy. Need a quote for the Hobbit movie. Ask a Wizards employee for his point of view.

 

[Mighty Veil]

a video game idea

Ah! A shooter game could be a D&D game to get the brand into the mainstream. Instead of a shotgun, shooting zombies. You have a sword and spells to kill off orcs, giants, mindflayers, beholders, githyanki, and dragons. Play online with others, form a adventuring party. Add ons come out every year with more dungeons.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi Cthulhu_duck!

They may also not have the patience or interest in campaign play. Casual gamers implies the group that like casual games that can be played quickly - Hero Quest can play for several hours - which is a bit longer than what I'd consider a 'casual game'.

I've never seen a HeroQuest game last more than two hours. Not saying it couldn't happen, but its certainly not the norm.

But at the same time, just because a 'board' can be played in 90 minutes (or whatever) doesn't mean you can play more than one adventure, or make the game last longer if everyone has the time. So if you still want to game for 3, 4, 5 hours or more, you can.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Are you serious?

I'm deadly serious. Complexity will only choke the game and inhibit new gamers from taking it up.

Granted the D&D rules are still hefty and all, and some of the rules are a bit tough to wrap some people's heads around (but really, I've never known any gamer who *used* ALL the rules), but... D&D just keeps getting more and more dumbed down. It's an old arguement I grant you, but I was insulted enough when the rules deigned to define a door for me, man.

Thats simply not true. 3rd Edition is far more complicated than 1st/2nd. Feats and Skills take up so much time when designing characters/monsters.

Personally I think Skill Points are an unnecessary waste of time.

Do I want the gamer base to grow? Yeah, sure I do. But I don't think the answer can possibly be to make the game more and more idiot-encouraging and get any positive result from that.

I think you have to try and plot out the fun to complexity graph and target the game where the 'fun' peaks.

The current incarnation of the game is too complicated and too much time is spent with the minutiae of setup and creation.

Boards and mini-based games makes me want to hide in a corner and mumble to myself, it's a terrifying prospect. Boards and minis used in RPGs, cool go ahead and use whatever tools are good for you, but the idea of a future where my gaming revolves around this as an aspect of the rules? Gods save me, I'll be glad that there's always an older Edition to fall back on. But that won't change the direction of where the D&D line will have gone.

So you are happy to use boards and minis, you just don't want to see them as integral. Just what exactly are you afraid of?

Idiot-buffing D&D is antithetical to the concept of the game that got me into this hobby. Maybe I'm just a cranky old gronard, but I still hold to the notion that We waded through Gygax's wonderfully-written, dense, wandering, hard-to-follow-coherently prose and managed to make sense of it without being handed every concept and idea on a silver platter labelled "Platter, Silver: A flat, often metal plate used to carry and present a morsel on". And gamers today should be smart enough to be able to friggin Read AND Comprehend. I mean this is supposed to be one of the prerequisites for leaving grammar school, eh?
*End rant*

But the simple fact of the matter is that you are unnecessarily restricting your market for no good reason!

There is little or no incentive for the casual gamer to pick up D&D over 101 other different hobbies which are more visually arresting and easier to get into.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi c_d!

Some people enjoy the micro-management.

As you remove elements that some enjoy, you potentially lose that chunk of the market - to whit:

But thats the point, we don't have to remove them, simply make them optional. At the moment, D&D does not have that luxury.

Its not catering to the lowest common denominator. Therefore its not selling as well as it could.

- when I GM, I don't want to play an adversarial role. When I play, I don't want a game where the GM runs the game in an adversarial fashion. If you make a game like you suggest, the odds are I won't buy or play it.

Again, what we are talking about is something optional.

Thinking of those who've joined my local rpg groups in the last couple of years, there were two common factors amidst them:

1) They also played wargames, and found their way into playing rpgs through rpg gamers in the wargames club; and / or

2) They had started with computer rpg games like Baldur's Gate, and then found out about the tabletop hobby.

DDM already address the first factor there - it's essentially a tactical wargame that could encourage people to look into the tabletop game. The second factor is somewhat addressed by DDO, but I'm not sure that there's anything feeding people from that into the tabletop hobby.

Rather than creating a dumbed down game that competes with the full game, why not create a game in a different section of the games market that can provide a player with a lead into the tabletop hobby?

When 3rd Edition came out, people still played 1st/2nd Edition.

Personally I see no reason for a pen & paper 4th Edition. It's not going to be sufficiently better than 3/3.5 to make the same amount of people buy all the supplemental books they already own.

People might buy a 4th Ed. PHB, DMG and maybe even MM but they won't fork out in large numbers for 4th Ed. Manual of the Planes, Savage Species, Complete Adventurer ad infinitum and the like.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again DragonLancer!

I didn't, and I should have. It's one reason why I ask, nay, demand, a level of commitment from my players. They all have busy lives with work and families (3 out of 6 of us have kids), and they make time and the effort to get away from all that to come and spend a few hours every Sunday night playing D&D for the social, stress-relief and fun aspects of the game.

Understandable.

The problem there is that there is such a small markup for retailers on gaming stuff. It's an aspect of this business that can't be helped unfortunately.

True.

Correct, though for me it would not be the same game. Theres evolving with the times as anything must, but thats not the direction I would want it to go. If RPG's went that way, it would seriously turn me off. If I want to play a game like has been described, I'd drag out my copy of Talisman or Runebond.

I have heard a few people say thats not the direction they want to see the game go in, but they never say why its not...?

Which is another problem. There just isn't any really effective way of getting to the non-gamers, and getting them to take an interest in the gaming hobby and we need to find a way to do that IMO if the gaming hobby is to continue in the face of consoles and online games.

I think you have to use a three pronged strategy.

Board Game - to get them to the mass market, stoke a new audience, breed new gamers.
Online Version - take advantage of that medium. Personally I think X-Box live is the way forward.
Marketing - position yourself with strong existing brands, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean. If you can't secure those licences, work off those themes. Imagine bringing out a D&D Board Game next summer based on something like Secrets of Saltmarsh, with Ghost Pirates and so forth. You would make a fortune. A good D&D movie wouldn't hurt either.

My FLGS runs Thursday evenings as RPG night. Theres a couple groups playing in store (A classic Runequest that I play in, and another group which cycles through Call of Cthulhu, Serenity and a few others) and the store is open for folks to come in. Our hope is that people will come in for a look or to pick up a boardgame, see the RPG's and take an interest. It has happened for a few, thankfully. While RPG's don't make for a great visual watch, playing one in store gets questions asked and maybe some interest.

I agree thats a step in the right direction. But if you add the visual element to that, board, minis, cards it becomes far easier to follow and also far more interesting especially for kids. I am sure even you would agree with that.

 

[JVisgaitis]

The problem there is that there is such a small markup for retailers on gaming stuff. It's an aspect of this business that can't be helped unfortunately.

Not sure what you mean. Retailers get a 50% discount. If my product has a cover price of $50, a retailer buys it for $25. I don't consider that a small markup. That's pretty much standard across most industries.

 

[DragonLancer]

I have heard a few people say thats not the direction they want to see the game go in, but they never say why its not...?

For me at least, it's because it's not what brought me into the hobby. RPG's fascinated me even before I started playing them because there was no board, no play pieces - everything is cerebral, it's all in the imagination.

When you add a board, it becomes no different than a more complex version of FFG's Descent boardgame. While that may be seen by some as the perfect form to draw new players in, for me it smacks a little of desperation if D&D has to incorporate those elements.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I'm deadly serious. Complexity will only choke the game and inhibit new gamers from taking it up.

Since when has complexity choked and inhibited anything from gathering new interested people? New uninterested people, sure.
Programming isn’t exactly simple, but people keep getting interested in it. Even web coding could be a hell of a lot simpler, but web pages keep popping up.
I cannot agree that just because RPGs are a niche product that appeals to a limited sub-set of the population that it must become less complex to continue. On what are we basing our thoughts that if we make it easier and easier for someone with only a passing glimmer of interest and a 3rd grade reading level to understand that the gamer base will grow? Hopeful thinking

Granted the D&D rules are still hefty and all, and some of the rules are a bit tough to wrap some people's heads around (but really, I've never known any gamer who *used* ALL the rules), but... D&D just keeps getting more and more dumbed down. It's an old arguement I grant you, but I was insulted enough when the rules deigned to define a door for me, man.

Thats simply not true. 3rd Edition is far more complicated than 1st/2nd. Feats and Skills take up so much time when designing characters/monsters.

Personally I think Skill Points are an unnecessary waste of time.

The rules may have grown more interconnected and complex in their variance and scope (skills, feats, PrCs, AoO, blah blah) but the books themselves have grown less and less complex. The verbiage and phrasing, the presentation, the wrting has grown ever-more simplified. The books are being more and more written to be absorbable with no actual thought required to understand what’s being said.
Sure, they don’t need to be written with Gygaxian prose and uncommon word choice that prompts a young’un to pick up a dictionary. I’m not trying to imply that D&D books should be an IQ test or intentionally difficult to understand, I’m just saying that when the level of writing has become dumbed-down enough that I find my intelligence being insulted when I read it by the text itself presuming that I’m not very bright, I think it’s gone too far.

And just as an aside, do you mean that you think a skills system is a waste of time, or that you’d like to see a system that doesn’t make use of skill point spending implemented?

I think you have to try and plot out the fun to complexity graph and target the game where the 'fun' peaks.

The current incarnation of the game is too complicated and too much time is spent with the minutiae of setup and creation.

Plot out the fun to complexity graph and target the game where fun peaks? I’m sorry, I know that’s intended to come across as responsibly proactive and well-meaning and all, but that line of text in and of itself just seems to kind of want to suck ‘fun’ into it like a black hole.
How in the name of all that’s holy is the game too complicated? What is the standard of ‘too complicated’?
I know some people have grumped that with the rigors of grown-up life (work, family, other hobbies, all that stuff) that they don’t have the kind of time they used to have to devote to the game, but that’s just 2+2 kind of stuff. Of course you don’t. But I fail to see the appeal of making the game into some kind of out-of-the-box plug-and-play thing just to make that easier. That certainly isn’t what we got hooked on as kids that lead us here now. Why would we want to turn it into that, when that’s not what we got into it for?

Boards and mini-based games makes me want to hide in a corner and mumble to myself, it's a terrifying prospect. Boards and minis used in RPGs, cool go ahead and use whatever tools are good for you, but the idea of a future where my gaming revolves around this as an aspect of the rules? Gods save me, I'll be glad that there's always an older Edition to fall back on. But that won't change the direction of where the D&D line will have gone.

So you are happy to use boards and minis, you just don't want to see them as integral. Just what exactly are you afraid of?

Just what exactly am I afraid of? Well, do you recognize the difference between playing a game of D&D and deciding to use minis, and playing a mini game that’s called D&D? Having tools that I may or may not decide to use I my game is great, having the game change to revolve around tools that were never a part of the game at it’s core is another.
If the game requires a board, it has become a board game.
If the game requires minis, it has become a mini game.
(I had about 5 paragraphs where I went on about suggestions like pda/cellphone driven softwares, online versions, software integration, etc. In the end I don’t think it was worth the effort to go into them, but I will say that I feel those are much more limiting to your potential playerbase than the complexity of the rules))
In the end, what I’m afraid of is D&D no longer being even vaguely recognizable as the game that got me interested in Role-Playing anymore. I’d suddenly become an Ex-Gamer, and I’d hate for that to happen.

Idiot-buffing D&D is antithetical to the concept of the game that got me into this hobby. Maybe I'm just a cranky old gronard, but I still hold to the notion that We waded through Gygax's wonderfully-written, dense, wandering, hard-to-follow-coherently prose and managed to make sense of it without being handed every concept and idea on a silver platter labelled "Platter, Silver: A flat, often metal plate used to carry and present a morsel on". And gamers today should be smart enough to be able to friggin Read AND Comprehend. I mean this is supposed to be one of the prerequisites for leaving grammar school, eh?*End rant*

But the simple fact of the matter is that you are unnecessarily restricting your market for no good reason!

There is little or no incentive for the casual gamer to pick up D&D over 101 other different hobbies which are more visually arresting and easier to get into.

Yes, there is an uphill battle in getting new gamers interested in D&D (or RPGs in general) against more visually arresting and instant-gratification providing activities. But the question remains, at what point do we draw the line and say “I am willing to push the game this far, even though by pushing it this distance it is no longer the game I began pushing?”
I’m unnecessarily restricting my market by suggesting that the books not be written for a grammar school level reading ability? Yeah, I suppose so. Didn’t the cigarette industry have a similar claim when people got in a big uproar about 5-10 year olds smoking?
Some restrictions aren’t that bad.
And it’s not like grammar school age kids can’t learn the game. I know kids in grammar school (or who were in grammar school when they started) who love the game, and play. Sure they may need an older person to help teach them (or maybe not), but if so… great, we call that ‘Mentoring’, it’s usually a good thing.

 

[Ceresco]

JVisgaitis,

Tavis Allison tried something similar from Behemoth3 with his Otherworld Excursions. I think he also ran seminars on it. As the person that ends up DMing all the time, I'd certainly pay for a professional DM from time to time so I can play alongside all my friends. Problem with that is unless there is a good interface to play games online, its not going to happen.

I would love to have the online product support to be able to professionally run games. But it's at conventions is where I see the oppurtunity to change the hobby. Create an online ranking system so all participants can anonymously give feed back on their session. Ranking of DMs and an auction like proceedure to be able to play at their table and wa'la, instant market.

If cons and gaming companies invest in their DMs, supply table top lcd projector displays with pre-generated floor plans and total lap top support then I think the age of the professional DM is soon at hand. Look at the Best Gaming Setup Ever thread. That's a step in the right direction.