What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[renau1g]

Why?

People get attached to brands all the friggin' time. We are a consumer culture. We identify ourselves with our purchases.

Like iPods...Apple's made their fortune on this fact.

 

[Imaro]

4e has Eberron and FR, and that's it. FR never needed different rules, as it is supposed to be generic. And Eberron's specialness has been incorporated either as race/class stuff, or as core mechanics (like the action points).

Actually 4e also has Ravenloft... as part of the default setting in the Shadowfell... another example of what I am talking about. So there's...
Forgotten Realms (which actually had different character creation rules in 3e from the Greyhawk/default setting)
Eberron
Ravenloft
Nentir Vale/PoL
... all done "4e style"

There as a time when D&D had just three settings - Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and FR. Dragonlance's mechanical uniqueness was limited to races and classes. The other two pretty much used just the core rules.

First, that is why I referenced 2e and 3e... not 1e. Second... so what, for more of D&D's history it has had specific rules for different campaign settings, including Hollow World for BECMI. (which if I recall correctly, and I may not be, there were only two major settings for... yet rules were used to bring out the uniqueness in different regions with the gazetteer series as well.)

So, is the problem that the rules don't change for the settings... or that there aren't half a dozen other settings for the system that require different rules?

Personally for me the problem is that they have chosen not to differentiate any of the settings listed above through unique rules to enhance their flavor. However it seems they may have gotten a clue with Dark Sun... though I'm not sure if I have enough faith in WotC to even buy it to see.

With respect, I thought I was addressing your post. You just weren't very specific about what you meant.

With respect, you decided to lump my reply to your post in with comments by others which obfuscated my point... as I was very specific about what era/editions of D&D I was speaking of and what characterictics I was talking about... again, not once did I mention 1e or races and classes.

 

[Lanefan]

So, what's the typical retention time for a gamer as a customer? Not just how long to they continue to play in general, or how long they play a particular game, but how long do they continue to buy products for a particular system?

The answer there depends, of course, on how long the system is commonly available before being replaced by another.

I would not be surprised if, in general, a given player is saturated after only a couple of years, and purchases will drop precipitously. Once you've got an entire shelf full of stuff, you probably don't need more to continue playing that game indefinitely.

I'm probably the exception, as usual, but almost 30 years in I'm still buying stuff for 1e.

Lan-"even though I don't really need it"-efan

 

[MerricB]

You would be correct.

Thank you. I think Wizards did try to make monster generation simpler in 4e - and I do think they succeeded - but it's still nowhere near as easy as in 1e!

Cheers!

 

[Hussar]

We already have that. The actual mechanics are not under copyright. That is why we can have S&W, LL, OSRIC, and others. What we can't have is the cool unique flavor that is the essence of D&D to go along with it- Mordenkainen, Tenser, Greyhawk, you know, the good stuff.
All those trappings are tied into the brand name and belong to whoever owns D&D.

And, lets be honest, no one in their right mind is going to give up that IP, no matter how much goodwill it would generate. That would mean giving up IP on the mindflayer and beholder, just to name two. Not going to happen in this lifetime.

/snip

It is a brutal cycle of dependence and a contributing factor to why DM's who are worth a damn are in high demand and in such short supply.

Oh, come on. DM's worth a damn have ALWAYS been in short supply. Sturgeon's law certainly applies to DM's as much as anything else. Having played with more than my share of very bad DM's, I can say that my main impetus for starting to run games was being so sick and tired of crap gaming.

The fact that even back in 2002, when I started playing over OpenRPG, I could get five players at any point in time within a week of advertising showed me that half decent DM's are few and far between.

As long as I'm playing 4E then my little fish lips are puckering too.
I don't really enjoy the presentation of most published adventures so I convert older material and write my own stuff. I can honestly say that I am heavily dependent on the monster builder to DM a 4E campaign. Take away the ability to quickly generate custom NPC's and monsters and I will step down from running the game. The statblocks are so ponderous that I simply wouldn't be willing to devote the prep time in generating them by hand.
/snip

It's funny. I just designed my very first 4e adventure. 4th level adventure. I have ((checks notes)) 23 distinct stat blocks (many are level variations of various monsters - level 2 brute, level 3 brute, level 4 brute, that sort of thing - but it does change the numbers). I statted up all 23 TOKENS in Maptool (which takes a HELL of a lot longer than doing it on paper) in an hour or two.

I wouldn't DREAM of doing that in 3e. I'd still be calculating stat blocks. Ponderous? Why? Good grief, most stat blocks are pretty small and adjusting up or down is a snap. I understand a lot of the criticisms of 4e, but, complaining that it's too work intensive for the DM is new one.

 

[billd91]

This right here is the bit I don't get - the "brand" thing, "their" D&D. Maybe it's because I left D&D for a long time to focus on Rolemaster as my main fantasy RPG of choice. I've never felt any need or desire to play a brand or a particular company's games). I've just looked for a ruleset that does what I want it to.

I understand that marketers want to build brand loyalty. I guess I'm a little surprised by just how successful they seem to have been among RPGers.

KM is right on the money, but it's not just about brand. It's also been about availability. Which RPG has been the most accessible to the public? It's never been Rolemaster. It's been D&D. It rode at the crest of a fad in RPGs and got its foot in to many doors showing up in Waldenbooks, B.Daltons, Borders, Barnes and Nobles, mom and pop bookstores in small towns like Baraboo, WI (no lie, saw it there in the early 1980s), and in public library systems. You're far more likely to find a D&D player, lapsed or current, than any other RPG as a result. So if you're looking to find D&D players, it's usually not been that hard - until you start factoring in edition variation. When it was mainly 1e/2e AD&D, it wasn't too hard. The games were far more compatible than any edition changes since. 3e kind of caught another wave of faddish popularity which made it a little easier, plus most concepts remained the same (spell casting, level advancements, roles the PCs played in the game world) even if some mechanics changed (skills, saving throws, AC numbers). Now, it gets harder with the gap between 1e/2e and 3e now adding a gap between 3e and 4e mechanics and between 1e/2e/3e and 4e concepts.

So that's why change is a bigger deal with D&D than it is for, say, Rolemaster and other games that are fringes compared to the mass of RPG players that know about and play D&D.

The availability has been instrumental to making the D&D brand as powerful as it is both in consumer loyalty and in the mindshare of the general public. Even people who have never played are far more likely to have heard of the term D&D than Rolemaster, GURPS, Champions, Vampire, or any other RPG. So again, another reason why these issues are so amplified when dealing with D&D than most other games.

 

[MerricB]

I wouldn't DREAM of doing that in 3e. I'd still be calculating stat blocks. Ponderous? Why? Good grief, most stat blocks are pretty small and adjusting up or down is a snap. I understand a lot of the criticisms of 4e, but, complaining that it's too work intensive for the DM is new one.

It's in comparison to 1E/Basic, not 3E, though. There's still quite a bit of text there in 4E. (Context of comparison is important! )

I know that preparing for a 1E game takes me less time that 4e (although, admittedly, I tend to not create custom monsters much in either system). However, I also know that my players don't enjoy the lack of player options in 1e and Basic D&D, so that's not a solution!

Going back to the main topic: I do not believe that Wizards can attract lapsed D&D players without also disenchanting some of its current players. It's just the way it goes... nor can a static system maintain its player base as the world changes around it, except in exceptional circumstances.

Cheers!

 

[I'm A Banana]

I wouldn't DREAM of doing that in 3e. I'd still be calculating stat blocks. Ponderous? Why? Good grief, most stat blocks are pretty small and adjusting up or down is a snap. I understand a lot of the criticisms of 4e, but, complaining that it's too work intensive for the DM is new one.

It's not a common complaint, but I'm one who has it.

Mostly, it's a style conflict. 4e assumes I want to prepare something for the party to go through. My native style is just to have a vague idea of possibilities and fill in the details during play. 4e doesn't like that, because it doesn't know what slots to put things in unless I tell it.

Forex, 4e says "you don't need to stat out NPC's who aren't going to be in combat," which is an entirely sensible thing to say, if you know which NPCs are and are not going to be in combat. For my style, I don't know this ahead of time. Best I can do is an educated guess, but even that could be last-minute.

3e had enough of a support network of "rules for everything" that I could pull something out with a few dice rolls. In 3e, if I needed an entire town generated on the fly, I could have it.

Comparatively, in 4e, I can't even roll for random magic items.

4e assumes a level of planning that I didn't do until 4e, whenever I DMed 2e or 3e it was by the seat of my pants. That's something that, so far, 4e hasn't made very possible for me.

I understand my style is likely a strange one, though.

 

[MerricB]

Comparatively, in 4e, I can't even roll for random magic items.

4e assumes a level of planning that I didn't do until 4e, whenever I DMed 2e or 3e it was by the seat of my pants. That's something that, so far, 4e hasn't made very possible for me.

I understand my style is likely a strange one, though.

It's not entirely strange. I have a lot of sympathy for it.

I've run D&D 4E "by the seat of my pants", but it works in a different way to earlier editions. Instead of having a random table, I had the Monster Builder or Compendium open on my laptop, and I'd quickly search & copy the relevant stats for that encounter - or item. (Need a 17th level item... hmm, that looks good!)

Without technological assistance, it's a little harder, but not impossible. Thankfully, Adventurer's Vault has items by level.

I wouldn't be creating statblocks on the fly, that was for certain. (I wouldn't in 3E, either!) Instead, I took advantage of the library of blocks that was available to me, reskinning them as necessary. Some good sessions came out of that playstyle, though I normally structure the sessions beforetime - if not long beforetime.

I can fully understand why 4E doesn't have random tables for magic items: apart from being far more structured about *what* items are given out, it also has an ever-increasing list of items, so the tables would have to change too much. (Also, do you presume the owner of AV2 has AV1?) Ditto monsters. That doesn't mean I don't want such tables for some occasions. I seem to remember some people working on those projects - like Asmor - but it's hard to keep up with the releases.

Cheers!

 

[WheresMyD20]

Going back to the main topic: I do not believe that Wizards can attract lapsed D&D players without also disenchanting some of its current players. It's just the way it goes...

I think this is largely true. I don't think there's a single edition of D&D that would even come close to satisfying everyone. I know that WotC wants to avoid splitting the market, but it seems to me that there's a pretty big divide between 4e, 3e, and "old-school" already. They are already three different markets. The split has already happened. In my estimation (FWIW), it's too late to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

nor can a static system maintain its player base as the world changes around it, except in exceptional circumstances.

I disagree. There's a large number of classic boardgames that have remained popular for decades: Monopoly, Risk, Clue, Scrabble, Stratego, etc. Then there's the true classics which have been around for centuries: Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, etc. A classic game can be static and still remain popular. It can even work for RPGs: Call of Cthulhu has been pretty much the same for about 30 years and is still quite popular.

I mention this not as an argument against the current edition of D&D (which is a good game in its own right), but as a reason for bringing back into print a classic version of the game. Why can't a classic version and a modern version co-exist?