When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[Halivar]

I have a question for the supporters of 4E. Why did you ever play D&D? If all previous editions (prior to 4E) failed to meet your needs or wants, why did you play it? There are literally hundreds of other options.

Because it was the best available. With 4E, we believe the best got better.

BTW, I have new players in my game who have never played 3.x. They're having a blast, and they don't need your pity.

 

[Psion]

I did some checking and did you know that there were over 70 BOX SETS for 2E? I think in 3E (including 3rd party) there were about 10. Ah, the good old days.

Wow.

I had noticed boxed sets fell out of vogue. Even before 3e. I recall the Council of Wyrms boxed set was republished as a hardbound.

I still lurve some of my 2e boxed sets.

 

[FireLance]

I have a question for the supporters of 4E. Why did you ever play D&D? If all previous editions (prior to 4E) failed to meet your needs or wants, why did you play it? There are literally hundreds of other options.

I think Dragon magazine was a key factor in my remaining loyal to whatever was the current version of D&D over the years. Unlike other systems, which were self-contained in one book or a small number of books, or which had irregular supplements, D&D promised a continuous, relatively inexpensive, monthy stream of new material, ideas and inspiration. Starting from 3e, I also started getting Dungeon, for pretty much the same reason.

Plus, what Halivar said.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Holy crap. Seventy?! Wow. And here I am with only, what. . . 3? Eesh. Plus some 1e, a couple for 3e. . . it is high time I went hunting for more boxiness, methinks. Boxy goodness, w00t!

I love the ones with stuff in them. Like, non-booklet stuff. Maps, counters, whatever. Love it.

 

[Stormtower]

For me, 3.5 is D&D done right. It isn't perfect but it is as close as the game has ever come to being perfect. I lament that my favorite edition of the game is no more. I won't ever again see an official new D&D book in print. All future new players are going to view 4E as the default version of D&D. And I pity them for that. They don't know what they are missing.

I know how you are feeling. To me, 3.5E is also "D&D done right," despite its warts (which I am in the process of houseruling away, little by little with my magical rules-emery-board).

However, 4E is a really solid game in its own right. It's versatile enough to run as a homebrew (see pg. 42 and the general attitude of empowering the DM to make stuff up on the fly, quickly and easily), but it's balanced enough to make it the best edition ever for RPGA/organized style play.

When you say new, 4E-exclusive players won't know what they're missing, I say in return: it's up to us as DMs, as the torchbearers of pre-4E D&D culture (whatever that may mean to you individually, it's cool with me) to help new players who are brought on board by 4E to understand the game's roots and not allow the RP traditions and imaginative storytelling parts of the game to die off. 4E can be a heavily tactical boardgame-style kill fest, it can be a sublime RP experience (IMO this part is system-independent), or it can be a hybrid.

Existing hobbyists who want to help provide direction to D&D, IMO, have a responsibility to define the game and its culture to new hobbyists. One way to do this is recruit new players and teach them about the roots of the game, while also exploring the new directions that 4E takes the game.

There's nothing to fear here. D&D never dies as long as people are playing their edition of choice, expanding our hobby into new social circles, and helping define the culture of the game one interaction at a time.

 

[Cadfan]

I have a question for the supporters of 4E. Why did you ever play D&D? If all previous editions (prior to 4E) failed to meet your needs or wants, why did you play it? There are literally hundreds of other options.

Because I liked 3e quite a lot. I just like 4e more.

For me, 3.5 is D&D done right. It isn't perfect but it is as close as the game has ever come to being perfect. I lament that my favorite edition of the game is no more. I won't ever again see an official new D&D book in print. All future new players are going to view 4E as the default version of D&D. And I pity them for that. They don't know what they are missing.

I pity you in return. Your inability to see how remarkably similar 3e and 4e happen to be is sad, and is much more attributable to you than to the game.

 

[Windjammer]

I did some checking and did you know that there were over 70 BOX SETS for 2E? I think in 3E (including 3rd party) there were about 10. Ah, the good old days.

Hey, can you tell me what those ten are? I've got the two from Goodman Games which I love to bits (Saga of the Dragon Cult, and Heroes Arise), recall WotC' Players Kit and the Necromancer's Wilderlands and City of Brass being boxed sets - but where are the other five?

 

[Zustiur]

I think (a) you are taking a joke too seriously, and, (b) even if it were meant seriously, your response doesn't correlate to what Simon said:

Previous EDITIONS had COMBAT ROLES and NON-COMBAT ROLES. They're called CLASSES:

COMBAT ROLES IN 1E: Fighter
NON-COMBAT ROLES IN 1E: Thief

Get it?

The answer to "what non-combat role does a fighter have" would, by Simon's definition, be "none... unless he's multi-classed."

Thank you! For a few minutes I was thinking I was the only one who understood his post that way.
In previous editions roles (classes) encompassed the character's place in the team for the whole game, not just for combat. Now it is more like everyone is the same outside of combat. I admit 3E was moving in that direction already, but to me, and it seems many others, 4E took it to the extremity.

Class used to define so much more than how you behaved in combat. We had combat roles and non combat roles. Taking the 4 'classics' we had:
Fighter - good in combat. Good for knocking down doors.
Thief - good at exploring, stealth, dealing with traps and dealing with shady NPCs
Cleric - good at healing, ok as a backup in combat, and good at dealing with nobles and other NPCs
Magic User - Good in combat, and occasionally useful for non combat reasons. Including dealing with haughty intellectual type NPCs.

Bear in mind that I joined in 2E, so my understanding of the above may be incorrect in the fine detail. But that is the gist of it.
Each class had their distinctions, and many were not strong in combat. That has clearly been altered. Now all classes 'must have an equal role to play in combat'. That simply does not fit right with my understanding of 'what DnD is'.

As for the original question -
I'm 25 and I evidently am not WotC's target audience. And that stems from two assumptions that 4E is built on.
1) The 'best' part of previous editions was 5th to 12th level.
2) Characters are 'already heroes' when they are 1st level.
My games rarely went beyond 6th level, and always started at 1st. Because it was the early formative stage of the game that interested me and my fellow players. That part of the game seems to have been almost surgically removed. With my group, once the characters are powerful enough to be considered heroes, it's time to think about the next campaign.

It doesn't take many sessions of playing with the 4E HP model to realize that play style doesn't fit anymore. If the wizard cannot be felled by a single blow at 1st level, something about the game has drastically changed. An 'average' wizard in 4E will have 20 HP. The highest damage dice for a single weapon blow is what? 2d6? 1d12?
Those damage dice used to be scary, and with good reason. Being hit by a greataxe SHOULD have a good chance of killing or maiming you. But I suspect by stating that I'll be labeled as a simulationist.

 

[La Bete]

I have a question for the supporters of 4E. Why did you ever play D&D? If all previous editions (prior to 4E) failed to meet your needs or wants, why did you play it? There are literally hundreds of other options.

Well, the various versions of D&D fulfilled my needs from a D&D-type game -at the time.

I loved playing D&D 1e and 2e - then those games began to stagger under the weight of all the house rules we created to make it more suitable, as our requirements changed.

Then 3e came out and addressed most of the issues we had house-ruled 2e for (mainly skills), and we moved to 3e.


Now 4e has come out, and addresses some of the issues I've had with 4e (mainly the fact attempting to add and subtract the various buffs in a climactic fight caused one of my players to have an epiliptic fit!)

That said, neither 3e or 4e is perfect for me - I still miss the 2e speciality priests!

 

[Psion]

I forked the 2e Boxed set discussion. This one (3e/D20 boxed sets) might deserve a fork, but I'll start here, and if the discussion drags, someone can fork it:

Hey, can you tell me what those ten are? I've got the two from Goodman Games which I love to bits (Saga of the Dragon Cult, and Heroes Arise), recall WotC' Players Kit and the Necromancer's Wilderlands and City of Brass being boxed sets - but where are the other five?

Necromancer Games also had Rappan Athuk Reloaded

Goodman Games also had Castle Whiterock

Green Ronin had Hamunaptra

That's all I can recall in addition to yours.