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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ShadowX" data-source="post: 3821769" data-attributes="member: 3720">Having been heavily engaged in the recent surge of German boardgames coming to America and the community that has sprung up around them asking a similar question, I am quite familiar with the arguments hobbyists have about why their favorite activity can't find mainstream success.  The basic reason is that with all the other types of activities available to young people today, boardgames and roleplaying games have much to high a barrier of entry.  Especially along with the legitimate complaint that today's young person has a particular short attention span with an intense need for instant gratification.As many posters already astutely stated, the PHB is a mammoth tome of occasionally subtle rules.  Most people would identify the PHB as a textbook rather than the most important manual for what is supposed to be a fun hobby.  I have problems introducing an unfamiliar boardgame with only four pages of rules and the PHB is a whole lot more intimidating.  I suspect that your average person would rather sit in front of the T.V. or play Monopoly with the wrong rules than learn something as complex as D&D.  Bottom line: learning rules is not fun for the vast majority of the consuming public.  Even a lot of people in the hobby dislike assimilating a new ruleset and you expect people with less invested in the hobby to really expend the effort to read the rules and find a group and explain the rules to them and then find a DM (a point I will get to in a second).  Finally, you run an adventure and it inevitably sucks and everyone swears of D&D.Of course, the other major barrier to entry is the whole DM role that RPGs foist upon a group.  DMing is a rough job.  You have to know the rules, keep your players interested and create your own adventures or spend your money to buy them.  Also, roleplaying can be a distinctly embarrassing situating for a new player which is only exacerbated in the DM chair as you are trying to entertain other people with an elaborate game of make-believe.  It is a lot of responsibility and pressure for someone new, but unfortunately it is also required to make the game work.</blockquote>

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