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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SiderisAnon" data-source="post: 4109323" data-attributes="member: 44949">While I recognize the enjoyable intellectual exercise of trying to package D&D into a two-page, ten minute to learn, simple language pamphlet, I personally believe it's mostly a waste of time.In my mind, the kind of people who are going to be lifetime gamers and who are going to regularly buy the new books and the new miniatures and the new dice -- which is exactly the kind of player you need to keep a market share going -- these are the kind of players who are not going to be drawn in by a ten minute game. There are already plenty of "gateway" games that you can learn quickly to turn you onto the concepts of D&D. Runebound  is one. Talisman is probably another. Certainly a number of computer games are.The kind of people that are lifelong players want the book full of possibilities. They won't want to be limited by the tiny bit you can put into the ten-minute version. (And will probably resent having to go out and spend more money to play the "real" game.)Now, I'm not opposed to things designed to allow existing players and DM's to easily bring in new players to their group. Maybe a small packet with a sample character, explanation of only those rules you need to run that fighter or whatever, and a few notes on playing. These things should be free downloads. Because other posters are right, most people get into the game because of other people who play.Now, all that being said, I'm no market analyst and I may be completely wrong. This is just my opinion based on my experience with the kind of people who keep on gaming.There is one product I would love to see, though I don't know if it's possible. I would love to see really good modules that could be picked up and run with almost no prep time. I have some really great modules from Goodman Games and Monkey God Presents, but I don't always have time to prep them. Heck, I was recently running a Goodman Games one where I was really hoping the party wouldn't get past point X because I hadn't had time to READ past point X yet. *blush* These are rich and detailed modules, but too many important bits are buried in the text and the statistics and abilities of the monsters are too hard to just glance through right before playing them. (However, this is not a failing of either company. I despise the monster block format and have a really, really hard time using it. Something like "Monster Cards" is much easier for me to read, but I certainly don't have time to convert all the non-standard monsters in a module to cards, especially when I don't always have time to read the whole thing.)Maybe something similar to the "delve format" concepts that WoTC was playing with for a while. (If I'm remembering correctly. Those have a picture of a room, the breif details you need, monster stats, and that's it. It's quick and easy.)</blockquote>

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