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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4231330" data-attributes="member: 710">I've seen the "New Coke" example very often now, and I really have never heard before the whole 4E talk about it. Must have been before my time. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyway, the analogy is flawed. if Cola already had 3 or 4 different established "default" variations before New Coke appeared, it might work better. People have started D&D with different editions. There are lot of "old-schoolers" that started with OD&D, but there are also a lot of people (like me) that started with D&D 3E. The other guys in my group are older and have experience with previous editions, and from all I know, they would never go back to anything before 3E, but all are very interested in 4E. That's why I believe that there either is no core to D&D, or it is so small to be almost meaningless. People don't necessarily like D&D for the D&D-specific things, but for reasons that exist purely for gameplay reasons. We don't play Shadowrun any more, not because we hate the world, but because the mechanics don't provide what we want. Character Advancement is to slow, gameplay is unsatisfying (boring) and unbalanced for non-reflex boosted characters. So, you see, we're giving up a perfectly good setting just because the mechanics don't work for us - and the mechanics capture the setting very well!Changing "thematic" elements in D&D will probably never stop us from playing it. Introducing things that don't make sense on a rules as physics level always hurts a bit, but if in the end, the game play is still better, I think I can live with that a lot better then with a mechanic that just hurts the playability...I know there are people out there for which the thematics like the "D&D Bildungsroman of low levels, the Great Wheel or 9 alignments might matter. But these are not the only one. I will not take any bets on whose in the majority, but just in case the "thematics" are the majority now - maybe that's the reason why the hobby is not bigger? Maybe if more was focused on playability and game balance, there would just be even more people that would come interested and like the game in the long run. Oh, and off course, I find the Feywild and Shadowfell a lot more interesting then the Astral Plane or the Shadow Plane ever where. Or the idea of Devils actually being fallen angels, in a conflict with the gods instead of the demons. (Who are in conflict with the whole creation!) On the other hand, my group (before my time) stopped playing Torg, despite loving the system and the world, because they didn't feel capable of creating good adventures for the system themselves. We're playing D&D now with a lot of published modules, and this also applies for non D&D games. (Warhammer, Das Schwarze Auge, being the most recent examples)So maybe another focus should be ensuring that (good) adventure support continues to exist? On the gripping hand ( <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ), other people stop playing simply because they do not find a (suitable) group. Maybe also something needs to be done to hold groups together, or help finding them?</blockquote>

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