It seems rather unfortunate to dismiss the impact computer games has had on D&D, since without it, my current group would not have existed.
I didn't.
In fact I said:
"I think that a lot of the ways new players approach RPG's has been affected more by CRPG's more than we all might be willing to admit. (Fantasy CRPG's are very high power fantasy ...) "
CRPGs have been very influential in modern D&D, from game design, art, and to the gameplay assumptions of new players.
No one would deny that.
but please don't dismiss the voices of those who got on the ship in a different way from what you prefer.
My commentary about Chris Cocks playing the game was solely about whether or not
he currently plays D&D.
I stated no preference. And I do not care how people wind up playing RPG's. People arrive at past times and hobbies in different ways. How people eventually get to start playing D&D with an RPG group are just things that happen.
Note my liberal use of the word
generally, in much of my commentary about casual players.
There will be outliers, of course. But they are outliers. We have seen booms and down turns in the hobby before. And we know the
general trends that these things follow.
only my brother bought the hardcover books.
Which proves my wider point. Just like I was the only one in a group of 5 to buy the books. And both of our groups are outliers.
We are outliers in that we both have long term players to who stay with the group, And players who will engage with the RPG outside of the game session in a hobbyist fashion.
D&D is attracting a huge amount of casual players in this current boom.
This makes for some seriously impressive numbers of people that play D&D.
But there is a
general difference, as even our two groups have shown; between the overall number of people that play D&D, and the number of those who actually buy the product that pays WotC's bills.
And one of those groups far and away outnumbers the other.
Wotc does not distinguish or attempt to weigh the responses of those two groups in its surveys that it uses to guide game development.
In my opinion:
I believe that is a mistake that will have long term consequences.
I think that the designers moving 5e to "easy mode",
to the degree that they have, will have the long term effect of not retaining/converting as many
new players as they think that they will into
long term player/hobbyists, because of the increasing removal of challenge in the core D&D gameplay, when the current boom winds down.