[WotC's recent insanity] I think I've Figured It Out

[Celtavian]

re

Question though: how is the newest generation any different than previous generations in terms of being a video gamer generation? Earlier generations just grew up playing different consoles. If you grew up playing Atari, or NES, or SNES, Playstation, Xbox360, etc the video game influence is there, yet D&D has snagged people from each generation that grew up playing those different systems in their own time period of dominance. I don't really see anything different between then and now.

I grew up on NES and would have played SNES like mad if only my parents had bought me one for Xmas like I begged every year. I never really read any of the fantasy books that influenced the earlier D&D crowd, nor did I ever actually play 1e or 2e. Yet I'm a giant D&D nerd nonetheless, albeit from a later generation (and one that thinks 2e had some amazing moments that need to be remembered in terms of world design).

And given the video game influence that has been around a really, really long while now, I'm confused at the sudden desire (or even the need) to radically reinvent the game to cater to some putative video gamer generation that won't relate to D&D like every other generation before it has, each in their own ways, each eventually putting their own evolutionary mark upon the game as new authors add to the corpus of D&D material.

Are you seriously trying to say that the video games from the late 70s early 80s are anywhere near comparable to today?

I'm a gamer from the Red Basic Set. I know for certain there were no advanced video game systems anywhere near what they are today. I sat around reading books all the time. Chronicles of Narnia, Arthurian Legends, Greek and Norse mythology, and Lord of the Rings and all the other strange fantasy books of that time. Reading was still something kids did a lot because video game consoles were expensive and fairly new.

Atari and Nintendo early on had Mario Brothers. Even a fantasy game like Gauntlet or Dragon's Lair paled in comparison to World of Warcraft or Everquest or even Neverwinter Nights.

I watch this younger generation on their cell phones and computers playing video games I never even thought would exist back when I was young. And you're comparing the video games when D&D came out to what is out there now? That's pretty unbelievable to me.

Kids can log on nowadays to a virtual fantasy world like WoW with other people from around the world and play characters most of us needed pen and paper to create. Fully developed, first person characters with all types of magic items and weapons and virtual monsters and a virtual world that allows them to engross themselves for hours of time for less than the cost of a D&D book. You spend about 17 a month ($204 a year) and $40 for the expansion and you get countless hours of gaming fun.

No need to go to anyone's house. No need to have a book present or know a bunch of rules. No need to imagine what your character is doing, you can see it on the screen. No need for a world setting book or hours of prep time.

Have you really not played an MMORPG to see what D&D is competing against?

If you haven't played an MMORPG, then I can understand the lack of awareness of what video games are like now compared to 1980. But I'm telling you that D&D is competing with MMORPGs and it won't be easy.

I knew when I saw the 4E ruleset and the various roles that a corporate edict was given to the game designers: Thou Shalt Design a Ruleset that is Video Game Friendly and especially works as an MMORPG.

I figured even the people that are enjoying 4E knew that part of the design philosophy was based on making the game appealing to video gamers and making a ruleset easily turned into a video game.

That's a very different influence than the books and tabletop tactical gaming that influenced the first generation of D&D gamers. You can see it in the new ruleset.

And the need to design a game around the video game set is necessary because that is how competition works. D&D isn't competing against GURPS or Legend of Zelda any longer. D&D is competing against MMORPGs influenced by D&D taken to the virtual world through the computer. That's a hard level of competition.

The only way to maximize the game and keep it alive is follow the money to the virtual world. D&D is trying to find a way to do it. But the previous ruleset was MMORPG unfriendly and this new one is exactly the type of ruleset that an MMORPG designer can work with.

If I had access to a 100 million plus, I would buy the rights to D&D and the Forgotten Realms and take it virtual. That's the big problem with an MMORPG is you need a lot of money to start up that type of business. It seems no one is willing to lay out the money to do it for D&D yet, even though D&D has the best source material that would far exceed World of Warcraft or Everquest.

Could you imagine seeing a fully virtual Forgotten Realms populated by the archive of monsters D&D has built through the years? That would be amazing. Imagine a fully developed virtual Underdark.

It's coming someday. Someday someone with money (maybe Hasbro) is going to get wise about all the D&D source material and shell out the cash to make an MMORPG out of it to rival World of Warcraft. This new 4E ruleset is the first step towards that end. They had to create a rule set that is easily rendered into video game form. Previous editions were either too simple (Basic D&D) or too complex and arcane (3rd Edition).

As much as I don't care for 4E from a pen and paper perspective, the rule set looks perfect for an MMORPG. And Hasbro/WotC can make hundreds of millions by successfully turning D&D into a popular MMORPG. It will never make that much money in pen and paper gaming. D&D is an asset best leveraged into the MMORPG market to maximize revenues.

Start off with Forgotten Realms core like Dalelands and Cormyr and the areas around there.

Then have your expansions which you could base on each of the box sets: Underdark, Frozen North, Waterdeep and the Sword Coast.

Then move into your planar regions with angels and demons. And build around Sigil and Planescape.

Then incorporate planar travel and do Dark Sun and Mystara.

The profit possibilities are endless. You have no idea how much I would love to have a 100 million laying around to capitalize a D&D MMORPG. The money possibilities as well as the sheer joy of bringing the vast D&D archive to life in a virtual world. That would be incredible fun.

 

[Argyle King]

Are you seriously trying to say that the video games from the late 70s early 80s are anywhere near comparable to today?

.

yes, I am


Though, I'm the type of person for whom the shiny graphics don't matter. Are they nice? Hell yeah, and I'd much rather have the graphics I have now than the stick figures I had on a Tandyvision. However, a crap game with really nice graphics is still a crap game.

In my opinion, there are a lot of games today which look nice, but are very lacking in substance. I find this to be especially true with many of the new console rpgs. Many people think the new Final Fantasy games are the Cat's Meow; personally, I feel that the last good game of that series which actually engaged my mind and sucked me in was Final Fantasy 3 (or 6 depending on how you count the series.)

Likewise, there are a lot of games I've bought for systems today and have blown through them in a day. I still have games for my older systems which I've never finished.

I in no way agree that a WoW character is what I would consider a 'fully developed' character. I have played MMORPGs, and there were some that I very highly enjoyed. Some of them even did a really good job of capturing some of the elements of a tabletop experience, but -at this point in time- none of them are able to replace the experience I get from pen and paper gaming.

Though, I will give you that D&D is competing against MMORPGs. Contrary to the vocal masses which continue to shout that D&D isn't like WoW any more than older editions were similar to video games of their time, I disagree. There are enough similarities to make that competition a reality. That ties into what I've said in my previous posts. I understand the need to bend the game to meet the market of today; however, there comes a point when the tabletop experience has been whittled away enough that a prospective player doesn't feel as though they gain anything by choosing pen & paper over a computer and a visual interface.

But... as I also said in my previous posts, I think it is very wrong to assume tabletop gaming is dead or dying. For a while now, video games have been incorporating more elements of rpgs. You can create your own teams in Madden Football; you can explore what is (in my opinion) a world which seems much more alive in games such as Oblivion (and the upcoming Elder Scrolls: Skyrim even the most recent WWE game focuses more on story and character development with WWE Universe Mode. I'd even point to the cheesy Facebook games like Farmville as being more rpg-like. The tabletop may need to evolve, but I feel it would be folly to throw away the game genetics which gives the pen & paper experience a look and feel which is different from other types of games.

Tabletop gaming as a whole is not dead, and, while I admit that D&D does indeed need to compete with games which look flashier and prettier, I would argue that there is a large amount of fertile ground into which an engaging story driven rpg experience could flourish. Many people and many youths still read - the recent success of Twilight wouldn't be possible otherwise. I believe we are at a turning point; that as society starts to more realize that the big flashy experiences we have now are shallow, there will be an increasing want for things which are more mentally engaging, socially fulfilling, and of more depth. The 'what's next?' question will hit more people; there are people out there who want to experience and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on going from point a to point b (or level 1 to level 30 as the case may be,) even if they aren't fully aware of it yet.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

If I had access to a 100 million plus, I would buy the rights to D&D and the Forgotten Realms and take it virtual. That's the big problem with an MMORPG is you need a lot of money to start up that type of business. It seems no one is willing to lay out the money to do it for D&D yet, even though D&D has the best source material that would far exceed World of Warcraft or Everquest.

Could you imagine seeing a fully virtual Forgotten Realms populated by the archive of monsters D&D has built through the years? That would be amazing. Imagine a fully developed virtual Underdark.

It's coming someday. Someday someone with money (maybe Hasbro) is going to get wise about all the D&D source material and shell out the cash to make an MMORPG out of it to rival World of Warcraft. This new 4E ruleset is the first step towards that end. They had to create a rule set that is easily rendered into video game form. Previous editions were either too simple (Basic D&D) or too complex and arcane (3rd Edition).

As much as I don't care for 4E from a pen and paper perspective, the rule set looks perfect for an MMORPG. And Hasbro/WotC can make hundreds of millions by successfully turning D&D into a popular MMORPG. It will never make that much money in pen and paper gaming. D&D is an asset best leveraged into the MMORPG market to maximize revenues.

Start off with Forgotten Realms core like Dalelands and Cormyr and the areas around there.

Then have your expansions which you could base on each of the box sets: Underdark, Frozen North, Waterdeep and the Sword Coast.

Then move into your planar regions with angels and demons. And build around Sigil and Planescape.

Then incorporate planar travel and do Dark Sun and Mystara.

The profit possibilities are endless. You have no idea how much I would love to have a 100 million laying around to capitalize a D&D MMORPG. The money possibilities as well as the sheer joy of bringing the vast D&D archive to life in a virtual world. That would be incredible fun.

Umm, Turbine built it in 2006. It's called D&D Online though they used a section of Eberron rather than Faerun. It was such a hit and so profitable that in order to save the servers, they made it a free-to-play game with revenue generated from the sale of virtual goods and advertising..

 

[I'm A Banana]

There certainly is a big difference between the minimum you NED to play and the maximum you could pay to play this game. It is a shame the minimum is so high, though. It would be better if it were lower.

This. This is the thing the Red Box and the DM's Kit and the Essentials Line partially wanted to fix, with varying degrees of success.

There's not exactly a clear on-ramp to the game, something you can just pick up and go "This is all you need to play D&D forever. And if it's a lot of fun, you can get this other stuff, too!"

The Red Box is a solid attempt (marred mostly just by some less-than-stellar rules info and a lack of expandability). The DM's Kit seems decent (marred mostly just by being available in bits and pieces in other places). The Essentials line works pretty well (marred mostly just by confusion with some existing players who have a strong WTF MAGIC MISSILE ALWAYS DOES DAMAGE?! NO FIGHTER DAILIES?! OH NOES TEH SYMMETRY! OMG THEY ROOND MAH GAME!" vein).

There's also problems inherent in the system. 30 levels and 2+ years to see them all (playing on a weekly basis) and the difficulty of setting up a face-to-face game all weave a tangled spell of problems.

There's still plenty of room for improvement in this area, though they have made a fairly solid try at the thing, and I do hope they keep it in mind going forward.

Have you really not played an MMORPG to see what D&D is competing against?

D&D is only in competition with an MMO in the same way that...I dunno...Yahtzee is.

They're really, very different things. Some similar trappings, some definite overlap, but if D&D wanted to compete directly with WoW, they'd rip their videogame licence from the color-blind chimp hands over at Atari and give it to a team that's made a good videogame in the last decade while ditching the tabletop all together. Fire the designers and developers, use their salaries to buy a programmer or two, and kick this 900+ page junk to the curb.

But that's not what they're doing.

So they certainly believe a tabletop RPG has something unique to offer an audience who could certainly grow beyond its current limits.

I don't think the dudes previously at the head of D&D really grokked what that was, if the design of 4e speaks to what they thought it was. Mearls might. He seems pretty sharp.

Videogames are a different beast, and D&D would be well-served paying attention to them only enough to make the occasional polygonal dungeon game, and focusing on making tabletop gaming something that is as fast, easy, and fun to do as it can possibly be (ideally while retaining D&D's expansible, customizable ruleset).

 

[mudbunny]

Umm, Turbine built it in 2006. It's called D&D Online though they used a section of Eberron rather than Faerun. It was such a hit and so profitable that in order to save the servers, they made it a free-to-play game with revenue generated from the sale of virtual goods and advertising..

And since they did that, they have seen revenues jump by 500% and had a million new users. In other words, they have money fights on fridays.

 

[Odhanan]

And you know what, WotC? We need you. Most of us don't have the time or energy to write our own Fantasy Heartbreaker.

I don't need WotC, and I don't have the intention to write a fantasy game of my own. I am just content to run First Edition AD&D. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate what they did with Gamma World and intend to run it. But I really do not need WotC at this point to catter to my D&D needs. At all.

 

[Griego]

Wait, what is this "recent insanity", again?

 

[I'm A Banana]

And since they did that, they have seen revenues jump by 500% and had a million new users. In other words, they have money fights on fridays.

Part of me wonders....

If they make D&D a "free to play" game (giving away the rules for free) with revenue generated from magazine-style subscriptions (which give access to both an online and in-print version of the magazine and a database) that included advertising, and "adventure boxes" that don't include advertising, but maybe sell for $30 at the store (and include tokens, maps, adventure books, whatever)....

I guess that would be too much like the OGL for them to consider doing at this point, but it's kind of an appealing thing to think about...

 

[Argyle King]

Part of me wonders....

If they make D&D a "free to play" game (giving away the rules for free) with revenue generated from magazine-style subscriptions (which give access to both an online and in-print version of the magazine and a database) that included advertising, and "adventure boxes" that don't include advertising, but maybe sell for $30 at the store (and include tokens, maps, adventure books, whatever)....

I guess that would be too much like the OGL for them to consider doing at this point, but it's kind of an appealing thing to think about...

There are other rpgs which do something similar, and it seems to be working for them. They have free previews which give you enough from which you could play. You don't *need* to buy the other suppliments, but many people still do because they appreciate the quality of the suppliments. I would in no way claim they make as much money as WoTC from D&D. However, from what I can tell, they are doing well enough to turn a profit without needing to bend their products to fit some sort of assumed target market of today.

DDi, to some extent, is -I think- a similar model. Though, if I may be so bold to make an assumption, I think there were a few very critical stumbling blocks in the beginning which left some number of people sour to it. The first impression is often a lasting impression; it's hard to look at new materials with a fresh set of eyes when you're already predisposed to negativity due to previous experience.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I may not be the first but I believe i've mentioend before that with it being online, the DDI, at least the character creation part, should be free. getting people to play and want to pay should be WoTC first priority, not making money off of books.

But I'm crazy that way. It's one of the reasons I suggested a higher focus on minis, tiles, adventurers, boxed sets, etc... things that can't be downloaded.