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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mattcolville" data-source="post: 5413160" data-attributes="member: 1300">I <a href="http://www.squaremans.com/?p=9" target="_blank">wrote about this a few years ago</a>, in regards to another company, Games Workshop.Here's the breakdown folks.We tend to get into gaming at around 12 years old, give or take, and we get out again sometime in college. Once you have a career and a family, or just a job and university, gaming starts to be something you did when you were a kid. That's normal. It's typical. It's a young person's hobby.Some of us manage to keep playing...well, until we die, but we are rare and there's not an endless supply of us. Some of those people post on forums, but not many.However, there ARE an endless supply of geeky teens. Games Workshop's stated strategy is to hook them young, and then push them out around 17. Why 17? Because Moms aren't OK with leaving their 13 year olds in a game store all day hanging out with 19 year olds.I don't think WotC is doing that, but I think they're doing something similar. They realize that the only way D&D can stay relevant--which is to say, played by mostly young people, instead of an aging and increasingly smaller demo of old people hooked in the 70s and 80s--is to make a game those kids find fun. Find fun, and play.That's all that matters. Do they find it fun, and do they play?Those kids don't know and don't care about an 18 Strength. They don't know and don't care whether or nor magic missile automatically hits. Why should they? All they care about is; is it fun, and will we play?So step one. Is it fun?We think, or it seems to some of us, that the designers have stripped out a lot of the legacy crap from earlier editions, concentrating instead on Fun. But the DevTeam haven't even gone all the way in this direction. Why do we have stats from 8 to 18? Why not 1 to 10? Why have stats at all when all you use is the bonus? Why even have 6 stats? Why not just say;Pick your race.Pick your class.Are you a Strong Fighter, or a Quick Fighter?And that's it, now go pick powers. Screw it, why not just do everything as powers?Pick your Race, gain a racial power.Pick your Class, gain a class power.Pick your Attribute (Smart, Quick, Strong), gain an attribute power.Pick your Weapon, gain a weapon power.Pick your alignment, gain an alignment power.Powers are cool. Stats are dumb. There's a long way to go yet toward optimizing the game for fun.But I think 4E is the most fun game we've seen from D&D yet and is the most game-like. So what's step 2? Can we play?Well they're doing *everything they can*. They've put the tools online, though stupidly the Character Builder is behind a paywall. Eventually they'll figure it out and make it free to make characters up to 3rd level. They still print books, which is a waste of money. You can't play a book. You play the game.But the online tools and the D&D Encounters program make it easier now than its ever been to get into the game.<a href="http://www.squaremans.com/?p=213" target="_blank">I wrote elsewhere about the Network</a> and what happened to it and what needs to happen to fix it. It's the only thing that matters. But those of us out of college aren't the folks who need the Network. It's the kids who need it. They're the ones who want to play, but don't know anyone. I think WotC is doing about all they can to help, but they can't engineer a robust Network. TSR didn't engineer it, they got lucky.</blockquote>

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