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Before anyone jumps down my throat I am talking about the level of maturity it treats its own subject matter and its players with, not any kind of sex or gore content increase.

You see fighting intelligent humanoids because they are bad lost pretty much every player I have known's interest an eternity ago. These so called evil humanoid's inability to form proper civilizations and normalize relations seemed to be for no reason other than to make them easy and acceptable targets for wandering bands of adventurers. Even in cases of races like Hobgoblins who by all descriptions should be better at maintaining nation-states and understanding the importance of trade and treaties than Elves this was so "just because".

Giving monstrous races functional nations only improves the over all quality of the game. If a Human state and a Hobgoblin state are at odds there is a more detailed reason for it than "teh evilulz" and more thought can go into the adventures. If Human town A has several of it's flocks stolen by Hobgoblins it could be any one of the following situations: Officially endorsed act of raiding, rogue military personnel instigating war or trying to make profits for themselves, organized criminal activity for profit, person grudge between human family and hobgoblin family, bunch of drunk hobgoblin teenagers/townsfolk just causing a ruckus. Every one of those situations would lead to a different type of adventure even though they all stem from the same hook because when you treat antagonists like people not humanoid animals you get deeper more satisfying adventures. This is only one example of how this approach would improve the game. 

Now I'm sure you will say that any DM can just do that in their own campaign but there is a problem with that statement: It works both ways. When you consider the amount of work it is setting that kind of game style/setting up from scratch it is often too time consuming for a working DM. However for a DM who wants a simpler game world they need only ignore it, they don't need to spends 10 hours a week to make it work.

There is also the issue of new player expectations. Conditioning people to expect an overly simplistic game world is detrimental to people who do want more than that. If a brand new player who literally doesn't know any better learns about D&D as something other than "bash dem goblins good an take their stuff" it won't hurt them in anyway but when they do learn of the game in the guise of the aforementioned example
it does. I've seen adults turned off the game because of that image it before even having the opportunity to see it can be run differently and I've known gamers who are minorities who avoid D&D because they view it (intentionally or not) as racially insensitive because of that image.

In conclusion I think if WotC wants to keep older gamers interested in the game, especially with the stated goal of bring them back into it they need to understand we have grown up in those 10-20 years out of the hobby as well, nostalgia for older mechanics is not going to be enough. Additionally they can do all of this entirely in the flavour of the game, they will not need to radically alter mechanics to do this. I also fail to see how this change could harm the game in the eyes of younger players of their parents from a marketing standpoint. This kind of change would be seen as "actually mature" not "sex and violence to make immature teens want it mature".
   

Well this is a new low for these forums.

Feb 22, 2012 -- 1:32PM, Zerozobbb wrote:

Feb 22, 2012 -- 1:16PM, SantaClaws wrote:

Well this is a new low for these forums.

I really don't know what you mean by this. I think the OP's suggestion is extremely reasonable.

Z.

Its more of an issue of people not caring enough to respond despite so many views. Its like most of the people here seem to be of the consumer mindset of "They won't listen so we shouldn't try" without stopping to think that maybe they never listen because they are never vocal enough about it.

Feb 22, 2012 -- 1:52PM, Artifact wrote:

Going forward, the main concern I have is the potential for a disconnect between what has came before and what's in store for the future.  For instance, what does the possible re-introduction of the Great Wheel mean for the World Axis?  The potential for a disconnect has always been there of course, it just seems more likely (to me) now.

Well reintegration for the parallel planes like the Shadowfell/Plane of Shadow would be very straight forward. They Feywild really deserves to be kept and I don't really see a problem adding it alongside the shadow and ethereal planes.

Now for the Outer planes? Well the Outer planes and Astral Sea were never really that different. The Astral Plane like the Astral Sea still connected the various Aligned Planes, most of the difference in this regard was thematic. I also loved the old names of the outer planes: The Bleak Eternity of Ghenna and the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, that sounds much better than a lot of 4e's "noun-noun" "noun-adjective" "adjective-noun" "verb-noun" naming conversions.

The Inner or Elemental planes is more of an issue. To be honest I never liked either. I though the elemental chaos in 4e was to well chaotic to use as a setting, I just couldn't visualize it. Same goes for the Elemental planes of the great wheel, I never used them because I could not visualize them and interesting places to take the plot. IMO they should be dumbed entirely.
 

I think the problem is when the game is taken out of context of a campaign setting. In some setting, some humanoids do have their own their own nation, are the majorit species in their nation or are integrated into another nation. Not all humanoids are going to be great nation builders, however--not all humans were great nation builders.

What it all comes down to, IMO, is how humanoids, players, etc. all fit into the larger framework of a setting. With no setting or even a minimalist setting, you get things like PCs killing kobolds 'cause they're "bad", but a developed setting can provide reasons for the PCs to kill (or not kill) kobolds based on the context of the setting.

So, pushing campaign settings and using examples that are based within the context of a setting could solve a lot of the issue.