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May 1, 2012 -- 9:09AM, the.nameless.one wrote:

It is not to big it is to commercialized. I play ttrpg and video games. I play them for different reasons. Kids today do not want to sit at a table and play with friends. They want to sit on the couch for 6 hrs with a head set. I enjoy getting together with friends face to face, some of the best times I have had are at the table. The experience can not be matched in a game. Being in the culture mentality we have it seems very unrealistic to expect to get new poeple involved and keep the old timers (me, even though I am only 30). I have spent well over $1000 on 2nd edition books and boxes and dice etc. and I now play 3.5 with the main books and use a lot of my old material for references of setting etc. The only kids who will put down a controller for paper and pencil will be ones that have parents who play or played and can relate the stories of the fun had at the table instead of a crappy online game. 

I can refute these statements with my own experience. I am a 21 year old who has been playing since I was 12. My father used to play, but he never talked about it. I learned about the game from elsewhere, and when I started talking about how awesome it sounded he told me he had played, and (after much pestering) agreed to run a game for me and some of my friends (If he hadn't, I would have just tried to run one, because I had already learned all of his old books pretty much by heart). Two years later (at 14) I took over running the game, and over the past seven years I have introduced some 30 people between 13 and 24 to the game, most of whom had no experience with (or in some cases even awareness of) D&D. More than 20 of them still play or are interested in starting to play again. Maybe 3-5 of them had parents who played, and about the same number were actively discouraged by their parents (yes, there are still parents who think D&D is satanic or something)...

The reason something like DDO seems hollow in comparison to D&D is because there are particular ways in which it simply cannot compete. TTRPGs have something that no other style of gaming has, and a level of flexibility in story telling, problem solving, etc. that is unparalelled in the gaming industry. I play all sorts of games, board games, MTG, CRPGs, RTS/TBSs, but D&D is my favourite, and I know lots of young people who would tell you that TTRPGs are simply more enjoyable than other sorts of games because of their strong social aspect, and the flexibility the provide in terms of in game decision making, as well as the input the players have into the world. 

My point is this: I feel that if Wizards were to digitize the game in a way that damaged the core experience of a TTRPG they would not be gaining ground among the young people that I know. The value that my friends and I derive from D&D  is fundamentally different from what we get from things like CRPGs or other digital games. 

Note that I am not against all use of the digital medium. In fact, I strongly favour digitizing many of the commercial aspects of the business: I believe that if WoTC is going with a modular format for the new rules, they should try having a distribution system for things past the inital book set that resembles an app market. The idea is that designers would pay a small amount of money to Wizards to vet their rules module, Wizards selects ones of sufficient quality and then allows those to use the D&D brand and be placed on their digital marketplace by the designers of the rules module, taking a percentage of the profits. 

I do believe, however, that changing the characteristics of D&D that make it unique is a terrible idea, and that making D&D too reliant on digital aids at the table (things like the Character builder or monster builder were a great idea) risks taking away that uniqueness. Also it means competing with games like Skyrim in the areas that they are strong (digital effects, speed of play, etc.) rather than the things at which they are weakest (flexibility of action, ability of the world to respond to you in unique ways)

May 1, 2012 -- 10:42AM, Dragonturtle wrote:

Nameless One, I am not actually disagreeing with very much of what you have said, but I would like to dispute a couple of ideas which you happen to have stated most recently. I am also responding to what Lokiare said, and in fact his ideas are the reason for most of my post after the first paragraph. 

May 1, 2012 -- 9:09AM, the.nameless.one wrote:

It is not to big it is to commercialized. I play ttrpg and video games. I play them for different reasons. Kids today do not want to sit at a table and play with friends. They want to sit on the couch for 6 hrs with a head set. I enjoy getting together with friends face to face, some of the best times I have had are at the table. The experience can not be matched in a game. Being in the culture mentality we have it seems very unrealistic to expect to get new poeple involved and keep the old timers (me, even though I am only 30). I have spent well over $1000 on 2nd edition books and boxes and dice etc. and I now play 3.5 with the main books and use a lot of my old material for references of setting etc. The only kids who will put down a controller for paper and pencil will be ones that have parents who play or played and can relate the stories of the fun had at the table instead of a crappy online game. 

I can refute these statements with my own experience. I am a 21 year old who has been playing since I was 12. My father used to play, but he never talked about it. I learned about the game from elsewhere, and when I started talking about how awesome it sounded he told me he had played, and (after much pestering) agreed to run a game for me and some of my friends (If he hadn't, I would have just tried to run one, because I had already learned all of his old books pretty much by heart). Two years later (at 14) I took over running the game, and over the past seven years I have introduced some 30 people between 13 and 24 to the game, most of whom had no experience with (or in some cases even awareness of) D&D. More than 20 of them still play or are interested in starting to play again. Maybe 3-5 of them had parents who played, and about the same number were actively discouraged by their parents (yes, there are still parents who think D&D is satanic or something)...

The reason something like DDO seems hollow in comparison to D&D is because there are particular ways in which it simply cannot compete. TTRPGs have something that no other style of gaming has, and a level of flexibility in story telling, problem solving, etc. that is unparalelled in the gaming industry. I play all sorts of games, board games, MTG, CRPGs, RTS/TBSs, but D&D is my favourite, and I know lots of young people who would tell you that TTRPGs are simply more enjoyable than other sorts of games because of their strong social aspect, and the flexibility the provide in terms of in game decision making, as well as the input the players have into the world. 

My point is this: I feel that if Wizards were to digitize the game in a way that damaged the core experience of a TTRPG they would not be gaining ground among the young people that I know. The value that my friends and I derive from D&D  is fundamentally different from what we get from things like CRPGs or other digital games. 

Note that I am not against all use of the digital medium. In fact, I strongly favour digitizing many of the commercial aspects of the business: I believe that if WoTC is going with a modular format for the new rules, they should try having a distribution system for things past the inital book set that resembles an app market. The idea is that designers would pay a small amount of money to Wizards to vet their rules module, Wizards selects ones of sufficient quality and then allows those to use the D&D brand and be placed on their digital marketplace by the designers of the rules module, taking a percentage of the profits. 

I do believe, however, that changing the characteristics of D&D that make it unique is a terrible idea, and that making D&D too reliant on digital aids at the table (things like the Character builder or monster builder were a great idea) risks taking away that uniqueness. Also it means competing with games like Skyrim in the areas that they are strong (digital effects, speed of play, etc.) rather than the things at which they are weakest (flexibility of action, ability of the world to respond to you in unique ways)

I'm not talking about making a video game out of D&D. I'm talking about translating the experience over to modern tools. Instead of using a game mat and minis, use a tablet or laptop with cool 3D graphics to show that dragon breathing acid on the entire party. It is possible to do this without losing any of the things that make D&D different from video games. Its time they pay a professional company to move into the 21st century.

Use a microsoft word like program customized instead of a notepad and graph paper for writing your adventure modules. Have it where you click the name of a monster in your adventure and it pops open a window/tab with the stats of the monster in it. Same thing for character sheets. click feat names for a popup that describes what it does taken directly from the rulebook database. etc...etc... There is so much that could be done, that they don't do...

Apr 30, 2012 -- 6:27PM, SantaClaws wrote:

Why do you just pack it in and go home WotC? Well all know that your production costs are too inflated because of your size and that the expectations for Next profits set by Hasbro are too high to be met. D&D will only survive as a table top rpg if it is sold to a smaller company with lower costs, lower expectations and a clean track record with the freedom to abandon sacred cows you wont to stir new interest instead of keeping the game on the power creep and feat bloat treadmill which is obviously getting diminishing returns at this point.  

Oh yeah because anyone who admits this publicly will be replaced by a yes man who in typical corporate fashion will promise the impossible to cling to their position for as long as possible. Just like what lost me my last job and now that my 6 month non-disclosure agreement is finished I can tell you all about it.

I worked for an advertising firm in charge of running a campaign for a Bank I'm not mentioning out of fear for future employment. Everyone I worked with knew that the campaign would fail to deliver on the sales X Bank demanded and everyone at X Bank knew that it would fail. However we went though the motions for 5 months and fired all of our entry level people twice over in the span of time because we had to blame the people at the bottom because the economy sucks so bad that most people can't afford another $80 a month service. Yes, it was in fact their fault! Not X Bank's fault for not allowing us to deviate from their ass backwards bench marks that actively hurt their own sales. Not the X Bank vice president in charge of this campaign for starting it knowing it would fail just so it looked likehe was trying to do something to keep his job. After 5 months we lost it and another firm got the campaign because they promised the impossible. It didn't take them half as long to loss it either because they were still marketing at the same broke, alienated public. 

WotC I honestly think you should just have D&D follow a "controlled decent" instead of a "collapse". That way the IP is still worth more and you will only need to wait 10 instead of 15 years for the world to be ready for 6E.

Well I really want this poster to be wrong, but I fear they are spot on it’s a very high bar to be the perfect game to everyone who has ever played any version of D&D. My hope is that 5e ends up with a complex character creation system and at least some of the old lore.  I am on a sort of pessimistic salvage mission to save my favorite game the D&D of my high school years but the truth is I think 4e killed it dead.  All that’s left of it is a brand name and some really bad video games. I want to be wrong about that and I wish wizards the best of luck.

May 1, 2012 -- 9:09AM, the.nameless.one wrote:

Kids today do not want to sit at a table and play with friends. They want to sit on the couch for 6 hrs with a head set.
The only kids who will put down a controller for paper and pencil will be ones that have parents who play or played and can relate the stories of the fun had at the table instead of a crappy online game.

Wrong and Wrong.  I know plenty of people who have started the game at a young age of their own volition, I did.  Also IME there are more people starting out the game with 4e than there were in 3.5.  Whether this is because of the wider acceptance of Geek culture, the more player friendly rules set of 4e or some other reason, I do not know.  

You didn't actually say it but your passive aggressive subtext made it quite clear that you have confused 4e with a video game.  It is not.  You still sit around a table and roll dice.  In fact to an outsider a game of 4e and an older edition game probably wouldn't look that different, they might perhaps pick up on the differences in the art styles.  

That being said DDO is not a virtual tabletop of D&D so of course the experience will be different.  There is nothing wrong with playing games using VTTs often it is the only way that some groups can actualy play together at all.

Apr 30, 2012 -- 6:27PM, SantaClaws wrote:

D&D will only survive as a table top rpg if it is sold to a smaller company with lower costs, lower expectations and a clean track record with the freedom to abandon sacred cows you wont to stir new interest instead of keeping the game on the power creep and feat bloat treadmill which is obviously getting diminishing returns at this point.

I just wanted to say, if a smaller company produced D&D chances are it would keep the sacred cows.

If they wanted to do something "different" they're just produce their own game.