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Jan 13, 2012 -- 12:42PM, Garthanos wrote:

Jan 13, 2012 -- 8:29AM, mbeacom wrote:

Jan 13, 2012 -- 8:12AM, XunValDorl_of_HouseKilsek wrote:

What's stopping new people from liking the old rules? The answer is nothing so I don't understand the point that was made.

It's like you have to be from the mid 70's to 80's to be able to enjoy the rules. I know for a fact that this isn't true because I've had some young people really dig 2nd edition D&D.

Remember this, what may be old and familiar to you is actually something new and exciting to someone that has never seen it before.

The thinking is that because so many people have played them for so long and realize how "broken" they are that they couldn't possibly entice anyone new to play the game unless they were as dumb and rudimentary as everyone was in the 70s. At least that's the impression I get. Shrug.

My personal opinion is that the original Red Box is just as enticing to a 10 year old today as it was 30 years ago. 

A ten year old today may have been playing WoW for 4 years and just got Skyrim for Xmas I think they have utterly different expectations and paradigms.

That's what I was going to say. It is true that 2e is no less potentially enjoyable today than it was 15 years ago, but A) it is a different world where people have slightly different ideas about what is fun and cool, and B) there are just much better games that have come out in the meantime. Why play 2e when you can play 4e, or maybe some OSR clone that cleans up the rules vastly? You can get pretty much the same gameplay and there is a lot greater variety of rules that competently create interesting gameplay than there were back in the old days.

That doesn't mean you can't do a good game that is very similar to an older game, there are plenty of them, but there'd be little point in just putting out Red Box Basic again as it was then. It might sell OK to old players that started with it in the day, but a more contemporary version, if done right, will be better for new players.

Jan 13, 2012 -- 2:31PM, LFK wrote:

Jan 13, 2012 -- 1:32PM, mbeacom wrote:

So why do you suppose it still works so well?

Because children play differently than adults. They ignore, misinterpret, and or alter rules that they find unintuitive and have a different relationship with the rules framework. I can virtually guarentee that anyone here who taught themselves D&D at a young age played with a very different ruleset than the one that's in the books. 

But I'm the one teaching it to them. I've been playing RPGs for 30 years.

Jan 13, 2012 -- 3:14PM, The_Othe_GM wrote:

i see, so the redbox works well when you have someone who's been doing it for 30 years teaching you. i can see some bias but honestly, do you think they would play the game in the assumed fashion with full understanding of the rules without you guiding them?

i know i didn't back then. i played "2nd ed D&D" but i can assure that i wasn't using the ruleset in the books, or at least not the one presented. then again, we didn't have someone to teach us. we had 5 kids in the boonies with a set of 2nd hand books. our understanding was mostly "roll dice, bullshit numbers, fight monsters".

only when i played again did i realize i was doing it wrong and that's probably why i was having fun. 

on the flipside, we all took to videogames quickly. i played the atari & NES as early as 3-4 at my aunt's place while being babysat. i got my SNES in what... '91? '92? still works too. the gist of the fantasy i grew up on was zelda, dragon warrior, mario, megaman and multiple final fantasies. i gobbled up as many RPGs as i could in the SNES & PS1 era of gaming.

on the flipside, D&Ds mechanics were pretty horrible compartively. we played D&D because it allowed a greater freedom to explore, not because the mechanics were stellar. 

a decent GM can make a decent experience with most systems. i can play 3.0/3.5/pathfinder and whatnot and have fun with the group, but i won't say the session was fun because of the system. it was fun because of the group. i generally find the 3rd ed system and it's direct derivatives more of a chore then anything, especially since i could have fun with the same group, but with less of a hassle due to the system. 

as i said before, if not on this forum, but another: 4th ed is the first edition of D&D i feel comfortable running without having to feel the need to rip it apart & re-assemble it just to make it useable. 

just because you can have fun doesn't mean the system is good. i've heard people could have fun with FATAL. i know i had fun when i was a kid with a sword made out of 2 planks and few rusty nails. all it mean is that humans who want to have fun can find ways to distract themselves with the tools they have at hand.

it doesn't say anything about the quality of the tools.

I've been letting them read the books by themselves and then i run the game. If they have questions, I answer them. For the most part, I just kind of sit back and watch it happen. It's been a real eye opener. They seem to really get it. After all the forums I've read, one would think such a thing is impossible. I think the biggest key isn't good or bad mechanics, but a simply LACK of mechanics. There just aren't a lot of rules.  Resolution is based on telling a story more often than not. The imagination of the child seems to be the limiting factor and to my surprise, those kids that are heavily influenced by Harry Potter and the likes of Skyrim seem to really run with it. I think it may be a case of "less is more".

"just because you can have fun doesn't mean the system is good."

Also, I don't know what to think about this really. I think any system that is easy to learn and lends itself to an entertaining experience is "good" on some level.

Jan 13, 2012 -- 5:09PM, jsepeta wrote:

After reading this thread, and listening to some podcasts with a bunch of DM's discussing this, I just had an awful notion: 

coupled with the collapse of the economy and decreasing entertainment budgets, WotC's corporate overlords at Hasbro likely have very wrong ideas about how much money the D&D franchise must generate to be a profitable business. Yes, WotC may be hoping to lure back players who left for Pathfinder, but this move (announcement in the NYTimes, killing 4e sales for the next 2 years until 5e comes out) is both bold and desperate. WotC must be losing tons of business to make such a bold move. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's a fools' quest.

recall how 4e was designed to use minis, and WotC had a miniatures game that kind of went along with the plastic prepainted minis. then wizkids went broke, and a couple of years later, WotC killed the minis line. This must in some way be related to the fact that Americans have less disposable income than ever - who's going to buy a bunch of collectible crap if you're worried about losing your job?

also note that Borders went out of business, and Barnes & Noble has been on the ropes, fighting vs. Amazon for their lives. and yet not a single D&D book is available for the Kindle -- I think the screen is too small on the Kindle for reading but there are those who disagree. Sure, D&D torrents of PDF's abound - cutting into WotC sales and forcing them to make dumbed-down paperbacks like the Essentials collection (tougher to scan to PDF if it's got double the number of pages and won't lay down flat on a scanner). part of this move to 5e MUST be the result of dwindling sales and corporate pressure, although I'm just making calculated guesses here. 

if WotC wants to make a modular version of D&D that appeals to different players, they need to improve their web support and start making apps for the iPhone and Android. These apps should include in-app content purchases. That way you buy a Basic Players' Handbook for $10 or whatever for your iPad, then if you want specialty classes like the monk, or paragon tier powers, you need to buy the downloadable content for $1 or whatever. They could still sell collections of powers for a discount (Every Martial Class! Every Shadow Spell! Rare armor and weapons!) and because this content would be digitally distributed, it would allow WotC to exit the paper publishing market gracefully, gaining the profits from sales and digital distribution without the hassles of printing, distribution, and difficult guesswork such as calculating how many books they need to print. As an additional benefit, they wouldn't have to worry about licensing content because all downloadable content is only sold through their app, and controlled through whatever review process that they have internally. As a result, they need not worry about losing app sales to a D20-style "cloning" scheme.

Note that I _love_ my iPad and bring it to every gaming session. I have PDFs of the books I've bought to make referencing the rules easy during gaming sessions - also to save on the backbreaking work of lugging 25 lbs of books to nerd night. Not every gamer has or wants an iPad, and for some, that will be a real turn-off. But this is where the entertainment industry is headed for music, movies, and yes, BOOKS. You can't stuff the genie back into the bottle - if WotC doesn't move to a digital world, then Paizo or some other enterprising company will.

"part of this move to 5e MUST be the result of dwindling sales"

Ahem.....no kidding. You think?  Of course, if 4E was selling well enough, they've never can it early. They'd let it continue. It must really be doing poorly for them to whack it off at the knees the way they are.

But I'm not sure selling the d&d equivalent of horse armor is the way to do. I like the idea of microtransactions, but not for materials like this.