Quote from: Votan;683576I still think D&D is two games:

1) a character build game where character power is important
2) a story-telling adventure game (not in the same sense as a story game)

Games 1 and 2 are ever in conflict as flexibility makes #2 work much better whereas you really need rigidity to be able to flawlessly analyze a build.

I think there are 2 types as well, and are very similiar to yours.

1. You can do only what is in the rules
2. You can do things even if there isn't a rule for it.


For example, let's look at a 4e fan's comment about how Next is failing as a tactical game:

QuoteTactics also involves every player working as a cog in a machine. Codified roles helped this quite a bit actually. Each class had a job to do that uniquely affected combat. In 5e each class is basically playing solo. It rarely matters what your team-mates do in 5e. In 4e it was very important what your teammates were doing in the round before yours. You could set up awesome combos with 2+ classes working together as a team. A group with good synergy and tactics could finish combat a good 50% faster than a group without it in 4e. Playing smart and playing to eachother's strengths mattered in 4e. Part of this was the fact that all classes could Nova, so setting up a nova was highly beneficial. In 5e, most non-caster classes are at-will, and there are almost no abilities that help set up or benefit team play.


..........

In 5e combat, what your ally does on their turn has almost 0 impact on your decision process on your turn. In effect, each individual is completely autonomous. In a tactical game, it matters significantly what your allies do on their turn.

This is clearly a person who can only think on point 1.  If something is not codified in the rules, then you can't do it or it doesn't happen.  For this player, the concept of creativity and out of the box thinking is an alien concept.

Quote from: Haffrung;682976So with the playtest heading into the home stretch, Mearls' summary of the feedback gives me a lot of reason for optimism.

The Final Countdown

So, what did we learn from the public playtest? In some cases you confirmed things, in others you dispelled some notions that had become lodged in R&D's view of you.

• You like simplicity. You want to jump into the game quickly, create characters, monsters, NPCs, and adventures with a minimum of fuss, and get down to the business of playing D&D.
• You like that every class has the potential to contribute in most situations, but you're OK with some classes being better at certain things if that fits the class's image. You see balance on a larger, adventure-based or campaign-based scale.
• You want rules that make it easy to build adventures and encounters. You want to think about the story or your setting's details, rather than fiddle with math.
• You value flexibility in rules. You prefer an ability or a rule that's easy to adapt or that leaves space for creative applications, rather than rigidly defined abilities.
• You aren't edition warriors. You want the game to support a variety play styles in equal measure. You're not attached to any specific ways of doing things as long as the game works.

[/I]

I know there are some grognards who are fiercely opposed to pretty much any mechanical changes from D&D circa 1980. Safe to say WotC has written them off. But for someone who wants to play an old-school style game, who is open to modern mechanics, it looks like WotC has me square in its sites as the market for Next.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding. There have been some head-scratchers in the playtests. And I frankly think they're still clinging to too many sacred cows. But it's starting to look like I'll be buying more than just a core book or two for a new edition of D&D to mine for ideas; I might actually become a fan of the in-print system. And that's a weird feeling.

I think they are trying to appeal to broad soectrum of gamers that includes old school folks but isn't limited to them. It also looks like they are making an effort to listen this time around. I'd say these points look good so far, and the playtest material has made me optimistic. But the final product will not be laser focused for just a single crowd of people, nor should it be (in many ways, 4E made that mistake in my opinion). It looks like a game where I can get my friends who like 1E and my friends who moved onto other games, at the same table. But really won't know until I see the final product.

Quote from: LibraryLass;683581I feel like the statements are a little vague, like a cold-reading or a horoscope or a campaign speech.

Yeah. 'The results of our extensive feedback campaign is that people like games that are fun'.

Quote from: soviet;683599Yeah. 'The results of our extensive feedback campaign is that people like games that are fun'.

Aka, "Games that aren't 4e"

Quote from: LibraryLass;683581I feel like the statements are a little vague, like a cold-reading or a horoscope or a campaign speech. Generic enough to sound applicable to almost everyone's beliefs without actually offering a concrete plan. I dunno. It seems to me that someone has to be disappointed and I wish he'd come out and say who he expects will or won't be. This is one of those times where it might actually be good to dictate a little.

Mearls hasn't come out and explicitly said who will be disappointed, but there are some pretty clear hints out there.

[Parphrasing]

We lost track of what most players really wanted out of D&D.

Next is based on the belief that players don't care about the mechanics as much as they care about cool stories.

We want Next to be a game that a group of friends could play out of the box casually for a couple hours and have a good time.

It seems pretty clear to me that Next will disappoint people who want:

* System-first design with the mechanics in the foreground

* Elaborate char op metagame

* A complex game that rewards system mastery

add people who obsess about mechanical character balance to that list, they are explicitly killed under point two.

Quote from: jadrax;683684add people who obsess about mechanical character balance to that list, they are explicitly killed under point two.

I have my doubts about how many of those people actually play D&D. I suppose they'll be disappointed in the game and piss and moan about it endlessly, but it's not like WotC will be losing them as customers.

Quote from: Haffrung;683657Mearls hasn't come out and explicitly said who will be disappointed, but there are some pretty clear hints out there.

[Parphrasing]

We lost track of what most players really wanted out of D&D.

Next is based on the belief that players don't care about the mechanics as much as they care about cool stories.

We want Next to be a game that a group of friends could play out of the box casually for a couple hours and have a good time.

It seems pretty clear to me that Next will disappoint people who want:

* System-first design with the mechanics in the foreground

* Elaborate char op metagame

* A complex game that rewards system mastery

Yeah, but let's face it they'll have a hell of a time pleasing the 3.x crowd and the old-schoolers. Neither of which seem like a safe market to me what with them having Pathfinder or sticking to their old editions and indie retroclones, respectively.

Quote from: Haffrung;683657Mearls hasn't come out and explicitly said who will be disappointed, but there are some pretty clear hints out there.

[Parphrasing]

We lost track of what most players really wanted out of D&D.

Next is based on the belief that players don't care about the mechanics as much as they care about cool stories.

We want Next to be a game that a group of friends could play out of the box casually for a couple hours and have a good time.

It seems pretty clear to me that Next will disappoint people who want:

* System-first design with the mechanics in the foreground

* Elaborate char op metagame

* A complex game that rewards system mastery

I'm okay with these things.  Avoiding those things is exactly why I drifted back to D&D from playing mostly GURPS.

Quote from: LibraryLass;683869Yeah, but let's face it they'll have a hell of a time pleasing the 3.x crowd and the old-schoolers. Neither of which seem like a safe market to me what with them having Pathfinder or sticking to their old editions and indie retroclones, respectively.

I'm 41, and have been playing for thirty years.  Am I an old-schooler?

Frankly 5e interests me more than 3e or 4e do.  It's for the *most part* what I would have wanted in an update - additional flexibility, cleaned up rules, but maintaining the core simplicity of earlier versions.

Quote from: LibraryLass;683869Yeah, but let's face it they'll have a hell of a time pleasing the 3.x crowd and the old-schoolers. Neither of which seem like a safe market to me what with them having Pathfinder or sticking to their old editions and indie retroclones, respectively.

I doubt I'll be running D&D Next, but from what I've seen of DDN it looks like I will be able to pick up adventures and settings for it and be able to use them in my old school campaigns without completely rewriting them. A complete rewrite is what 3.x and 4e adventures needed, which means I seldom was interested enough to buy one. Assuming DDN is anything like the playtest stuff, adventures and settings should be easily usable with the TSR D&D and clones I use. This means WOTC has a chance of getting some money from me -- something they haven't had much of from me in the past.  I know a number of other old school fans who feel as I do.

Quote from: robiswrong;683870I'm 41, and have been playing for thirty years.  Am I an old-schooler?

Frankly 5e interests me more than 3e or 4e do.  It's for the *most part* what I would have wanted in an update - additional flexibility, cleaned up rules, but maintaining the core simplicity of earlier versions.

Sure, but you wouldn't deny there's a specifically old-school market that's... okay, it's not huge, but by RPG standards it's robust enough, no?

I think they can't rely on winning over that market in large numbers because a lot of old schoolers are happy using existing systems (or their clones). Making B/X available on DnDClassics and the 1e and OD&D reprints is, I think the acknowledgment of this. 4e's history shows that they're not likely to capture a large segment of the "casual" market on name recognition. And the 3.5 market is pretty wrapped up in Pathfinder for the most part, so I think winning them over is a long shot.

I'd love to be wrong and have 5e be a genuinely fun game that makes them a lot of money and gets a lot of people playing the same game, but I'm not holding my breath, because it's not clear to me where the large market share they want is meant to come from.

Quote from: RandallS;683875I doubt I'll be running D&D Next, but from what I've seen of DDN it looks like I will be able to pick up adventures and settings for it and be able to use them in my old school campaigns without completely rewriting them. A complete rewrite is what 3.x and 4e adventures needed, which means I seldom was interested enough to buy one. Assuming DDN is anything like the playtest stuff, adventures and settings should be easily usable with the TSR D&D and clones I use. This means WOTC has a chance of getting some money from me -- something they haven't had much of from me in the past.  I know a number of other old school fans who feel as I do.

Maybe. WOTC's track record on adventures is a bit on the spotty side if you ask me. I can count the number of decent 4e adventures on one hand, and I think I could probably count the number of (EDIT: First-party) 3.x adventures that existed at all on two hands. Their business model has traditionally shown much more focus on supplements.

Quote from: LibraryLass;683881Sure, but you wouldn't deny there's a specifically old-school market that's... okay, it's not huge, but by RPG standards it's robust enough, no?

I don't know - it'll be interesting to see.  If 5e actually hits a lot of the old-school feel, with a cleaned up ruleset and a bit of flexibility added?  I could see old-school players making a switch.

I mean, I love old-school, I really do.  But the rules are clunky.  I don't think there's many people that can argue that.  While B/X is comparatively clean, AD&D 1e really shows that it's an organically grown "thing" more than anything else.

Whenever I've considered running an old-school game, that's been a factor in deciding to or not.

If they don't hit the same notes as older versions, then no, 5e won't have any impact on the old-school crowd.

Quote from: Haffrung;683740I have my doubts about how many of those people actually play D&D. I suppose they'll be disappointed in the game and piss and moan about it endlessly, but it's not like WotC will be losing them as customers.

I have met and played with the breed, but they are a definite minority of D&D players.  They also tend towards being extremely obsessed with following the letter of the rules.

Quote from: LibraryLass;683869Yeah, but let's face it they'll have a hell of a time pleasing the 3.x crowd and the old-schoolers. Neither of which seem like a safe market to me what with them having Pathfinder or sticking to their old editions and indie retroclones, respectively.

The lapsed/old-school D&D market is way, way bigger than the retroclone OSR, which is largely an online thing. Just as indie gamers have their heads up their ass when they suggest 13th Age will be popular alternative to Next, old-schoolers on the forums who think an amateur retroclone that sells 1,000 or 2,000 copies is any kind of a rival to official D&D lack any sense of perspective.

The indie publisher scene is talked up online out of all proportion to its size in the overall RPG hobby. Sure, WotC would like to get all those guys who downloaded Labyrinth Lord and have DCC RPG on their shelves to buy and play Next. But they don't need them. The channels that Next will be publicized through will reach a vast cohort of lapsed old-school players who have never heard of the OSR, RPGnet, DCC, or OSRIC. Heck, it already has:150,000 downloads of the playtest rules. And none of the guys I play with had heard of Next or the playtest until I told them about it a few months ago, including a guy who has bought and played every edition of the game from Moldvay Basic through to 4E. The population of gamers out there who only see a game on their radar once it has official D&D commercial status is huge. That's who WotC has to win over with Next, not a few hundred cynical grognards who have accounts at Knights and Knaves Alehouse and Grognardia.

Quote from: Haffrung;683889The lapsed/old-school D&D market is way, way bigger than the retroclone OSR, which is largely an online thing. Just as indie gamers have their heads up their ass when they suggest 13th Age will be popular alternative to Next, old-schoolers on the forums who think an amateur retroclone that sells 1,000 or 2,000 copies is any kind of a rival to official D&D lack any sense of perspective.

The indie publisher scene is talked up online out of all proportion to its size in the overall RPG hobby. Sure, WotC would like to get all those guys who downloaded Labyrinth Lord and have DCC RPG on their shelves to buy and play Next. But they don't need them. The channels that Next will be publicized through will reach a vast cohort of lapsed old-school players who have never heard of the OSR, RPGnet, DCC, or OSRIC. Heck, it already has:150,000 downloads of the playtest rules. And none of the guys I play with had heard of Next or the playtest until I told them about it a few months ago, including a guy who has bought and played every edition of the game from Moldvay Basic through to 4E. The population of gamers out there who only see a game on their radar once it has official D&D commercial status is huge. That's who WotC has to win over with Next, not a few hundred cynical grognards who have accounts at Knights and Knaves Alehouse and Grognardia.

I don't think those retroclones compete with D&D, I just think most old-schoolers, lapsed or not, already have the D&D they want, and if they don't, as of this year they can buy a reprint of it anyway. I don't think there are more than ten or twelve thousand active players of old school games and I think most of the lapsed ones can't be arsed to get back into it no matter how good 5e is.