WotC sucks at selling games

[Stubbazubba]

...according to the Angry DM:

http://angrydm.com/2014/09/dear-wotc-why-do-you-suck-at-selling-games/

This is not a hate thread. This is a serious discussion of a problem facing D&D and many other TTRPGs (though I hesitate to say the entire industry--read on). D&D is the flagship product of the entire TTRPG industry, it is one of the only games that non-players are actually cognizant of and would try if given a chance. The growth of the industry is to a large degree determined by how well WotC expands the D&D player base. And they have settled on an outdated and underperforming model to do so.

According to Mike Mearls, WotC relies on the "older cousin" method of bringing new gamers to the table. You know what this is: the person you know--a family member, friend, or friend of a friend--who invites you in and teaches you how to play the game. Their teaching then prepares you to understand everything in the PHB and other books.

But at that initial step, the actual rules are themselves a barrier to entry. And not just that the books are simply too voluminous, though that's part of it, it's that they're not actually useful to learn the game. They're too full of legacy terms that go unexplained because everyone who wrote the book knew what those terms meant long before they dreamed of writing it. For example: Armor Class. Feat. Hit Points. The Basic Rules (where new players would first look) don't offer any meaningful explanation. How do you use them? How Hit Points work, what affects them, is spread out all over the PDF. Of course, we don't need that, we know how Hit Points work! And while many video games use similar ideas, you wouldn't know that without reading the entire Basic Rules and inferring how HP works afterwards.

And regardless of the flaws of my chosen example (which I'm sure someone will pick at), we all know the rules and rulebooks are written as reference materials, not as introductory material. And when WotC sets out to make deliberately introductory materials, they end up being just like the reference materials. Why? Because the game is taught by an "older cousin" anyway. In theory.

That's no longer an acceptable approach. As Mearls has also stated (all from the above article, I'm just rephrasing), the past decade has seen an immense growth in the vibrancy and primacy of nerd culture. Yet D&D has only grown at the same rate it did before all of that happened. Why? Because when you use an "older cousin" plan, your growth is limited, not by the number of potential customers (which is growing) but by the number of older cousins (which doesn't grow like that).

And maybe that was a reality that had to be faced in the 20th century, at the dawn of the D&D era, but AOL happened twenty years ago, and it's high time WotC realized just how much D&D needs an introduction that can completely replace the older cousin, not just supplement him.

The very first thing you should be clicking on the D&D website is a big, bold button that says, "New to D&D? Click here!" which takes you to an interactive, choose-your-own adventure story. A montage of sketches plays while a voice-over says, "You're an adventurer exploring the depths of a dungeon in search of an ancient artifact. Before you is a chasm, maybe 6 feet wide, blocking your path to your prize." Then a text prompt says, "I want to jump across the chasm." Clicking that shows you a zoomed in portion of a character sheet, highlighting the Ability Scores. "These six Ability Scores--Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma--reflect your basic competencies in the fantastic world of Dungeons & Dragons. To jump over the chasm, you'll add your Ability Modifier, here, to the result of rolling a 20-sided die, called a d20." Jump over the chasm by rolling the d20 and adding my Dexterity modifier. You do so, a number comes up (always high and successful, of course, because tutorials gotta be so) and the voice-over continues, "With a running start, you vault across the chasm, deftly landing on the other side." Maybe throw in a sound effect.

And then the adventure continues, similarly walking you through the experience of using a character sheet to attack an enemy, how to roll advantage and disadvantage, how to cast a spell, etc. All-in-all, this is probably about a half-hour production, give or take, filled with an adventure seed (you get to the artifact's resting place only to find it's already been taken by your rival Gary arch-nemesis, but you know just where to find him). Then there's another link, this time to a chargen tutorial. And so on. At some point you get a link that gives you the rest of the Basic Rules, and tells you to check out Adventurer's League in your area, and maybe something with the digital tools. But the simple idea is this; introduce people to playing D&D by having them play D&D, explaining as you go, the same way the "older cousin" would. Bam, no more bottleneck based on how many "older cousins" there are. WotC can immediately interact with potential players, give them both the taste for and the basic understanding required to understand the rules tomes they put out, and go.

But wait! There's an extremely important part of the puzzle yet missing. Just as new players need an interactive "older cousin" to teach them the basics of play, new DMs need an interactive "older cousin" to teach them the basics of prepping and running a game. This will necessarily be a little more freeform, but a similar walkthrough starting at the concept for an adventure, going down to encounter design, and finally running the game, complete with PCs that pull out something unexpected that you have to respond to, would go far towards giving people looking to start games the confidence they need to do so. EDIT: Y'know what? Strike that, reverse that: start from the bottom, how to adjudicate an action, then how to build an encounter (combat, social, or exploration), and then how to improvise. These are the basic skills you need to build confidence in to get DMs to run a game; adventure concepts and campaign ideas are cheap./EDIT Only by focusing on training new DMs will WotC actually get substantially more people playing the game. The DMG doesn't go very far in terms of training, it's more of a toolbox. But interactive education, which has been possible for far too long to not be heavily utilized in this industry, can disseminate those initial skills and confidence to new DMs, which will finally enable D&D to catch up with the expanding nerd culture.

With 5e, the barrier to entry that is the rules is significantly lower than it was previously. That's a step. But if real, live, literal "older cousins" are all we have to really bring new players in, it doesn't matter, the game won't grow, and thus the industry won't grow (at least not as much). It's time WotC addressed that initial experience, and brought new players and DMs into the fold on a far larger scale.

If this didn't convince you, go read the Angry DM's article. He's much more passionate than I am, his treatment is much better. But the idea is the same:


(TL;DR) WotC is focusing on the wrong things in introductory materials and relying too heavily on word of mouth to actually teach both how to play and how to DM. It's high time they, or someone, leveraged this little thing called the internet to change that.

Thoughts?

[archaeo]

I'll just note that the Angry DM doesn't bring up DungeonScape once, which may end up being a very powerful tool for getting DMs to play 5e and for getting new players interested in the game, if it's a good as Trapdoor says it will be (and as good as the initial reviews seem to suggest).

I think the Angry DM is just angry because WotC has been selling 5e to enthusiasts pretty exclusively so far. I think the WotC strategy, right now, is to win over the market that exists. After they have that, selling it beyond that core market should be much easier.

[emeraldstreak]

I think Sales is a field that hasn't stopped developing. So, it's not that DnD is outright bad when it comes to sales, but it's more like its competition, even the most direct ones in Fantasy Flight and Paizo have kept in pace while WotC has been staying in place.

Obviously, if you go out of the tabletops into the general "nerdy" hobbies, the outlook is even more bleak.

[FadeAssassin]

I think that interactive tutorial is awesome (theoretically). I'm sure even if WotC Doesn't do it, someone can figure it out and make it. It would help new players, even those who have "older cousins" learn the game, because sometimes people who know the game so well sometimes skip over things that matter and take hours on things that aren't so important.

The DM's Tutorial could be just as helpful for the people who've never played, don't have an "older cousin" DM to teach them.

I hope WotC sees this and gets it done, or someone from the community makes it. It would definitely help people start playing and create more DMs!

It would also help people who see the starter set in the store, Buy it, get people willing to play, all with no experience (pun), and then are so confused when they start, a lot like my friends I'm DMing for now. None of them could really DM the set they had, so I offered to do it because I had like four sessions under my belt.

[rlc]

Good idea, actually. Half an hour might be a bit too long, though.

[obryn]

I think he's exactly right, on pretty much all counts, here. And I've said similar, though less... Uh.... Angry.

[Beleriphon]

Actually I think the biggest problem is less about marketing and sales, the overall Hasbro sales strategy which seems to be the Disney model. That is to say most of your money doesn't come from the primary product (say the movie Aladdin), its from the ancillary stuff you sell like underoos with the Genie's face on the butt. That's the overall marketing and sales goal. Quite frankly the licensing for a D&D video (or a movie, see the new recently) are worth more the Hasbro than the RPG ever will be.

Thus you're never likely to see a different sales model, because it honestly doesn't make that much difference to Hasbro's bottom line to bother with the expense. It could double or triple the player base and it would be a drop in the bucket. Its kind of how Disney really doesn't give a rat's ass how well Marvel comics sell, as long as the movies and licensed products make crap tons of money.

[Soras Teva Gee]

While its probably a good idea I consider that well... D&D is not a product that can command a lot of marketing dollars.

I totally get making a sort of online tool to teach you D&D. However especially if you want something comprehensive enough to reach the goal of a total neophyte being able to start their own group, your not talking a mere tool but some kind of scaled down video game to walk you through an adventure. Especially you want to help out with "visualizing" part of things. And that's going to cost some amount of money that well D&D might not be able to command. Also maybe not the best way to point out the all important differences

Mind you I'm still not sure it would work. Because what you need really to make that be effective is to convince some total neophyte they can run the game before they've ever even played it to create new patient zero DMs in the wild, not from person to person. Because of course if you don't have an "older cousin" around in some form you need someone to DM without ever having played as a PC. I'm... unconvinced... that's possible to do.

The "older cousin" idea has the advantage of being cheap, you don't in fact need to do marketing because the players do it for you. They also do all the heavy lifting of teaching new people and letting them play the game before they have to run it for themselves. I must also point out this has worked in the past for nerdy hobbies many nay most of which have been around since the effectively the pre-internet days. I got into almost all of mine via infection from other nerds I knew, like I was about to say Baldur's Gate is why I play D&D at all... and then I remembered I first got into it borrowing it from a friend.Almost got into Warhammer because my best friend was an avid player and showed me the models. Magic, knew folks that played and it didn't have as bad an initial start-up cost as 40k. Got into anime mostly via a high school club showing NGE on bootlegs VHS though Toonami helped and person to person is arguably no longer necessary it was definitely built from there.

Has that changed in the past decade or do people still mostly get into these hobbies via person to person infection? And most troubling of all... if its still working for say MtG why is it NOT working for D&D? Maybe there is some social support aspect that is missing?

(Of course maybe people just fundamentally aren't interested in the product that the market reached is all their is to be had and D&D must run on that. Not like folks not under that umbrella are doing much better right? Sometimes there's nothing to be done and your product just isn't interesting. Troubling but often true.)

[Beleriphon]

Has that changed in the past decade or do people still mostly get into these hobbies via person to person infection? And most troubling of all... if its still working for say MtG why is it NOT working for D&D? Maybe there is some social support aspect that is missing?

(Of course maybe people just fundamentally aren't interested in the product that the market reached is all their is to be had and D&D must run on that. Not like folks not under that umbrella are doing much better right? Sometimes there's nothing to be done and your product just isn't interesting. Troubling but often true.)

I think the problem Angry DM is trying to point there isn't a tool that lets people do that without somebody else. As noted he's had questions about how start playing, from people that watch Big Bang Theory where they saw the characters in the show playing. The current answer is that the easiest way to play without somebody else is to get the game and muddle through. Most people aren't willing to do that, especially adults who have limited time to get a group of people together to plan magical elf make believe (because let's be serious, that's what the game looks like to people that have never played).

The best comparison that I can think of is that if you want to start playing something like Warhammer I really can go to the store, buy an army box and the rules and then GW has resources on their website that actually tell me how to play (and build armies, and do other stuff). Wizards doesn't have this, but at the same time GW has vested interest in making people buy as much crap as they can, while the nature of D&D in many ways actively prevents this since all you really need to play is one book amongst as many people as you care to try an play with.

Wizards is actually awesome at selling the game. They're just really bad at teaching it to people that don't have that "older cousin".

[squashmaster]

Over time, MMORPGs have killed TTRPGs. It's simply true.

I played MMORPGs/MUDs for years and I never touched a TTRPG despite always being aware of D&D. I mean, who isn't aware of D&D?

Quite simply, the hobby, while obviously rewarding, often doesn't offer a compelling enough reason to go with it over an MMORPG. Now, that's not to say it can't be amazing and brilliant in its own way, but finding a group willing to put in the time to play/buy the books, as well as the most important aspect of finding someone willing to DM, is just too huge of a barrier compared to the MMO. That was my number 1 barrier for getting into it. Nobody to play with. Nobody to DM.

I mean, I could just play WoW or Wildstar or Guild Wars, bam, good to go. My character is still massively customizable, the world is still huge with no shortage of things to continually keep myself busy, and the social aspect is still very much a big part.

I understand that with the right DM, the right campaign, the right players, TTs can have even more possibilities and be even better in certain ways. But...a lot of the time TTs can be pretty mundane. You can't deny it. You gotta drudge through a lot of routine stuff before you get to the epic stuff. That's just the nature of TTs. It's why they're so great. It's also why so many people have only a passing interest.

Honestly, I think the savior of the TTRPG will be something like Roll20 or Google hangouts.

[Snails]

The early versions of D&D created the RPG industry based, on the most part, on the "older cousin" model. It may be a limitation of the TTRPG hobby, because even the lightweight and simple games require a significant amount of before-game investment in time/energy on the part of the GM/DM. D&D is not a simple game.

GM/DMing is incredibly hard if you have never seen it done before, and someone picking up a random RPG book will sense that accurately enough.

Has any RPG actually succeeded based on any other model? The Boxed Set of 1980 may have been somewhat successful, but it was not directly competing against Plants vs. Zombies or Minecraft or the various online games.

[Sartharina]

If WotC sucks at selling D&D, I'd be amazed to see how D&D would sell if they were awesome at marketing it. It would probably be setting records, given how well it's been selling so far.

[rlc]

And most troubling of all... if its still working for say MtG why is it NOT working for D&D? Maybe there is some social support aspect that is missing?


it's because one's a card game and one's a book game.

[pwykersotz]

I agree with most of Angry's points. In fact, the first thing I noticed about the PHB is how much is missing from it. Now looking at it from that angle, I see even more. He's right, the PHB is a rules compendium. Useful for me, not so much if I wanted to hand it to my kid brother.

[MeeposFire]

One important consideration is that gaming is a very tradition bound hobby (even if we don't think of it that way). Just changing things in small ways, a lot of times only as simple as format, can cause great upheaval in the community. There could be a real fear that changing how the game is dispersed could affect the perception of the game with its traditional base and losing that may make the game a real loss with only the gambit of getting a newer more broad base. They may not like that gambit when they know if they produce it this way they will get this result even if it is not as big as some other games.

Not saying they should or should not have that fear but I could see them having it.

[Eldan]

I agree with most of Angry's points. In fact, the first thing I noticed about the PHB is how much is missing from it. Now looking at it from that angle, I see even more. He's right, the PHB is a rules compendium. Useful for me, not so much if I wanted to hand it to my kid brother.

Especially disappointing if that's also missing from the starter rules, as Angry says. It couldn't be that difficult to write up a starter set that actually explains things, can it?

I've brought a small handful of people into the hobby over the years. The beginning is always the same. You hand them a character sheet and give them the quick and dirty explanation of what all the numbers mean. "These are ability scores. There are six of them. The first is strength, this is what strength does... This is your armour class. It's good for ... This is initiative. Here we have your attacks, you use them to attack, like this. These are skills, you use them for specialized things. Let's pick one, say, climb. If you want to climb, you would roll like this. Okay? Good. Now, on page two, we have a list of special abilities your character could have. Okay? Let's do a simple example. This is a room (sketches map), this is you (puts down counter), this is a simple enemy, a goblin (puts down other counter)"

I'm pretty convinced one could write that down into about five pages that would be enough to get someone to play. For the first hour or so of a session with a new player? Just kick out the fiddly rules like special abilities, equipment, most modifiers, all that. Get people to do some make believe and rolling some d20s.

Edit: and make it descriptive, of course. For a new player, that's key. "This is your strength. You are a warrior, so it is 16, which is a very high for a human. Your weapon is a two-handed axe which deals a lot of damage, so you can kill most enemies in one or two strikes." Give examples of everything. "Your dexterity is 8, which is a bit clumsy, but not terrible."

[Stan]

Paizo's starter box is a little better at explaining things. It has pregen characters with annotation explaining what things do what and walks new players through things. The problem is that it's walking them through Pathfinder which, while a lovely game, is a bit more complex than 3e and definitely more complex than 5e.

Price and time are also limiting factors - 5e is still fairly complex. Seeing a $50 book hundreds of pages long that is the implied starting point is likely to make most people not bother. The starter box has a decent 32 page rule book (though no chargen at all) and is cheaply priced for easy entry. But I haven't seen it in any big box store's game section, which ties back into the marketing problem. I haven't seen much indication that people who were not previously roleplayers have bought it.

[Stubbazubba]

I'll just note that the Angry DM doesn't bring up DungeonScape once, which may end up being a very powerful tool for getting DMs to play 5e and for getting new players interested in the game, if it's a good as Trapdoor says it will be (and as good as the initial reviews seem to suggest).

DungeonScape sounds like it's aiming to be yet another reference tool, maybe with a side order of automating some things. It's made for people, like us, who knew how to play the game from the phrase, "d20 + modifiers." I'd be surprised if all of a sudden it whips out introductory stuff that comes at learning the game from a perspective that almost no company has even tried in the past 40 years.


Actually I think the biggest problem is less about marketing and sales, the overall Hasbro sales strategy which seems to be the Disney model. That is to say most of your money doesn't come from the primary product (say the movie Aladdin), its from the ancillary stuff you sell like underoos with the Genie's face on the butt. That's the overall marketing and sales goal. Quite frankly the licensing for a D&D video (or a movie, see the new recently) are worth more the Hasbro than the RPG ever will be.

Thus you're never likely to see a different sales model, because it honestly doesn't make that much difference to Hasbro's bottom line to bother with the expense. It could double or triple the player base and it would be a drop in the bucket. Its kind of how Disney really doesn't give a rat's ass how well Marvel comics sell, as long as the movies and licensed products make crap tons of money.

I'm still confused as to how Hasbro thought Battleship was a better brand to turn into a movie than D&D. Haven't those movie rights reverted yet? What's the hold up? Fantasy is in, if the Hobbit movies and Game of Thrones are any indication. Nevertheless, I think we already are seeing a different marketing strategy for 5e: the Basic Rules, a whole new suite of digital tools that are designed for tablets, this thing is going in a much different direction than 4e. Surely some of those resources would be better spent making quality introductory materials?


While its probably a good idea I consider that well... D&D is not a product that can command a lot of marketing dollars.

I totally get making a sort of online tool to teach you D&D. However especially if you want something comprehensive enough to reach the goal of a total neophyte being able to start their own group, your not talking a mere tool but some kind of scaled down video game to walk you through an adventure. Especially you want to help out with "visualizing" part of things. And that's going to cost some amount of money that well D&D might not be able to command. Also maybe not the best way to point out the all important differences

That seems patently unnecessary to me. "Older cousins" don't need a video game to teach you to play, I don't think WotC does, either. A simple tutorial like I described should be able to cover most of the mechanics through play in minutes. The only visuals you need are some evocative art pieces.


Mind you I'm still not sure it would work. Because what you need really to make that be effective is to convince some total neophyte they can run the game before they've ever even played it to create new patient zero DMs in the wild, not from person to person. Because of course if you don't have an "older cousin" around in some form you need someone to DM without ever having played as a PC. I'm... unconvinced... that's possible to do.

I think you'll find that a significant minority of us did just that; picked up a game book having never played or even had it explained to us, and figured it out the old-fashioned way. And we messed stuff up, but we could totally play some version of the game, just like kids playing with a pool table can play some version of pool that looks nothing like the pros. That's all this would have to do: get neophytes excited and prepared to try to run the game. Not run it at a convention or with total strangers, just enough that they can handle a couple of encounters with their friends, probably with a starting adventure or two. It doesn't even all have to be right; they can forget or just skip the nuances of Constitution damage, or calculate initiative wrong, or give the Wizard bonus spells in levels he couldn't cast yet. None of that matters, so long as the group does, in fact, play.


If WotC sucks at selling D&D, I'd be amazed to see how D&D would sell if they were awesome at marketing it. It would probably be setting records, given how well it's been selling so far.

You're right, they're selling it just fine. What the Angry DM (and I just copied his language) is getting at is that WotC sucks at teaching D&D. Happy?

[Eldan]

We actually started that way in 3E. Mostly because none of us knew what RPGs were or knew anyone who played them. What we eventually came up with was "Baldur's Gate without a computer" as our closest reference point. One of us (the one who had played Baldur's Gate before, which counts as "rules knowledge" as far as we were concerned) imported some books from the UK and started running.

We had every newbie mistake ever. Overpowered encounters, pitifully easy encounters, an untouchable boss (he was a cleric casting 7th level spells facing a first level party!) who teleported out after being discovered and snarking a bit about how much better he was, tons and tons of rules that were simply wrong, the DM taking away player agency (my character was possessed by a demon - again, level 1 - who took control when he went off the Dm's rails), Monty Haul levels of loot (a ring of +4 AC, a flying ship, our own stronghold, magic swords for everyone including the casters, a force cube (item that creates an almost impenetrable shield around the character), on level 1), characters that were totally unbalanced against each other(interestingly enough, the monk easily beat the two casters every time in combat), plots that went nowhere, plots that were on rails, a DMPC caster in the group, literal Deus Ex Machina and so on and so on.

We still loved it. But it would probably have been so much better if we had any idea what we were doing. And if any of the DMs (we changed after each adventure) actually ever prepared something, instead of having a basic idea ("Today, I'll send them to climb an infinitely tall tower next to the city, that they haven't noticed before") and then improvising.

So, it can work. Ten years later, I'm still playing.

[Talakeal]

I have been saying for years d&d needs to have a simple sit down and play board-game variant ala Heroquest to teach the basic concepts without need of an experianced player or even a real DM. Then have expansions which slowly work the hardcore players into a real RPG environment.

[Stan]

I have been saying for years d&d needs to have a simple sit down and play board-game variant ala Heroquest to teach the basic concepts without need of an experianced player or even a real DM. Then have expansions which slowly work the hardcore players into a real RPG environment.

They do have those, such as Castle Ravenloft. But they retail at $65 which more than most people will spend as an impulse on something they know little about. I'm not sure just how simple they are to non-roleplayers. They had also made a D&D version of Heroscape but it was too little, too late as Heroscape was already going downhill.

There's a new Dungeon boardgame, priced at only $20. I have no idea how good it is. It's also not in mainstream stores at this point.

For comparison, There's a Pathfinder cardgame. It's a tad overpriced but it's pretty cool and simple enough that my 9 year old has no problem with the rules. Your characters grow over time as well.

I'd love a D&D movie/series as long as has good scripts and enough budget to not look cheesy. The previous attempts probably harmed the brand more than helped it.

Edit: I looked up the movie rights. Sweetpea got the rights in 1994 from Lorraine Williams era TSR. Last year, Sweetpea started development on an idea with Warner Bros - it had some of the same crappy Sweetpea people attached to it. Hasbro has been attempting to show that Sweetpea didn't honor all their terms of their contract so it is void. Hasbro is already in talks with Universal as they have worked with them before. The court case started a couple of days ago.

It is very possible that Hasbro's current releases are essentially beta versions. They're putting them out there, getting more genuine feedback than playtesting yields, moving toward a clean, solid line of products. Then they'll do a solid market push timed with the release of a movie in a couple of years. Hasbro has enough going on that they can afford to wait and would probably rather do one big push than premature marketing than could damage the brand prior to a movie release.

[Person_Man]

I agree entirely with the Angry DM.

Their stated goal is to cast a wide net, and convert as many geeks as possible.

But 5E D&D is very, very backwards looking. It is the quintessence of what people liked about 2E and 3.X. It's essentially about recapturing old players from 3rd party competitors.

I'm cool with that, since I grew up playing 1E/2E/3.X. But its the exact opposite of what you would do in order to capture new players. Because 2E/3E is a very rules heavy game filled with idiosyncrasies which are basically impossible to understand in practice unless someone physically demonstrates them to you. And even then, experts on the rules argue about some fairly basic points (stealth, movement, reach, etc) ad naseaum on forums like this one, because we can't agree on them, because they were so vaguely written.

I think its basically impossible to create a Starter Set for 5E that can teach a new player to play the game without an "older cousin" because the rules are just way, way to cumbersome, and a critical mass of the existing players like it that way.

[Stan]

If you go to http://dnd.wizards.com/ you can see that they are starting to make it easier. You can also see that they consider the rpg to be but one part of D&D, which could explain why they left it complex, suitable for a hardcore audience. The rpg is analagous to comics in the Marvel world; Marvel is doing fabulously but haven't pushed the comics hard.

So, either they genuinely suck or they don't care much about the actual rpg. Either way, that means the population of roleplayers isn't likely to grow much.

I'm curious if they'll create a new version of Basic for grade and middle schoolers. They had a free draft of something aimed for parents to play with their kids but I can't find it now.

[ImperiousLeader]

While Angry is mostly targeting WotC, it seems to me that this is an industry-wide problem. DnD is the most visible, so it gets a lot of flack for not growing TTRPGs. But then, it seems to me, that DnD serves as the older cousin for the whole industry. Most TTRPGers get their start in DnD.

I agree with Angry's argument. I think 5th ed might be the best edition for getting new players, as it's a (comparatively) light and intuitive system ... but the PHB does feel like an insider's book. As in all the references to other game worlds and such are great if you know them, but can be a barrier to those that don't.

[Kurald Galain]

That was an insightful blog post. Indeed, WOTC is not doing a lot to get new people into the TTRPG hobby, nor does their marketing appear to be aimed at that.

[Beleriphon]

Paizo's starter box is a little better at explaining things. It has pregen characters with annotation explaining what things do what and walks new players through things. The problem is that it's walking them through Pathfinder which, while a lovely game, is a bit more complex than 3e and definitely more complex than 5e.

Price and time are also limiting factors - 5e is still fairly complex. Seeing a $50 book hundreds of pages long that is the implied starting point is likely to make most people not bother. The starter box has a decent 32 page rule book (though no chargen at all) and is cheaply priced for easy entry. But I haven't seen it in any big box store's game section, which ties back into the marketing problem. I haven't seen much indication that people who were not previously roleplayers have bought it.

I actually got my starter set at Chapters (well the website) and last time I went to the store they it displayed quite prominently in the games section with the boxes facing out.

[Stan]

That's encouraging. They weren't in the local Target or Walmart here. I haven't been to the local Barnes & Noble (which has a decent games section and a few rpg books) to see what they have.

[Stubbazubba]

My local Barnes & Noble didn't have any RPGs under it's "Role-Playing" section. It had Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels, Warhammer 40K novels, World of Warcraft novels, but no actual games. Very disappointing. I don't blame WotC for that, though.

[archaeo]

I think its basically impossible to create a Starter Set for 5E that can teach a new player to play the game without an "older cousin" because the rules are just way, way to cumbersome, and a critical mass of the existing players like it that way.

Eh. Even accepting that WotC isn't doing enough to teach new players, I don't think 5e is too complicated for someone to learn from scratch. The PHB fails primarily because there's just too much to hold in your head all at once, and the book doesn't do a good job at all of steering you toward the important rule bits you need to play rather than build your character (I think the book does a great job of walking you through character building).

If WotC does a good job, the DMG will make it a lot easier to grok the rules. And they're not so cumbersome! They just haven't been put together in a fashion that makes everything super clear, though I think the Starter Set moves in the right direction.

As an aside, I don't think WotC necessarily needs perfectly simple rules to sell things to young new players, if only because, for the certain type of people that typically get into table top games of their own volition, that complexity is a selling point. A thick, beautiful book filled with obscure rules? 12-year-old Archaeo is on it.

But yeah, man, I don't think WotC is dumb, and I think they understand that success in the TRPG world right now means actually having a core market. This part of the product cycle is important; they know we geeks are going to eat up all their time, busting their rules open with exploits and complaining about monster CR and all the rest. By focusing attention on the core market at the beginning of the system's lifetime, they can grab those players and DMs for the next half-decade. New players aren't going anywhere, and they'll still be around after the system's actually finished.


DungeonScape sounds like it's aiming to be yet another reference tool, maybe with a side order of automating some things. It's made for people, like us, who knew how to play the game from the phrase, "d20 + modifiers." I'd be surprised if all of a sudden it whips out introductory stuff that comes at learning the game from a perspective that almost no company has even tried in the past 40 years.

Well, it is supposed to come with an introductory adventure. I think the plan may very well be that you and your friends can download the free preview version, have the Basic Rules and a sample adventure, and learn to play the game that way.

But yes, as I said above, I think we'll have to wait to see what WotC's strategy is for capturing new players.

[Psyren]

If you want to grab the video game players, you make a video game. It doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

I had no idea what THAC0 was for instance, or the difference between 18/00 and 18/50 Strength, but I still had no problem playing and enjoying Baldur's Gate. Which in turn got me to play NWN and got me to 3.5.

Yet WotC has appeared to throw that kind of game out the window to go after the WoW crowd instead. But yet another MMO won't capture the magic of tabletop the way the prior RPGs did, where the player was actually the hero, instead of being just one pleb among many.

[Person_Man]

If you want to grab the video game players, you make a video game. It doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

I had no idea what THAC0 was for instance, or the difference between 18/00 and 18/50 Strength, but I still had no problem playing and enjoying Baldur's Gate. Which in turn got me to play NWN and got me to 3.5.

Yet WotC has appeared to throw that kind of game out the window to go after the WoW crowd instead. But yet another MMO won't capture the magic of tabletop the way the prior RPGs did, where the player was actually the hero, instead of being just one pleb among many.

I agree completely.

I also have no idea why they don't cut a licensing deal with Google or Adobe or Webex or GotoMeeting or whoever to create an official online gaming table. Seems like a very easy lift.

[Lokiare]

My take is that they fear a backlash from the religious community like they had in the 80's (where were all those awesome cult women in black robes when I was growing up. I kept playing D&D hoping to be approached by scantily clad black robed women, but no luck).

Unfortunately they don't seem to understand that D&D would be small potatoes compared to modern movies, TV, and video games on the same subject.

They could easily make a big market push to get people to play with everything from a 'family night' commercial to a web miniseries about a group of players (scripted and acted, not their profanity filled celebrity games). To a movie about role players and what happens in a game. to various documentaries that note the increased intelligence of TTRPG gamers.

They are flat out choosing not to or Hasbro has cut their budget to the point they can't afford it. Hopefully paizo will do this as they continue to grow.

[archaeo]

My take is that they fear a backlash from the religious community like they had in the 80's (where were all those awesome cult women in black robes when I was growing up. I kept playing D&D hoping to be approached by scantily clad black robed women, but no luck).

What? At this point, if I was WotC Director of Marketing, I would be salivating at the opportunity to get a big backlash going. In exchange for annoying a subset of the Christian community, they would get a ton of free publicity from a sympathetic press and it would give D&D that "banned book" cachet that drove a lot of its popularity back in the 80s.

I mean, the Harry Potter series didn't exactly suffer in sales because some people thought they were the devil's work, right?


They are flat out choosing not to or Hasbro has cut their budget to the point they can't afford it.

I think "choosing not to" is probably more likely, given that Hasbro is already spending money on all those lawyers to get back the film rights. Purposefully marketing 5e to the core market of TRPG players during this stage of the game seems like a good idea; the system isn't even entirely out yet, but enthusiasts can be counted upon to buy products like this.

By Christmas, when the core system is entirely out and you can download DungeonScape to your tablet, I expect WotC to make its big mass market push.

[Psyren]

I agree completely.

I also have no idea why they don't cut a licensing deal with Google or Adobe or Webex or GotoMeeting or whoever to create an official online gaming table. Seems like a very easy lift.

It needs to be more than an online gaming table. There are a dozen of those, and such a program is by necessity geared at the folks (or at least the DM) who already knows how to play, thus it does nothing to alleviate the Older Cousin problem in the article. Rather it needs to be something where a computerized AI can run some basic modules and get people comfortable with the game. And you show them the dice rolls in the chat box so they know when they have advantage, when they make a saving throw etc. Where people can learn at their own pace instead of feeling like they are dragging down a group or making it boring for the seasoned vets.

Paizo appears set to outmaneuver them yet again, with the Obsidian partnership.

[archaeo]

Paizo appears set to outmaneuver them yet again, with the Obsidian partnership.

I mean, props to Paizo for getting some of the best RPG talent in the business to buy their license. But the rest of your wishes for the "Older Cousin" problem don't seem like they'd be well-served here; the whole point of a CRPG is to make all that math invisible, or at least considerably less visible.

As an example, would you ask a player to play Baldur's Gate to learn how to play D&D?

Edited to add: I should point out I know next to nothing about the Paizo/Obsidian plans, so if they're making some kind of Pathfinder-with-an-AI-DM thing, maybe I'm totally wrong!

[Psyren]

I mean, props to Paizo for getting some of the best RPG talent in the business to buy their license. But the rest of your wishes for the "Older Cousin" problem don't seem like they'd be well-served here; the whole point of a CRPG is to make all that math invisible, or at least considerably less visible.

It is invisible in NWN. You can turn all of that diceroll feedback off, and you don't ever need to pay attention to it to play the game even if it is popping up.

But it's always there, and if at any point you get curious/invested and want to eke the most effectiveness out of your build (or simply feel brave enough to do a deeper dive into the mechanics), you can turn it on and look. Best of all, it all stays even after combat, so you can scroll back up and see where any problem parts were. "None of my spells were affecting that guy, why?" *scrolls up* "Oh, he had something called 'spell resistance,' and it was making me roll a d20 for some reason, and the numbers I got were low. I wonder what would have happened if they were higher?" (Bam, tangential learning.)

Later, you could be checking to see if the extra attacks from flurry of blows are worth the higher chance to miss, so you re-enable the reporting and crunch the numbers if you choose to. Or if you're evaluating a bane scimitar vs. a flaming thundering longsword to see which one does more damage overall, etc.


As an example, would you ask a player to play Baldur's Gate to learn how to play D&D?

If I was teaching them 2e? Absolutely and without reservation.

[archaeo]

I guess I just don't see how these games are really excellent teaching tools. They may be a lot of fun, and in the process of having fun you have the ability to learn something about D&D, but they're certainly not intentionally trying to teach players how to sit at a table and really play the game.

Anyway, one hopes that WotC gets a good game into development really soon, if there isn't one secretly brewing. I find it difficult to believe that nobody in the industry wants that tasty D&D license; is it tied up because of the MMO?

Also, as a point of order, Mike Mearls says via tweet that the plan is to have video content to teach players the basics of the game (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/513068726401261568). Again, one presumes that they're busy trying to finish the books right now; hopefully the how-to-play videos will be good and excellent when they arrive.

[Psyren]

I guess I just don't see how these games are really excellent teaching tools. They may be a lot of fun, and in the process of having fun you have the ability to learn something about D&D, but they're certainly not intentionally trying to teach players how to sit at a table and really play the game.

Sure they are; learning the mechanics in a safe space at your own pace is a very big part of that.

Have you played the Magic the Gathering video games, like Magic 2013? It's the same thing - they aren't 100% identical to the tabletop version (very weak deckbuilding for instance), but they teach the players the main things they need to know - phases of a turn, zones of play, timing of effects, keywords, how combat works, tokens/counters, and most importantly of all, the stack. These are all very complicated concepts for a new player - especially the last one, since you can't even see it during a "paper game." But they were able to package all of it up with some pretty graphics and sounds, slap in an AI that could play against the player and throw it up on XBLA and PSN. There is even a puzzle mode to teach you critical thinking, much like the "chess puzzles" they used to print in newspapers back in the day - "white to win in 5 moves" kind of thing. And just like those puzzles taught people of all ages how to play chess better, the Magic puzzles do the same thing.

This is what we need for D&D - the most important mechanics, in an interactive format, with an AI that can handle (relatively) small tasks like initiative, typical monster behavior, and combat modifiers like elevation and lighting. With 5e it should be even easier since most modifiers boil down to advantage, disadvantage or neither. Sure there is a lot that 5e expects the DM to adjudicate rather than the rules, but with the right module included in the product they can sidestep most of those gray areas.


Also, as a point of order, Mike Mearls says via tweet that the plan is to have video content to teach players the basics of the game (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/513068726401261568). Again, one presumes that they're busy trying to finish the books right now; hopefully the how-to-play videos will be good and excellent when they arrive.

No, no, no! The article in the OP of this very thread already went into detail on why videos are a bad idea for teaching an interactive medium. They're going full-speed in the wrong direction. I quote (with censoring smilies):


"People talk about using multimedia to indoctrinate new gamers, and they immediately jump right to “example of play videos.” F:smallsmile: that s:smallsmile:. You do not sell an INTERACTIVE F:smallsmile: HOBBY with a NON-INTERACTIVE VIDEO that shows the fun you “could” be having if you were playing. People want to do things. Especially kids. Especially f:smallsmile: 12-year-olds."

[Sartharina]

It needs to be more than an online gaming table. There are a dozen of those, and such a program is by necessity geared at the folks (or at least the DM) who already knows how to play, thus it does nothing to alleviate the Older Cousin problem in the article. Rather it needs to be something where a computerized AI can run some basic modules and get people comfortable with the game. And you show them the dice rolls in the chat box so they know when they have advantage, when they make a saving throw etc. Where people can learn at their own pace instead of feeling like they are dragging down a group or making it boring for the seasoned vets.
You cannot replace a DM with a computer. A competent, living DM is what makes D&D work. The closest they could go for a digital tabletop would be something that helps coach new DMs, instead of continuing with the glut of incompetent and over-entitled players who say "I can't DM" (Especially without ever giving it a try)

Locking away the DM seat is the worst thing for the hobby.

That said - the CRPGs are great for teaching the game to new players, but somewhat terrible for teaching the game to new DMs.

[Psyren]

Gah, just - I never said anything about "replacing the DM with a computer." Obviously an AI DM would be inferior to the real thing, hence my use of terms like "basic."

But you also don't have to buy it pizza, or leave its house before 4am, or argue with it over whether you said you were casting bless or merely saying you had one ready to cast. And when it runs through a module with you, you can save and reload to explore every possible branch of that module, which is DM training - and is much more engaging, than just reading through an AP would be.

So no, I disagree.

[KiltieMacPipes]

A little late to the party, but here's my two cents. One huge problem with the older cousin model is that there are a great number (empirical evidence, ymmv) of older cousins who simply will not move on from the edition that they started playing on. I'm not getting into details about the Edition Wars, but I'm sure that every one of us here knows a DM or a group that still thinks that 2e is perfect just the way it is and they'll simply not play another version of D&D. I was like that for a long time. It's a hard thing going from a system where you know everything to one where you know jack.

[archaeo]

Sure they are; learning the mechanics in a safe space at your own pace is a very big part of that.

Have you played the Magic the Gathering video games, like Magic 2013? It's the same thing - they aren't 100% identical to the tabletop version (very weak deckbuilding for instance), but they teach the players the main things they need to know - phases of a turn, zones of play, timing of effects, keywords, how combat works, tokens/counters, and most importantly of all, the stack. These are all very complicated concepts for a new player - especially the last one, since you can't even see it during a "paper game." But they were able to package all of it up with some pretty graphics and sounds, slap in an AI that could play against the player and throw it up on XBLA and PSN. There is even a puzzle mode to teach you critical thinking, much like the "chess puzzles" they used to print in newspapers back in the day - "white to win in 5 moves" kind of thing. And just like those puzzles taught people of all ages how to play chess better, the Magic puzzles do the same thing.

This is what we need for D&D - the most important mechanics, in an interactive format, with an AI that can handle (relatively) small tasks like initiative, typical monster behavior, and combat modifiers like elevation and lighting. With 5e it should be even easier since most modifiers boil down to advantage, disadvantage or neither. Sure there is a lot that 5e expects the DM to adjudicate rather than the rules, but with the right module included in the product they can sidestep most of those gray areas.

I'm not altogether unsympathetic to your POV here, Psyren. But you have to admit, M:TG is a different beast than D&D when it comes to video games. That said, an RPG built on 5e's architecture probably would be totally doable, though I think "fun-to-play RPG" and "good at teaching 5e mechanics" is a lot to ask out of one game (it has been done before though!). However,


No, no, no! The article in the OP of this very thread already went into detail on why videos are a bad idea for teaching an interactive medium. They're going full-speed in the wrong direction. I quote (with censoring smilies): "People talk about using multimedia to indoctrinate new gamers, and they immediately jump right to “example of play videos.” ... You do not sell an INTERACTIVE ... HOBBY with a NON-INTERACTIVE VIDEO that shows the fun you “could” be having if you were playing. People want to do things. Especially kids. Especially ... 12-year-olds."

Note that he said "sell" here. If a kid wants to learn how to play D&D in this day and age, they'll watch videos, they'll look up websites, etc., etc. There's a whole internet full of information, and a motivated 12-year-old will swallow it whole.

The Angry DM's point (and the thread's) is that dry "how to play" videos aren't selling the game, and he's right. I tend to think video games just sell video games, but I'd be interested to see how D&D did back when it had critically acclaimed video games coming out. I think a movie/TV show might make a bigger impact. Either way, it's all a bit academic; as I said upthread, why would WotC try to drive a bunch of people to their product that they haven't even finished yet?

Maybe think about 5e like a new gadget or state-of-the-art console. WotC can count on a lot of enthusiasts buying the full-price hardcovers, can drive a lot of sales to their industry network (which helps them sell cardboard crack). Those enthusiasts will only generate more buzz as they discuss the system bit by bit, but they're unlikely to totally abandon ship when the system doesn't work perfectly. Come Christmas, WotC will be able to have the full core set out, DungeonScape will be in app stores, and then it's time to make a shot at the mass market.

[Psyren]

I'm not altogether unsympathetic to your POV here, Psyren. But you have to admit, M:TG is a different beast than D&D when it comes to video games. That said, an RPG built on 5e's architecture probably would be totally doable, though I think "fun-to-play RPG" and "good at teaching 5e mechanics" is a lot to ask out of one game (it has been done before though!).

I see no reason at all why it would be a lot to ask.



Note that he said "sell" here. If a kid wants to learn how to play D&D in this day and age, they'll watch videos, they'll look up websites, etc., etc. There's a whole internet full of information, and a motivated 12-year-old will swallow it whole.

But their job is to motivate 12-year-olds, not rely on them to already be motivated.



Maybe think about 5e like a new gadget or state-of-the-art console. WotC can count on a lot of enthusiasts buying the full-price hardcovers, can drive a lot of sales to their industry network (which helps them sell cardboard crack). Those enthusiasts will only generate more buzz as they discuss the system bit by bit, but they're unlikely to totally abandon ship when the system doesn't work perfectly. Come Christmas, WotC will be able to have the full core set out, DungeonScape will be in app stores, and then it's time to make a shot at the mass market.

But that's the problem - the "enthusiasts" are the very "older cousins" that WotC is depending on. Yes, that market is growing steadily, but not at all proportionate to the number of extra fish in the pond, to go back to the article's analogy.

Having the full core set out is nice, but without alternate avenues - a SRD, a card game, a video game etc. - just putting books out there is not going to have the kind of returns they need.

And videos, while great for igniting a spark of interest that already exists, are very poor for creating one.

[Alent]

You cannot replace a DM with a computer. A competent, living DM is what makes D&D work. The closest they could go for a digital tabletop would be something that helps coach new DMs, instead of continuing with the glut of incompetent and over-entitled players who say "I can't DM" (Especially without ever giving it a try)

Locking away the DM seat is the worst thing for the hobby.

That said - the CRPGs are great for teaching the game to new players, but somewhat terrible for teaching the game to new DMs.

As an odd thought here, why is this not a thing? If coaching new DMs is the goal, why not have the computer replace the party instead of the DM? It should be really easy for a dev team that can make a decent railroad type DM "AI" to take the railroady AI and reverse it into a player group murderhobo simulator, where you build your own campaign and maps with lines on a grid while the AI repeatedly tries to go off the rails and kill your quest NPCs for more loot.

As an added perk, it can help train the DM to see where he has to roll dice, vs where player agency rolls dice, and get a feel for how effective monsters are against beginner/low OP groups- which is what they're really going to see with most "first cousin" groups. You could probably make a good tablet app out of it, and with some modifications turn it into a DM reference so a newbie DM could set up the AI group to resemble his players and get an idea for the kinds of DM rulings he'll have to make with his group.

[Farner]

Re Angry DM: TLDR :smallbiggrin:

However, the problems can be grouped thusly.

1) Too expensive to get into the game via official publications. For the same price I can get a computer RPG or FPS game and dive in. Finding players at any time, all over the world, or I can ignore those and just play the game.

TTRPG's can't do that.

2) Too much - way too much - competition for TTRPG's. Nothing is sitting on top of the pile anymore. PF and 5E might be the biggest dogs but see my next point.

3) Too much - way too much - free stuff out there. I'm not talking piratebay "free" either but legit stuff posted by all sorts of TTRPG thinking geeks the world over. And mostly published in English.

4) Outside of your friendly local gaming store Encounters group, every TTRPG group I've come across has nearly been homebrewed beyond recognition of the official rules.

That brings us back to the Older Cousin mode of bringing in new players. And also touches on the fact that older gamers won't give up their "best edition ever".

5) Speaking of FLGS. Ever since 4E (my official intro to TTRPGs) I've chatted up game store owners and long-term employees. Not one of them has played D&D on anything like a regular basis. They all seem to like some mix of wonky, indie, funded-by-kickstarter RPGs and/or board games with RP components.

6) Most FLGS clients (who actually buy stuff there) don't play TTPRGs. Ask and you'll see that card games, product like Warhammer 40k, and comics account for 2/3 to 9/10 of the store's income.

So I don't know that WotC sucks at selling games as much as the market take isn't big enough to make more aggressive marketing pay off.