# So What IS Happening to Tabletop Roleplaying Games? Dancey & Mearls Let You Know!



## howandwhy99 (Feb 19, 2015)

EDIT:
This doesn't bode well for the game except as promotion.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Ahnehnois said:


> I don see that rpgs require prep work. That's something people do because they want to, not because they have to.




I look at my 3e books, and consider the details required for the GM to play a high-level game by the rules, and I can't see how you come to that conclusion.  Moreover, whatever *you* may have for skills, you should consider that not everyone is good at improvisational GMing.  For those who can't get good results winging it, preparation is required if the game is to be played.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 19, 2015)

I've come to look at a game session as being roughly equivalent to an episode of one of the big-scale serialized TV dramas (GoT being the obvious fantasy example). You're invariably spending a lot of time on minutiae when combat happens (just as fight scenes take a ton of time to shoot), and there's distractions from RL concerns like food. But I end up writing fairly vague summaries that can run ten pages long. It's very doable if you work at it.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Jhaelen said:


> But that isn't all. Card and board games have the same strength, i.e. 'interaction at the table with other human beings',




I have seen many a game of Magic: the Gathering and chess played in complete silence. The depth and breadth of interaction called for in RPGs are, in my opinion, far greater than that called for by the other game genres.  There's a qualitative difference in the nature of interaction called for.

To generalize: Other games allow interaction.  RPGs require and reward it.


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## Argyle King (Feb 19, 2015)

I agree with the general idea that more time actually playing is good.  

However, what I disagree with is that there seems to be this belief that doing rpg-related things away from the table is somehow unfun.  I don't believe it needs to be.  Heck, I wouldn't be here on Enworld even talking about this if I did not have a desire to engage in rpgs and the hobby on a deeper level.  By all means, yes; as people grow older, we may have less time due to increased obligations to other things.  So, to some extent, I do agree with making the game smoother and more intuitive to engage; I also think allowing quick play should be an option (though not the sole option the game is based around,) but what I took away from the panel was that there seems to be this idea that people no longer enjoy engaging a rpg on a deeper level.  Maybe that's not what was meant, but it is how it came across to me, and I very strongly disagree with that.

I have video games that I play, hobbies that I engage in, and a much wider variety of entertainment choices available to me now than I did when I was younger.  However, I still do also have rpgs, and I don't view my time with rpgs as time I'd rather be doing something else.  If I wanted to be doing something else, I would be; when I gather around a table with my friends or sign into rpol.net, I do it because I want to.  More than that, I engage in rpgs because I want a more cerebral experience; I want something I can immerse and lose myself in.  I find it hard to believe I'm the only one who wants then when I look around me and see a world in which video games have become more immersive -not less; I see a world in which people binge watch an entire season of a tv show at a time via things like Netflix and Hulu; I see a world in which people are willing to watch several super hero movies and a tv show just so they'll know as much as they can about the story before seeing Avengers 2, and I see a world in which elements of rpgs are more part of mainstream culture and entertainment than I remember them ever being.  Certainly, this is also a world in which casual gaming rules cell phones, and perhaps the attention span of people isn't what it once was due to cultural changes, but I also believe there is room for a more engaging experience out of a roleplaying game.  

I am not exactly surprised by the panel discussion though.  I've been engaging in Encounters for a few seasons now, and the impression I currently have of 5th is that it seems ok for a casual game, but I haven't yet had an experience with it that makes me believe I'd want to play it heavily as my primary game; base a long term campaign around it.  I kept telling myself that maybe that was due to the Encounters format and due to not having the full version of the game available to me.  Now it seems that feeling is a designed part of the game...?  For what it's worth, this isn't meant as a complaint; just an observation from one point of view (mine,) and the feedback from one member of the rpg community (me.)  On the upside, I suppose if D&D no longer wants to be the kind of game I'm looking for, I live in a time when a multitude of rpgs are readily available.

I understand the desire to grow D&D as a brand, but, as just an average joe on the street, I'm a little confused by some of the mentality of the team.  I do not make that statement as only a gamer, but also as someone who enjoys those other forms of entertainment such as movies, video games, and etc.  If I don't have that deeper connection with the brand anymore, what is being offered in those other avenues to engage me?  ...to engage someone who isn't familiar with the brand?  Maybe it will make more sense with time.  I'm sure there are many pieces of the skill challenge I'm just not seeing yet.  Maybe I'm in the extreme minority and the desires I have for gaming aren't share by anyone else.  All I do know is that where I'm standing now is somewhere that feels so far away from what the D&D brand is and wants to be that it's hard to believe that brand was at one time such a large part of my life.  I used to be someone who would take a chance on buying something blindly, and now the mentality and culture behind the game seems -at times- completely alien to my way of thinking.  I often wonder if how I feel now is in any way similar to how some of the old greybeards who grew up with 1st and 2nd edition feel now when they look at D&D.

As for Car Wars?  I don't have a lot of experience with the product, but I'm looking forward to the new product.    http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/December_07_2013/Mini_Car_Wars_Returns

http://www.warehouse23.com/products/car-wars-classic-t-shirt


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## delericho (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I look at my 3e books, and consider the details required for the GM to play a high-level game by the rules, and I can't see how you come to that conclusion.




Yep. D&D 3.5e, PF, and SWSE (and, probably, other systems I'm less familiar with) may not _absolutely require_ significant preparation work in order to run, but only in the same way that I don't absolutely require a spoon to eat soup - sure, it's technically possible to manage without, but it's sufficiently messy as to not be worth it.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I agree with him that an RPG company trying to compete with large multimedia properties like movies and comics and TV is out of the core competency, as he puts it - or as I put it earlier, those things aren't D&D's strengths.




Well, WotC, and Hasbro, are not just RPG companies, now are they?  



> I disagree that nobody has time for solo engagement with RPGs - that's exactly what [non-multiplayer] video games are.    We have plenty of time for solo activities.




Yes, but now you have that big question - reward vs work.  It isn't enough to be "engagement".  That engagement has to be *fun*.  Is sitting and working out the stats of an NPC as entertaining as those non-multiplayer video games?  For some people, yes.  For many others, probably not.  So, how big do you want your market to be?  Is requiring that solo engagement going to pay off?


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I look at my 3e books, and consider the details required for the GM to play a high-level game by the rules, and I can't see how you come to that conclusion.  Moreover, whatever *you* may have for skills, you should consider that not everyone is good at improvisational GMing.  For those who can't get good results winging it, preparation is required if the game is to be played.



Of course there is a skill component; I don't expect that most people can sit down and reel off a masterpiece off the top of their heads on the first try.

But trying to create a living, dynamic game experience from static prepared material is also a challenge that also requires various skills. So while it may be hard to improvise, I'm not at all convinced that it's hard_er_.

I also think that they are disparate skill sets to an extent, such that if you learn how to DM using maps and prewritten characters and whatever else, you are naturally dependent on those things. I think the gaming company's role in this-if they are truly wanting to reduce the time commitment in playing-is to push improvisational skills and de-emphasize prepared elements in the material that they put out.


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## Argyle King (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Well, WotC, and Hasbro, are not just RPG companies, now are they?
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, but now you have that big question - reward vs work.  It isn't enough to be "engagement".  That engagement has to be *fun*.  Is sitting and working out the stats of an NPC as entertaining as those non-multiplayer video games?  For some people, yes.  For many others, probably not.  So, how big do you want your market to be?  Is requiring that solo engagement going to pay off?





For me, I'm looking at it from a different angle.  Did I find prepping for 3.5 fun?  Not really.

However, what I do find fun is engaging in a deeper level of entertainment than what a board game or a more casual game typically gives.  There have been plenty of times when a campaign premise was simply to kick in a dungeon door and kill some monsters, and I certainly enjoyed those times.  That being said, the moments that really stuck with me are when a group of friends and I lost track of time and realized we had been playing a game for several hours; moments when we'd talk about the game away from the table... discussing how we thought a session went or what the heraldry for the kingdom we just founded should look like...  as a DM, sitting with a player and working out the details of a story element we created together, and actually looking into the face of a person who is just as excited as I am to do it; even if that means doing a little extra math or getting together a little bit earlier than the session normally starts.  

I agree that the engagement needs to be fun.  Though, what I'm gathering from the panel is that there is supposedly no longer room for a deeper type of engagement with the game or the brand, and that's something I wholeheartedly disagree with.


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I don't think anyone's actually saying it will, except in terms of helping the overall business, so that continuation of the RPG is a non-issue.




That was my point. It feels like giving up on the RPG.

Of course Mike Mearls has to manage all of D&D and his focus isn't just on the RPG. I hope they are successful and that it tangentially helps the RPG. More revenue for that part of WotC is a good thing.


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## TarionzCousin (Feb 19, 2015)

Serendipity said:


> Kind of what I took away from that too.  It seems like Wizards has been trying to leverage D&D into some multimedia franchise, with about the same level of success, since 2000.  I don't think it's happening.  Moreover, movies, and legos (sorry, KreO or whatever), and video games, etc etc. do not further my ability to sit down and actually *play* the game, so it seems like an unnecessary diffusion of effort and resources.
> I don't especially want some kind of Entertainment Transmedia Experience (tm), I just want to play some table top with some friends and enjoy some shared experience.



What if it is the Kreo, DnD movies, Saturday morning cartoon, or something else that brings in the younger players? Is it worth it to have D&D survive/thrive if it depends on things like crappy movies?



RangerWickett said:


> Personally, the thing that is keeping D&D or Pathfinder or Rogue Trader from being an "every week, binge-game" event is the fact that combat takes too g**d*** long. I love gaming, but what I like is the roleplaying, and D&D's rules actually get in the way of roleplaying. So yes, please, make the game more elegant so it plays faster, even if that means simplifying some things.



Amen.

Making combat less tedious and prep less time-spongy (is that really a word?) are good goals to have. I like high-level 3.5, but I after spending six hours on one combat--and not being halfway through--I begin to enjoy the game much less.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Derren said:


> So you start designing PnP RPGs for people who do not actually want to play PnP RPGs and instead are just looking for their next "fix" of whatever they can get their hand on?




No.  You're driving to an extreme end, and apparently forgetting that there's a continuum available.  If you design for gearheads, you can get them.  But you'll get only them.  If that's enough for your game, then fine.  But, if you want a larger market, you have to remember that many of the potential players may love the action at the table, but may not find engaging away from the table compelling compared to the other things they have in their lives.



> Tabletop RPGs can never compete with other forms of entertainment like computer games on the ground of accessibility and ease of play. Instead when making PnPs the designers should focus on the strengths, on things other forms of media can't deliver, instead trying to achieve the impossible by "dumbing down" the game as  jrowland calls it for mass market appeal.




The opposite of "game that requires lots of out-of-game-time engagement" is not "dumbed down".  Unless, I suppose, you think that spending lots of time with calculations on your own time "smart".

As far as I can see, the *real* strengths of RPGs has squat-all to do with rules, but has to do with interaction at the table with other human beings.  That's the thing that Tabletop games have that the other media cannot, as yet, touch.  So, tell me, how is a game that calls for a lot of away-from-table engagement focused on that strength?

From that startling point, we can then note the variations - there's flavors of interactions, there's tastes you can serve in addition to getting those human interactions.  There's lots of ground that can be covered to meet many playstyle needs.  But the human interactions are still the central piece.


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## Nagol (Feb 19, 2015)

GX.Sigma said:


> So are you saying the D&D designers shouldn't even try to make the game quicker, easier, smoother, etc.? Do you not think that is a good goal for the game?




I'm saying the chosen comparison is one that is unflattering to the  medium and has a gap that can never be closed. 

I'm saying that any attempt to close said gap should have realistic goals, and an understanding how any such improvement compares to the compromise in whatever other area is being affected to grant said improvement.


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## Argyle King (Feb 19, 2015)

I don't think it's as simple as light/heavy though.  I tried to say that in a different thread elsewhere, but the wording I chose was poor.  I think intuitiveness of rules and how a game world works helps as well.  For example, I view D&D 4E as being relatively light compared to other games I play, but it took me a while to understand how to GM the game because the way the 4E game world works wasn't intuitive when compared to how I felt things should work out given a situation.  I also think making the game interesting helps; while I thus far find 5th Edition ok, I don't think I see myself heavily investing into it.  At this point; in spite of the fact that I sometimes enjoy Encounters, I'm doubting I'll purchase the system.  I do still plan to try the game once the full version is available, but it hasn't yet grabbed my attention.  With that in mind, I'm wondering what the brand as a whole will offer to make me feel differently about the rest of the brand.  I don't feel negative about the brand; the 'problem' is that I don't feel much of anything beyond that the ideals I have about games and entertainment is much different than the ideas the design team behind the brand has.


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## Iosue (Feb 19, 2015)

darjr said:


> That was my point. It feels like giving up on the RPG.
> 
> Of course Mike Mearls has to manage all of D&D and his focus isn't just on the RPG. I hope they are successful and that it tangentially helps the RPG. More revenue for that part of WotC is a good thing.



The thing is, you have to look at it from WotC's perspective.  It is, or at least was, nothing for them to have the top dog in the TRPG industry.  Even with the big 3e/4e split and Pathfinder scooping up the 3e diaspora, as long as they were releasing regular supplements, they were they industry leader.  But where do you go from there?  Particularly when the industry you're leading is slowly but surely losing ground in the larger entertainment industry?

Bill Slavicek's answer to this question was to attempt to reposition the TRPG itself to take advantage of the changing landscape.  At best, we can say that this strategy expanded the market but also left a chunk of money on the table, which went to Paizo.  

Mearls' answer is to let the TRPG be a TRPG, and let other iterations of the brand explore the wider entertainment market.  Because, worst case for the TRPG, it remains in 2nd place, one of only two games in the entire industry out selling every other game by 3 or even 4 orders of magnitude.


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## Blackwarder (Feb 19, 2015)

darjr said:


> That was my point. It feels like giving up on the RPG.




I disagree, I think that it's saying that the RPG got enough brand recognition that they will be able to leverage it into other media, but I hardly think that they will abandon the TTRPG, like it or not D&D is labaled as an RPG, even people who won't ever play the RPG but will watch the movies or the TV-shows or will play a digital game or even just read the novels know that at the bottom of all of this there is the RPG.

It's like with marvel movies and tv show, I don't read the comics but I know that everything I see on the screen is based on things in the comics and I know that behind what I see there is a rich background  and it's the same thing that can happen with D&D.

Warder


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

I have to say, if it means the end to the edition treadmill or the supplement treadmill or splat treadmill or all three, more power to them.


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## Serendipity (Feb 19, 2015)

TarionzCousin said:


> What if it is the Kreo, DnD movies, Saturday morning cartoon, or something else that brings in the younger players? Is it worth it to have D&D survive/thrive if it depends on things like crappy movies?




I can understand the desire to continue bringing in new players, but not at the expense of the existing customer base. You'd think that Wizards would have gotten that particular learning experience down by now.  Given the way the concerns of many 4e players have been, ah, politely disregarded, it isn't looking that way.
But that's fine - wizards ought just make sure they're making more money off the new players they are bringing in than the money lost by those who move on to other things.


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

For me, much of what is being described by folks here as too much work/time is what _distinguishes_ an RPG.  I play them because of that, not despite it.  I can play boardgames instead if I wish; I don't, much.  I play RPGs. 

This is why RPGs were different to the boardgames of the 70s.  And why they're different to the various entertainment options of the 21st century.  Diluting what has always been a characteristic of the RPG may well fit in with the time schedules of some demographics, but it doesn't fit in with the way I personally play - and want to play - the games.  I've *always* been able to easily find things to do which take less time; I could do that in the 1980s and I can do it now.  I choose not to because I enjoy that off-the-table process and choose to make time for it above some other choices of entertainment.

I know I'm not a representative sample, though.  I mean, I'm producing an RPG which continues to scratch that itch for me precisely _because_ I want to keep that tradition going and ensure it continues to be supported and available.


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## GX.Sigma (Feb 19, 2015)

Nagol said:


> That and
> 
> 
> the medium is audio-visual which cuts out a lot of description time
> ...



So are you saying the D&D designers shouldn't even try to make the game quicker, easier, smoother, etc.? Do you not think that is a good goal for the game?


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## Celebrim (Feb 19, 2015)

Janx said:


> At various times, I have basically said this very same thing.
> 
> Buffy can face some social drama and save the day in an hour's time.  With commercials.  Why can't D&D go as fast.




Because Buffy has a script.


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## lkj (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> For me, much of what is being described by folks here as too much work/time is what _distinguishes_ an RPG.  I play them because of that, not despite it.  I can play boardgames instead if I wish; I don't, much.  I play RPGs.
> 
> This is why RPGs were different to the boardgames of the 70s.  And why they're different to the various entertainment options of the 21st century.  Diluting what has always been a characteristic of the RPG may well fit in with the time schedules of some demographics, but it doesn't fit in with the way I personally play - and want to play - the games.  I've *always* been able to easily find things to do which take less time; I could do that in the 1980s and I can do it now.  I choose not to because I enjoy that off-the-table process and choose to make time for it above some other choices of entertainment.
> 
> I know I'm not a representative sample, though.  I mean, I'm producing an RPG which continues to scratch that itch for me precisely _because_ I want to keep that tradition going and ensure it continues to be supported and available.





I don't disagree exactly, but there are two points I think are worth making:

1) Mearls has pretty consistently indicated that the goal is to make a game that gives you the option to pick up and play quickly but also has enough depth to engage the 'gearheads' who really enjoy tweaking and designing and creating as it were. I really don't think these objectives are incompatible if the design of the game is done thoughtfully. And I see a lot of potential for this in the playtest. If they put it together right, I think this apparent conflict between the way you want to play the game and still making the game accessible to the market which wants to play but is unwilling/unable to put the prep time in will go away. We'll see.

2) I really like creating too. I enjoy the prep nearly as much as the game as well. It's why I'm nearly always the DM. However, there are two different kinds of (non-mutually exclusive) prep. There's what I'll loosely call 'narrative prep'-- You focus on creating a world and plot hooks and narratives that engage both you and your players. You populate that world with the various monsters, NPC's and bits and pieces you want. Then there's 'mechanical prep' where you spend a great deal of time designing the detailed characteristics of each NPC, monster, and set piece that you want to use. Both of those can be fun and go hand in hand. But these days I lean very, very heavily toward the former. Due to time constraints, I want my prep time to be primarily focused on what's the most fun for me-- filling out the narrative and story elements. When I come up with a cool idea for a villain or monster, I would like to be able to quickly slot in some mechanics to create the feel of that villain or monster. I can handle the rest at the table. I no longer have the time (and less of the inclination) to spend hours developing these pieces. Sure, I'd like the option to get detailed if I feel like it for some master villain. But I don't want it to be a necessity. I want to be able to quickly generate a villain and feel confident it will work pretty much how I envision it.

I loved 3rd edition. Still do in many ways. It reinvigorated my gaming group. But at some point, I was running a high level 3.5 game, and the prep time not only felt like work, it was stressful. I found myself spending so much time trying to get the mechanics right I could barely get a handle on creating the flavor and opportunities for narrative that had made the game so fun in the past. 

What I hope for the new edition is that I can pick up and play a quick game based on a cool idea I have in fairly short order. But that I can also-- when the time and inclination arises-- create an intricate world with intricate NPC's. Sometimes the latter will happen because the former went so well.

Anyway, enough ramble from me.

AD


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

lkj said:


> I don't disagree exactly, but there are two points I think are worth making:
> 
> 1) Mearls has pretty consistently indicated that the goal is to make a game that gives you the option to pick up and play quickly but also has enough depth to engage the 'gearheads' who really enjoy tweaking and designing and creating as it were. I really don't think these objectives are incompatible if the design of the game is done thoughtfully. And I see a lot of potential for this in the playtest. If they put it together right, I think this apparent conflict between the way you want to play the game and still making the game accessible to the market which wants to play but is unwilling/unable to put the prep time in will go away. We'll see.
> 
> 2) I really like creating too. I enjoy the prep nearly as much as the game as well. It's why I'm nearly always the DM. However, there are two different kinds of (non-mutually exclusive) prep. There's what I'll loosely call 'narrative prep'-- You focus on creating a world and plot hooks and narratives that engage both you and your players. You populate that world with the various monsters, NPC's and bits and pieces you want. Then there's 'mechanical prep' where you spend a great deal of time designing the detailed characteristics of each NPC, monster, and set piece that you want to use. Both of those can be fun and go hand in hand. But these days I lean very, very heavily toward the former. Due to time constraints, I want my prep time to be primarily focused on what's the most fun for me-- filling out the narrative and story elements. When I come up with a cool idea for a villain or monster, I would like to be able to quickly slot in some mechanics to create the feel of that villain or monster. I can handle the rest at the table. I no longer have the time (and less of the inclination) to spend hours developing these pieces. Sure, I'd like the option to




Sure.  To clarify, I wasn't referring to what Mike said but rather what folks have said in this thread since he said it.  I'm 100% sure I'm going to like 5E.


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## lkj (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Sure.  To clarify, I wasn't referring to what Mike said but rather what folks have said in this thread since he said it.  I'm 100% sure I'm going to like 5E.




Ah. Fair enough. I like your confidence. (And find myself wondering if it's only the latest public playtest that has inspired it . . . but I'll leave it at that . . .)

AD


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## pickin_grinnin (Feb 19, 2015)

Normally I would say that it's a smart business move to take your IP and extend it into other media, toys, online games, etc.  

The reality, though, is that the various owners of D&D (from TSR to Hasbro) have tried to do that for a really long time now, and it never takes.  They have the right idea, but not the right IP.

D&D was designed by folks who came out of the wargaming community, and it shows.  They were also very into Tolkien (and Howard and Moorcock, etc.), and it shows.  Though the game was revolutionary for it's time, the basic fantasy elements were largely borrowed from existing fictional universes.  There was nothing innovative in their world concept/design - the innovation was in introducing roleplay into wargames.  

When you try to move things to other media, your core world concepts need to seem innovative in some way if they are going to catch on.  The gaming aspects of D&D don't translate to movies, toys, comics, TV series, etc.  In those media, it just comes off looking like a mishmash of Tolkien, King Arthur legends, general European mythology, etc.  There are far too many movies with those same fantasy elements already.  D&D just gets lost in the mix.

There have been different campaign worlds in D&D to be sure, but very few of them have deviated much from the general high fantasy concepts of Tolkien, Howard, Moorcock, etc.  In fact, there's very little conceptual creativity in any of the popular high/epic fantasy roleplaying games.  A Pathfinder movie wouldn't do well, either.

I started playing D&D back when it was first released in the 70s, and have enjoyed it in all it's various incarnations (except for 4e).  I have yet to see them produce anything in other media (except fiction) that has enticed me, even though they have tried very hard.  What works well in a gaming enviroment does not necessarily work well in a movie.  It can be fun to struggle to climb a mountain or kill a dragon in a game setting, but it just looks stereotypical and boring in a movie unless you have a very talented director at the helm who can bring something new to it.

To take it from the opposite end of things, "Game of Thrones" is doing well on TV.  The original books are doing well, too.  If you move it to a roleplaying game environment, though, you might as well just do it in D&D or Pathfinder or any other epic fantasy game.  There would be no reason to buy a dedicated "Game of Thrones" game.


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## Janx (Feb 19, 2015)

Nagol said:


> That and
> 
> 
> the medium is audio-visual which cuts out a lot of description time
> ...




Of course that's true.  But are you telling me that you haven't watched a game and seen a bunch of things the GM put in there that could have been cut to make the game flow better/faster?

Like having 12 combat encounters stand between the PCs and the bad guy, instead of 3?

Or wasting time hex crawling across a map to get to the next city where the real adventure is and as it turned out, the only thing that happened was an encounter with orcs?

There are still editorial lessons a GM can take from how TV shows handle pacing, though obviously, not everything is applicable.


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## Vicar In A Tutu (Feb 19, 2015)

I still don't see how they are going to leverage the D&D-brand. Computer games? No good D&D computer games have come out in a long time. The large developers prefer to use their own settings / IPs. D&D comes out with a few Facebook games or some such, but they seem to come and go without people really noticing. Board games, though are cool. But Paizo is doing this as well, with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Movies? The D&D movies are horrific. When it comes to fiction, it has been my impression that TSR was already having much success with it, and that it is nothing "new" to Wizards. 

I'm waiting for Wizards to expand the D&D-brand in a new and interesting way, but I'm not seeing it. They have to give priority to the tabletop roleplaying game. If they permanently lose their number 1 slot there, I can't see them gaining headway (or becoming industry leaders) anywhere else.


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## Halivar (Feb 19, 2015)

On prep: I want to be an improvisational DM. I MUST be because I don't have the time to plan. If WotC can help me with this, then I would be thankful.

On cross-media: Giving up? No. If they can replicate Baldur's Gate, and make people like young me go "OMG this is the funnest thing ever, what is this D&D thing? I wanna play it" then this would be of inestimable value to the TTRPG (or even TTRPG's as a whole).


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## DMZ2112 (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I imagine D&D has quite the challenge on it's hands - instead of competing with other tabletop games, it's now putting Drizzt & Co. up against Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and the like.  Hope it can deliver!




Well, I think long-time fans of those properties would say that they were delivering consistently long before they hit Hollywood like a bullet train (well, Star Wars notwithstanding), and I think D&D is in the same boat.  It does deliver.  The real question is, can WotC/Hasbro successfully scale up that delivery?

Transformers is huge, but horrible.  Battleship was awful, but Liam Neeson.  _They are trying to make a Hungry Hungry Hippos movie_, which is at once the most insane, boldest, worst, and most epic idea I have ever heard.

...Frankly, all will be forgiven if they get Liam Neeson to play Mordenkainen.  With hair.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Feb 19, 2015)

Derren said:


> So instead of making D&D so good that you rather do that than watch Netflix you rather see D&D be made so simple that you can play it as 2nd choice when you tire of Netflix?



If RPGs had someone capable of designing a game that no one could resist, eschewing all other distractions, no one would be capable of posting on ENWorld to debate the issue.


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## Li Shenron (Feb 19, 2015)

I'm just going to say that IMHO making the minimum _mandatory_ work as small as possible is the way to go, simply because you can always do more if you want.

If you have published adventures and a system that is light enough so that you barely have to read an adventure once before running the game, still nothing prevents you from devoting weeks to write your own highly detailed adventure. But if you don't have published adventures, or if the system is heavy and requires you to study an adventure and do more preparation work, you just have to do it.

If you have rules that let you run a combat in 15 minutes and a reasonable adventure in an evening, nothing prevents you to add extra rules to make combat more complicated, or to still design a long saga that takes a year to finish. But if you have the basic combats last an hour and a half, it's harder to fix it the other way around.

If you have easy monster and NPC creation rules, so that you can 10 minutes while waiting for the train to design a new monster on your smart phone, nothing stops you from taking a whole weekend to design an entire ecology of monsters. But if the rules require 2 hours to make a mid-level NPC or monster, then you really have no choice.

I think Mearls is on the right track with this, he's simply acknowledging that D&D has to be flexible and adapt to the _little _time that a lot of people have available nowadays, either because they are 20 years older with jobs and families, or because they have many more interests/hobbies to pursue, or because the younger generations maybe just have a shorter attention span. The lucky ones who still have plenty of times don't have any disadvantage from a light and flexible system, they are just going to do more stuff in the same amount of time.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> For me, much of what is being described by folks here as too much work/time is what _distinguishes_ an RPG.  I play them because of that, not despite it.



I think it's that rpgs are self-driven. You can make whatever characters and whatever scenario you want. As with most things in life, the more you put into it the more you're likely to get out of it. But how exactly you invest your time is customizable to what interests you personally (as opposed to most hobby games where everyone is trying to get better at doing what the game designers want them to).


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## RyanD (Feb 19, 2015)

A lot of great comments in this thread - I'm glad people found something interesting to consider out of the panel at Pax East!  Hopefully we'll be able to do it again in the future!


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## Nagol (Feb 19, 2015)

Janx said:


> Of course that's true.  But are you telling me that you haven't watched a game and seen a bunch of things the GM put in there that could have been cut to make the game flow better/faster?
> 
> Like having 12 combat encounters stand between the PCs and the bad guy, instead of 3?
> 
> ...




There are certainly things a GM could take out to make the _story that did play out in the end_ have gone faster/more smoothly, but most of those things are branch points _where the story could have altered substantially_ compared to _the story that did play out in the end_.

If there are not substantial consequences and the table isn't having fun doing what they're doing then sure the GM could use some pointers on adjusting play.    

However, a primary audio medium dealing with multiple participants who have input on crafting each scene coupled with an overt mechanical resolution system will never be as narratively smooth as an edited TV episode for the same amount of content.


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## SteveC (Feb 19, 2015)

Just wanted to say what a great thread this was: thanks for posting it. Thanks for giving this great info!


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## Phototoxin (Feb 19, 2015)

At the end of the day, people can get more reward easier and faster from computer games. However computer games are never as flexible as the human mind (well not until our Skynet overlords become sentient..)

A big issue is the view of them as 'games' like monopoly, in monopoly it doesn't matter how much of a douche the car player is because it's a 'linear' game. Whereas in D&D that douche can ruin everyone else's game. 

I think the emphasis needs to be on socialisation and creativity as well as the gaming aspect.


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## Yora (Feb 19, 2015)

Interesting what Mearls says about the 1-hour game. Because I came to just the same conclusions a few months ago while I was browsing around for GMing advice for the new Sword & Sorcery campaign I was about to start.
My current group is all university students with no kids, who live in the same city with excelent public transportation long into the night, and even with just four players we managed to get together only about once per month. I had a great idea for an epic campaign, but even if we keep playing for the next two years, it could take ages for the great story actually becoming apparent and we may get only 20 session in all. There simply is no time for long campaigns that go for years, even under ideal conditions.
So I scrapped almost all my plans for the big conspiracies and slow buildup and go straight to the juicy parts of the story. I think the standard model for campaigns that most GMs have in mind is still that of a novel or even a novel series. But I think we could really use more "public awareness" for campaigns that follow the short story anthology style instead. We don't have to play out the whole adventuring career of the PCs. You can very much trim it down and focus on the most awesome and incredible tales in the long story of a heroes life. And that might even be more fun.

I don't think I want to play or run 5th Edition, but if this is something that is part of the brand strategy for D&D, I think they might actually be able to catch up with Pathfinder again. Because Pathfinder simply is based firmly on a system that is not meant to go that way. Instead of two brands competing for the same niche, having them aim at different directions should be much more beneficial.


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## Blackwarder (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I agree with him that an RPG company trying to compete with large multimedia properties like movies and comics and TV is out of the core competency, as he puts it - or as I put it earlier, those things aren't D&D's strengths.  I disagree that nobody has time for solo engagement with RPGs - that's exactly what [non-multiplayer] video games are.  We have plenty of time for solo activities.  What he refers to as "lonely fun" is  very common these days - but it's electronically facilitated, not book-facilitated.  The tech's changed, but people still have "lonely fun" (that sounds dirty!)




That analogy is flawed, a better one will be spending time coding the video game in your "lonely fun" time.

Personally, I've seen this coming a couple of months ago, the intent to make the Prep time easier and shorter and making the game much easier to run and move forward is a great step forward in my eyes.

I don't get all the anguish about Mike's comments of taking D&D to the next level as a brand, I wish they'll succeed, I don't read comics but I love the Marvel movies and TV show, and the cross media interaction is, IMO, only add to the enjoyment I get from each of them and I would love if we get the same thing for D&D. 

I've watch the LoTR movies countless times, I've read the books several times and while searching for information about the release schedule for the first Hobbit movie I came across The One Ring RPG game so I bought it just for the cross pollution and to get my hands on another source of LoTR goodness.

My point is, that taking D&D to the next level will do good to everyone, it will draw new players to the hobby, it will give us more venues to get out D&D fix and it will allow us to interact with friends and family who are non-RPG players with D&D related things.

Warder


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## Li Shenron (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> For me, much of what is being described by folks here as too much work/time is what _distinguishes_ an RPG.




There is work and there is work however...

When I was DMing regularly in the 3e era, I was "working" on designing my own adventures and (short-lived) fantasy settings, or building around existing published adventures. But most of it was "work" that I did in my head or with just pen-and-paper, while travelling by bus to work, in bed before going asleep, in the tub while taking a bath... That is edition-indipendent and rules-free work I can still do as much as I want.

Then there was mechanical work. I was never into creating monsters, but I definitely wanted to design NPCs or slap class levels onto existing monsters, and it took dedicated time where I needed to sit down at a table, consult books, roll dice and make calculations. I also loved traps, and I had to do some mechanical work on those too. It wasn't bad because I could still choose to stop when I had enough, and use ready material for the rest.

OTOH, I stopped DMing and playing around where 4e came out, because I realized I couldn't keep up with system mastery anymore. I hadn't played for a few months and I had already started to forget 3e rules, and the idea that I had to go back and study them again just to run the game, or worse learn a new edition just as complicated, made me quit. Those seemed to be systems that either I can afford to play regularly, or I can't keep up well enough. My co-players were tired as well, too cumbersome systems, too many rules-checking at the table, too much time spent to make sure we were playing "correctly". And with 4e there was the feeling that the new trend was to update the rules continuosly... no way!

That's why I'm looking at 5e with lots of hope. It's not as simple as it could be, but definitely much lighter _at the table_, more importantly for me than being lighter between sessions, because at least I can choose the latter but I can't choose the first.


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## Jhaelen (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I have seen many a game of Magic: the Gathering and chess played in complete silence.



I believe you, but I've never experienced a CCG being played in complete silence; to give just one example: there's almost always rules questions coming up that need to be discussed. For Chess as an abstract two-player game with a fixed ruleset that's been established for decades, it's far more likely.


Umbran said:


> To generalize: Other games allow interaction.  RPGs require and reward it.



I suppose it depends on the game but there's also plenty of boardgames that require and/or reward interaction. The main reason RPGs require interaction is the GM role: Since not all of the rules are codified, the GM must supply rules for anything that isn't covered. But many (multi-player) board games feature trade or diplomatic actions, so even in games where it's not a requirement per se, in order to be successful you typically cannot ignore player interaction. 
Talking about 'Diplomacy': Imho, it's a prime example of a board game that effectively requires player interaction. So it's not the exclusive province of RPGs.


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## Janx (Feb 19, 2015)

Nagol said:


> There are certainly things a GM could take out to make the _story that did play out in the end_ have gone faster/more smoothly, but most of those things are branch points _where the story could have altered substantially_ compared to _the story that did play out in the end_.
> 
> If there are not substantial consequences and the table isn't having fun doing what they're doing then sure the GM could use some pointers on adjusting play.
> 
> However, a primary audio medium dealing with multiple participants who have input on crafting each scene coupled with an overt mechanical resolution system will never be as narratively smooth as an edited TV episode for the same amount of content.




Nobody's saying and RPG will be as smooth as a TV episode.  But what Buffy achieves in 45 minutes of content should be doable in 4 hours of RPG time.  There are tables and adventures that fail that.


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## Serendipity (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> So D&D (as in  its settings and characters) is focusing on doing those other  entertainment things rather than just being a tabletop roleplaying game -  the goal, obviously being that "D&D" as a brand flourishes.  And,  further, that that means it doesn't matter to them what Paizo is doing  with Pathfinder, because D&D doesn't need to be the top-selling  tabletop RPG (not that I'm saying it won't be - I expect it will be  again come next year, though time will tell) as long as D&D as an  overall entertainment property is doing a whole bunch of things.




Rather than just being a table top game?  *sigh*  I don't much care about those other things, I care about the tabletop rpg.  It's hard for me to see this as a positive.


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## Nagol (Feb 19, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Because Buffy has a script.




That and


the medium is audio-visual which cuts out a lot of description time
the show is edited to remove "dead time" the characters face: strategizing, chatting, travel between scenes
 the show is edited to remove all time sinks the hypothetical players would face such as mechanical resolution, clarifying the situation, clarifying expected outcome/rulings, table breaks, waiting for the slow guy, etc.

Compare the filming time of a Buffy episode to a game session and see which is shorter...


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## Cybit (Feb 19, 2015)

Serendipity said:


> Rather than just being a table top game?  *sigh*  I don't much care about those other things, I care about the tabletop rpg.  It's hard for me to see this as a positive.




The problem is; I don't know if many others are the same way, where the only form of entertainment they partake in is the TRPG.  I mean, I grew up playing D&D 3E as well as Baldur's Gate, and the reason I enjoyed both of them was because of each other.  I don't think making good entertainment options for D&D or Pathfinder (see: Pathfinder Online) makes the TRPG worse.


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## DaveMage (Feb 19, 2015)

RyanD said:


> A lot of great comments in this thread - I'm glad people found something interesting to consider out of the panel at Pax East!  Hopefully we'll be able to do it again in the future!




Since you stopped by....

Thank you for the OGL.


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## Serendipity (Feb 19, 2015)

Cybit said:


> The problem is; I don't know if many others are the same way, where the only form of entertainment they partake in is the TRPG.  I mean, I grew up playing D&D 3E as well as Baldur's Gate, and the reason I enjoyed both of them was because of each other.  I don't think making good entertainment options for D&D or Pathfinder (see: Pathfinder Online) makes the TRPG worse.




I don't know that I would say the only form of entertainment, but where D&D is concerned, it's really the only one I care about.  MMOs have always hit a "inferior substitute for table top" chord with me, but I know that's hardly universal.  I realize I'm not their, what, demographic or whatever now, but really - the way forward for the TT is through things other than the game itself?  Maybe, possibly, a good idea for Hasbro, but not a good move for the game itself.  
Or at least, any game I've interest in playing.


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

*So What IS Happening to Tabletop Roleplaying Games? Dancey & Mearls Let You K...*

I imagine D&D has quite the challenge on it's hands - instead of competing with other tabletop games, it's now putting Drizzt & Co. up against Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and the like.  Hope it can deliver!


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 19, 2015)

I think the value in D&D is that it's the only recognizable IP from the tabletop hobby, and represents the gateway to an entire creative medium. Absent that context, I'm skeptical that anything about D&D has any real worth (though, to be fair, many esoteric IPs of limited merit have been reinvented into huge multimedia franchises).


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## Fobok (Feb 19, 2015)

*So What IS Happening to Tabletop Roleplaying Games? Dancey & Mearls Let You K...*



Morrus said:


> I imagine D&D has quite the challenge on it's hands - instead of competing with other tabletop games, it's now putting Drizzt & Co. up against Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and the like. Hope it can deliver!




 In a way, it kind of always has been. The novels have always been there, and they have a built-in audience. The video games have always been there (going all the way back to the gold box games), and again, you have a built-in audience there. Now you have board games, like Lords of Waterdeep, bringing new audience in there. You have the tabletop games. You have the (admittedly awful) licensed movies. (Well, the Dragonlance animated movie wasn't *terrible*.) You have the Forgotten Realms graphic novels (which, admittedly, mainly just retell stories from the novels). There was the old cartoon series. I'm probably forgetting other things too.

D&D has never (*at least, not since the early 80s) just been the tabletop game. It's always been a wide IP with a lot of sources of income for whoever held the rights.


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

I'm not sure I'm willing to believe that Mike Mearls agrees with Ryan Dancy about the 20 minutes thing. If so I couldn't disagree more.

I like the idea of reaching out to other entertainment avenues, after all I think that is where other gamers who haven't found RPG's yet will be, to some extent.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Feb 19, 2015)

I think D&D needs good complementary activities to fill out the brand -- novels, movies, casual tablet/phone games, fighting games, CRPGs, online tools, etc.  Emphasis on _good_. The TTRPG shouldn't have to suffer to support those things, however -- just like Baldur's Gate and 2E (at the time) were complementary, so should the other activities.


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## billd91 (Feb 19, 2015)

I can see Mike Mearls's point about other distractions (like minigames on our tablets and smartphones) keeping us from investing the time in the tabletop game hobby by basically competing for that time. I think they really should start developing apps or allowing others to develop apps that would enable us to continue to interact with the tabletop game from our devices when we're away from the table. That's one thing that's seriously been missing for far too long (although I do manage to get some things done with Pathfinder on my iPad thanks to Paizo's commitment to cheap PDFs and subscriptions). They should be competing with those minigames out there to draw our time and attention back into their products.

What I'm not so sure I like is the idea that because I can run a Mass Effect mission in an hour and a half that I should compress the time it takes to play out an adventure. For ME, that's me interacting with the computer - no mediation with other players, no time sharing DMs, just me and the computer and however long it takes me (and just me) to make decisions. RPGs can only achieve that level of efficiency by having much less content than a similarly timed ME mission. And that's not very satisfying.


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## Celebrim (Feb 19, 2015)

Celebrim on Car Wars, http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Edition-on-Kickstarter&p=5906364#post5906364, echoing a similar observation as Mearls.  

However, I disagree with Mearls about his theories of the substitution of play for prep.  I think that this is relevant only to DM's - players never usually had huge prep times on their hands - and I think it also points to why WotC's focus on system changes for the last 10 years have really missed the point and also explains why Pazio is flourishing despite having by many measures a lousy system.

D&D's dominance has rarely been about system.  It's about putting games into game masters hands better than any other system.  It's the adventure module and the ease of playing one that IMO separated D&D from its competitors.



> I was playing Mass Effect 1 or 2 at the time. I can complete a mission in Mass Effect in about an hour and a half. So why can't I complete an adventure in D&D in that time?




*sigh*  Comments like that are precisely the sort of things that make Mearls my least favorite designer from the old TSR stable.  How many answers do you really want to that?

Mass Effect is a single player game.  Compare 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours to typical waits to get friends together in WoW to do some raiding/instancing.  Single player PnP and a DM plays really fast too.
Mass Effect automates combat calculations.
Mass Effect is real time rather than turn based, something PnP RPGs can't achieve.
Mass Effect missions are generally trivially simple compared to PnP games?
Mass Effect RP consists of selecting pre-written text from 2-3 possible options, and recieving a canned NPC response that you can truncate if you want and which barely varies regardless of the inputs you give.
Mass Effect missions are only completable in about 1 1/2 hours after you are experienced and have generally abandoned all tangental curiousity.

Seriously, you won't do 'Mass Effect' better than Mass Effect.  Or if you can, switch industries.


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## GX.Sigma (Feb 19, 2015)

Serendipity said:


> I don't know that I would say the only form of entertainment, but where D&D is concerned, it's really the only one I care about.  MMOs have always hit a "inferior substitute for table top" chord with me, but I know that's hardly universal.  I realize I'm not their, what, demographic or whatever now, but really - the way forward for the TT is through things other than the game itself?  Maybe, possibly, a good idea for Hasbro, but not a good move for the game itself.
> Or at least, any game I've interest in playing.



Even if you only care about the TRPG, the takeaways from this panel are:

The TRPG is designed with the assumption that the players/DMs don't have a ton of free time to spend on it
They don't care about being the best selling TRPG, because that's such a small slice of their pie. So they don't need to release splatbooks every month just to have something to sell. So they can make publishing decisions based on what's good for the game, not the short-term bottom line.

Both of those are good for the TRPG.


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## dm4hire (Feb 19, 2015)

darjr said:


> I'm not sure I'm willing to believe that Mike Mearls agrees with Ryan Dancy about the 20 minutes thing. If so I couldn't disagree more.
> 
> I like the idea of reaching out to other entertainment avenues, after all I think that is where other gamers who haven't found RPG's yet will be, to some extent.




While I don't think they want the entire game to pan out in 20 mins, I do think they want to fix it so combat takes no longer than that.

What D&D has to compete with now is entertainment that offers more for your buck than just a good game.  Players want to play D&D, WoW, Elder Scrolls, Titanfall, watch movies or TV, and explore other entertainment.  More often all in the same day.  In the past players dedicated that time to play and prepare for the game, but now that time is wanted for more than game prep.

Games are becoming quicker to assemble a game through limiting options, but making those options count.  We're seeing less encyclopedia style campaign settings and returning to the days of old where there was just enough to give you an idea of what the setting was like but leaving the rest up to the GM and players.

It will be interesting to see if their predictions are correct.


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## Callahan09 (Feb 19, 2015)

I just don't know that I agree with the premise that people aren't putting as much "alone-time" into their RPGing experience because they have "more options" now than they did in the 80's.  There were movies, videogames, computers, arcades, books, toys, and all kinds of other things that were available to pass the time back then add there are now.  People either want to devote time to reading and prepping their RPG materials or they have other things they would rather do with that time.  Same was true then as it is now, for me.  

In 1987 I was devoting more time to trying to complete Super Mario Bros, and riding my bicycle, than I did trying to read and prepare D&D stuff, though I spent some time on that as well.  These days I spend far more time on it than I ever have in the past.

Is Mearls talking explicitly about multimedia as way of keeping the D&D brand at the front of our attention? It seems that way, but why would that be important to us as RPGers who are interested in D&D for the RPGing? That's a fine way to get new people into the hobby, by making quality entertainment in media that reaches a broader audience, but you've still got to have a game that people want to devote their time to! 

So the concern should be: how do we make spending time with the RPG materials themselves appealing to people even when they aren't actively with a play group? 

I think the materials themselves should be fun to "play with" outside of the game itself.

His example of Car Wars makes this obvious... to be sure, he spent his time alone generating custom play materials for that game because doing so was fun in and of itself, considering he implies he almost never got to play the game in the first place.

Of course some people will never want to spend their time doing that.  It all comes down to personal tastes about what's fun and how creative and imaginative you are.

An RPG is in a lot of ways a toolkit for expressing your creativity.

I don't think RPGers are concerned with a multimedia problem.  We just need to be presented with effective tools that are fun to use and allow us to express and share our creativity.

So why even mention to a room full of RPGers (or at least seem to imply, unless we are all mistaken about what he was trying to say) that we have an attention deficit problem that can be cured by multimedia endeavors to fill our non-gaming time with D&D?  We aren't concerned with D&D, only Wizards of the Coast is, and as far as I could tell this wasn't an investor's meeting, we are concerned with having an RPG product on the market that will be worth spending our time and money on.


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## Fobok (Feb 19, 2015)

Callahan09 said:


> So why even mention to a room full of RPGers (or at least seem to imply, unless we are all mistaken about what he was trying to say) that we have an attention deficit problem that can be cured by multimedia endeavors to fill our non-gaming time with D&D?  We aren't concerned with D&D, only Wizards of the Coast is, and as far as I could tell this wasn't an investor's meeting, we are concerned with having an RPG product on the market that will be worth spending our time and money on.




Looking in context, those quotes seem to be in reply to the host saying that he thought the future of the RPG industry was going to be Pathfinder and D&D battling it out until one laid dead on the ground. Mike is saying that's not the case... even if Pathfinder continues outselling D&D in the tabletop arena, D&D won't be dead because it's a much wider IP.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Seriously, you won't do 'Mass Effect' better than Mass Effect.  Or if you can, switch industries.




I think the point is that, for a large section of the potential market, whether it is Mass Effect or D&D is, honestly, not terribly relevant. They are both *entertainment*, and for many people, that's enough.  They aren't dedicated to one genre (videogames, or TTRPGs, or bowling, or watching TV).  All the genres are lumped into "pleasant stuff I can do with my spare time".  For these folks, D&D, and tabletop games in general, is in competition with all the other ways you can spend your spare time.  

"How much work does it take to get your entertainment?" then becomes a notable question.  There are other notable questions, of course, but this becomes one.  Specifically, if your work to entertainment ratio is too high, your activity will drop off.

And, that the work/entertainment ratio is not high for players doesn't invalidate the argument - the game doesn't happen at all without a GM.  If there's too much work for the GM for the value they get out of it, they won't run a game.

I'm facing that very point myself, with a new Shadowrun campaign, and looking at how I can present high quality game, that's fun to run, with smaller amounts of prep.


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

I think Mike Mearls is correct. There isn't time. I know I find it hard to make time. Also I think they should use the brand in other products that make sense.

Still though, it seems like giving up, like a lack of enthusiasm for the hobby in general. I'd really like things that would help me reduce the time needed for a game, tools and products designed for me to run a session with little prep, but with lots of depth and detail. Maybe t hat's not possible.


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## Callahan09 (Feb 19, 2015)

darjr said:


> I think Mike Mearls is correct. There isn't time. I know I find it hard to make time. Also I think they should use the brand in other products that make sense.
> 
> Still though, it seems like giving up, like a lack of enthusiasm for the hobby in general. I'd really like things that would help me reduce the time needed for a game, tools and products designed for me to run a session with little prep, but with lots of depth and detail. Maybe t hat's not possible.




Well there is a big difference between _not having time _and _preferring to do something else with the time that you have_.  It seemed to me that he was talking about the latter more than the former... But in regards to the former, there isn't time because that's just a symptom of adulthood.  As a child you have far fewer responsibilities keeping you from doing the things you might prefer to be doing with your time.  I know I have far less time now to spend on games or anything else "entertainment-wise" than I did as a child... But that is a separate issue from which media and how I allocate my time towards in a general sense.

If the argument is that we want to appeal to more adults and there are more things that appeal to adults than just RPG game materials in terms how they might choose to spend their time, than aren't we really just talking about your second statement, which is that we need a set of tools that help us maximize the efficiency of our creative output and fun had vs time spent with our games?


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## jrowland (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran has really nailed it. Its the Cost/Benefit ratio to entertainment. We have SO many choices for entertainment (and my $$) that I have to make choices as to which one gets the time and the money.

I am a MMO fan as well as  TTRPG fan. In MMOs, there has been a general trend of so-called "dumbing down" that I think is more a reflection of the same thing Mearls is saying: The older MMOs (EQ I am looking at you) required a LOT of time before you even got to a place where you and friends could group up and kill stuff. But as entertainment became more accesible, as the variety expanded, spending 2 hours prepping for a Raid in EQ then 2 hours dieing, rezing, corpse-running had(has) a hard time competing with WoW where you log in, group up, hit the queue and pop your in killing stuff and having fun with less headache. (before anyone tries to argue, I like the old school challenge as well, and my MMO days are gone, the new stuff is unsatisfying - its the trend I am talking about, whether you like it or not)

TTRPGs have the same issue. When I was 13 prep time was minimal...I didn't know better and my players didn't either. 3rd edition nearly broke me as a DM...prep time was WORK that competed with my fun time. 4E was a breath of fresh air in that regard, despite its flaws. Pathfinder did the right thing with the OGL and the 3E engine by doing most of the prep for you.

Mearls is right, both systems are trying to compete for your time and money, but they are not necessarily competing with each other. Pathfinder succeeds becasue it has done much of the prep for you. D&D Next might/will succeed if it makes DM prep quick and painless.

The publishing model has always focused on players: There are more players, therefore more potential sales. I've always felt that model was flawed. DMs are where the focus is needed, and pathfinder has that fixed publishing model. If 4E failed (arguable, I know) then it was because of trying to push sales to players and having little DM support.

I think D&D 5E is sticking with the "player-centric" model, but moving the brand into other venues: Board Games such as Lords of Waterdeep eg. I think it can be successful. 

5E will live or die on the backs of DMs. I 5E supports DMs, it will succeed. Ease of play is one approach. Ease of Customization (modules) will be another DM-centric factor. And quality adventures will be the another. Time will tell.


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## Derren (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I think the point is that, for a large section of the potential market, whether it is Mass Effect or D&D is, honestly, not terribly relevant. They are both *entertainment*, and for many people, that's enough.  They aren't dedicated to one genre (videogames, or TTRPGs, or bowling, or watching TV).  All the genres are lumped into "pleasant stuff I can do with my spare time".  For these folks, D&D, and tabletop games in general, is in competition with all the other ways you can spend your spare time.
> 
> "How much work does it take to get your entertainment?" then becomes a notable question.  There are other notable questions, of course, but this becomes one.  Specifically, if your work to entertainment ratio is too high, your activity will drop off.




So you start designing PnP RPGs for people who do not actually want to play PnP RPGs and instead are just looking for their next "fix" of whatever they can get their hand on?
Tabletop RPGs can never compete with other forms of entertainment like computer games on the ground of accessibility and ease of play. Instead when making PnPs the designers should focus on the strengths, on things other forms of media can't deliver, instead trying to achieve the impossible by "dumbing down" the game as  jrowland calls it for mass market appeal.


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## Ratskinner (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> The opposite of "game that requires lots of out-of-game-time engagement" is not "dumbed down".  Unless, I suppose, you think that spending lots of time with calculations on your own time "smart".
> 
> As far as I can see, the *real* strengths of RPGs has squat-all to do with rules, but has to do with interaction at the table with other human beings.  That's the thing that Tabletop games have that the other media cannot, as yet, touch.  So, tell me, how is a game that calls for a lot of away-from-table engagement focused on that strength?
> 
> From that startling point, we can then note the variations - there's flavors of interactions, there's tastes you can serve in addition to getting those human interactions.  There's lots of ground that can be covered to meet many playstyle needs.  But the human interactions are still the central piece.




I think this is an absolutely critical point. From observing my teenage kids, there does still seem to be a significant appeal to that direct interaction. Furthermore, it seems to me that its an attraction _enhanced_ (maybe exacerbated?) by all those trans-media experiences. Folks who live through their phones/computers seem hungry for direct interaction. The kids I've seen definitely seem to recognize that "I can do anything with it because its not a program" aspect of it. (Of course, limited sample size, etc.)

 However, I do think Mearls is close to correct when it comes to attracting the attention necessary for new players/groups to experience that in the first place. Ever fewer potential players will spend the time (as many of us likely did in the 70s and 80s...90s even) to slog through some generic tome-like rulebooks and then do all the work needed to GM. As a corporation/institution D&D needs a good way to get some eye-ball time with a lot of those kids.

Personally, the notes above reinforce a suspicion of mine that we will not see a "basic set" for 5e, but we will see "Basic Adventures" produced like "Euro games" in the manner of Shards of Ashardalon. These boxes will be as ready-to-play and full of replay value as they can make them: small rulebook(s), maps, adventure text(s) with helpful notes, monster cards/tokens, perhaps even with minis and pre-gens. If, as Umbran and I suspect, the personal interaction and flexibility is what TRPGs offer over other media, then it will be vital to get new players into that mode of operation as soon as possible.


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## Serendipity (Feb 19, 2015)

darjr said:


> Still though, it seems like giving up, like a lack of enthusiasm for the hobby in general.




Kind of what I took away from that too.  It seems like Wizards has been trying to leverage D&D into some multimedia franchise, with about the same level of success, since 2000.  I don't think it's happening.  Moreover, movies, and legos (sorry, KreO or whatever), and video games, etc etc. do not further my ability to sit down and actually *play* the game, so it seems like an unnecessary diffusion of effort and resources.  
I don't especially want some kind of Entertainment Transmedia Experience (tm), I just want to play some table top with some friends and enjoy some shared experience.


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## Serendipity (Feb 19, 2015)

GX.Sigma said:


> Even if you only care about the TRPG, the takeaways from this panel are:
> 
> The TRPG is designed with the assumption that the players/DMs don't have a ton of free time to spend on it
> They don't care about being the best selling TRPG, because that's such a small slice of their pie. So they don't need to release splatbooks every month just to have something to sell. So they can make publishing decisions based on what's good for the game, not the short-term bottom line.
> Both of those are good for the TRPG.




I'll agree that the second one is good for D&D - in fact, it's one of the best things I've heard from anyone on the dev team as far as D&D is concerned.  
The first one I'm dubious on - creating a bunch of multimedia (games, books, blah blah) instead of creating, you know, game content, isn't going to get my vote.   Keep in mind, my perspective on this is a bit different than most I think.   I play lots of different games, and lots of different versions of D&D.  The game being in decent shape is more important to me than the company making it showing a profit.  Kind of selfish but that's my bottom line.    In any case, making more (D&D branded) things to compete with the table top version of the game in terms of every one's precious amounts of free time seems awfully backward to me, save from a business perspective.


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## Janx (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> So why can't I complete an adventure in D&D in that time? Why does it take me 4, 8, 12 hours just to get from page one of the adventure to the end? I mean, yeah, you can have huge epic adventures but I can't do it in less than four hours.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Dancey-amp-Mearls-Let-You-Know!#ixzz2zeg5eNJp




At various times, I have basically said this very same thing.

Buffy can face some social drama and save the day in an hour's time.  With commercials.  Why can't D&D go as fast.  Buffy has 3 combats in an episode.  Why does a D&D session need 12 to get to the bad guy?


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## Agamon (Feb 19, 2015)

Serendipity said:


> Kind of what I took away from that too.  It seems like Wizards has been trying to leverage D&D into some multimedia franchise, with about the same level of success, since 2000.  I don't think it's happening.  Moreover, movies, and legos (sorry, KreO or whatever), and video games, etc etc. do not further my ability to sit down and actually *play* the game, so it seems like an unnecessary diffusion of effort and resources.
> I don't especially want some kind of Entertainment Transmedia Experience (tm), I just want to play some table top with some friends and enjoy some shared experience.




There's nothing wrong with that, I'm sure a lot of roleplayers are in the same boat.  But if WotC wants to explore new avenues to further the brand, it's not necessarily a bad thing.  If they are successful, the revenue streams form other sources help prop up the more niche core RPG, as well as introduce potential  new gamers to the game.

To get right down to it, for me, even a healthy brand isn't necessary to my own enjoyment of roleplaying.  D&D could die tomorrow and I'll still be gaming next week.  But to keep the brand healthy and keep gaming alive, diversity of the brand isn't a bad thing, even if you choose to ignore it.


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## Agamon (Feb 19, 2015)

Janx said:


> At various times, I have basically said this very same thing.
> 
> Buffy can face some social drama and save the day in an hour's time.  With commercials.  Why can't D&D go as fast.  Buffy has 3 combats in an episode.  Why does a D&D session need 12 to get to the bad guy?




I tried running my recently ended 13th Age campaign in bite-sized 4-hour episodic chunks.  Extremely unsatisfying experiment, I won't run a game like that again.  For me, a game needs a narrative flow between the GM and players, and that should be allowed to take as long as it takes.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Jhaelen said:


> The main reason RPGs require interaction is the GM role: Since not all of the rules are codified, the GM must supply rules for anything that isn't covered.




I think the main reason RPGs require interaction is the need to play through unscripted social interactions of characters.  You don't need a GM, per se, but when the fictional people interact with something other than swords, the people must interact.  Moreover, they have to interact over something in the fiction, not over the logic of rules themselves.


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## DaveMage (Feb 19, 2015)

Mearls was spot on for me regarding time.  

In the 80s, I'd spend hours and hours designing D&D adventures.  Now, I'd rather watch something on Netflix or surf the web when I have free time.

To me, though, that's what's so VERY appealing about Pathfinder - tons of pre-made adventures that I don't have to prepare myself.  All the work is done for me.  I'm running Slumbering Tsar from Frog God Games right now (for Pathfinder).  It's so easy to run that I essentially just sit down and go once my players arrive.

I would also hope that D&D (and all setting creators) change the way settings are done - in that I hope they develop settings in a "dive in and play" mode - like Monte Cook did for Ptolus, rather than just say "here's the world, now you have to go and create all the adventures" like many campaign settings do.  Monte's Ptolus comes loaded with adventure sites ready to go so you can just dive in.  THAT'S the way a setting should be, IMO.


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## Argyle King (Feb 19, 2015)

I came away from this with three thoughts:


1) 5th Edition is being designed with a vastly different mentality in mind than what I look for in a rpg.  Quick prep and being able to get through encounters quickly is great, but, personally, I want a more engaging experience from a rpg.  

2) I wonder if Mike Mearls is excited about the possibility of Car Wars being reprinted.  

3) Will D&D eventually evolve into something which isn't a tabletop rpg at all?


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

Johnny3D3D said:


> 3) Will D&D eventually evolve into something which isn't a tabletop rpg at all?




Well, yes - I think that's what was very clearly stated.  That's the take-home message here: D&D is going to turn into something else - a whole media property.  It may_ have_ an RPG (just like LotR has one, and Star Wars has one) but it won't _be_ the RPG.


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## Derren (Feb 19, 2015)

DaveMage said:


> Mearls was spot on for me regarding time.
> 
> In the 80s, I'd spend hours and hours designing D&D adventures.  Now, I'd rather watch something on Netflix or surf the web when I have free time.




So instead of making D&D so good that you rather do that than watch Netflix you rather see D&D be made so simple that you can play it as 2nd choice when you tire of Netflix?


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

DaveMage said:


> Mearls was spot on for me regarding time.
> 
> In the 80s, I'd spend hours and hours designing D&D adventures.  Now, I'd rather watch something on Netflix or surf the web when I have free time.




I personally still enjoy all that stuff.  The stuff away from the gametable is pleasurable to me.  So is the stuff at the gametable.  Two different enjoyable activities, but I find both very rewarding.

Then again, some of that might be the same instinct that makes me want to write an RPG, or build a website.  I like the building of stuff.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I like the building of stuff.




Yeah, Morrus.  So do most of us.  

But consider - a guy's running a campaign, but he has a day job, a wife, and a house.  His free and alone time probably comes in one or two hour chunks, here and there.  He likes building things, sure.  But if the task of building takes longer than one of his chunks of time, he has to prioritize - is the thing he's spending the time to build worth that time?  He's got a one-hour chunk of time.  He can spend that doing most, but not all, of the careful design of an awesome spaceship, and not be done before he has to return to the Real World, or he can more or less wing it on the spaceship, and spend an hour playing Skyrim.

In a world without huge amounts of time available, folks turn to the Pareto principle (aka "the 80-20 rule").  Say the GM has this perfect image in his head of a thing he wants to build.  If he can get 80 percent of the way there with only 20 percent of the effort, is he really going to go the rest of the way?  If he has oodles of time on his hands, sure!  But, if not, then "good enough" will be the word of the day.

And if the game doesn't enable "good enough", then he'll choose another game.


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

Evil Hat's Fred Hicks posted some interesting stuff publicly on G+:
Mike was talking about is the idea that the “time where you wanted to be doing something else” used to belong to RPGs, but doesn’t now.  If I were to reword it I’d say the idea is essentially that nobody’s got time now for “lonely fun” (sitting around, making characters solo).

We’ve been feeling this change for most of our time as a company; it’s some of why we orient on character creation as a group play activity.  It also informed some of the direction I gave to +Mike Olson  when we kicked off the Atomic Robo RPG, w/ its “create characters AS you play” feature.

What's interesting to me is that Mike’s take on all that sounds like “we should retake that smartphone time” whereas mine is “let’s stop needing that time”. 

The companies that are specializing in acquiring your attention for "smartphone time" are good at that and getting better. There ain't no RPG publishing company that's going to get as good at it as they are because that's not the core competency of RPG publishing, at the end of the day. 

We don't do software. We do stories and in-person/tabletop/hangout-driven play experience. That's where I want to "solve" the attention/time problem Mike's talking about — away from the smartphones.

I want to see play structures and experiences that don't need that time. It used to be we could rely on it — but too many other things compete for that time now, and retaking it might well be a waste of effort.

I will be super excited if I can be shown that retaking it can be done. But for today's designs, I think it's smartest (if you don't have the resources of Hasbro) to assume we can't, and to make deliberate design choices that work with the constraints of that assumption.​
I agree with him that an RPG company trying to compete with large multimedia properties like movies and comics and TV is out of the core competency, as he puts it - or as I put it earlier, those things aren't D&D's strengths.  I disagree that nobody has time for solo engagement with RPGs - that's exactly what [non-multiplayer] video games are.  We have plenty of time for solo activities.  What he refers to as "lonely fun" is  very common these days - but it's electronically facilitated, not book-facilitated.  The tech's changed, but people still have "lonely fun" (that sounds dirty!)


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## RangerWickett (Feb 19, 2015)

DaveMage said:


> In the 80s, I'd spend hours and hours designing D&D adventures.  Now, I'd rather watch something on Netflix or surf the web when I have free time.






Derren said:


> So instead of making D&D so good that you rather do that than watch Netflix you rather see D&D be made so simple that you can play it as 2nd choice when you tire of Netflix?




Personally, the thing that is keeping D&D or Pathfinder or Rogue Trader from being an "every week, binge-game" event is the fact that combat takes too g**d*** long. I love gaming, but what I like is the roleplaying, and D&D's rules actually get in the way of roleplaying. So yes, please, make the game more elegant so it plays faster, even if that means simplifying some things.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 19, 2015)

Janx said:


> Why can't D&D go as fast.



It can. I've had a lot of success pushing narrative pace over the years.

If D&D can be said to be glacially paced, I think that's probably a product of the game's culture first, of some specific mechanics second, and of the general format of a TTRPG little if at all. That is to say, if your idea of a D&D game is slogging through a dungeon of on-CR encounters and tracking every five foot step taken and arrow used, you may only get twenty minutes of fun in four hours. So if you don't enjoy some part of the game, just don't do it and move on.


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

dm4hire said:


> While I don't think they want the entire game to pan out in 20 mins, I do think they want to fix it so combat takes no longer than that.




The Dancy quote is that D&D is '20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours'. I've always thought that it was wrong, for me and many people who play. I know many folks who it is true for. I usually end up suggesting a different hobby for those folks. An rpg for those folks would not appeal to me generally. Might be a fun filler game, but not my cuppa. That's why I think Dancy is wrong about that quote, he, I think, ascribes it to all players. I think the problem with RPG's is finding the folks that would dig it. Doing that is the key to growing the hobby. Not making the games appeal to the mass market. IMHO.

I like the idea of Mikes that would have D&D in many different forms of entertainment, maybe that's the way to find those folks. I'm a bit worried that Mike Mearls also thinks that D&D is '20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours'. Not deeply worried, mind, mostly just enough to comment about it here.


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## Morrus (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Yeah, Morrus.  So do most of us.
> 
> But consider - a guy's running a campaign, but he has a day job, a wife, and a house.  His free and alone time probably comes in one or two hour chunks, here and there.




Umbran, I do understand the concept of being an adult with responsibilities.  I'm a grown-up, too!


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

Callahan09 said:


> If the argument is that we want to appeal to more adults and there are more things that appeal to adults than just RPG game materials in terms how they might choose to spend their time, than aren't we really just talking about your second statement, which is that we need a set of tools that help us maximize the efficiency of our creative output and fun had vs time spent with our games?




No, I'm not talking about 'Angry Birds - Forgotten Realms'. I think Mike Mearls is. I don't think shooting multiple copies of Elminister the Mockingjay at the Pig Wizards of Thay will help my rpg game. Might get some folks thinking about D&D and might interest them in giving it a try, that would be cool. And I must admit a weakness, I'd probably play that game. But no, it won't help my rpg game.


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## DaveMage (Feb 19, 2015)

Derren said:


> So instead of making D&D so good that you rather do that than watch Netflix you rather see D&D be made so simple that you can play it as 2nd choice when you tire of Netflix?




No, not at all.  I love playing and running Pathfinder.  I don't love designing it.



RangerWickett said:


> Personally, the thing that is keeping D&D or Pathfinder or Rogue Trader from being an "every week, binge-game" event is the fact that combat takes too g**d*** long. I love gaming, but what I like is the roleplaying, and D&D's rules actually get in the way of roleplaying. So yes, please, make the game more elegant so it plays faster, even if that means simplifying some things.




Pathfinder combat duration isn't an issue for my group, but then, we like the tactical part as well as the role-playing part.


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## DaveMage (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I personally still enjoy all that stuff.  The stuff away from the gametable is pleasurable to me.  So is the stuff at the gametable.  Two different enjoyable activities, but I find both very rewarding.
> 
> Then again, some of that might be the same instinct that makes me want to write an RPG, or build a website.  I like the building of stuff.




I used to.  Just not anymore.


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## delericho (Feb 19, 2015)

Janx said:


> Nobody's saying and RPG will be as smooth as a TV episode.  But what Buffy achieves in 45 minutes of content should be doable in 4 hours of RPG time.  There are tables and adventures that fail that.




There will _always_ be tables and adventures that fail that. However, for both of my most recent campaigns, our 3-hour sessions proved to be a very close analogue to a single episode of a TV series - indeed, intentionally so.

(I do need to put one big caveat on that: in the former of those two campaigns, a 3.5e game, it only applied at the lower end of the level range. As the game climbed into the teens, the rate of progress slowed noticeably. But that shouldn't be a surprise - the problems with high-level play in 3.5e are well known.)


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## Jhaelen (Feb 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> As far as I can see, the *real* strengths of RPGs has squat-all to do with rules, but has to do with interaction at the table with other human beings.



But that isn't all. Card and board games have the same strength, i.e. 'interaction at the table with other human beings', but in contrast to RPGs they don't require prep-work. Actually, for me, board games _have_ replaced the time I used to play and prep for RPGs, since for various reasons we only manage to meet for RPG sessions about once a month.

So what are the strengths of RPGs over (other) board games that make the additional amount of prep-work worth it?
I think it's the freedom to (try to) do whatever you can imagine as opposed to being restricted by the typically very limited, static rule framework of a board game.

Related anecdote: I have played the 'Mansions of Madness' board game, hoping it could scratch my itch for Lovecraftian Horror roleplaying. Unfortunately, it fell completely flat for me (in that regard). Although it's a really nice and flavourful board game it's sadly just a board game. Being restricted to two rather abstract actions per player turn somehow killed the atmosphere for me. I missed being able to simply tell the GM what I wanted to do and her telling me how to accomplish it and/or giving me feedback on my success and any consequences.


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## Dannager (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Well, yes - I think that's what was very clearly stated.  That's the take-home message here: D&D is going to turn into something else - a whole media property.  It may_ have_ an RPG (just like LotR has one, and Star Wars has one) but it won't _be_ the RPG.




I'd love to see the primary property within the D&D brand become the world's first significant post-tabletop RPG. I want to see someone define that space and figure out how a game can effectively occupy it.


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## darjr (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Evil Hat's Fred Hicks posted some interesting stuff publicly on G+:
> Mike was talking about is the idea that the “time where you wanted to be doing something else” used to belong to RPGs, but doesn’t now.  If I were to reword it I’d say the idea is essentially that nobody’s got time now for “lonely fun” (sitting around, making characters solo).
> 
> We’ve been feeling this change for most of our time as a company; it’s some of why we orient on character creation as a group play activity.  It also informed some of the direction I gave to +Mike Olson  when we kicked off the Atomic Robo RPG, w/ its “create characters AS you play” feature.
> ...





Here's a link
https://plus.google.com/+FredHicks/posts/gaX6J7P443g


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## Callahan09 (Feb 19, 2015)

Wow, somehow tapatalk decided to place this in exactly the wrong thread, sorry about that.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 19, 2015)

Jhaelen said:


> But that isn't all. Card and board games have the same strength, i.e. 'interaction at the table with other human beings', but in contrast to RPGs they don't require prep-work.



I don't see that rpgs require prep work. That's something people do because they want to, not because they have to.



> I think it's the freedom to (try to) do whatever you can imagine as opposed to being restricted by the typically very limited, static rule framework of a board game.



Or just about any game really. That open-endedness is pretty exciting.


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## TerraDave (Feb 19, 2015)

I support streamlined and faster play as much as the next person...but from what Mearls says (and Mearls says a lot of things, so we have to keep that in mind), he seems to be drawing exactly the wrong conclusion from current times.

PF is obviously not a light game. Its very AD&D. And you can kill a lot of time with it. In game, out of game. In lots of ways. (yes, like AD&D in the early 80s, it has lots of adventures, but again that may be part of the time killing part). 

I find the interwebs allow me to spend more time on gaming and related things then I have in years. I mean, look at what I we are doing right now. 

And look at the wider culture. Game of thrones, again, not really an 1.5 hour experience.

What he was really saying is that you should have an app to make car wars cars, and then play it through a virtual table top. Thats what he meant to say.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Umbran, I do understand the concept of being an adult with responsibilities.  I'm a grown-up, too!




I know.  Which is why I'm rather mystified by the apparent pushback to Mearls' and Dancy's comments.


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## Umbran (Feb 19, 2015)

darjr said:


> But no, it won't help my rpg game.




I don't think anyone's actually saying it will, except in terms of helping the overall business, so that continuation of the RPG is a non-issue.


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## delericho (Feb 19, 2015)

Callahan09 said:


> But in regards to the former, there isn't time because that's just a symptom of adulthood.




While that's true, it's a reality that D&D will have to face if it wants to survive*. Simply saying, "oh well, that's just the way it is" and then carrying on as though it isn't won't really help.

So... If time is precious, and especially if big blocks of time are very hard to come by, what to do? And here I think Mearls is broadly correct:

- Ideally, we want a game that requires minimal preparation, that can have that preparation done in a snatched few minutes here and there, where that preparation can be done without needing access to the physical books that are on our shelf at home, and where that preparation is itself fun.

- We want a game that allows us to fit the maximum fun into the time available. If I've got a three hour session once every two weeks, I don't want to spend two and a half of those hours slogging through a single throwaway encounter - I want to resolve that battle quickly and move on. (Conversely, though, if that encounter was the climactic battle of the multi-year campaign, I'm probably more than happy to dedicate a whole session to it. And yes, both of the above are real examples from actual play.  )

Of course, what constitutes 'fun' differs from group to group. 

* Note quite true, of course - they could sack their current, greying customer base and bring in a whole load of kids to replace us. But assuming they've tried that and it didn't work so well, they're stuck with us.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 19, 2015)

I wonder if this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You produce less RPG books and more apps and then you say "Look! The apps are doing better than the books!". 

I agree with those who are saying part of the fun is preparing the next quest. Just sitting and imagining what players could do next, what that vilain is thinking or what the artifact can do is a lot of fun. It is like being a playwright. Granted it is not for everyone, but RPGs aren't for everyone.

Campaigns take way too much time? They do. I've spend years as a player and a DM on the same campaign with the same PCs. And we didn't finish most of them. It didn't stop us from doing an other, still do it now and still have tones of fun! 

I think Mearls' strategy is to make D&D be everything except a PnP RPG. Maybe there is money there. Maybe.


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## delericho (Feb 19, 2015)

goldomark said:


> I wonder if this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You produce less RPG books and more apps and then you say "Look! The apps are doing better than the books!".




Well, that depends what your agenda is. I would expect WotC's agenda to be "make as much money as possible", so if they say the apps are doing better then it's because the apps are genuinely doing better. But, of course, I could be wrong about that.



> Campaigns take way too much time? They do.




Actually, I'm not sure I agree. Almost all of my best game experiences, and all of my most satisfying ones, have been in campaign form. Seeing the whole thing come together over time (sometimes a long time) offers something that a one-shot just can't. (And I've had some _wonderful_ one-shots over the years.)

So I'm not sure it's as simple as asking how much time they take - a better question is probably how good a return of investment do they offer?



> I think Mearls' strategy is to make D&D be everything except a PnP RPG.




I _hope_ it's to make D&D be everything _as well as_ a PnP RPG. But, again, I might be wrong.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 19, 2015)

delericho said:


> Well, that depends what your agenda is. I would expect WotC's agenda to be "make as much money as possible", so if they say the apps are doing better then it's because the apps are genuinely doing better. But, of course, I could be wrong about that.



But if you want to make as much money as possible, wouldn't you want to milk the RPG a bit more? Not enough to saturate the market after 1-2 year, but produce a bit more than what we are seeing? The currents rants about the RPG boils down to people saying they do not have the opportunity to give WotC their money and are losing interest into doing so. 



> Actually, I'm not sure I agree. Almost all of my best game experiences, and all of my most satisfying ones, have been in campaign form. Seeing the whole thing come together over time (sometimes a long time) offers something that a one-shot just can't. (And I've had some _wonderful_ one-shots over the years.)
> 
> So I'm not sure it's as simple as asking how much time they take - a better question is probably how good a return of investment do they offer?



We're saying the same thing. I thought that was clear originally.



> I _hope_ it's to make D&D be everything _as well as_ a PnP RPG. But, again, I might be wrong.



I was being a bit dramatic, but is does seem like the RPG is secondary in his strategy.


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## delericho (Feb 20, 2015)

goldomark said:


> But if you want to make as much money as possible, wouldn't you want to milk the RPG a bit more?




I'm not sure. From a simplistic point of view, sure - I would. And yet... Mearls' comment about too many books _of any sort_ being bad for the game blind-sided me rather. I would _never_ have seen that coming.

And assuming that is, indeed the case, I would need to re-think my suggested strategy.

(What doesn't change, though, is that I'd certainly _prefer_ more material - specifically, I'd like a full conversion of Eberron. What we've got so far is good as far as it goes, but it's necessarily brief.)


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## GameDaddy (Feb 21, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I imagine D&D has quite the challenge on it's hands - instead of competing with other tabletop games, it's now putting Drizzt & Co. up against Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and the like.  Hope it can deliver!




Actually it does just fine, The Boy is 12 and we did our first D&D Friday night last Friday with the _Moldvay B/X_ set. Somehow this managed to get stretched into an all day Saturday affair, and we played D&D for half of Sunday too. So it turned into an epic 3 day D&D Marathon This week the boy has been running around with the Red Book and Rules Cyclopedia close at hand. Now he could play playing Xbox or Wii, or hanging out with his friends, but he wants to be playing tabletop D&D... it is, and I quote from him;

_"Better than video games! The dungeon tiles are great! When can we play again?"_

Tonite of course for a short spell anyway.

Never did get cramming 20 minutes of fun into four hours. Here D&D was always, and continues to be three hours of fun, with a half an hour for lunch, and half an hour or so to socialize and catch up on what happened last time.

10,000 ways to die, The Friday Night D&D Thread;
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=31647

...and a couple of new pix from the Saturday and Sunday games! And of course dinner, and moar D&D tonite! The boy has an iPhone 5 but he's rather be playing tabletop B/x, so there! Also got a request to run a _Middle Earth_ game. Just haven't decided on the rules set for that, but are leaning towards _Runequest_ at the moment.


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...and the rest of the photobucket collection from last weekend!

http://s158.photobucket.com/user/aw...iday Night Dungeons and Dragons?sort=3&page=1


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## Umbran (Feb 21, 2015)

goldomark said:


> But if you want to make as much money as possible, wouldn't you want to milk the RPG a bit more?




That depends on how much in money and resources is required to milk that market.  As I believe others have said - it isn't about just absolute number of dollars, but on return on investment.


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## GMMichael (Feb 21, 2015)

delericho said:


> - Ideally, we want a game that requires minimal preparation, that can have that preparation done in a snatched few minutes here and there, where that preparation can be done without needing access to the physical books that are on our shelf at home, and where that preparation is itself fun.



So, monsters you can whip up in one minute or less, almost no tables to reference, a website that can be accessed from anywhere, and prep that moves as fast as your imagination?



delericho said:


> - We want a game that allows us to fit the maximum fun into the time available. If I've got a three hour session once every two weeks, I don't want to spend two and a half of those hours slogging through a single throwaway encounter



Hmm, what if you could resolve those throwaway conflicts with just one opposed roll?  If you had combat that kept everyone engaged?  Or if you didn't have to worry about fireballs that dealt 12d6 damage?

I can recommend one.  



delericho said:


> if that encounter was the climactic battle of the multi-year campaign, I'm probably more than happy to dedicate a whole session to it.



I know what you mean, but, even two hours sounds somewhat anti-climactic.


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