# Dragon Con: A Sight of the Schism in action



## Stalker0 (Sep 15, 2009)

So just recently I made my yearly pilgrimage to Dragon Con. While I'm not a big con gamer normally, I decided this year to try out a few events.

We all talk about the edition war, and we even like to talk about how we shouldn't talk about the edition war. But for me until now the edition war was simply post and chats on Enworld. As much as I love online posting, its not always the best representation of the gaming group at large.

During Dragon Con gaming events, I got to see the schism 1st hand.

There were 20 or more different DND type adventures going on throughout the con, but guess how many 4e ones there were?

That's right, a big zero.

Now I had checked the roster last year and hadn't seen 4e games then either. But I chalked that up to the fact that the game was new. The game now had another year under its belt, but once again I could still see it being the new kid on the block.

Except that Pathfinder, the game that had literally just released its finished rules, had 4 adventures going on at the Con.

All that said, there could be a number of reasons behind it, so I still might not have thought too much about it.

However, there was one 4e event going on (though not a true adventure), and that was the Cheese Grinder. I'm a big fan of the Grinder, its a few hours where I throw off the roleplaying side of my soul and just dive into pure mechanical powergaming goodness. 

Every year the grinder had seen more and more people enter. This year was the worst turnout they had ever had. In fact while I was making characters, people were actively coming up to the people running, telling them how much they hated 4e, and that they didn't want to play because it was 4e.

Frankly, 4e is not a good system for the cheese grinder. It is after all supposed to eliminate much of the cheese the grinder explores. But the numbers and the passionate anger of many of the people was telling.

For good or ill, it seems to me that the edition war is alive and well, and will continue for a good while longer.


----------



## Treebore (Sep 15, 2009)

Its not a war, its just an affiliation. Much like politics. Some people may take it to the level of a "fight", but for most it is simply choice.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 15, 2009)

STalker0 said:
			
		

> people were actively coming up to the people running, telling them how much they hated 4e, and that they didn't want to play because it was 4e.



Apparently the internet is not the only place people are openly rude. That really steams me up, that people would actively come up to someone running and event and saying, "I hate your game and won't play your game". I can understand choosing to not play, but to make a point of going up to insult the people running the game? 



Treebore said:


> Its not a war, its just an affiliation. Much like politics. Some people may take it to the level of a "fight", but for most it is simply choice.



There's a reason you don't talk politics or religion.


----------



## Nightson (Sep 15, 2009)

It's one thing to do say stuff like that on a messageboard, you see the topics right there and discussion is normal.  But to go up to someone and tell them the game they're running is horrible, to actively seek that out is so amazingly rude I can't even fathom it.


----------



## Cadfan (Sep 15, 2009)

That's a lot of D&D events.  My local convention (the little local one, not the huge regional one) had maybe 6 D&D events last convention.  Two were 4e.  The rest were 2e.  Of course, then there was the RPGA, which had who knows how many D&D games running.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 15, 2009)

I had a bunch of friends who did a weekend roadtrip to Dragon Con this year. I had the chance to go, but I had too much going on and I skipped out on it. In retrospect I should have gone, because they had a blast.

Not too surprising to find the schism in action there. No reason to think it's confined to just messageboard flames, or any smaller among the gaming public at large.


----------



## Treebore (Sep 15, 2009)

Rechan said:


> There's a reason you don't talk politics or religion.





I talk about them all the time, its just that I talk about them with people who... talk. Same with "editions". Its a "war" only with people who don't know how to talk.


----------



## Contrarian (Sep 15, 2009)

Nightson said:


> It's one thing to do say stuff like that on a messageboard, you see the topics right there and discussion is normal.  But to go up to someone and tell them the game they're running is horrible, to actively seek that out is so amazingly rude I can't even fathom it.




Really? I wish more gamers had the nerve to say what they believe in person instead of saving it for message boards. That way they can't go running to hide behind a moderator when someone calls them out as a morron.

Anyway, despite being a 1E guy myself, my gut says Dragoncon probably isn't the best measure of what's happening at regular game conventions (where the RPGA no doubt picks up the slack). The gamer contingent there probably skews older, crankier, and more resistant to change than other conventions.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> my gut says Dragoncon probably isn't the best measure of what's happening at regular game conventions (where the RPGA no doubt picks up the slack a good representation of D&D gaming. The gamer contingent there probably skews older, crankier, and more resistant to change than other conventions.




And there's a question: is the current RPGA representative of the D&D community at large?


----------



## Stoat (Sep 15, 2009)

I missed Dragon Con this year, but in years past a lot of the D&D games were being run by 3rd party publishers with product to sell.  Was that the case this year?  Were the Pathfinder games run by Paizo folks or fans?


----------



## davethegame (Sep 15, 2009)

I'm surprised, and moreso, was pretty sure I had heard reports to the contrary (that there were people playing 4e at DragonCon.) I could have heard wrong though.

It was also opposite PAX, which reportedly had a strong RPG turnout.


----------



## Rodrigo Istalindir (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> Really? I wish more gamers had the nerve to say what they believe in person instead of saving it for message boards. That way they can't go running to hide behind a moderator when someone calls them out as a morron.




It's all in how it's done.  If I were running a game that had been successful/popular in the past, and a bunch of people told me something like "I always looked forward to playing this, but I really don't care for 4e," or "This would be awesome with something like Pathfinder" that's just constructive criticism.


----------



## Baron Opal (Sep 15, 2009)

That *really* surprises me. DragonCon has been one of the anchors of the RPGA Living X campaign since it began. Every time in the past that I have gone at least half of the D&D events were Living (whatever). Also, there were a number of people heavily invested in the Living X campaigns living in or often coming to Atlanta. Now, it has been a sad, sorrowful 8 years since I have gone to DragonCon. Things change, and 8 years is a long time in gaming. But, still, no events?


----------



## Hussar (Sep 15, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> And there's a question: is the current RPGA representative of the D&D community at large?




A question for your question - was it ever?


----------



## amysrevenge (Sep 15, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> And there's a question: is the current RPGA representative of the D&D community at large?




As a member of that community, I can safely say that we are NOT representative of the D&D community at large.  We're off in our own little universe.  Anyone is welcome to join in, but lots of folks wouldn't like it.


----------



## Glyfair (Sep 15, 2009)

Hussar said:


> A question for your question - was it ever?



Overall, I think not.  However, overall, I think gamers who go to conventions aren't representative of the RPG community (or event the D&D community) either.


----------



## Saeviomagy (Sep 15, 2009)

Looking at information on the web about it, one could be forgiven for thinking that there was zero gaming going on at dragoncon.


----------



## dm4hire (Sep 15, 2009)

I think it was probably meant to be constructive critism, just wrongly delivered.  If spoken as mentioned, where they stated they liked the event but didn't like 4e that's constructive, any other way would be purely rude in my opinion.

My game club has run RPGA events for the last seven years and we've seen our numbers drop from three to four tables down to one, two at most, over the last year.  Meanwhile our Pathfinder now that it is out of beta has gone from one table to two.  There is also expected to be a bigger turnout at our local convention at the end of the month for Pathfinder than for 4e.  I'll know more later I'm sure.


----------



## wedgeski (Sep 15, 2009)

dm4hire said:


> My game club has run RPGA events for the last seven years and we've seen our numbers drop from three to four tables down to one, two at most, over the last year.  Meanwhile our Pathfinder now that it is out of beta has gone from one table to two.  There is also expected to be a bigger turnout at our local convention at the end of the month for Pathfinder than for 4e.  I'll know more later I'm sure.



Let us not forget that PF is the new shiny.


----------



## JoeGKushner (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> Really? I wish more gamers had the nerve to say what they believe in person instead of saving it for message boards. That way they can't go running to hide behind a moderator when someone calls them out as a morron.
> 
> Anyway, despite being a 1E guy myself, my gut says Dragoncon probably isn't the best measure of what's happening at regular game conventions (where the RPGA no doubt picks up the slack a good representation of D&D gaming. The gamer contingent there probably skews older, crankier, and more resistant to change than other conventions.




The thing about this though, is that you're actively, well, harrassing someone else.

The reactions of all such folks can be difficult to predict. It seems to be "poking the bear" and for what reason? Because my RPG is better?

Please. No wonder people think role players have poor social skills.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 15, 2009)

If those people were mentioning they would prefer to play 3.x and not 4E, for future reference, that is not very rude. Of course it depends on tone of voice and how many times they stated that.

How about other venues? I visit several online game advertisement sites and have yet to see Pathfinder (Though there were some Bets games a long time ago) I do see a lot of 3E, 3.x and 4E games though. FOr gamers who go to the (admittedly small) sites I game on, all three versions of d&d seem viable, and Pathfinder is not yet. 

What was Gencon like?


----------



## Majoru Oakheart (Sep 15, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> If those people were mentioning they would prefer to play 3.x and not 4E, for future reference, that is not very rude. Of course it depends on tone of voice and how many times they stated that.



From my experience, the tone of these people is never nice.  See below.



Dice4Hire said:


> What was Gencon like?



I spent almost all my time in the RPGA room at GenCon.  We had over a hundred tables of 4e RPGA games going.  And since there was no non-4e gaming happening in the room, there wasn't that many negative comments or people around.  I never got to see the numbers of people playing Pathfinder or 3e, since they were in other rooms.

On the other hand, over the course of the weekend, about 3 or 4 times people did wander past tables I was playing at and mutter insults at 4e and people who played it.

One time someone wandered past me and asked me what edition we were playing and I answered "4th".  They said something to the effect of "Oh, I can't believe they destroyed D&D like that.  Is there any 3rd edition games here?" and I said "No, this is the RPGA room, they only support the current edition of D&D." and they said "Looks like I'll have to come back next year when 5e comes out." and wandered away.


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 15, 2009)

Stalker0 said:


> There were 20 or more different DND type adventures going on throughout the con, but guess how many 4e ones there were?
> 
> That's right, a big zero.
> 
> ...




There were 50 or so 4e events listed on the event list. If you searched for 4e, you'd only see the Cheese Grinder, which threw me off as well; however, if you searched under Living Forgotten Realms, you'd have seen a ton of 4e. 

I've been tracking fall con D&D games of various editions for my own amusement and edification. Right now I'm seeing around a 3:1 split between 4e and 3.X/Pathfinder. When the Pathfinder Society shows up at a con it's usually about 2:1 in favor of 4e events, but we've seen a couple of big cons (DexCon, PAX) with no Pathfinder presence at all.

This strikes me as a wild success for Paizo, and a comfortable margin for WotC, if they were actually competing.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 15, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> and they said "Looks like I'll have to come back next year when 5e comes out." and wandered away.




I usually consider violence against those kind of people.


----------



## Phaezen (Sep 15, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> I usually consider violence against those kind of people.




I just ignore then and carry on having fun


----------



## Perram (Sep 15, 2009)

I don't quite understand why you would walk up to an event and bash someone elses fun.

I have my own reasons and internal struggles when it comes to which system I prefer (Pathfinder), but I think going out of your way to attack someone over their choice of game is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Palladium Fantasy isn't my cup of tea, either, for example.  But I don't go around telling people how much I don't like the game. (I don't dislike the game, by the way, I just don't prefer it.)  Especially at a convention.

And if one of my friends invites me to a 4e game of his, I'll gladly play, just like they play in Pathfinder with me, or Savage Worlds, or Mutants & Masterminds or Earthdawn 1e, or whatever game we happen to be playing this time around.  It isn't like our hobby is so large and healthily growing that we can really afford to keep fracturing ourselves off like this.


----------



## Midknightsun (Sep 15, 2009)

If that is indeed the attitude that was given, then yes, bashing someone's 4e game (or any game) is just plain unnecessary.  Show what you like by playing in those games and the rest would take care of itself.  Discussing what you like and don't like is one thing, but nerdage elitism is just sad.  Its a game, for the love.


----------



## diaglo (Sep 15, 2009)

Stalker0 said:


> For good or ill, it seems to me that the edition war is alive and well, and will continue for a good while longer.




don't blame me. 

i live in hotlanta. but i never attend Dragon Con.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

It's weird because it isn't that bad of a game and has a good following but I've not seen a mainstream RPG, and certainly not a current D&D edition, take as much flak online and off as this.  I can understand people not wanting to play a game, especially when a new edition is made so different from the previous editions, but it doesn't require taking it out on those fans that remain or are drawn to the new game.  It might just be that WotC is going to have to go out and be more active in sponsoring RPGA events themselves like at Gencon if they are going to get a bigger showing at the mid-sized conventions.  Surely, Atlanta has a large enough population to turn out RPGA gamers for such events.  There's a smaller/midsize con coming up in a couple weeks here in the Chicago area that I attend.  I'll see what sort of turn out it engenders and maybe pop back in this thread with some info if it seems pertinent.


----------



## Crothian (Sep 15, 2009)

That is really weird.  Origins had a good mix of D&D from many editions and I never heard anything like this happening.  Are you sure it is not being exaggerated?


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 15, 2009)

Mark said:


> Surely, Atlanta has a large enough population to turn out RPGA gamers for such events.






Crothian said:


> That is really weird.  Origins had a good mix of D&D from many editions and I never heard anything like this happening.  Are you sure it is not being exaggerated?




There were a ton of 4e events at Dragoncon; they were just listed under Living Forgotten Realms instead of under 4e. See my above post.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

Thanlis said:


> There were a ton of 4e events at Dragoncon; they were just listed under Living Forgotten Realms instead of under 4e.





Did you note the same sort of derision being cast at 4E as reported by others or was this an isolated event?


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 15, 2009)

Mark said:


> Did you note the same sort of derision being cast at 4E as reported by others or was this an isolated event?




In general? I see some of it; there's a guy who shows up every session of my LFR game (shoutout to Renaissance Games) and he's never shy about saying he dislikes 4e. I sort of wonder why he doesn't just go play Pathfinder, since he likes it more. He apparently feels some obligation to play RPGA events. (Yeah, I know, it's odd.)


----------



## Umbran (Sep 15, 2009)

Mark said:


> It's weird because it isn't that bad of a game and has a good following but I've not seen a mainstream RPG, and certainly not a current D&D edition, take as much flak online and off as this.




Well, there's a few things to consider:

1) D&D is still the biggest game out there.  It will generate the most flak, and the most praise, period.  

2) The last edition change was most of a decade ago.  For previous editions, the internet communication network for the propagation, production and amplification of flak did not exist in anything like its current form.

We may be looking as much or more at a social communication phenomenon as we are a game that doesn't meet the desires of the customers.


----------



## billd91 (Sep 15, 2009)

Perram said:


> I don't quite understand why you would walk up to an event and bash someone elses fun.




Because lots of people, especially gamers it seems, are socially maladjusted. Seriously, this sort of thing has been going on since someone first brought a different game to a _Tactics_ convention.

But I do remember a time when RPGA supported more than just the most recent edition of D&D and not just with living campaigns. Has its focus really narrowed to just 4e D&D now?


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 15, 2009)

If I look at some of the reactions on Warhammer 3E I have "witnessed" just here, I am not sure that it's not a general occurence and not game specific. Of course, D&D is a lot more visible and common. 

How does it look with the World of Darkness games and Shadowrun? Both had major edition changes, too, right? Is it really that much better, or it just less visible because they are less players and less online activity (not to mention EN World activity?)...

I don't get why people need to behave like asshats due to an edition change?


----------



## Saracenus (Sep 15, 2009)

When looking for 4e events at a Con, first check if there is an RPGA presence, because we suck all the 4e oxygen out of the General/Free Play areas of the Con with the Judge demand and schedule put forth. 

When 3e and Living Greyhawk was the King Kong of Cons, it was the same. It wasn't until late in the campaign when people were burning out that you saw large offerings outside the RPGA.

At PAX this year, 4e was dominated by the Ultimate Dungeon Delve (4e), The Delve (4e) and Living Forgotten Realms (4e).

The regular Delve alone was running 9 tables of 6 players an hour in a 4 hour slot and all tables were full. We had a total of 6 slots over 3 days. That's:


1296 players (though people played multiple times)
216 tables
We had so many people that wanted to play the Ultimate Dungeon Delve that we could not accommodate all of them. But we ran 6 or 7 tables each slot.

I don't have the LFR statistics because I wasn't in charge of the gaming, I was just a judge.

While organized play is not everyone's cup of tea it does provide a huge part of many cons. Pathfinder Society is gonna have the same effect. Where there is organized Pathfinder RPG presence at the Con you will see more play. The trick is going to be competing for limited DM resources when both the RPGA and Pathfinder Society are at the same Con.

My two coppers,


----------



## Phaezen (Sep 15, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> If I look at some of the reactions on Warhammer 3E I have "witnessed" just here, I am not sure that it's not a general occurence and not game specific. Of course, D&D is a lot more visible and common.
> 
> How does it look with the World of Darkness games and Shadowrun? Both had major edition changes, too, right? Is it really that much better, or it just less visible because they are less players and less online activity (not to mention EN World activity?)...
> 
> I don't get why people need to behave like asshats due to an edition change?




I know the WoD edition change has caused a fairly large rift in that particular community, partly due to the hard reset of the wole setting.  Shadowrun, not so much.


----------



## green slime (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> ...someone calls them out as a morron.




Really? I'd have thought being called a moron would have elicited the desired response.


----------



## Xer0 (Sep 15, 2009)

Thanlis said:


> In general? I see some of it; there's a guy who shows up every session of my LFR game (shoutout to Renaissance Games) and he's never shy about saying he dislikes 4e. I sort of wonder why he doesn't just go play Pathfinder, since he likes it more. He apparently feels some obligation to play RPGA events. (Yeah, I know, it's odd.)




Thanlis,

I assume you mean the one in Fallston, MD?  I'm in the other group, near the back.  And I know exactly who you're talking about.  It's nice to meet another Ren Games guy.

As for the schism, it's gonna happen.  Hell it happened to me on vacation to England.  At least the guy I was talking to was receptive to my opinions and it didn't turn nasty.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 15, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> How does it look with the World of Darkness games and Shadowrun? Both had major edition changes, too, right? Is it really that much better, or it just less visible because they are less players and less online activity (not to mention EN World activity?)...




I'm not on Dumpshock enough to really comment on any SR3 v SR4 issues online, but I've never seen anything negative between various edition players at conventions. They had a pretty massive turnout for the Catalyst SR Q&A at GenCon, and a raise of hands there was pretty diverse for what edition people were playing, or had started with (as I recall). My current group is using SR3, but I've played SR4 and I can go with either one. I've never been told that X edition of SR sucks, or I'm playing a discontinued edition, or that SR X ruined the game, etc.

However the big difference there is that changes are largely mechanical in nature, while between D&D 3.x and D&D 4e, there are also massive flavor changes to the game itself, which makes for a very different experience. That's why I would expect the community schism between prior editions of D&D and 4e to be on another level entirely versus some other games with different editions.


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 15, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> On the other hand, over the course of the weekend, about 3 or 4 times people did wander past tables I was playing at and mutter insults at 4e and people who played it.
> 
> One time someone wandered past me and asked me what edition we were playing and I answered "4th".  They said something to the effect of "Oh, I can't believe they destroyed D&D like that.  Is there any 3rd edition games here?" and I said "No, this is the RPGA room, they only support the current edition of D&D." and they said "Looks like I'll have to come back next year when 5e comes out." and wandered away.



For real?

Maybe the next time, you should have told their parents that such behavior is not acceptable.. because this was kids, right? Like young teenagers or something like that?


----------



## Rechan (Sep 15, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> How does it look with the World of Darkness games



I have several friends who are into WoD, and the New World of Darkness (Well, at least Vampire, Werewolf and Mage) is considered a steaming pile to all of them.

The primary reason is the setting reboot (they went from 12 organizations to 5). There's also annoyance over a rule change or two. But it's the setting/fluff retooling.


----------



## bielmic (Sep 15, 2009)

Majoru Oakheart said:


> From my experience, the tone of these people is never nice. See below.
> 
> ****
> One time someone wandered past me and asked me what edition we were playing and I answered "4th". They said something to the effect of "Oh, I can't believe they destroyed D&D like that. Is there any 3rd edition games here?" and I said "No, this is the RPGA room, they only support the current edition of D&D." and they said "Looks like I'll have to come back next year when 5e comes out." and wandered away.




it may not be nice but neither is it particularly rude.  if they interupted your game to find out what you were playing (a normal common convention experience) and responded to your answer with a single sentance, that's not rude unless they did so in a SNL chris farley screaming manner.  that's just expressing an opinion (to which yours regarding the same system is equally valid).  to the guy who posted earlier in the thread stating that he would respond with violence to something like that, you deserve any jail time you would get for doing so but i suspect you're probably just excercising your massive internet muscles and are really as gentle as a flea when confronted with adversity in real life. 

what would be rude is if he/she continually interupted your game while attempting to "convince" you of the validity of his opinion.  personally, i think people should just simply play what they like and leave the edition discussions for con hotel bar rooms, empty tables, and internet forums.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 15, 2009)

Rechan said:


> I have several friends who are into WoD, and the New World of Darkness (Well, at least Vampire, Werewolf and Mage) is considered a steaming pile to all of them.
> 
> The primary reason is the setting reboot (they went from 12 organizations to 5). There's also annoyance over a rule change or two. But it's the setting/fluff retooling.



Seems to me as if setting reboots don't make a lot of friends, overall.

Though Shadowrun 4E kinda does that, too. Though maybe not to that extent? I know the change of every spellcaster being able to spontanously summon and to conjure via ritual didn't appeal to all players in my group.


----------



## Cadfan (Sep 15, 2009)

I feel like there's a bit of a different vibe over at Catalyst, a general feeling that Catalyst is protecting games that otherwise would be dying.  This creates a much more positive attitude.

Disclaimer: my interaction with Catalyst is mostly, though not solely, through Battletech rather than through Shadowrun.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

Thanlis said:


> In general? I see some of it; there's a guy who shows up every session of my LFR game (shoutout to Renaissance Games) and he's never shy about saying he dislikes 4e. I sort of wonder why he doesn't just go play Pathfinder, since he likes it more. He apparently feels some obligation to play RPGA events. (Yeah, I know, it's odd.)





He probably feels doubly disenfranchised, losing his game as well as his gaming network.




Umbran said:


> We may be looking as much or more at a social communication phenomenon as we are a game that doesn't meet the desires of the customers.





I suppose the disenfranchised D&Ders felt more isolated prior to the advent of the Internet.  The two facets probably feed one another.


----------



## The_Gneech (Sep 15, 2009)

The only gaming I did at Dragon*Con was one session of _Swashbuckling Adventures d20_ -- and that largely because the _Call of Cthulhu_ session I wanted was taken.

That said, I went specifically looking for some 4E to try out, but like the previous poster couldn't *find* any except for the Cheese Grinder. There were a lot of 1E "nostalgia games" going on, and a variety of 3.x/d20 variations, but no 4E. Of course, if it was all over in "Living FR," that would explain why I didn't see it -- I'm not a member of the RPGA and have no plans to join.

What bothered me more was the lack of 3rd party 4E support in the dealer room. Only Troll & Toad had _any_ Goodman Games, and that was only two modules. Several dealers had the WotC stuff, of course, but what's the point of flying to Atlanta to buy that when I can get it for 10% off at the Barnes & Noble up the street? I had hoped to come home with a suitcase full of Punjar and maybe a few others ... instead, I ended up spending what gaming money I did on some dice at the Chessex table, and a small handful of miniatures.

A real disappointment, in all. The 4E situation with third party companies is scandalous.

-The Gneech


----------



## AllisterH (Sep 15, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Seems to me as if setting reboots don't make a lot of friends, overall.
> 
> Though Shadowrun 4E kinda does that, too. Though maybe not to that extent? I know the change of every spellcaster being able to spontanously summon and to conjure via ritual didn't appeal to all players in my group.




Welll, SR isn't really a setting reboot. It basically just moves the timeline up a few years and that's it. It basically is the same method as was done for the 3e FRCS when you compare it to the 2e Boxed set.

Same general setting moved up a few years with a couple of rules change.

The difference with BOTH WoD and D&D is they did both. Reboot the settings AND reboot the rules at the same time. Basically, the people who invested in the setting feel like their time was wasted (even though they still have their same experiences) and of course, they are the most vocal.

The guy that may just be tangentialy interested in the game isn't one to complain loudly across the net.

There probably would've been MASSIVE outcry if say for example Crisis on Infinite Earth had taken place in the Internet age. Both marvel and DC pretty much need reboots IMO but both are too scared to pull the lever and have found ways around it (Marvel by creating the Ultimate Line and DC by having min-reboots every 3-4 years and quietly changing stuff)


----------



## Henry (Sep 15, 2009)

I may be alone in this, but I often go to cons and gamedays to play games I DON'T normally play from week to week. 4E might not be as representative because many of these people have access to a 4E game normally. Last Gencon I went to, I played Spycraft, Iron Heroes, d20 Modern, Original D&D, etc. -- games I don't normally get to play a thome. These days, if I went, I'd be looking for a game of 4E, because all I've had time for is a game of Star Wars that another DM is running (an excellent campaign, by the way!)


----------



## Rechan (Sep 15, 2009)

I should note that the WoD dissatisfied folks are not very vocal and militant about it. I mean, when nWoD is brought up they grumble, but it's not "go on messageboards to yell about it" type of disatisfaction. At least, of those that I know.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

Henry said:


> I may be alone in this, but I often go to cons and gamedays to play games I DON'T normally play from week to week.





I run what I like the most at Gamedays but when I go to play at conventions I often look for games I have never played or haven't played in a while.


----------



## Reigan (Sep 15, 2009)

If only nerdrage could be harnessed, the world would have all the renewable energy it would ever need.


----------



## jfauch2 (Sep 15, 2009)

Not at a con but at a FLGS.  I run a DND 4E game every friday night it's an open game, 1st 6 players show up can play.  This past Friday I was running a game with 2 players with 4E exp, and 3 new players.  the 6th player comes along and from the get go starts to complain about 4E...Why they change that, what do I roll now, does it matter what I do... It kinda ruined the game for the others.  I really couldn't waste my time defending the game while I'm trying to run it. He basically was just trying to cause grief.


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 15, 2009)

Xer0 said:


> I assume you mean the one in Fallston, MD?  I'm in the other group, near the back.  And I know exactly who you're talking about.  It's nice to meet another Ren Games guy.




That's right! I was remembering someone on some board mentioned they played there, but I couldn't remember who. I'm the guy who's usually DMing; I'll say hi next time we're there and you guys don't look like you're in the middle of an encounter. Or kick me in the chair and say "stop sitting in the aisle, Thanlis!"

Edit: and Mark, yeah. You're probably right. Although he does still have an active 3.5 Living Greyhawk-esque game going.


----------



## Mark Hope (Sep 15, 2009)

Rechan said:


> I should note that the WoD dissatisfied folks are not very vocal and militant about it. I mean, when nWoD is brought up they grumble, but it's not "go on messageboards to yell about it" type of disatisfaction. At least, of those that I know.



There is also a fair amount of WoD fans who are keen on taking the "best of both worlds" - swapping rules, fluff and ideas between OWoD and NWoD, depending on their preferences.  I count myself in that camp - I play OWoD but treat NWoD as a source of awesome ideas and respect it as such.  And I'm finding that several of our listeners over at Darker Days feel the same way (those that post at our dinky little forums, at any rate).  I find this hugely refreshing and invigorating.  You see a lot of this kind of thing over at rpg.net as well - folks hacking one system with stuff from the other, generally without rancour.

Of course, as far as the WoD is concerned, we're more than 5 years on from the reboot, so I'd guess that most folks have moved on from arguing and are back into gaming and swapping ideas and tall tales now.  ('twas not always thus, of course, as anyone who witnessed the Great Atlantis Flamewar will attest, or its predecessor, the Mage Revised Apocalypse... ).  But maybe D&D will eventually find a similar era of compromise.  It would be nice.


----------



## Zinovia (Sep 15, 2009)

jfauch2 said:


> Not at a con but at a FLGS.  I run a DND 4E game every friday night it's an open game, 1st 6 players show up can play.  This past Friday I was running a game with 2 players with 4E exp, and 3 new players.  the 6th player comes along and from the get go starts to complain about 4E...Why they change that, what do I roll now, does it matter what I do... It kinda ruined the game for the others.  I really couldn't waste my time defending the game while I'm trying to run it. He basically was just trying to cause grief.



Showing up to simply diss 4E is rude, if that's in fact what he's there for.  As the person running the game, it is within your purview to ask him to leave if he is diminishing fun for the other players or interfering in the game.  Even if it's a public venue, you shouldn't have to put up with someone else ruining your game.  

If he was trying out the system and grumbling a little about changes, that's natural enough.  It's hard to get used to changes in a system.  You are constantly being misled by your past experience with how things used to be in the prior edition. In many respects it's easier to start fresh than adapt to a new edition.


----------



## Nikosandros (Sep 15, 2009)

Henry said:


> I may be alone in this, but I often go to cons and gamedays to play games I DON'T normally play from week to week.




My thoughts exactly. When I went to GenCon UK last year, I avoided all D&D games (both 3.5 and 4e). I had originally signed up for a RPGA event, but I dropped it in favor of a GURPS game. I play plenty of D&D normally and when I go to a con, I try to play something different.


----------



## Treebore (Sep 15, 2009)

You guys must not watch general human behavior very much. The "edition wars" have nothing on politics, religion, race, illegals, etc... rage. 

Everyone is pretty tame about the edition wars in comparison to all of that "rage".

Then again, we often take far more offense than is even intended when it is about something we ourselves have a vested interest in.

I also agree that a large part of the unhappiness with 4E is how drastically not only the mechanics were changed, but also because of how a favorite setting was drastically altered.


----------



## Contrarian (Sep 15, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> And there's a question: is the current RPGA representative of the D&D community at large?




I don't think convention attendees of any sort are representative of the gaming community at large. We're the extremists in a hobby full of casual gamers.  That said, I think the RPGA _is_ representative of the D&D community that shows up at conventions.

At every game convention I've attended in the past four years (except WinterCon, which was mostly a wargamer con), the RPGA has had the overwhelming share of D&D activity. (Which was not necessarily the case when I joined in the 1980s; I had to struggle to get people interested in RPGA games at conventions I volunteered for.)

Unless everybody outside my Michigan/Ohio/Indiana turf is seeing something radically different, I'm going with the theory that RPGA D&D is most of the D&D being played at game conventions these days.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> I'm going with the theory that RPGA D&D is most of the D&D being played at game conventions these days.





Maybe most of the current edition, anyway, as I have seen much of PF, 3.5, 1E and even some (O)D&D being played at the shows I attend.  Can't say I see much, if any, 2E, FWIW.  I know of at least a couple of 4E games that were run at Gencon but off the books, so to speak (just check the EN World Gencon forum for details).  I wonder if 4E inspires more people to play than to run games, as far as that goes.  Is running 4E for strangers not as rewarding as elsewise, perhaps?


----------



## amysrevenge (Sep 15, 2009)

billd91 said:


> But I do remember a time when RPGA supported more than just the most recent edition of D&D and not just with living campaigns. Has its focus really narrowed to just 4e D&D now?




Other than the turnover time between August 2000 and the Living City conversion that was a short time later (where Living City still ran under 2E rules for a while after the publication of 3E) I don't remember a lot of older edition play.  Even Classics were 3E almost right from then, if I recall correctly.

The focus has narrowed though, that's for sure.  There was a period in the early part of the decade where there were half a dozen or so official RPGA living campaigns, some for non-WotC games even (but none for earlier editions of D&D).  Those games gradually were dropped from the roster over the past several years (at the end of 3.x Living Greyhawk was about all that was left), and now LFR is pretty much the only RPGA game in town (other than one-shot PH/DMG/MM gamedays and Delves).


----------



## BlightCrawler (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> Anyway, despite being a 1E guy myself, my gut says Dragoncon probably isn't the best measure of what's happening at regular game conventions (where the RPGA no doubt picks up the slack a good representation of D&D gaming. The gamer contingent there probably skews older, crankier, and more resistant to change than other conventions.




Yeah. I know a bunch of people who go to DragonCon. None of them play table top RPGs of any kind. DragonCon doesn't strike me as a big gaming culture convention.

The gaming focused cons out here at almost 100% 4E. There are a few 3.X/d20 games, and even most of those are actually OGL instead. Pathfinder might change things, I didn't go to any labor day cons, so I'm not sure. But you are had pressed to find D&D that's not 4E.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

BlightCrawler said:


> The gaming focused cons out here at almost 100% 4E.





Where and which ones, please?


(Funny sig.  )


----------



## Dannager (Sep 15, 2009)

I think it's a mistake to imagine that what goes on at DragonCon (or even GenCon or PAX) is anywhere near representative of the D&D or tabletop player base at large.

Someone mentioned that they're surprised that the schism reaches beyond those on messageboards.  The reality is that the ones posting on messageboards are probably the same ones griping about it in real life at conventions.  The vast majority of people are just playing the game they enjoy.


----------



## Mark (Sep 15, 2009)

Dannager said:


> I think it's a mistake to imagine that what goes on at DragonCon (or even GenCon or PAX) is anywhere near representative of the D&D or tabletop player base at large.
> 
> Someone mentioned that they're surprised that the schism reaches beyond those on messageboards.  The reality is that the ones posting on messageboards are probably the same ones griping about it in real life at conventions.  The vast majority of people are just playing the game they enjoy.





This sort of dismissal surprises me.  When I see people post that what happens on messageboards is not representative and what happens at conventions and gamedays is not representative and what happens at gamestores is not representative and then theorize that there are vast numbers of people who there is no way to poll and no way to be sure even exist in any substantial number with a specific viewpoint, I have to be skeptical.  I mean, if you want to believe it, more power to you, but it doesn't even rise to the level of insufficient data.  The fact of the matter is that people on messageboards, at convention and gmedays, and in gamestores are precisely representative of what they play and think.  They just happen to be people who you can actually count and poll.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 15, 2009)

Treebore said:


> You guys must not watch general human behavior very much. The "edition wars" have nothing on politics, religion, race, illegals, etc... rage.
> 
> Everyone is pretty tame about the edition wars in comparison to all of that "rage".



That's because the moderators keep people in line here. 

I have no doubt that if there was not a strong presence from the moderators, that the edition wars would be brutal.


----------



## Primal (Sep 15, 2009)

Wow, I've never heard gamers attending a con being that impolite and rude... in a situation like this, I'd probably ask such people to back off and go play their own favorite system. Sorry to hear that something like this has happened more than once...

I may prefer 3E and PF RPG over 4E, but if I were attending a con, I might very well sit down and play it. Like Henry, I see cons as excellent opportunities to try out new RPGs.


----------



## Treebore (Sep 15, 2009)

Rechan said:


> That's because the moderators keep people in line here.
> 
> I have no doubt that if there was not a strong presence from the moderators, that the edition wars would be brutal.




I'm not so sure of that. I no longer hang out on Circus M. or RPG.net, or the WOTC boards, but I used to, and all of that stuff is tame in comparison to what I have seen on other topics.

Plus at my LGS 4E is "the" game of choice, and I have talked to a fair number of people about the pro's and con's of 4E and we may have had strains of frustration in our voices, but no one has yet to get "rude". 

Talk about the other topics and disagree with them and they quickly go off the deep end. Except for a few groups of people I have met, we talk about anything and we stay civil with each other, even though we often completely disagree, especially with regards to religion. These are not message boards either, they are face to face conversations. 

So the degree of "rudeness" is totally dependent upon the individual, not what "social group" they belong to. Unless you want to talk "mob mentality", but I doubt that applies here.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 15, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> Unless everybody outside my Michigan/Ohio/Indiana turf is seeing something radically different, I'm going with the theory that RPGA D&D is most of the D&D being played at game conventions these days.




For 4e maybe, but even then I'd need to be convinced. Unless I specifically hit WotC's site I don't see much about the RPGA online, and at least in my experience if you aren't already a member involved with them, it doesn't seem to have all that much visibility. Not being a member, quite literally I never saw them at GenCon - they were holed up in a big room somewhere, but I never saw it. 

Branching off of that, the RPGA from my exposure seems, I dunno how best to put this, but... incredibly insular? But that's perhaps less the RPGA and just how it feels like WotC has promoted 4e lately, which as a whole feels distinctly excluding of anything but 4e as a viable style of D&D, be it the 4e exclusivity of the RPGA, the renaming of WotC's own forums as the "4e Forums", the DDI adverts to "play the game the way -we- play the game", and a general feel of 'you're either with us or you're against us'. Just doesn't feel exactly very big-tent and inclusive or different styles of play, different editions, etc.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 15, 2009)

Rechan said:


> I should note that the WoD dissatisfied folks are not very vocal and militant about it. I mean, when nWoD is brought up they grumble, but it's not "go on messageboards to yell about it" type of disatisfaction. At least, of those that I know.




But the marketing and leadup for oWoD/nWoD was a bit different than the 3e/4e changeover from WotC. For instance, we never saw, "Tzimisce? Bullet in the head." So the 4e reaction from the start seemed primed by WotC to be much more vocal than the oWoD/nWoD changeover, or SR3/SR4.


----------



## Mark (Sep 16, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> For 4e maybe, but even then I'd need to be convinced. Unless I specifically hit WotC's site I don't see much about the RPGA online, and at least in my experience if you aren't already a member involved with them, it doesn't seem to have all that much visibility. Not being a member, quite literally I never saw them at GenCon - they were holed up in a big room somewhere, but I never saw it.


----------



## BryonD (Sep 16, 2009)

I'll happily argue with people all day on message boards.

If you are playing 4E and someone starts insulting you or it while you are gaming, I'll applaud whatever response you take.


----------



## Campbell (Sep 16, 2009)

Mark,

I might be mistaken here, but I actually believe that convention goers, message board posters, and even game store customers aren't representative of the entire D&D community for a simple reason - most people who play D&D don't go to conventions, spend a good deal of time discussing D&D on the interwebs, or even go to game stores. Those are fringe activities of the hardcore. 

I would guess that most people who play D&D get together with their friends at someone's house and knock dice about 2-4 times a month, and they really don't talk about the game outside that group of friends. They probably also buy D&D books and minis at book stores or online. For stuff like dice and mats they probably buy stuff online or might stop into a game store every so often. At least that's been the experience I've had playing D&D since high school. I've always been the exception in the groups I've played in as far as actually spending time on the internet talking about D&D.


----------



## Mark (Sep 16, 2009)

Campbell said:


> Mark,
> 
> I might be mistaken here, but I actually believe that convention goers, message board posters, and even game store customers aren't representative of the entire D&D community for a simple reason - most people who play D&D don't go to conventions, spend a good deal of time discussing D&D on the interwebs, or even go to game stores. Those are fringe activities of the hardcore.
> 
> I would guess that most people who play D&D get together with their friends at someone's house and knock dice about 2-4 times a month, and they really don't talk about the game outside that group of friends. They probably also buy D&D books and minis at book stores or online. For stuff like dice and mats they probably buy stuff online or might stop into a game store every so often. At least that's been the experience I've had playing D&D since high school. I've always been the exception in the groups I've played in as far as actually spending time on the internet talking about D&D.





Maybe but you have to ignore hard data and go on a guess and a thimble of annecdotal evidence to be correct.  You might as well guess that most non-convention-attending, non-gamestore going, non-messageboard-using D&D players frequently wear black shirts.  It might be a safer guess and you'd have just as little hard data to back it up.  Also, your theory requires belief that those who go to gamestores frequently, attend conventions or utilize messageboards are actually the opposite of being representative of D&Ders as a whole (a sort of abborent minority), and I've not seen evidence to support that.  So, I hear you and understand your premise but am not inclined to ignore some evidence in face of a guess and no evidence.


----------



## Lord Xtheth (Sep 16, 2009)

The Edition War (tm) even exists between myself and my best friend. He and I don't even play together at all any more.


----------



## Banshee16 (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannager said:


> I think it's a mistake to imagine that what goes on at DragonCon (or even GenCon or PAX) is anywhere near representative of the D&D or tabletop player base at large.
> 
> Someone mentioned that they're surprised that the schism reaches beyond those on messageboards.  The reality is that the ones posting on messageboards are probably the same ones griping about it in real life at conventions.  The vast majority of people are just playing the game they enjoy.




I'm not sure why it's so hard to believe that the schism might in fact exist.  There have been tonnes of accounts on these boards of people seeing things related to the schism, outside of the boards.  Whether these anecdotes are from gaming groups, in conventions, in stores, etc.

I would suspect that you're getting people from different subgroups complaining in different venues.  I know lots of gamers who don't post a single time online (post about gaming, that is).

Banshee


----------



## Dannager (Sep 16, 2009)

Mark said:


> Maybe but you have to ignore hard data and go on a guess and a thimble of annecdotal evidence to be correct.  You might as well guess that most non-convention-attending, non-gamestore going, non-messageboard-using D&D players frequently wear black shirts.  It might be a safer guess and you'd have just as little hard data to back it up.  Also, your theory requires belief that those who go to gamestores frequently, attend conventions or utilize messageboards are actually the opposite of being representative of D&Ders as a whole (a sort of abborent minority), and I've not seen evidence to support that.  So, I hear you and understand your premise but am not inclined to ignore some evidence in face of a guess and no evidence.



Hard data nothing.

WotC holds that 6 million people play D&D (in one version or another) according to recent court documents.

There are _not_ anywhere near 6 million people attending cons (you could take every GenCon attendee, _ever_, and then _quadruple_ that number, and you still wouldn't have close to 6,000,000).

There are _not_ anywhere near 6 million people discussing D&D actively online.

There are _not_ anywhere near 6 million people huddling in the corners of game stores.

Surround yourself with the hardcore and that's all you're going to see.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 16, 2009)

Banshee16 said:


> I'm not sure why it's so hard to believe that the schism might in fact exist.  There have been tonnes of accounts on these boards of people seeing things related to the schism, outside of the boards.  Whether these anecdotes are from gaming groups, in conventions, in stores, etc.
> 
> I would suspect that you're getting people from different subgroups complaining in different venues.  I know lots of gamers who don't post a single time online (post about gaming, that is).
> 
> Banshee



I believe the schism exists.  It exists online, and it exists in real life.  But it barely registers on the radar of your average tabletop gamer.  For instance, I'd put money on most D&D players not even knowing what Pathfinder _is_.  The edition wars are being carried out in the fringes of what is already itself a fringe.

Even calling it a schism might be overdoing it.  A moderate crack, perhaps.


----------



## Tiberius (Sep 16, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> For instance, we never saw, "Tzimisce? Bullet in the head."




We should have, though; the degenerate Fiends should have been staked out for the sun. I may be biased, though, being a Tremere loyalist.

The reference made to the Mage 2e -> Mage Revised transition is fairly apt to this discussion, I think. The new edition updated and greatly improved the underlying ruleset (a point, I will note, that I do not cede in regard to D&D) at the cost of murdering, in the eyes of the 2e fans like myself, the cool bits of the setting. A decade later, it is not unheard-of for a Mage flamewar to kick off; I suspect the furor around either game will not die down anytime soon.


----------



## TheAuldGrump (Sep 16, 2009)

Nightson said:


> It's one thing to do say stuff like that on a messageboard, you see the topics right there and discussion is normal.  But to go up to someone and tell them the game they're running is horrible, to actively seek that out is so amazingly rude I can't even fathom it.



Anything that I am willing to say on a message board I am willing to say in public.

Then again, I try not to be overly rude on message boards, so it amounts to the same thing: being rude is rude, no matter where you are being rude.

The Auld Grump, rudely speaking....


----------



## Banshee16 (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannager said:


> I believe the schism exists.  It exists online, and it exists in real life.  But it barely registers on the radar of your average tabletop gamer.  For instance, I'd put money on most D&D players not even knowing what Pathfinder _is_.  The edition wars are being carried out in the fringes of what is already itself a fringe.
> 
> Even calling it a schism might be overdoing it.  A moderate crack, perhaps.




Maybe it varies by region.  I can't say that everyone around me knows what it is......but I can say most gamers I know do know Pathfinder, and when I talk to the local shopkeepers, they express that they have their 4E gamers, and then they have their Pathfinder gamers.  They've definitely experienced a schism.  The Pafhfinder stuff is apparently selling pretty well.

But, as others have pointed out, many of the gamers, even those who've picked a side, are probably more busy playing (something), rather than complaining.

Banshee


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannager said:


> I believe the schism exists.  It exists online, and it exists in real life.  But it barely registers on the radar of your average tabletop gamer.  For instance, I'd put money on most D&D players not even knowing what Pathfinder _is_.  The edition wars are being carried out in the fringes of what is already itself a fringe.
> 
> Even calling it a schism might be overdoing it.  A moderate crack, perhaps.




This can't be repeated enough. 

Most D&D players I know haven't been to a gaming store since the early 90's, they never visit a D&D website and they don't know Paizo and certainly not Pathfinder.

But yet, they play D&D once a week, just like they have for 20 years.


----------



## FireLance (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannager said:


> I believe the schism exists.  It exists online, and it exists in real life.  But it barely registers on the radar of your average tabletop gamer.  For instance, I'd put money on most D&D players not even knowing what Pathfinder _is_.  The edition wars are being carried out in the fringes of what is already itself a fringe.
> 
> Even calling it a schism might be overdoing it.  A moderate crack, perhaps.



The D&D schism is like our sun going nova. It makes very little difference to the galaxy as a whole, but it's a real pain if you happen to be affected.


----------



## BryonD (Sep 16, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> This can't be repeated enough.



That's true.
No matter how many times you repeat it, it won't change the schism.

Funny, you praise DDI for evidence of 10,000 subscribers (and I agree, praiseworthy), yet 50,000 unique downloads gets dismissed as something not even heard of by most gamers.

And the far more significant fraction of gamers who have heard of PF than you give credit for really isn't even relevant.  Knowing that PF exists is not a requirement for thinking that 4E is an inferior edition.


----------



## Imban (Sep 16, 2009)

There are a *lot* more D&D players than go to conventions or post on the internet about it - I know this because I have 10 players in my 3e D&D game and a whopping one of them posts on gaming boards.

That doesn't mean that they all like 4e, though - the neutral majority tends to have an opinion, and I know in my group two don't like it very much (i.e. they've expressed to me that they would much rather play 3e than 4e, given the choice), two hate it like fire (i.e. they've expressed to me that 4e is, er, poopy and the designers are poopyheads), and the remainder are apathetic or never played 4e. Uh, or are the guy who wandered into the chatroom one day and said he was signing up for my game who none of us really know. He's cool, but I dunno if he likes 4e or not.

So in conclusion, there's not that much reason to think that the people who Jack99 described:



> Most D&D players I know haven't been to a gaming store since the early 90's, they never visit a D&D website and they don't know Paizo and certainly not Pathfinder.
> 
> But yet, they play D&D once a week, just like they have for 20 years.




play 4e as opposed to whatever edition they've been playing for 20 years.


----------



## ExploderWizard (Sep 16, 2009)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Anything that I am willing to say on a message board I am willing to say in public.
> 
> Then again, I try not to be overly rude on message boards, so it amounts to the same thing: being rude is rude, no matter where you are being rude.
> 
> The Auld Grump, rudely speaking....




Same here. It is sad that so many people cannot simply disagree without hate.


----------



## billd91 (Sep 16, 2009)

Campbell said:


> Mark,
> 
> I might be mistaken here, but I actually believe that convention goers, message board posters, and even game store customers aren't representative of the entire D&D community for a simple reason - most people who play D&D don't go to conventions, spend a good deal of time discussing D&D on the interwebs, or even go to game stores. Those are fringe activities of the hardcore.




I disagree that any of this is the fringe activity of the hardcore. From what I see of gamers, these are all pretty normal activities of the moderate to hard core gamer\fanboy. So while they may not be respresentative of all gamers, since a lot of gamers are pretty casual, they're not unrepresentative of the core of the hobby, particularly going to some kind of convention, perhaps not annually but every few years or so.


----------



## Phaezen (Sep 16, 2009)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Anything that I am willing to say on a message board I am willing to say in public.
> 
> Then again, I try not to be overly rude on message boards, so it amounts to the same thing: being rude is rude, no matter where you are being rude.
> 
> The Auld Grump, rudely speaking....




This.

Which is why I have taken to putting my name into my sig here and other place.  If I say something it comes from me, I am not going to hide behind some annonymous forum name.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 16, 2009)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Anything that I am willing to say on a message board I am willing to say in public.
> 
> Then again, I try not to be overly rude on message boards, so it amounts to the same thing: being rude is rude, no matter where you are being rude.



For me, it's not just about rudeness in and of itself.

I generally try to avoid negativity for the sake of being negative. Just because I _have_ an opinion does not mean that I _should_ share it.  Badmouthing another edition accomplishes nothing but offending other people. This is why I avoid threads that I know are going to be negative in the first place.


----------



## Hussar (Sep 16, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> This can't be repeated enough.
> 
> Most D&D players I know haven't been to a gaming store since the early 90's, they never visit a D&D website and they don't know Paizo and certainly not Pathfinder.
> 
> But yet, they play D&D once a week, just like they have for 20 years.






			
				Imban said:
			
		

> play 4e as opposed to whatever edition they've been playing for 20 years.




Umm, I don't think he mentioned anything about which edition they play.  

All he said was that most of the players he knows don't get involved in the "industry" or the edition war thing.  Just that they play whatever D&D they want to play and get on with it.  

I'm not seeing anything which points to any particular edition here.


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

BryonD said:


> That's true.
> No matter how many times you repeat it, it won't change the schism.



Cute..



> Funny, you praise DDI for evidence of 10,000 subscribers (and I agree, praiseworthy), yet 50,000 unique downloads gets dismissed as something not even heard of by most gamers.



If you do not understand the difference between having a subscription to a collection of programs and downloading a free beta of a game, then I am not sure I can help you.

Most people who know Paizo are part of the online community of D&D, which is like what? - 3-5% of the total D&D community? Consider the number of accounts here, on Wizbook and at Paizo. Consider the only number of D&D players we have been told (6 millions). 

6000k vs 50k, that's less than 1%. Now, I am sure that not everyone who knows Paizo downloaded the beta, so obviously there are more. But I doubt that number is >10%, so yeah, most people do not know it.

Most of the hardcore gamers who spend way too much time online know Paizo though, and it's amongst those (the hardcore gamers) that there is a schism of whatever you wish to call it. 



> And the far more significant fraction of gamers who have heard of PF than you give credit for really isn't even relevant.  Knowing that PF exists is not a requirement for thinking that 4E is an inferior edition.



I am amazed that you can never enter an argument without having to say that 4e sucks. We know you do not like it. We do not care. Get over yourself.


----------



## malkav666 (Sep 16, 2009)

@Jack99

That is six million folks for ALL versions of D&D, not 6 million 4e players.

Those folks who are playing D&D once a week just like they have for the last 20 years? They are probably playing the same edition they were 20 years ago if they aren't looking on the internet to see whats new, or going into the game stores to buy new products. 

10,000 DDI accounts says a lot about dnd4's popularity. I would even be willing to imply that lots of groups that are serious about it share ddi accounts for the builder. Even if sharing is 6 to 1, that is still only 60k users. (with 50k of them not paying for the service).

I don't know what your specific issue with Pathfinder is. But you cannot just pretend like know one knows what it is, and try and paint that as a fact to me. I go to con's, I run gamedays at game stores and libraries, I help organize gaming for high school clubs, and even boy scout troops. And while what I have seen may be unique to myself. The things I witness are almost the exact opposite of the picture that you and Dannager have painted. 

I see folks in all of these venues talking about other antasy games aside from 4e (and yes Pathfinder is definately among those things being discussed, but certainly not the sole topic of discussion).

Yes I see a 4e community in the real world. But IMO it is but a fraction of the D&D-ish community at large. In fact most of the fantasy games I see being played in public venues are not D&D 4e at all. (Most of what I am seeing in my area are 1e games and Pathfinder games TBH). D&D miniatures is more popular than 4e in several of the places I frequent. (In fact if you look at the Dragoncon pics mark posted, all of the folks at the long tables are in fact playing miniatures, only the round tables are actually playing RPGA games)

Certainly the things I am seeing could be viewed as anecdotal evidence. But other folks are seeing similar things and having similar experiences. There reaches a point when so many folks in so many different places are seeing the same thing that the "anecdotal" mantra I see being offered every time someone says that they experienced a scene where 4e was not the top dog, starts to seem rather pointless.

Sure on the internet the divide is about 50/50 as far as I can tell. I see lots of different folks on lots of different sites having issue with the new system, and the same 20-30 4e fans telling them they are wrong. But I am also seeing a 50/50 divide in the real world with folks that have nothing to do with internet forums/blogs/etc.

It is my opinion that the newest version of D&D not being popular is a common conception among the gaming community at large. Every time the topic is brought up, it is almost always a pretty even split on stances as far as I can tell. It is certainly not a D&D vs Pathfinder split, it is more of a D&D 4e vs all other editions and flavors of D&D split. But the split seems pretty large from what I can tell.

But that is just what I am seeing and the opinions I have formed from the things I have seen personally, out in the real world away from the interwebs. Your own experiences may in fact paint the diametrically opposed picture that you play up. But I am just not seeing that in my neck of the woods, so I will step out from under any other blanket statements that are being made about the runaway popularity of the newest edition of D&D. Because they don't seem to apply in my gaming circles.

love,

malkav


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Umm, I don't think he mentioned anything about which edition they play.
> 
> All he said was that most of the players he knows don't get involved in the "industry" or the edition war thing.  Just that they play whatever D&D they want to play and get on with it.
> 
> I'm not seeing anything which points to any particular edition here.



I was not responding to Imban's post


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

malkav666 said:


> @Jack99
> 
> That is six million folks for ALL versions of D&D, not 6 million 4e players.




I never said 4e had 6 million players. As for the rest, think what you want. I dunno why I even got into this again. I must have been bored. Because I honestly do not care. 

But just for the record. I have no issue with Paizo and Pathfinder. I buy roughly 80% of what they publish. That still doesn't change the fact that I think you are kidding yourself if you think the general D&D public knows who Paizo is and what Pathfinder is.

But hey, think whatever makes you happy. I know I do.


----------



## Imban (Sep 16, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Umm, I don't think he mentioned anything about which edition they play.
> 
> All he said was that most of the players he knows don't get involved in the "industry" or the edition war thing.  Just that they play whatever D&D they want to play and get on with it.
> 
> I'm not seeing anything which points to any particular edition here.




Well, yeah.

I guess it depends on whether you're talking about the schism in terms of the total number of D&D players who are not currently playing 4e (which would be at least 8, probably 10/11 of my 11-person 3e group) or the total number of D&D players who think 4e is a blight upon gaming. (which would be 2, maybe 3/11 of the same group)

Obviously the latter number is a lot smaller, but a lot of people seem to be confusing both numbers as suits their agenda - marking the relatively small number of people who absolutely hate 4th edition as the only people not playing it on one hand, or marking everyone who's playing something else as their comrades in hating 4th edition on the other.



> I was not responding to Imban's post




...are you saying "I have Imban on ignore and Hussar should too" or just stating the obvious, since my post was after yours?


----------



## avin (Sep 16, 2009)

More than 18 different people have played D&D with me in the last 12 months. 

I'm using 18 because I know their interwebs behavior.

- All of them have played 3.5 and like it.
- 17 have experienced 4E.
- Just one never tried 4E and hate it (likes Wizards...)
- Just one who played 4E decided to never play anymore, after a bad luck on 5 rounds where his warforged was out of combat.
- Probably only 2 have no clue about what PF is.
- Just 1 is a DDI subscriber at this moment (there was more before)
- I'm the only regular over Enworld, Paizo, RPGnet and Wotc boards.

They don't care about edition wars (would play any RPG game offered), except for the dude who never tried 4E and bashes it based on what he read on pdfs and the guy who quit after the bad dice but, heck, this dude ALWAYS leaves the games... 

The big majority among us who knows Paizo thinks it has a better image as a company, compared to Wizards.


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

Imban said:


> Well, yeah.
> 
> I guess it depends on whether you're talking about the schism in terms of the total number of D&D players who are not currently playing 4e (which would be at least 8, probably 10/11 of my 11-person 3e group) or the total number of D&D players who think 4e is a blight upon gaming. (which would be 2, maybe 3/11 of the same group)
> 
> ...





Ups. I misunderstood Hussar's post, and thought he thought I was responding to your post - which I thought was before mine... Ups.

EDIT: I never claimed that everyone plays 4e. I am claiming that most D&D players (whatever the edition they are playing) play D&D and do not waste time going to boards and reading about the game. And thus, a good part of them know nothing (or very little) of Paizo and Pathfinder.


----------



## Mallus (Sep 16, 2009)

Schism, schmism. 

I can only speak about my (extremely) local gaming community. Right now, we're playing 4e and M&M2e (for fantasy, supers, and, soon, an low-power contemporary urban fantasy campaign). 

One person doesn't like 4e, one likes it, but misses all the traditional wahoo magic, one seems to like it, but would probably prefer playing AD&D or LBB Traveller, the rest enjoy it. I think it's safe to say, given world enough and time, that any of us would play in a 3.5e or Pathfinder game, but none of us would run one. However, our 4e campaign is on it's 3rd rotating DM, with another player interested in a running an adventure or two (in our rather clever homebrew setting).

Everyone enjoys M&M2e. But that's completely understandable, since it's the best d20 game of the lot. 

That's the state of gaming with the only community I'm interested in.


----------



## Maggan (Sep 16, 2009)

Stalker0 said:


> During Dragon Con gaming events, I got to see the schism 1st hand.




"That's ugly." 

That was my first thought. But then I remembered how it was in Sweden, nigh on 20 years ago.

The dominant producer of roleplaying games in Sweden (Target Games, later famous for Kult and Mutant Chronicles) experienced a backlash. Gamers bought up their games for cheap at con auctions and then made a scene out of burning them outside the premises.

Literally burning the games. In front of a cheering audience.

Yeah, when I remembered that I thought "nowadays the edition wars are pretty lame compared to when I was young". 

/M


----------



## Derren (Sep 16, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> I never said 4e had 6 million players. As for the rest, think what you want. I dunno why I even got into this again. I must have been bored. Because I honestly do not care.
> 
> But just for the record. I have no issue with Paizo and Pathfinder. I buy roughly 80% of what they publish. That still doesn't change the fact that I think you are kidding yourself if you think the general D&D public knows who Paizo is and what Pathfinder is.
> 
> But hey, think whatever makes you happy. I know I do.




You are aware that if you go by Amazon, Pathfinder is outselling D&D everywhere since one month?
The only exception is the UK where WH40K is number 1 followed by 4E and France where the first few spots are taken by Video Game guides. I couldn't check China as I don't understand a word (but in Japan, Pathfinder is 1st)
Sure, its core vs. splatbook, but I would take that as indication that Pathfinder isn't quite as small as you want people to believe.


----------



## pawsplay (Sep 16, 2009)

Mark said:


> This sort of dismissal surprises me.  When I see people post that what happens on messageboards is not representative and what happens at conventions and gamedays is not representative and what happens at gamestores is not representative and then theorize that there are vast numbers of people who there is no way to poll and no way to be sure even exist in any substantial number with a specific viewpoint, I have to be skeptical.  I mean, if you want to believe it, more power to you, but it doesn't even rise to the level of insufficient data.  The fact of the matter is that people on messageboards, at convention and gmedays, and in gamestores are precisely representative of what they play and think.  They just happen to be people who you can actually count and poll.




Some have theorized the existence of thousands of casual gamers who are composed entirely of dark matter.


----------



## pawsplay (Sep 16, 2009)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Anything that I am willing to say on a message board I am willing to say in public.
> 
> Then again, I try not to be overly rude on message boards, so it amounts to the same thing: being rude is rude, no matter where you are being rude.
> 
> The Auld Grump, rudely speaking....




Context is important. Discussion boards are for discussions. Obviously, wandering into the 4e section of this site to dump on 4e would be rude, as would wandering into the PF section to dump on PF. But neither category is immune to discussion.  When someone is gaming, you are interrupting their activity for a discussion. The equivalent online would be going over to play-by-post games or recruitment threads and posting "Eww, X Game system stinks."


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 16, 2009)

Derren said:


> You are aware that if you go by Amazon, Pathfinder is outselling D&D everywhere since one month?




Let's be meticulously precise: the Pathfinder Core book was the best seller for a month or so. I'd be leery of assuming that meant Pathfinder as a whole was outselling D&D as a whole. Maybe yes, maybe no, but let's not assume.

As of this post, the DMG 2 and Revenge of the Giants are both outselling the Pathfinder Core book.

I've seen Pathfinder in one FLGS. Don't recall seeing it in the other. Haven't seen it in my comics stores, which do stock RPGs in a fairly light way. Hm. Does it have Borders/B&N distribution?


----------



## Rechan (Sep 16, 2009)

Odd. A year ago, I was hearing that amazon sales meant nothing. Wonder why that was?


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 16, 2009)

Mark said:


> This sort of dismissal surprises me.




What surprises me is that the premise of the thread was disproved fairly quickly (the OP just didn't know where to look on the schedule for the D&D 4E games, they were under LFR instead of 4E, and there were over 50 of them being played), and yet folks continue to respond to the thread as if the premise were still correct.


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 16, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> What surprises me is that the premise of the thread was disproved fairly quickly (the OP just didn't know where to look on the schedule for the D&D 4E games, they were under LFR instead of 4E, and there were over 50 of them being played), and yet folks continue to respond to the thread as if the premise were still correct.




Heck, it's even hit a couple of other boards at this point. I don't think it's any ill-will; once a thread goes over a page, a lot of people just read the first few posts and then respond. Maybe they read the last page if you're lucky.


----------



## Derren (Sep 16, 2009)

Thanlis said:


> Let's be meticulously precise: the Pathfinder Core book was the best seller for a month or so. I'd be leery of assuming that meant Pathfinder as a whole was outselling D&D as a whole. Maybe yes, maybe no, but let's not assume.
> 
> As of this post, the DMG 2 and Revenge of the Giants are both outselling the Pathfinder Core book.



I just checked and the exact order seems to depend on which category you look as they use different timespans to determine their bestsellers.
Still, it doesn't invalidate my point that Pathfinder is much more well known than what some people think.


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 16, 2009)

Derren said:


> I just checked and the exact order seems to depend on which category you look as they use different timespans to determine their bestsellers.
> Still, it doesn't invalidate my point that Pathfinder is much more well known than what some people think.




I think it's been a wild success. Lots of people playing it at cons, very good sales, etc.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Sep 16, 2009)

Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?

Seriously.


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

Derren said:


> You are aware that if you go by Amazon, Pathfinder is outselling D&D everywhere since one month?



No I wasn't. I must admit I have better things to do than checking how a RPG that I won't be playing does on amazon.

But apparently you did, so tell us Derren, how many time the last month did you check all these places? (US, Japan, UK, France, Germany)

Because you do realize that things get updated hourly (Atm Pathfinder core rules is nr3, after DMG2 and Revenge of the Giants). Of course, the core gift set is still at nr8, more than 1 year after release.

Anyway, while you might be right, you have provided no proof of anything but you having too much spare time on your hands


----------



## avin (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where *Pathfinder or 4E* are mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?




Fixed that for ya


----------



## D'karr (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?
> 
> Seriously.




Can we have just one goddamn thread where 4e is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?

Seriously.


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?
> 
> Seriously.




Seriously yourself.

I never said Pathfinder would be a failure. In fact, I have often said the opposite. Pathfinder will succeed (or rather already has) beyond the wildest dreams of Mona and co. 

Pathfinder can be a huge success and still not be known by most D&D players - as I understand things.

/shrug.


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?
> 
> Seriously.




Pathfinder being a huge success is not mutually exclusive with most gamers having never heard of Pathfinder.

I do think it is safe to say that Pathfinder is a huge success, and that most gamers have never heard of Pathfinder or Paizo.


----------



## MrMyth (Sep 16, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> Branching off of that, the RPGA from my exposure seems, I dunno how best to put this, but... incredibly insular? But that's perhaps less the RPGA and just how it feels like WotC has promoted 4e lately, which as a whole feels distinctly excluding of anything but 4e as a viable style of D&D, be it the 4e exclusivity of the RPGA, the renaming of WotC's own forums as the "4e Forums", the DDI adverts to "play the game the way -we- play the game", and a general feel of 'you're either with us or you're against us'. Just doesn't feel exactly very big-tent and inclusive or different styles of play, different editions, etc.




That's odd. The RPGA is, from all signs, currently doing quite well - and notably has had a very strong focus on bringing in new players and being welcoming to all sorts of gamers. The presence of Game Days, for example, and the current RPGA Campaign (Living Forgotten Realms) having a much greater focus on casual play. Or more specifically, being designed to give DMs and groups much more ability to run things as best fits their own style of play - including more DM leeway to adjust modules, the presence of custom adventures within the RPGA, a rewards program to encourage DMing...

Compare this to Living Greyhawk which, as much as I enjoyed it, often was very insular. The emphasis of the campaign was often on conventions and the hardcore players that would attend them. Which had many strengths - you ended up with a much more tightly woven storyline and a greater focus on building a story for that small group of core players... at the cost of building a story for that small group of core players. 

I was amazed at the difference when I started LFR. New players every week, casual gamers regularly able to show up and join in and even start running games. WotC putting a lot of effort into making things welcoming and easy for people to join in. 

But... I take it your opinions aren't based on any actual experience with the RPGA, so I suspect any insularity involved was not the result of their end of the equation. I'm not saying you _should_ go and seek out the RPGA room at a con and join on in - but if you aren't going to do so, or be willing to have any contact with it at all, you might not be the most reliable source for commenting on the RPGA's current state of affairs.


----------



## Gothmog (Sep 16, 2009)

One of my buddies from my regular gaming group went to Dragon Con, and indeed there were a number of 4e games there, but they were almost entirely RPGA and mostly in their own area.

As far as the rudeness goes, I've seen some of it locally at my FLGS.  Saturday night is open gaming night at the FLGS, and we have several 4e games going that night (some RPGA, some private).  Earlier this summer there was a group of three guys who come by the tables every week and bitch and moan about 4e, preach the superiority of 3e/Pathfinder, heckle the players, and disrupt the game (generally being complete asshats).  After several weeks of this, the staff and owner of the store asked them to leave "if you're going to behave like spoiled infants."  They haven't been back...good riddance.

There is also one private PF game the same night, and these three dudes got thrown out of that game for being jackasses.  Oddly enough, 4e players don't go by that table and heckle.  If anything, they watch quietly, or ask questions about changes from 3e while trying to cause a minimal amount of distraction to the group.  

I think the rudeness that some folks experience comes from a combination of two things: disenfranchisement from the current version of D&D, and immaturity.  I can see why it would be disappointing to no longer be able to play your previous game of choice due to design decisions that make the game unenjoyable (this was the position I was in from 2003-2008 during the reign of 3e).  However, I used the opportunity to explore other systems, and found some awesome other games to play!  There is no reason to put down other games or attack other's opinions regarding a game- that is simply immature and small-minded.  The other factor is immaturity, specifically the need to always be "right" or "vindicated".  Its what I've seen time and time again in this case.  These people try to preach their opinions as fact, and belittle or shout down those who disagree.  There is no reasoning with them, because its become such an emotional issue and they have tied a game so closely to their identity as a person.  Its immaturity and lack of social skills, pure and simple.

While there are some 4e fans who have engaged in this kind of behavior (every example I've seen has been on forums, and usually in form of sniping back at people they have had history/issues with in the edition wars), the majority of troublemakers I've seen (both in person and online) are people who feel like they have been left behind with the transition from 3e to 4e, and are dealing with it poorly.  Hopefully with the release of Pathfinder (which is a good game and an improvement to 3.5, but not to my liking), they will have something to enjoy and engage in, rather than defining themselves as being "anti-4e" and agitators.  We can always hope.


----------



## AllisterH (Sep 16, 2009)

I don't think Shemeska was attacking the current RPGA for its insularity.

I think, as you pointed out MrMyth, the RPGA during the Living Greyhawk years was really about the convention goers and personally it never really interested me.

Nowadays, the RPGA seems a lot more casual friendly as you mention and I don't think a lot of people realize that...

Like anything, the RPGA from when it was created has changed over the years....(there was a great post detailing the changes in how the RPGA dealt with casual vs hardcore and I'd loved to see it again).

It kind of makes sense that LFR takes up all the 4e tables. As mentioned, it is more casual friendly so you don't need those casual D&D game tables that you used to have during earlier Cons when the RPGA was running its various Living Campaigns...


----------



## mudbunny (Sep 16, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> Pathfinder being a huge success is not mutually exclusive with most gamers having never heard of Pathfinder.
> 
> I do think it is safe to say that Pathfinder is a huge success, and that most gamers have never heard of Pathfinder or Paizo.




The difference in sales that are required for 4E to be considered a success and for Pathfinder to be considered a success are, to be honest, orders of magnitude. A value that, for WotC would be an utter failure would probably be a smashing success for Pathfinder.

This is not intended as a slight or slam against Paizo as a company or the PFRPG as a system. It is just a fact that falls out of the respective size of the companies and their expectations.


----------



## Vorput (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?
> 
> Seriously.




This  (minus the taking of the Lord's name in vain).


----------



## Remathilis (Sep 16, 2009)

Gothmog said:


> As far as the rudeness goes, I've seen some of it locally at my FLGS.  Saturday night is open gaming night at the FLGS, and we have several 4e games going that night (some RPGA, some private).  Earlier this summer there was a group of three guys who come by the tables every week and bitch and moan about 4e, preach the superiority of 3e/Pathfinder, heckle the players, and disrupt the game (generally being complete asshats).  After several weeks of this, the staff and owner of the store asked them to leave "if you're going to behave like spoiled infants."  They haven't been back...good riddance.




Sigh. Its asshats like this that paint all dissenting voices as whiny, frothing h4ters who just wish to see WotC fail so that their beloved game will return to print as they remember it by Peter Atkinson/Paizo/Troll Lord/Pramas/The Ghost of Gary Gygax/whoever. 

To borrow a quote heard about recent political discussion in the US: Its not the wisest voices who get the attention, its the shrillest.


----------



## Gothmog (Sep 16, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Sigh. Its asshats like this that paint all dissenting voices as whiny, frothing h4ters who just wish to see WotC fail so that their beloved game will return to print as they remember it by Peter Atkinson/Paizo/Troll Lord/Pramas/The Ghost of Gary Gygax/whoever.
> 
> To borrow a quote heard about recent political discussion in the US: Its not the wisest voices who get the attention, its the shrillest.




Yep, you nailed it.  In no way, shape, or form do I think that all dissenters of 4e, 3e, or any other system are irrational h4ters.  Some people will just find a given game not to their tastes, and thats fine.  If people can debate and articulate their opinions politely and respectfully, then I welcome that discussion.  But there are a number of asshats like I mentioned that really escalate things beyond where they have any business going.  In this case, public humiliation drove them away (which is probably the most effective punishment in this situation), but there is no reason to ever tolerate this kind of behavior.


----------



## Herschel (Sep 16, 2009)

Mark said:


> This sort of dismissal surprises me. When I see people post that what happens on messageboards is not representative and what happens at conventions and gamedays is not representative and what happens at gamestores is not representative and then theorize that there are vast numbers of people who there is no way to poll and no way to be sure even exist in any substantial number with a specific viewpoint, I have to be skeptical. I mean, if you want to believe it, more power to you, but it doesn't even rise to the level of insufficient data. The fact of the matter is that people on messageboards, at convention and gmedays, and in gamestores are precisely representative of what they play and think. They just happen to be people who you can actually count and poll.




Except vocal minorities tend to be the ones most often noticed by others. Look at the receont "Town Hall" political meetings here in the US. Does anyone reasonable really think that EVERYONE who voted for a Republican in the latest election is a slobbering  nitwit?

Getting real data is always the hard part, but the key is not to rely too heavily on the easy data. That's for talk radio, not resoned responses.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?
> 
> Seriously.




And now you've gone and invoked 'em. Lovecraft said something prescient on that issue about calling things up and all, and in this instance the solution is called a report thread button for all sides involved.


----------



## Herschel (Sep 16, 2009)

Imban said:


> Well, yeah.
> 
> I guess it depends on whether you're talking about the schism in terms of the total number of D&D players who are not currently playing 4e (which would be at least 8, probably 10/11 of my 11-person 3e group) or the total number of D&D players who think 4e is a blight upon gaming. (which would be 2, maybe 3/11 of the same group)
> 
> Obviously the latter number is a lot smaller, but a lot of people seem to be confusing both numbers as suits their agenda - marking the relatively small number of people who absolutely hate 4th edition as the only people not playing it on one hand, or marking everyone who's playing something else as their comrades in hating 4th edition on the other.




I also think you are misrepresenting some information. I never really liked 3E, but I have played it because I really liked the people I played it with. That's what D&D is about for me and I would guess many others. 

I happen to like 4E (even with the wonky bits I hated originally) and play that now in both RPGA (which I had never done before, I played the skirmish game in public) and among friends. It is the edition I prefer for many reasons, most of which are based on the people I game with. 

In other words, what I prefer and what I play aren't always one and the same.

Had I not gotten involved in the skirmish game followed by message boards I likely would still be running hybrid 2E games on various weekends which is what (I'm pretty sure) Jack was referring to. If I hazard a guess I'd say I was a typical player and now I'm more "extreme" or whatever term you like.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 16, 2009)

BryonD said:


> That's true.
> No matter how many times you repeat it, it won't change the schism.
> 
> Funny, you praise DDI for evidence of 10,000 subscribers (and I agree, praiseworthy), yet 50,000 unique downloads gets dismissed as something not even heard of by most gamers.



50,000 free, unique downloads is great, but it a) gives us an idea of the maximum initial size of the Pathfinder fanbase, and b) is _wildly_ different from a subscription service that requires people to pay _actual money_ for.

You can't really compare the two in any meaningful way.


> And the far more significant fraction of gamers who have heard of PF than you give credit for really isn't even relevant.  Knowing that PF exists is not a requirement for thinking that 4E is an inferior edition.



No, but I would say it's pretty common for those gamers who frequent game stores, conventions or internet message boards.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 16, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> Pathfinder being a huge success is not mutually exclusive with most gamers having never heard of Pathfinder.
> 
> I do think it is safe to say that Pathfinder is a huge success, and that most gamers have never heard of Pathfinder or Paizo.



This.

I don't think anyone here has said - or even implied - that Pathfinder is a failure.


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 16, 2009)

Sorry, was out of line. Ment it as a tongue in cheek joke, Not as an insult 


*Folks,

This is an excellent example of insulting and dismissive discourse.  We strongly suggest you not engage in discussion in this manner, nor do we encourage that you pick up the gauntlet and reply in kind. 
-Umbran*


----------



## Barcode (Sep 16, 2009)

It wasn't enough that you couldn't play in a public room at a college without "normals" poking their heads in and giving you crap for playing this weird game.  You travel halfway across the country and pay a pantload of money to sit in a convention center with other people who supposedly like the same things you like and play your weird game with them.  Now you have to deal with people specifically coming to where your weird game is being played, and interrupting your weird game to ridicule your preferred flavor of this weird game?

Next Dragon Con, someone should arrange an army of jocks to come through and wedgie this community back into solidarity.  Or at least some perspective.


----------



## RefinedBean (Sep 16, 2009)

Barcode said:


> Next Dragon Con, someone should arrange an army of jocks to come through and wedgie this community back into solidarity.




Actually, I know a few jocks who'd rather sit down, roll up a character, and play.  

You're right about perspective, though.  4E, Pathfinder...whatever.  They're just GAMES, for crying out loud.


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 16, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> I just want to point out this thread is now a bunch of guys in a school yard with pants down going "See mines bigger!"




Not really, but thanks for your meaningless generalization.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 16, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> I just want to point out this thread is now a bunch of guys in a school yard with pants down going "See mines bigger!"



No, I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on at all.

Comments like yours don't help matters, either.


----------



## Umbran (Sep 16, 2009)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Recent events in the political sphere are not, I repeat NOT, suitable analogies for discussion on these boards.    

In general, the quality of language and civility in this thread is going downhill - enough with the asshats and goddamns, folks.  Let's lift the level of the rhetoric from here on, hm?


----------



## malkav666 (Sep 16, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> Pathfinder being a huge success is not mutually exclusive with most gamers having never heard of Pathfinder.
> 
> I do think it is safe to say that Pathfinder is a huge success, and that most gamers have never heard of Pathfinder or Paizo.




And you are basing this "safe guess" on what? Because that statement really does not make any sense to me, and kind of looks like a make believe line of think you are using to try and validate your own opinion.

Because I am seeing the book book ranked in sales on sites like Amazon. I am seeing the company making the game for the last winning awards for their work for the last several years (see the Ennies). I am seeing all of the rpg websites I visit talking about Pathfinder. I am seeing Paizo products displayed prominently in the capstone display that every gamer sees as they come into the store at one of my local FLGS, and them having a book display area that is equal to that of 4e at the other. I am seeing the books at big chain bookstores in my area.

It must be that these gamers that you say safely cannot have heard of it don't use the internet to shop their games, they must not be buying stuff at FLGS or big band book stores. Because I am seeing Paizo at ALL of those outlets. These gamers must not be doing ANY gaming  at public venues either (in fact is this thread not about a gamer roaming around a huge con and seeing games like PFRPG being played, but not 4e?).

 I don't think its very safe to say at all.The jury is still out for me on PFRPG's staying power (time will tell on that one). But I feel that the game is signifigantly popular to the point that most gamers interested in the purchase of fantasy games (ie. those folks that buy new releases from folks making new fanstasy gaming material) and actually buying those games, should have a decent chance of knowing what Pathfinder is.


love,

malkav


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 16, 2009)

The big question for me is if Pathfinder will be able to break past the True20, C&C and such levels of gaming. Sure, on this board, those systems had rabid defenders, and supporters, but I would only very very rarely see a game being offered using those systems. Thus far it has been the same with Pathfinder.

Granted, I do not game everywhere and anywhere so these games might be being played in places I do not go, but not seeing these games played in areas I do go is a big disincentive to buying the game.


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 16, 2009)

malkav666 said:


> And you are basing this "safe guess" on what? Because that statement really does not make any sense to me, and kind of looks like a make believe line of think you are using to try and validate your own opinion.
> 
> Because I am seeing the book book ranked in sales on sites like Amazon. I am seeing the company making the game for the last winning awards for their work for the last several years (see the Ennies). I am seeing all of the rpg websites I visit talking about Pathfinder. I am seeing Paizo products displayed prominently in the capstone display that every gamer sees as they come into the store at one of my local FLGS, and them having a book display area that is equal to that of 4e at the other. I am seeing the books at big chain bookstores in my area.
> 
> ...




Malk, from what I can tell, most gamers don't buy game books, enter game stores, or discuss games on the net.

WOTC revealed that in their survey long ago that a lot of people are still just plugging along with their home brew game that started as 1E.

Another large group are simply players in games, though they never buy any books for those games, or enter a game store, or even even log into an internet forum like this.  That accounts for almost every single person I play with.

I think there is this perception that most gamers buy new games, frequent local game stores, and use the internet to discuss said games.  I really do not think they do.

But more importantly, why do you seem so bothered by my saying that I think most gamers have not heard of Paizo and Pathfinder, given I also said I thought Pathfinder was a huge success? What's with the "make believe line" accusation?


----------



## Dannager (Sep 16, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> I think there is this perception that most gamers buy new games, frequent local game stores, and use the internet to discuss said games.  I really do not think they do.



This.

Most gamers are not enthusiasts.  They play or have played in maybe one game, with one system, and perhaps own the player book for that system.

Again, surround yourself with the hardcore and that's all you're going to see.


----------



## Imban (Sep 16, 2009)

Herschel said:


> I also think you are misrepresenting some information. I never really liked 3E, but I have played it because I really liked the people I played it with. That's what D&D is about for me and I would guess many others.




Uh, what am I misrepresenting? If you're not buying or playing 4e, you... aren't buying or playing 4e. I didn't imply that they *wouldn't* - at least not most of them - but they're still among the many people who would call themselves D&D players but who aren't playing 4th edition or really caring about 4th edition in any way.

Which... is what I said in the first place. Unless you were constantly pressing for a different game or something while you were in the 3e game you never really liked, you were a 3e player.



			
				malkav666 said:
			
		

> It must be that these gamers that you say safely cannot have heard of it don't use the internet to shop their games, they must not be buying stuff at FLGS or big band book stores. Because I am seeing Paizo at ALL of those outlets. These gamers must not be doing ANY gaming at public venues either (in fact is this thread not about a gamer roaming around a huge con and seeing games like PFRPG being played, but not 4e?).




Dude, that's most of my gaming community - doesn't use the internet to shop for games (in fact, doesn't really shop for games at all), doesn't have a FLGS, and generally don't buy RPG books at all. The only reason more than two or three of them have *heard* of Pathfinder is that one of them handed the beta to me one day and said he wanted to use it in my current D&D game.

You really underestimate just how many gamers are just that way because their friends game, and who aren't really throwing money at it, posting on gaming boards, or going to conventions.



Dice4Hire said:


> The big question for me is if Pathfinder will be able to break past the True20, C&C and such levels of gaming.




Pathfinder has a much easier time of things, because I can just toss some of its good ideas into my 3e game. True20 is Something Totally Different.


----------



## Umbran (Sep 16, 2009)

malkav666 said:


> And you are basing this "safe guess" on what? Because that statement really does not make any sense to me, and kind of looks like a make believe line of think you are using to try and validate your own opinion.




Yeah, well, that it doesn't make sense to you in no way suggests intellectual weakness or dishonesty in someone else, okay?

While I don't take it as given data, it does make sense to me.  Here's why:

WotC has released some tidbits of market research information now and again over the past decade.  It suggests that there's something like _3 million_ or more people who play Pen-n-Paper RPGs regularly (like once a month or more).

Take all the folks who go to GenCon, all the folks who are registered users on messageboards and RPG websites, and you've got numbers in the hundreds of thousands.  That is - the people who are seeing conversation about Pathfinder are a smallish fraction of the overall gaming population.

Amazon sales rank?  There's been much discussion of that elsewhere that I'd not want to repeat.  Suffice to say, the "sales rank" does not actually indicate how good the sales are, except in the very short term (like, the course of a week), and in a relative sense.  It can be strongly affected by short bursts of purchases, and does not actually indicate the sales are strong for, say, the year.

And, honestly, having it sit on the shelf at the bookstore or FLGS when I am buying other things hardly means I "know about" the game.  Glancing at the spines does not grant real knowledge.


----------



## BryonD (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannager said:


> 50,000 free, unique downloads is great, but it a) gives us an idea of the maximum initial size of the Pathfinder fanbase, and b) is _wildly_ different from a subscription service that requires people to pay _actual money_ for.
> 
> You can't really compare the two in any meaningful way.



He said "heard of".  I think that standard is an entirely reasonable comparison.


----------



## BryonD (Sep 16, 2009)

Dannager said:


> This.
> 
> Most gamers are not enthusiasts.  They play or have played in maybe one game, with one system, and perhaps own the player book for that system.
> 
> Again, surround yourself with the hardcore and that's all you're going to see.



I completely agree.

Of course, I repeated several times that 4E appeals to "casual" gamers much more than it does to enthusiasts.


----------



## Contrarian (Sep 16, 2009)

Mark said:


> This sort of dismissal surprises me.  When I see people post that what happens on messageboards is not representative and what happens at conventions and gamedays is not representative and what happens at gamestores is not representative and then theorize that there are vast numbers of people who there is no way to poll and no way to be sure even exist in any substantial number with a specific viewpoint, I have to be skeptical.  I mean, if you want to believe it, more power to you, but it doesn't even rise to the level of insufficient data.  The fact of the matter is that people on messageboards, at convention and gmedays, and in gamestores are precisely representative of what they play and think.  They just happen to be people who you can actually count and poll.




He're my ultimate "casual gamer" anecdote/factoid:

It's about 15 years ago. Gen Con is still in Milwaukee. I'm at a seminar that was scheduled to be "the _Gamma World_ design teams gives you GM advice" but turned out to be "the _GAmma World_ design team announces that _Gamma World_ is cancelled *again*. So it turns into a post-mortem/what-might-have-been type of discussion.

One of the TSR editors, explaining how enthusiastic _Gamma World_ players are, mentions that _Gamma World_ actually had the best "second purchase rate" of any TSR line, but overall sales weren't enought to keep the line going. So, of course, somebody has to ask what a "second purchase rate" is. It's TSR's sales-derived guestimate of how many gamers who bought the core product in a game line went out and bought a second product.

_Gamma World_'s "best in the company" second-purchase rate? *Fifty percent*.

Let that sink if for a minute. If 50% was the best number at TSR, that means, for all of its other lines, *including AD&D*, less than half of TSR's "customers" ever bought a second product. There's a huge number of people out there who never bought anything except a _Players Handbook_. Those are casual gamers (which includes drop-outs, admittedly), and I'm pretty sure they don't spend much time at Gen Con, or hanging out on discussion boards. There isn't much to discuss when you only own one rulebook.

(Me, I'm a science guy. If I had a billion dollars, I'd go ahead and commission a random-sample study of Americans to ask what games they play, and settle all these questions about who the casual gamers are, and how big the Generation of Lost Editions is. I don't have a billion dollars, unfortunately.

More realistically, I'd like to have access to sales figures so I could compare accessory sales to core product sales. I'm never going to get those, either, but at least I know the numbers exist _somewhere_.)

Face it, man. We're the hardcore. We represent the _core_ target audience of the hobby (because I assume we're all "second, third, fourth, etc purchase" people), but we're not really like the majority of gamers.


----------



## Wicht (Sep 16, 2009)

Of course, the enthusiasts are also the biggest spenders.  Those guys who are still in the same basement using the same books they used 20 years ago and who don't pay attention to the market, have no practical effect on the market.  One can argue that the rift doesn't matter because its only the real core enthusiast who care.  But you know what?  Its us core enthusiast who determine which games the rest of our gaming friends are going to play.  We're the ones running games, testing rules, writing adventures, etc.  So if the core enthusiasts are split it does matter to the market because those who peel away to other games will take the non-enthusiast with them.  

Not to mention that even if on-line posters, shoppers, enthusiasts are only a small sample of gamers at large, I would not be surprised to find that they are a fairly representative sample of the tastes of the larger population.   That is to say, if I'm marketing a brand and I take a small sample of ten people and try my product out on them,... if all ten hate it, its pretty silly to tell oneself "what do ten people know - there are after all 6 billion other people in the world who probably feel differently."


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 16, 2009)

Wicht said:


> Not to mention that even if on-line posters, shoppers, enthusiasts are only a small sample of gamers at large, I would not be surprised to find that they are a fairly representative sample of the tastes of the larger population.




I would.  The first part of your sentence defines a subgroup behaving drastically differently within the hobby than the majority of that hobby.  It therefore follows that it WOULD be surprising if they were fairly representative of the tastes of the larger population of that hobby.

Particularly on this topic, where I honestly think a large number of D&D players are still playing home brewed variants of what was once 1E.  I do not think your online poster/shopper of 3e or 4e or Pathfinder is in any way representative of a player in a home brew 1E-type game, for example.

Enthusiasts in general tend to vary from casual partakers of anything really.  A chess enthusiast is looking for things that a casual chess player is not.  The casual chess player may well want pretty pieces that can look good when sitting on a shelf, while the enthusiast may be looking for a more efficient timer device.  And enthusiast stamp collector is looking for a rare stamp from 1806 while a casual stamp collector will pick up an extra sheet of star wars stamps when they come out.  An enthusiast comic collector will want a high grade CGC Fantastic Four number 1, while a casual comic collector will want the newest issue of X-Men.  

Casual hobbyists usually have different tastes and buying habits than hobby enthusiasts, for most hobbies.  I do not think D&D is different.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 16, 2009)

Is there *anything* that can be said about PF or 4e that won't get the response "There's no data to back that up" or "that proves nothing"?

Until cold hard numbers are provided about everything gaming related, then everything is subjective, based on opinion and anecdote. Can we move past this?


----------



## Rechan (Sep 16, 2009)

Wicht said:


> Of course, the enthusiasts are also the biggest spenders.  Those guys who are still in the same basement using the same books they used 20 years ago and who don't pay attention to the market, have no practical effect on the market.  One can argue that the rift doesn't matter because its only the real core enthusiast who care.  But you know what?  Its us core enthusiast who determine which games the rest of our gaming friends are going to play.  We're the ones running games, testing rules, writing adventures, etc.  So if the core enthusiasts are split it does matter to the market because those who peel away to other games will take the non-enthusiast with them.
> 
> Not to mention that even if on-line posters, shoppers, enthusiasts are only a small sample of gamers at large, I would not be surprised to find that they are a fairly representative sample of the tastes of the larger population.   That is to say, if I'm marketing a brand and I take a small sample of ten people and try my product out on them,... if all ten hate it, its pretty silly to tell oneself "what do ten people know - there are after all 6 billion other people in the world who probably feel differently."



I would replace your second paragraph with this:

Regardless of what the general population of gamers think, they that speak the loudest are the ones that are heard. IF the majority are so casual that they're not giving positive feedback, then the only feedback that is received is the negative.


----------



## cangrejoide (Sep 16, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Can we just have one goddamn thread where Pathfinder is mentioned and a small group doesn't rush forward to assure us all that it's a big failure that most gamers will never hear about?
> 
> Seriously.




You do realize this thread was started by someone stating that 4E was a failure because there were no games for it at Dragoncon?


And seriously guys, its been more than a year..can we let this go?

Everyone plays whatever they want, doesnt matter if its 4E, PF or Fatal.


----------



## gribble (Sep 16, 2009)

Another data point, which seems to marry well with most of the others:

Of the 9 local players that I game regularly with (including myself, and not counting my players which only play SW Saga and not D&D):
One has played about half a dozen sessions of 4e, disliked it intensely and prefers not to play it.
One prefers 4e and refuses to play 3e (then again, he's always been a "latest version of D&D only for me" kind of guy).
One has a strong preference for 3e/PF, but will play 4e.
The other 6 of us slightly prefer 3e/PF (or another system entirely) or 4e in an even split, but are happy to play whatever is on offer.

Of that group, there are probably 3 of us that I'd consider to be fairly active members of the online community. Curiously enough, all of us fall into the "slight preference but will play anything" category. As far as I know, I'm the only DDI subscriber.


----------



## malraux (Sep 17, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Everyone plays whatever they want, doesnt matter if its Fatal.




No, Fatal is decidedly badwrongfun.


----------



## Dragonblade (Sep 17, 2009)

Never heard of Dragon Con, but I went to PAX which probably had some 70,000+ attendees and probably exceeds Gen Con in terms of geek attendance and the only RPG gaming going on that I saw was 4e.

Well, I take that back. I did see 4 guys playing Burning Wheel with the creator in one of the side game rooms. But that was the only non-WotC RPG I saw in my entire time there.

The WotC Dungeon Master seminar at PAX had something crazy like 500 attendees and was packed. The PAX staff had to turn people away at the door.

Outside of the hardcore tabletop gaming subculture, very few people know anything about Pathfinder (or EN World for that matter). 4e D&D is clearly king. And I don't mean that to disparage Pathfinder which I have nothing against.


----------



## malkav666 (Sep 17, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> Malk, from what I can tell, most gamers don't buy game books, enter game stores, or discuss games on the net.
> 
> WOTC revealed that in their survey long ago that a lot of people are still just plugging along with their home brew game that started as 1E.
> 
> ...




That is an interesting perspective. Lets say for the sake of furthering the discussion that it is in fact true.

Those gamers while definitely a part of the gaming community, don't seem to be a part of the gaming market. When I say gaming market I mean those that are actually spending money in this hobby. I think those are more of the folks I was talking about, and you were talking about those playing but not spending. The end result I think had us talking past one another instead of to one another.

So let me restate myself. I feel that the majority of gamers in the active market (those buying games, from whatever venue) are aware of Pathfinder, as well as 4e.

I feel that those staying out of the market and sticking to their 1ed game would probably know as much about 4e as they do Pathfinder. This is where I took slight with your statement. As it seems that if those gamers are not participating in this generation of games, then the statement they don't know about pathfinder would be kind of moot in a conversation about a schism between players of the newish games. As they would not know much about any of the games in the schism (They themselves having branched off a long time ago).

But if we are talking about the active market section of gamers (once again those buying new games), do you still feel that the majority of those gamers are oblivious to the presence of Pathfinder? If so, please explain.

love,

malkav


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 17, 2009)

Ok guys my last post was meant as a joke, because well frankly that's how the thread looked
The OP made an observation and it has turned into  "I have number that say my game sales more...No your number are useless , but my number are better so my game is better...No I looked up on site a that's shows your game is not selling, No site A clearly shows my game selling more"


So yes, it was tackless and I should have thought about it but it amused me as that was the image that popped in my head. Two groups of puffed up macho kids seeing hows was bigger and better.

So sorry if any one was offended It was not meant as an insult or an attack, But really guys look over the posts and there is a lot of chest thumping "mines better" going on. Can't we talk about something without both sides firing shots?


----------



## Dannager (Sep 17, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> Ok guys my last post was meant as a joke, because well frankly that's how the thread looked
> The OP made an observation and it has turned into  "I have number that say my game sales more...No your number are useless , but my number are better so my game is better...No I looked up on site a that's shows your game is not selling, No site A clearly shows my game selling more"



Again, this isn't actually what's being said.

It's not so much that what you said was tactless, but rather that it didn't do a good job of describing the state of the conversation.

Of course, given that the premise of the OP has been shown to be categorically incorrect (though not through any fault of the OP's), this thread's topic has kind of been doing its own thing.


----------



## Doom (Sep 17, 2009)

The schism will always be there, but it's clear it's not as bad as at origins last year, where 4.0 didn't have a majority.


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 17, 2009)

Dannager said:


> Again, this isn't actually what's being said.
> 
> It's not so much that what you said was tactless, but rather that it didn't do a good job of describing the state of the conversation.
> 
> .





Maybe I should have made it longer and that was my intent to go back and edit it longer but RL pulled me away from the pc. But yeah thats how I saw it. one one side ya had pathfinder is unknown and number mean nothing, on the other side ya had well it's on amazion and 4e is not on top.. then the same ol number mean nothing (unless it supports my system,} and so on

So yeah it was back to the very same thing it always is.

The OP could not find 4e games that's a fact, ya can agree or disagree but it really does not change the fact hat for him there was zero 4e presence at the con. So he stated that. I don't seem to recall him screaming 4e failed or anything yet the war must carry on it seems. It saws truth to the OP words that the very thought of an isult to eaither side just makes the war flare up, we see insults and little jabs and attacks where there may not have been any.

This is both sides, the divide is there, it's heated and even after more then a year it simmers like a gases just waiting for that one little spark to set it off. This more then anything speaks volumes to me


----------



## Dannager (Sep 17, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> The OP could not find 4e games that's a fact, ya can agree or disagree but it really does not change the fact hat for him there was zero 4e presence at the con. So he stated that. I don't seem to recall him screaming 4e failed or anything yet the war must carry on it seems. It saws truth to the OP words that the very thought of an isult to eaither side just makes the war flare up, we see insults and little jabs and attacks where there may not have been any.



No.  That's ridiculous.

The OP used the lack of 4th Edition presence to argue that the schism was pervasive.  Except *there was no lack of 4th Edition presence*.  He looked under the wrong heading for the events in question, and it ruined his premise.  No, he didn't say 4th Edition failed.  He _did_ say that his experience must mean that the schism is huge and wide-reaching.  Except his experience _doesn't_ say anything but that he looked for something in the wrong place.

I mean, if I had gone to PAX and managed to miss all the Microsoft products because I was looking for the "360" booth rather than the "Microsoft" booth, it doesn't suddenly make the claim "There's a huge schism in the video game community!" any more valid.


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 17, 2009)

Not gonna get combative and this will be my last reply in this thread on this topic anyhow. The OP's experience  did not change. There was no 4e for him, no non-RPGA 4e going on he could find so the fact it was under another name does nothing to change the impression he got. The divide is large and  wide , if it's even 30% or so that's a big number of the former D&D pie. A number that really does not hurt wotc much but makes a big split in the D&D community.  If people do not see that then they simply wish not to see it.

Edit. Not trying to fight with ya man. I often come off as harsher then I intend so please don't take it as targeting you or anything. I can happily agree to disagree


----------



## Dannager (Sep 17, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> Not gonna get combative and this will be my last reply in this thread on this topic anyhow. The OP's experience  did not change. There was no 4e for him, no non-RPGA 4e going on he could find so the fact it was under another name does nothing to change the impression he got.



"I got the false impression that there is a wide-reaching schism."

"There is a wide-reaching schism."

Tell me you can see the difference between the two above statements.


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 17, 2009)

It's not false it's there and it's ugly. And with that I am done


----------



## Hussar (Sep 17, 2009)

Wicht said:


> Of course, the enthusiasts are also the biggest spenders.  Those guys who are still in the same basement using the same books they used 20 years ago and who don't pay attention to the market, have no practical effect on the market.  One can argue that the rift doesn't matter because its only the real core enthusiast who care.  But you know what?  Its us core enthusiast who determine which games the rest of our gaming friends are going to play.  We're the ones running games, testing rules, writing adventures, etc.  So if the core enthusiasts are split it does matter to the market because those who peel away to other games will take the non-enthusiast with them.
> 
> Not to mention that even if on-line posters, shoppers, enthusiasts are only a small sample of gamers at large, I would not be surprised to find that they are a fairly representative sample of the tastes of the larger population.   That is to say, if I'm marketing a brand and I take a small sample of ten people and try my product out on them,... if all ten hate it, its pretty silly to tell oneself "what do ten people know - there are after all 6 billion other people in the world who probably feel differently."




There's a bit to remember in here too - age.  WOTC's market research showed that after about 35, buying goes down.  Really down.  To the point that they actually stopped looking at anyone over the age of 35 when they started doing market research for 3e.

Look at the age on this board.  There's a whole lot of us in the 30+ crowd.  It's been shown that at this age, we stop buying.  

So, why would you design a game for me?  

We're quite possibly not terribly representative because we're just outright older on average than most gamers.  I know the last Paizo poll I saw for Dragon pegged Dragon readership average age at early 20's.  The average age on this board is about ten years older than that.

Which is more representative of gamers?  I have no idea.


----------



## Votan (Sep 17, 2009)

Hussar said:


> There's a bit to remember in here too - age.  WOTC's market research showed that after about 35, buying goes down.  Really down.  To the point that they actually stopped looking at anyone over the age of 35 when they started doing market research for 3e.
> 
> Look at the age on this board.  There's a whole lot of us in the 30+ crowd.  It's been shown that at this age, we stop buying.
> 
> ...




Interesting.  In my gaming group, 3 of us are over 35 (the other three are late 20's).  One of them plays 4E (and has bought several books) and the other feels that he dislikes the WotC treadmill.  

Myself, I have bought the 4E PHB I&II, MM, DMG, the 3 power splat books, one FR book and open grave.  I also bought the Pathfinder core rules and the Golarion campaign setting. So I guess I voted for both systems.  

Both have features that I really like.  I think Pathfinder was (to my great surprise) well done.  I like a lot of the 4E mechnanics although it's no longer like the AD&D of my youth.  I still have 1st and 2nd edition with a strong bias to trying them again someday.  

But all of the games under discussion seem to be really good systems to me.  Not to everyone's taste in all cases but there is a reason that they have partisans.  Unlike other systems that I have bought and have languished in (deserved) obsurcity.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 17, 2009)

Re: the OP:

Nobody in my extended circle of gamers has adopted 4Ed.  The only exemplar I've seen of the RW schism occurred shortly after 4Ed's release, when the clerk at one of my FLGS's chided me on my perceptions of the game.  I held my ground, and it didn't really bother me much.  I've known the guy for years- we're not buddies, but he's a kidder by nature (though serious in this case) and my skin is pretty thick.

I'm not sure how other gamers might have taken it, though.

Re: gamers purchasing habits by age

I'm not sure how WotC's stats should be taken.

Personally, I'm 42 and I'm a Mr. Library...and over several systems (my collection is at 65+, _down_ from 100+).  The other gamers in my group are all over 35.  Of those, most only buy D&D stuff.

The thing is, most of them have responsibilities- wife, kids, car, mortgage, medical bills- that most 20somethings don't have.

HOWEVER...

There is another statistical force at work here.

RPGs were invented by Boomers, but it was Gen X that took up the mantle of the games and made the hobby huge.  Part of that is because of the money we're willing to throw at entertainment (we save a smaller % of our income than Boomers, and a higher percentage of our purchases are for entertainment), part of that is because we were introduced to the game as kids and young teens.  RPGs grabbed our imaginations while we were still expanding our horizons.

Gen Y, OTOH, is like a mutant combination of the Boomers and Gen X.  They, like Gen X, are coming into the hobby as youths.

Like the Boomers, though, Gen Y is Legion- already nearly as numerous as the Boomers, they already control an amount of wealth equal to Gen X..._and they don't even have all of their members in the workforce yet._

Plus, if you adjust for inflation, you'd probably find that hardcover RPG books have fallen in price from the 1970s to today.  A 1Ed PHB was $12-19, depending upon where and when you bought it (I just looked at the price tags on a couple).  My 4Ed book has a cover price of about $40.  But 31 years have passed.

I'm not going to look for my financial calculator at this time of night, but by way of comparison, the price of a gallon of gas has risen from 57¢ to $2.39 (or more) in the same time.

IOW, WotC's numbers could just be an artifact of the fact that there are more Gen Ys than Gen Xs, and the hobby is cheaper for them than for us.

Now, that still means that there are excellent reasons for them to target the 20somethings- "Gamers, Mr. Rico! Zillions of them!"- but their stats may not be telling them _why_ with any accuracy.


----------



## ronnieramone (Sep 17, 2009)

*schism and age 35*

I think the schism has more to do with the similarities that 4e has with WoW, and the fact that most younger gamers experienced WoW first, as opposed to the other way around for us older folks.  Speaking as a rare individual who hardly ever plays video games at all (I'm not counting Solitaire), I can't say that I'm happy with the new edition, particularly its breakdown of combat into chapters that resemble levels in a video game, complete with "boss" monsters.  Sure, there have always been arch-villains in D&D, but were they ever really just "boss monsters" to kill and loot for treasure?  I remember playing in Ravenloft and knowing that I would never really defeat the villain for good, but I could maybe foil his or her plans to a degree.  We always had enemies in town that thwarted us, but we couldn't raise a sword against them without the law siding with them against us.  Also, the concept of the wizard as little more than an energy blaster with every spell the same but for the type of energy it uses is sort of a video game staple.  Sometimes taking out loopholes (like summoning a mount twenty feet above your opponent's head and watching them get squashed as it falls on them) also takes a little bit of the charm from the game as well.  It starts to feel like the villains are all the same: this is a minion goblin, this is an elite goblin, this is a boss goblin... whatever, we're sick of frickin' goblins!  Does anything else live in this cave?  I'm getting way off-topic here...

If the younger generation grew up on video games, why not give them a pen and paper RPG that builds on what they already know from video games, complete with a monthly membership?  WotC made the right call, for their business and their desired target audience.  Do the younger players buy more books?  Certainly, if we're talking about a new edition that requires a lot of books to play effectively and still have any decent amount of options.  They are also more likely to succumb to a monthly membership fee than those of us more used to just picking up Dragon magazine a couple times a year when it has something we can use in our game.  WotC knew that many of us older players wouldn't bother with the D&D Insider, and we would have too much invested in our existing 3e libraries to abandon them altogether for new books.  So they deliberately went after a completely different audience, and they found it.  I think they knew exactly what they were doing, and yes, they abandoned the older players.  That's business.  MTV doesn't want you anymore, go watch VH1.

Now, I think the Pathfinder game will tell the real story of which age group buys more books.  Will the Pathfinder Bestiary outsell the next 4e monster book?  Maybe, maybe not, but I am damn glad somebody remembered that older gamers still want and are willing to buy new books.

----------------------------------

"I don't understand video games these days.  two hundred buttons?  and all this online play!  When it comes to World of Warcraft, I'll just have to pass.  But give me two flappers and one ball bearing and I'll kick your ass!"
- Gerbils 2.0, formerly Jenn and the Gerbils


----------



## cangrejoide (Sep 17, 2009)

ronnieramone said:


> If the younger generation grew up on video games, why not give them a pen and paper RPG that builds on what they already know from video games, complete with a monthly membership?  WotC made the right call, for their business and their desired target audience.  Do the younger players buy more books?  Certainly, if we're talking about a new edition that requires a lot of books to play effectively and still have any decent amount of options.  They are also more likely to succumb to a monthly membership fee than those of us more used to just picking up Dragon magazine a couple times a year when it has something we can use in our game.  WotC knew that many of us older players wouldn't bother with the D&D Insider, and we would have too much invested in our existing 3e libraries to abandon them altogether for new books.  So they deliberately went after a completely different audience, and they found it.  I think they knew exactly what they were doing, and yes, they abandoned the older players.  That's business.  MTV doesn't want you anymore, go watch VH1.
> 
> Now, I think the Pathfinder game will tell the real story of which age group buys more books.  Will the Pathfinder Bestiary outsell the next 4e monster book?  Maybe, maybe not, but I am damn glad somebody remembered that older gamers still want and are willing to buy new books.




Anecdotal data is anecdotal data.

WOTC didnt abandon you anymore than they abandoned the people of 1st edition when 2nd came out or 2nd when 3E came out. 

And really 4E=Wow?. 

Really?

IMHO: If anything, 4E caters to the older crowd, I for example no longer have 3 hours to design NPCs/Encounters. The new way of 4E makes me do this in 10 mins tops(have done the night's adventure in 30 mins) and with the extra stuff from DDI this easeness of play extends to the players themselves. I DM a table of 6 people on avg, and the youngest one there is 36. All of them have sworn off any 3E incarnation, with some citing that 4E reminds them more of when we used to play 1st edition way back then.

So you see, everygroup's experience is totally subjective. Either 4E/pathfinder fails or wins, doesnt matter. Just play what you like and let other be.

live and let live.



> Now, I think the Pathfinder game will tell the real story of which age group buys more books.  Will the Pathfinder Bestiary outsell the next 4e monster book?  Maybe, maybe not, but I am damn glad somebody remembered that older gamers still want and are willing to buy new books.




If Pathfinder could sell the same amount of books the lowest selling book from wotc did, they would have been ultra successful. Can you not undertsand the different in magnitudes between both companies sales?

Pathfinder is a success because they found their niche in the market. As long as they can mantain that niche they can last years, look at Palladium they been in business 20+ years. Paizo will be the Palladium of 3E.


----------



## corncob (Sep 17, 2009)

New Rule:  No one can use the phrase 'younger generation' until they have grandchildren.  Calling people out on their age is silly when you can count the difference on your hands.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 17, 2009)

Well, I always knew I was a rebel. 

I am 40 and I have bought a lot of books in the last 5 years, including 8 4E books, and maybe another 7 or so from 3.5E. It is looking like I'm not buying many more, though. 

I also use the younger generation as I see fit.  There is a younger generation, and I am not in it.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 17, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> If Pathfinder could sell the same amount of books the lowest selling book from wotc did, they would have been ultra successful. Can you not undertsand the different in magnitudes between both companies sales?
> 
> Pathfinder is a success because they found their niche in the market. As long as they can mantain that niche they can last years, look at Palladium they been in business 20+ years. Paizo will be the Palladium of 3E.




I have to admit Pathfinder has found a nice niche in the market, the 3.5 market. Now if they had just not gone and changed 3.5 so much, I would be a lot happier. I'm about to leave 4E for modified 3.5, but I do not see myself going for Pathfinder. And now I cannot really even use Paizo's adventures either, which I enjoyed a lot a few years ago.

It is rather disappointing. 

And please do not say I can just convert the modules, I can do that with any gaming system , just yoink the story and make up the encounters on my own. I don't see Pathfinder modules to be a lot easier to convert.


----------



## Mark (Sep 17, 2009)

Contrarian said:


> Face it, man. We're the hardcore. We represent the _core_ target audience of the hobby (because I assume we're all "second, third, fourth, etc purchase" people), but we're not really like the majority of gamers.





So you're saying that if anyone is to be dismissed it should be the majority since, once the core rules are out, mostly the messageboard-using, convention-going, gamestore-frequenting folks are the ones doing most of the buying?  So, if your somewhat dated info is on track, the people who ignore the messageboard-using, convention-going, gamestore-frequenting folks are actually dismissing the groups that are primarily the majority of beyond-core purchasers?  It's an interesting premise and I hadn't look at it from that angle.


----------



## Wicht (Sep 17, 2009)

I wonder about this claim that 35+ gamers stop buying.  I turned 36 this year and I have spent more on gaming this year and last than I have the years before.  For one thing Paizo really sold me on their products and I've been buying and subscribing to their stuff consistantly.  I've encouraged gaming in all 4 of my children and even this year took the whole family to Origins where we spent even more money on game books and dice.  But besides that, older players (I would think) would tend to have more money - even if they also have more expenses.    I won't argue that WotC didn't do the study but if it was my business I would be looking at ways to market to us older players, not ways to write us off.  Buts its not my business.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 17, 2009)

A point of note: I kinda get the impression this is happening.

"WotC's market research says that the average 35+ gamer doesn't buy books. As age increases, book buying goes down."
"WELL I DON'T." (Subtext: Therefore, it must not be true!*)

Findings in research *deals with averages*. They take the average of various groups and compare them. Averages are not individual differences. The issue is that there are just more 35+ with fewer new books than those that have a library of new books. It doesn't surprise me that the people _here_ have the multitude of books.

*I'm not saying anyone has SAID overtly "WotC's data is wrong". But a reader can get the impression that the data is wrong from a multitude of posters saying that they don't qualify.


----------



## Wicht (Sep 17, 2009)

Rechan said:


> *I'm not saying anyone has SAID overtly "WotC's data is wrong". But a reader can get the impression that the data is wrong from a multitude of posters saying that they don't qualify.




I think that I was trying to say that if WotC decides that 35+ gamers don't bvuy and therefore stop marketing to them, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.  I'm also saying that when one does such a study and gets such results, if it was my company, the question I would ask would not be, "How can we better market to the younger crowd that is already buying more than the older crowd."  I would ask myself how I could better serve the older crowd which I would calculate to have more money to spend.


----------



## Abciximab (Sep 17, 2009)

Wicht said:


> I wonder about this claim that 35+ gamers stop buying.  I turned 36 this year and I have spent more on gaming this year and last than I have the years before.  For one thing Paizo really sold me on their products and I've been buying and subscribing to their stuff consistantly.  I've encouraged gaming in all 4 of my children and even this year took the whole family to Origins where we spent even more money on game books and dice.  But besides that, older players (I would think) would tend to have more money - even if they also have more expenses.    I won't argue that WotC didn't do the study but if it was my business I would be looking at ways to market to us older players, not ways to write us off.  Buts its not my business.




I wonder as well. I'm 40 and I've spent more on my gaming habit in the last 5 years than I had in my all previous years. (I've been gaming since I was about 10-11) The biggest reason is, I've got more money to spend now than I did in my earlier years. (The lack of game stores and no internet probably helped contribute a little, but really I didn't have as much disposable income I do now.) I've bought 4th ed. & Pathfinder stuff.

Now if I could just have the same amount of time for gaming that I used to...

Now that I think about it, maybe a 35+ is just less likely to take the time to answer a survey


----------



## Rechan (Sep 17, 2009)

Wicht said:


> I would ask myself how I could better serve the older crowd which I would calculate to have more money to spend.



The reason that 35+ do not buy books might have nothing to do with the books themselves, but instead might be that they don't have the money to spend, due to having more obligations. 

Children, mortgages, health bills, etc etc. In such a situation, gaming books might be seen as decreasingly unimportant commodity.

Also there is the question of: "If we market/put content in the books to appeal to OLD gamers, will it turn off the YOUNGER gamers who buy way more of our books than the old gamers?" The company doesn't want to threaten the demographic that is giving them more money, and if appealing to Older gamers would do that, take a guess which they're going to do.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Sep 17, 2009)

Lord Xtheth said:
			
		

> The Edition War (tm) even exists between myself and my best friend. He and I don't even play together at all any more.




Man, that is perhaps the saddest thing I have heard come out of this. 

I'd be much more willing to abandon a given edition than to abandon gaming with friends.


----------



## Imban (Sep 17, 2009)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I'd be much more willing to abandon a given edition than to abandon gaming with friends.




Sadly, I've always ended up having to abandon gaming with people when this happened - back when I was first into roleplaying, before I quit for about 4 years, my group went on one of those "renounce AD&D, play WoD, we're roleplayers-not-rollplayers" benders and I stopped wanting to play with them ever.

And well, the pre-release information of 4e apparently caused two of the people in my community to become so frustrated with 3e that they immediately declared, before 4e was even released, that they would never play 3e again. One of them was in my 3e game at the time and made good on such by immediately walking out.


----------



## Drkfathr1 (Sep 17, 2009)

Rechan said:


> The reason that 35+ do not buy books might have nothing to do with the books themselves, but instead might be that they don't have the money to spend, due to having more obligations.
> 
> Children, mortgages, health bills, etc etc. In such a situation, gaming books might be seen as decreasingly unimportant commodity.
> 
> Also there is the question of: "If we market/put content in the books to appeal to OLD gamers, will it turn off the YOUNGER gamers who buy way more of our books than the old gamers?" The company doesn't want to threaten the demographic that is giving them more money, and if appealing to Older gamers would do that, take a guess which they're going to do.




Methinks they should work on trying to find a way to support BOTH demographics. 

Step 1: Target and capture younger audience
Step 2: Target and maintain current older audience
Step 3: Profit.


----------



## La Bete (Sep 17, 2009)

Imban said:


> my group went on one of those "renounce AD&D, play WoD, we're roleplayers-not-rollplayers" benders and I stopped wanting to play with them ever.




This is one of the reason why whenever "roll-playing" is used against D&D, it really gets my goat - didn't we get this when Vampire showed up, and we were shown what "true roleplaying" was?


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 17, 2009)

La Bete said:


> This is one of the reason why whenever "roll-playing" is used against D&D, it really gets my goat - didn't we get this when Vampire showed up, and we were shown what "true roleplaying" was?



But did we learn from it? Apparantly not, we're still playing D&D.


----------



## The_Gneech (Sep 17, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> You do realize this thread was started by someone stating that 4E was a failure because there were no games for it at Dragoncon?




Um, no, he said that "the edition war" was still going on, not that 4E was a failure. The fact that this thread is so all over the map suggests that he is probably right, whether or not he looked under the right heading for 4E games at Dragon*Con.

As I mentioned earlier, I went there specifically looking for some "non-campaign" 4E to play and couldn't find it, whereas there was plenty of 1e and 3.x/d20 stuff going on. I think the belief that there's still plenty of acrimony about editions is a perfectly sound conclusion to draw from this state of affairs. In the days when "campaign" gaming was all 3.5, that didn't stop there from being plenty of 3.5 stuff happening in the "non-campaign" arena as well.

-The Gneech


----------



## AllisterH (Sep 17, 2009)

The_Gneech said:


> As I mentioned earlier, I went there specifically looking for some "non-campaign" 4E to play and couldn't find it, whereas there was plenty of 1e and 3.x/d20 stuff going on. I think the belief that there's still plenty of acrimony about editions is a perfectly sound conclusion to draw from this state of affairs. In the days when "campaign" gaming was all 3.5, that didn't stop there from being plenty of 3.5 stuff happening in the "non-campaign" arena as well.
> 
> -The Gneech




Ah, but just as importantly, the RPGA has changed.

The RPGA from my perceptions seems more casual friendly, thus, the type of gamer who might've been frustrated with the more "hardcore" LG campaign might be more willing to try LFR in 4e.


----------



## The_Gneech (Sep 17, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Ah, but just as importantly, the RPGA has changed.
> 
> The RPGA from my perceptions seems more casual friendly, thus, the type of gamer who might've been frustrated with the more "hardcore" LG campaign might be more willing to try LFR in 4e.




That's as may be ... but this thread is the first place I've heard such. I'll certainly look into it. 

-The Gneech


----------



## Thanlis (Sep 17, 2009)

The_Gneech said:


> That's as may be ... but this thread is the first place I've heard such. I'll certainly look into it.




There's a nice long thread on Living Forgotten Realms here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/264167-so-what-thoughts-rpga.html

May or may not be your cup of tea, but that ought to give you enough info to make an educated guess as to whether or not you'd enjoy it.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 17, 2009)

ronnieramone said:


> I think the schism has more to do with the similarities that 4e has with WoW, and the fact that most younger gamers experienced WoW first, as opposed to the other way around for us older folks.  Speaking as a rare individual who hardly ever plays video games at all (I'm not counting Solitaire), I can't say that I'm happy with the new edition, particularly its breakdown of combat into chapters that resemble levels in a video game, complete with "boss" monsters.  Sure, there have always been arch-villains in D&D, but were they ever really just "boss monsters" to kill and loot for treasure?  I remember playing in Ravenloft and knowing that I would never really defeat the villain for good, but I could maybe foil his or her plans to a degree.  We always had enemies in town that thwarted us, but we couldn't raise a sword against them without the law siding with them against us.  Also, the concept of the wizard as little more than an energy blaster with every spell the same but for the type of energy it uses is sort of a video game staple.  Sometimes taking out loopholes (like summoning a mount twenty feet above your opponent's head and watching them get squashed as it falls on them) also takes a little bit of the charm from the game as well.  It starts to feel like the villains are all the same: this is a minion goblin, this is an elite goblin, this is a boss goblin... whatever, we're sick of frickin' goblins!  Does anything else live in this cave?  I'm getting way off-topic here...



The best part is that half of the above doesn't come anywhere _near_ accurately describing 4th Edition.

In fact, some of the things about previous editions are incorrect, too!  Summoning a mount (or any other summon) in midair was not a loophole in 3.5, it was _against the rules_.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 17, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Ah, but just as importantly, the RPGA has changed.
> 
> The RPGA from my perceptions seems more casual friendly, thus, the type of gamer who might've been frustrated with the more "hardcore" LG campaign might be more willing to try LFR in 4e.



Yeah, the tone of the 4e RPGA is radically different from the old RPGA.  I know a lot of people were frustrated with the restrictions and requirements placed on previous RPGA play, and those are largely gone, now.  Beyond really quirky one-shots, I can see little reason not to play in RPGA games at cons.  They offer about as solid an experience as you can expect in convention play.


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 17, 2009)

Dannager said:


> The best part is that half of the above doesn't come anywhere _near_ accurately describing 4th Edition.





See this is where the misconception is. 4E does indeed look like that. Upon first look, maybe a fast read though it screams wow. Now does it play anything like wow, well no of corse not but it look a lot like wow, it seems to anyhow. And that is what drawls some folks in

Now once ya get into the game it's nothing alike but You don't want to know how many wow players and nonplayers that I know {or folks I  have seen in the bookstore) without me saying anything and folks that DO NOT come to the boards upon seeing the 4e books go "Man this looks like wow!" Now once they read it they may change their minds, and I would say it plays nothing like it...being a pen and paper game and all but thats the first impression it does bring to alot of people and really I think it was the intent (I mean really the new tifling art looks an awelot like a wow race who's name I will mangle}


----------



## Herschel (Sep 17, 2009)

It boils down to this:

There are three demographics WotC needs to market the game to:
1. New gamers
2. Existing gamers.
3. Former gamers.
(gamers as in purchasing gamers)

New gamers want the "bright & shiny"

Existing gamers may or may not clutch to the game/edition they are playing.

Former gamers are people with experience but aren't currently playing (in this case) 3E.

For new gamers, letting them know the game exists and getting them to try it is the thing, regardless of edition.

Existing gamers generally only buy so much, then there's the law of diminishing returns (or repeated material)

Former gamers need to be lured to the new edition in order to open their wallets again. 

It looks nice and simple. Too bad the lines are actually really blurry between them. Former gamers may become existing gamers (like me) or existing gamers may become former gamers. The only unique group is new gamers. Once they're in the cycle it's easier to keep them/get them back than if they don't know the game in the first place.


----------



## The_Gneech (Sep 17, 2009)

Actually, to me that points to the brilliance of the Goodman Games DCC line -- "You can have your old D&D experience with the new shiny rules!" allows for the best of both worlds.

-The Gneech


----------



## billd91 (Sep 17, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> See this is where the misconception is. 4E does indeed look like that. Upon first look, maybe a fast read though it screams wow. Now does it play anything like wow, well no of corse not but it look a lot like wow, it seems to anyhow. And that is what drawls some folks in




See, for me, it started off screaming City of Heroes, not WoW. Still does and I've been playing on alternate Thursdays for some time now.


----------



## PoeticJustice (Sep 17, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> See this is where the misconception is. 4E does indeed look like that. Upon first look, maybe a fast read though it screams wow. Now does it play anything like wow, well no of corse not but it look a lot like wow, it seems to anyhow. And that is what drawls some folks in




Dude, if you reduce any edition of D&D to casual terms, (you assume the role of a character you create and take it through a fantasy world) anyone with even a passing knowledge of WoW will think the two are similar. 

Comparing 4th edition and 4th edition alone to WoW isn't any more reasonable than comparing D&D in general to witchcraft. They're both so ignorant that no attention need be paid to either.

I'm not saying that 4E is perfect, but people who want to criticize it ought to debate the merits of the system itself rather than simply comparing it to WoW and letting that stand as their argument.


----------



## Hunter In Darkness (Sep 17, 2009)

It's not a criticism or anything, but man I have heard that said to much to just wave it off as bashing. The over all look of the book tends to remind folks of wow, and the powers and such. I am not saying it plays like wow or that they are right but that is what they jump to.

Saying it's not like wow all day long does nothing to make folks think of it as like a MMO upon first look. I am not bashing the game but people get the impression they get. Saying they are wrong, ignorant or bashers does nothing to change that first impression

I know people that seem to enjoy the game so it's not an attack on it. Stand in a bookstore near the games a while, watch teenages with no pen and paper knowledge look though the books. I have Pointed a few to some games even cleared up the "It looks like wow" thing twice now. This group looked though some shadowrun, 3.5 and wod books yet when they picked up the 4e PHB it was "Hey guys look this looks like WoW!"  At that point I went over said Hi told em I was told it did not play like wow, but still thats what they jumped to.

This is not me saying that{though I did on first looking at the book) but other people that had never played. The comparison is not going away unless the books are vastly redesigned and thats not gonna happen. But hey if they can bring more players into the community then more power to em


----------



## PoeticJustice (Sep 17, 2009)

Hunter In Darkness said:


> It's not a criticism or anything, but man I have heard that said to much to just wave it off as bashing. The over all look of the book tends to remind folks of wow, and the powers and such. I am not saying it plays like wow or that they are right but that is what they jump to.
> 
> Saying it's not like wow all day long does nothing to make folks think of it as like a MMO upon first look. I am not bashing the game but people get the impression they get. Saying they are wrong, ignorant or bashers does nothing to change that first impression
> 
> ...




Do you think the kids in the store said it looked like WoW because it looks like WoW and the others didn't or because it was the only one they bothered to read for more than a moment or two? WoD wouldn't look anything like WoW and 3.5 PHB is less accessible than 4E PHB (smaller text and more of it, less pics, etc.). It's up in the air, so you can't conclude that even the passing observer sees more similarity than to WoW than other editions.

I know you might not feel this way, but people do use an imagined, special connection between 4E and WoW as an attack on the system. The people who do this are in a position to know the system well enough to realize it isn't any more like WoW than any other edition, but they don't want to know.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 17, 2009)

We've been over this all ready.

But I think Hereticus sums up what I want to say nicely:


> When people who are not WoW players compare 4.0E to WoW, they are likely categorizing all video games into one, using the name of the one they heard of most and demonizing it. In a similar manner, some non role players categorize all RPGs as D&D.


----------



## Jack99 (Sep 17, 2009)

Rechan said:


> We've been over this all ready.




More than once it seems to me.. Let the poor horse die already.


----------



## Umbran (Sep 17, 2009)

Herschel said:


> It boils down to this:
> 
> There are three demographics WotC needs to market the game to:




Well, you see, that's not really true.  Those are the demographics it might make sense for them to market to.  Whether they _need_ to market to all of them is a matter of some debate.  It may well be that trying to make one game that sells well to all of those groups simply isn't cost-effective.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 18, 2009)

Welcome to the ENWorld boards, ronnieramone! 

Re: 4ED=WoW

Personally, I don't play any of the subscription MMO games, so I can't speak to whether that perception is justified...based on _my_ observations.

However, most of the guys in my group do play WoW and other CRPGs- one even programs computer games professionally- and nearly all of those guys compared 4Ed to WoW or another CRPG.

Not that I haven't compared 4Ed to computer games.  I just felt it reminded me of games like Tekken or Mortal Kombat.


----------



## Wicht (Sep 18, 2009)

Some of the comparisons are just perspective based on the observers prior experiences.  Personally, as a semi-grognard, when I play fantasy computer games, my default comparison, if I had to describe them to myself or another, would be to say that they are like Dungeons and Dragons.  I would say this of any number of games from Diablo to World of Warcraft to Bard's Tale to Heroes of Might and Magic.  To me, fantasy gaming is Dungeons and Dragons and everything else derives from it.  To another, younger person though, World of Warcraft may be their gateway into fantasy games of any genre and thus the default comparison.  

This is, granted, a seperate issue from those 4e detractors who try to disparage 4e by making the comparison.  I think it behooves 4e promoters to discern the intent of the statement before automatically getting upset.  Otherwise you might find yourself attacking someone who actually is trying to make what is to them a favorable comparison.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 18, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> More than once it seems to me.. Let the poor horse _rest in peace_ already.




fixed it for you


----------



## I'm A Banana (Sep 18, 2009)

> Sadly, I've always ended up having to abandon gaming with people when this happened - back when I was first into roleplaying, before I quit for about 4 years, my group went on one of those "renounce AD&D, play WoD, we're roleplayers-not-rollplayers" benders and I stopped wanting to play with them ever.
> 
> And well, the pre-release information of 4e apparently caused two of the people in my community to become so frustrated with 3e that they immediately declared, before 4e was even released, that they would never play 3e again. One of them was in my 3e game at the time and made good on such by immediately walking out.




This is also extremely sad. 

If Paizo and WotC can still come over to each others' barbeques and play and enjoy each others' games, what the heck has crawled so deeply betwixt some fans' cheeks? What do you have riding on this? What's it worth?

Dang, kids, I'd just as soon not play any D&D game, in that case. Let's play Smash Bros or Halo or Scrabble or something. Something with less _crazy_ anyway.

RE: 4e & WoW

Part of me idly wonders if the slightly "cartoony" art that pops up especially in the first core books contributes to this. Part of me also wonders if this was a conscious decision on WotC's part to attract the WoW audience, since WoW is quite cartoony (and wears its anime influences rather proudly). 

The similarities between them are no closer than the similarities between a terrier and a great dane. Maybe father. Maybe between a terrier and a sabre-toothed tiger. Clearly, they're both mammals, but man, the differences *far outweigh* the similarities.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 18, 2009)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> RE: 4e & WoW
> 
> Part of me idly wonders if the slightly "cartoony" art that pops up especially in the first core books contributes to this. Part of me also wonders if this was a conscious decision on WotC's part to attract the WoW audience, since WoW is quite cartoony (and wears its anime influences rather proudly).




While that may be the case for some- that is a highly subjective observation, after all- it wasn't the case with my buddies.  (They were harping on and on about mechanics that reminded them of WoW or other CRPGs.  Since I don't play CRPGs, I kind of tuned them out after a few minutes...)


----------



## Hussar (Sep 18, 2009)

ronnieramone said:


> /snip
> 
> If the younger generation grew up on video games, why not give them a pen and paper RPG that builds on what they already know from video games, complete with a monthly membership?  /snip




I'm 37 and I grew up on videogames.  I had videogames in my home since I was 8 years old.  I played D&D inspired video games on the C64 and probably the Vic 20 as well.  I'm willing to bet that just about everyone here under the age of 40 grew up with video games.

What is this "younger generation" you speak of?



Wicht said:


> I think that I was trying to say that if WotC decides that 35+ gamers don't bvuy and therefore stop marketing to them, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.  I'm also saying that when one does such a study and gets such results, if it was my company, the question I would ask would not be, "How can we better market to the younger crowd that is already buying more than the older crowd."  I would ask myself how I could better serve the older crowd which I would calculate to have more money to spend.




Couple of points.  This was market research that was done before 3e came out, not 4e.  This was what they based 3e on.  IIRC, there are a few threads here floating around that complained about that fact at the time.  But, I've also heard Ryan Dancy talk about this same fact and he was pretty emphatic about it.  Role playing game buyers (not players) tended to be very heavily surburban and under 35.  

So, if that's what your market research tells you, it would be bad business to target other markets.

I also note that the bit I put in there from Dragon got glossed over.  Dragon readership was 25 years old on average.  And IIRC, overwhelmingly male.  

So, it's not like it's just WOTC saying this.  That RPG's (or at least D&D RPG's) are primarily a younger male hobby (again, from the purchasing standpoint) is something that's been shown in more than a few places.

Honestly, from my own viewpoint, I think this is why places like EN World might not be a good overview of the game buying population.  We're simply too old.   ((Again, note the game buying part there.  I'm not saying gamer.))


----------



## Wicht (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Couple of points.  This was market research that was done before 3e came out, not 4e.  This was what they based 3e on.  IIRC, there are a few threads here floating around that complained about that fact at the time.  But, I've also heard Ryan Dancy talk about this same fact and he was pretty emphatic about it.  Role playing game buyers (not players) tended to be very heavily surburban and under 35.





If that is what their research said before 3e then I believe it.  But I also still would have a harder time believing it today.  That was over 9 years ago the research would have been done.  I was younger than 27 then myself and I recognize that there were a lot of us introduced to the game as kids in the 80s which would have been in our mid twenties right about then.  The bulk of D&D players in fact.  But as time progresses, those of us who picked up the game in the 80s continue to age and the fact that we were 25 10 years ago does not mean we are necessarily dropping the game.  

Furthermore, 10 years ago, those who would have been 35 and gamers would likely have been learning the game in the 70s when it just wasn't as popular and there would consequently be less of them.  

I guess I just can't see a study 10 years ago as particularly relevant to the age of gamers today.  D&D has been around a short enough period of time that 10 years is a fairly significant piece of time.


----------



## Imban (Sep 18, 2009)

Dannager said:


> In fact, some of the things about previous editions are incorrect, too!  Summoning a mount (or any other summon) in midair was not a loophole in 3.5, it was _against the rules_.




It was not against the rules in 3.0. This was explicitly changed in 3.5e because people were summoning Earth Elementals in midair.


----------



## Reigan (Sep 18, 2009)

I suppose some people will be disappointed to find out that what will probably happen is both 4e & PF will be very successful and provide many years of entertainment to their respective fans.

I've also been listening to the latest Penny Arcade/pvp podcasts. For the first two session you would be hard pressed to tell which edition of D&D they're playing. There's also a lot of messing around and banter, pretty much like at my game table, it reminds me that having a good time with your friends is far more important than the rules.


----------



## billd91 (Sep 18, 2009)

Wicht said:


> If that is what their research said before 3e then I believe it.  But I also still would have a harder time believing it today.  That was over 9 years ago the research would have been done.  I was younger than 27 then myself and I recognize that there were a lot of us introduced to the game as kids in the 80s which would have been in our mid twenties right about then.  The bulk of D&D players in fact.  But as time progresses, those of us who picked up the game in the 80s continue to age and the fact that we were 25 10 years ago does not mean we are necessarily dropping the game.
> 
> Furthermore, 10 years ago, those who would have been 35 and gamers would likely have been learning the game in the 70s when it just wasn't as popular and there would consequently be less of them.
> 
> I guess I just can't see a study 10 years ago as particularly relevant to the age of gamers today.  D&D has been around a short enough period of time that 10 years is a fairly significant piece of time.




That's an interesting point. The market study done in early WotC D&D days would be a good snapshot of the time, but if it's not updated you really wouldn't have much of a clue how different cohorts behave over time. The big influx of players in the early 1980s, now that we're over 35, may serve to push that buying bubble into older territory.


----------



## Hussar (Sep 18, 2009)

That, however, doesn't explain the Dragon readership polls, which are only a couple of years old and line up pretty well with the WOTC figures.

In the late 90's, when WOTC was doing the research, that would make the largest bubble of gamers (those that started in 1980-83) in their mid 30's.  I'm not really sure why buying habits would really change.  They might.  For all I know it's shifted ten years older.  It could be.  

But, those who were in their mid 30's when 3e came out probably outnumbers considerably those in their mid 30's when 4e came out.  2e wasn't a major influx of new gamers, rather it was a pretty serious downturn in numbers.  

Meh, it's all back of the envelope anyway.  Until I see something different, I'll stick with the over 35's don't buy as much which, in my mind anyway, goes a long way towards explaining a lot of WOTC's actions.


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 18, 2009)

billd91 said:


> That's an interesting point. The market study done in early WotC D&D days would be a good snapshot of the time, but if it's not updated you really wouldn't have much of a clue how different cohorts behave over time. The big influx of players in the early 1980s, now that we're over 35, may serve to push that buying bubble into older territory.




Very true. There's also the generation of folks who got into D&D with 3e, who (myself included) were in highschool or college back in 2000, but in the decade since we now have incomes to spend. That's got to be a big bracket of potential sales that's WotC's (and othes') to gain or lose.

Speaking for myself and most of my gaming group who are part of that same market segment, we get into the game, we enjoy it, we finally have money to spend on it, and then a new edition comes out and the marketing tells us that the edition that brought us into the game was poorly made, things we liked about it are bad, etc. I do have to wonder if they managed to alienate much of the generation they had just finished gaining in 3e, with 4e.


----------



## ferratus (Sep 18, 2009)

I've generally found that the ones who have been most vehemently opposed to 4e to the point of passionate hatred have been those who were brought in to the game with 3e.  I'm sure there are a people who liked both 2e and 3e who hate 4e too, they just seem fewer in number and less passionate about their dislike of the new system.

People who didn't like 3e but still play 2e or earlier seem to have largely stayed out of this edition war.  Sure they can act like condescending jerks about the new edition on their own blogs and on dragonsfoot, but that is in their "own house" where I think it should be allowed.


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> I'm 37 and I grew up on videogames.  I had videogames in my home since I was 8 years old.  I played D&D inspired video games on the C64 and probably the Vic 20 as well.  I'm willing to bet that just about everyone here under the age of 40 grew up with video games.
> 
> What is this "younger generation" you speak of?




I agree.  I was playing Hunt the Wumpus on a home built computer lacking both a screen and keyboard (actual switches and lights) before AD&D existed (and it's a game that first came out in University computers before Gary and Dave even published D&D).  I was playing Adventure on my Atari 2600, and then was loving Temple of Apshai on my Commodore 64, while learning AD&D for the first time.  What "younger generation" grew up on video games? Fantasy video games and D&D developed simultaneously.


----------



## JRRNeiklot (Sep 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Meh, it's all back of the envelope anyway.  Until I see something different, I'll stick with the over 35's don't buy as much which, in my mind anyway, goes a long way towards explaining a lot of WOTC's actions.




I think you have it backwards.  WOTC's actions explain why the over 35s don't buy product.


----------



## Mistwell (Sep 18, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> I think you have it backwards.  WOTC's actions explain why the over 35s don't buy product.




It's information WOTC said they were reacting to during 3e by the way (that's when the survey was done, during the 3e prep era).  I might be mistaken, but I thought you were a fan of 3e?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 19, 2009)

Videogames?

I started with PONG!  As an _arcade _game!

I dropped so many Deutsche Marks into that thing (we lived in Germany at the time, and were on vacation), we bought a Pong console when we got back home.

Then came the 2600.

Then came the Apple IIe.  And the Macs.

Now a Wii.


----------



## wingsandsword (Sep 20, 2009)

Mark said:


> This sort of dismissal surprises me.  When I see people post that what happens on messageboards is not representative and what happens at conventions and gamedays is not representative and what happens at gamestores is not representative and then theorize that there are vast numbers of people who there is no way to poll and no way to be sure even exist in any substantial number with a specific viewpoint, I have to be skeptical.  I mean, if you want to believe it, more power to you, but it doesn't even rise to the level of insufficient data.  The fact of the matter is that people on messageboards, at convention and gmedays, and in gamestores are precisely representative of what they play and think.  They just happen to be people who you can actually count and poll.




I see the Edition Wars even in everyday life.

At my workplace, a few months ago I was assigned to a new team at the call center I work at.   A dozen and a half people are on that team, of which it turns out a half-dozen are gamers, albeit more-or-less casual ones.  One even went to the Dragon Con that started this thread (not for the gaming, she's more into cosplay and sci-fi), and cautiously I broached the question of what their edition of choice was.  The answer was unanimous, they were all 3.5 players, and avoid 4e like the plague.

None had ever even heard of PF, they just knew they didn't like or want 4e and were still playing the D&D edition they liked.  

Yes, I've seen 4e players in the real world, and I've seen just as many, or more 3e players that have just quietly gotten off the edition treadmill at 3.5.  They don't buy new products, and probably won't touch PF, and they can sit around with their older edition PHB, MM, DMG and any other books and play for the rest of their lives with their friends and "drop off the grid" from the larger D&D community, especially when some communities online aren't very friendly to older edition adherents.

What really bothers me is that there are so many people who so quickly dismiss any evidence that there are still 3.5 players out there as irrelevant.  Just as WotC put fertilizer for an edition war with the "bullet to the head" and "not fun" cracks (among others), 4e fans that claim that the presence of 3.x fans on message boards, in game stores, at conventions ect. are irrelevant and there are vast hordes of 4e players and that players of any other edition is a tiny and very vocal minority.

Yes, as the currently supported edition of D&D, 4th edition is going to have a lot of players as it benefits from marketing and ease of obtaining the materials, and some people do prefer it over other editions, but of the millions of people who play D&D how many just suddenly switched over?  Of those vaunted hordes of quiet, casual gamers that don't go online to message boards and attend major cons, how many really bought 4e and switched their campaigns just because it was the new edition (especially given the vast changes between 3.5 and 4e in both setting presumptions and system)?


----------



## carmachu (Sep 20, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> And there's a question: is the current RPGA representative of the D&D community at large?





Doubtful. Neither is Pathfinder society. 

I played alot of RPGA events in 2nd, even though I didnt like the rules. I love 3.5 adn Pathfinder, but doubt I'll be actually going to any events anytime soon. I cant be alone in that.


----------



## Reigan (Sep 20, 2009)

If 4e had turned out to be PF style upgrade, more of 3.75 if you like it just would not have sold. People crying out for change would not have bought it, many of the 3.5  fans would have chosen to stay put not wanting to fork out yet more cash on what was basically the same game for a second time.

The problem was, no matter how many people liked 3e, it was done, complete, nothing new could be added to it that would sell in sufficient quantity to support a company the size of WotC. (Paizo are the right sized company to fill that niche with an edition that could have killed Wizards, they can grow their company from there.)

There are just too many types of gamers for a "one size fits all" set of rules. The 3e era was a brave experiment, it just couldn't last. With lots of alternatives available now, lets all move on in peace.


----------



## BryonD (Sep 20, 2009)

Reigan said:


> If 4e had turned out to be PF style upgrade, more of 3.75 if you like it just would not have sold. People crying out for change would not have bought it, many of the 3.5  fans would have chosen to stay put not wanting to fork out yet more cash on what was basically the same game for a second time.
> 
> The problem was, no matter how many people liked 3e, it was done, complete, nothing new could be added to it that would sell in sufficient quantity to support a company the size of WotC. (Paizo are the right sized company to fill that niche with an edition that could have killed Wizards, they can grow their company from there.)



I agree, it is just too bad they didn't come up with an alternative that could repeat the boom that 3E saw, rather than one that created the fracture we have now.



> There are just too many types of gamers for a "one size fits all" set of rules. The 3e era was a brave experiment, it just couldn't last. With lots of alternatives available now, lets all move on in peace.



If we agree that there are lots of people who ARE moving on in different directions and there are very legitimate reasons for both loving 4E and for being not at all in favor of 4E, then cool.


----------



## Dannager (Sep 20, 2009)

wingsandsword said:


> Yes, as the currently supported edition of D&D, 4th edition is going to have a lot of players as it benefits from marketing and ease of obtaining the materials, and some people do prefer it over other editions, but of the millions of people who play D&D how many just suddenly switched over?  Of those vaunted hordes of quiet, casual gamers that don't go online to message boards and attend major cons, how many really bought 4e and switched their campaigns just because it was the new edition (especially given the vast changes between 3.5 and 4e in both setting presumptions and system)?



Lots.


----------



## Votan (Sep 20, 2009)

Wicht said:


> Some of the comparisons are just perspective based on the observers prior experiences.  Personally, as a semi-grognard, when I play fantasy computer games, my default comparison, if I had to describe them to myself or another, would be to say that they are like Dungeons and Dragons.  I would say this of any number of games from Diablo to World of Warcraft to Bard's Tale to Heroes of Might and Magic.  To me, fantasy gaming is Dungeons and Dragons and everything else derives from it.  To another, younger person though, World of Warcraft may be their gateway into fantasy games of any genre and thus the default comparison.
> 
> This is, granted, a seperate issue from those 4e detractors who try to disparage 4e by making the comparison.  I think it behooves 4e promoters to discern the intent of the statement before automatically getting upset.  Otherwise you might find yourself attacking someone who actually is trying to make what is to them a favorable comparison.




I agree with this (rather strongly).   World of Warcraft is a beloved and highly successful game with a lot of adherents who have greatly enjoyed it.  I see it as a compliment for people to compare D&D to it (just like the reverse woudl aslo be a compliment).  Great ideas come from many sources and it's fine to trade them back and forth with another gaming environment.

And I say this as 3.5/Pathfinder type . . .


----------



## BryonD (Sep 20, 2009)

Dannager said:


> Lots.



Correct!!!

How many looked at 4E and decided to not switch?

Answer: Lots.

Now that the qualitative assessment is complete, lets see some quantities......


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 21, 2009)

For that, you may have to go to the Quan strip bar or buy a "Quans Gone Wild!" DVD.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman (Sep 21, 2009)

I haven't been keeping up with the thread, but just wanted to chime in on my experience with the "schism" at WWD&DGD on Saturday.

I was there all day and spoke to about ten people that had come in to see what was going on. They were a mix of 3e and 4e players, but interestingly all the 3e players said that their opinion of 4e had improved after playing it. More than one used the word "enthused" .

My point is simply this - it's really hard to know who does/doesn't like 4e until they've actually played it, and a good game (in whatever edition) is always more fun than a bad one, no matter what system you're using. Happily, I was in a good game.

Looks like in Brighton, UK, the schism isn't really an issue.


----------



## BryonD (Sep 21, 2009)

Mathew_Freeman said:


> My point is simply this - it's really hard to know who does/doesn't like 4e until they've actually played it,



True, but it does cut both ways.  There are plenty of examples of people who played 4E for a while and decided it wasn't getting the job done as well.



> and a good game (in whatever edition) is always more fun than a bad one, no matter what system you're using.



True, period.


----------



## vagabundo (Sep 21, 2009)

Mathew_Freeman said:


> I haven't been keeping up with the thread, but just wanted to chime in on my experience with the "schism" at WWD&DGD on Saturday.
> 
> I was there all day and spoke to about ten people that had come in to see what was going on. They were a mix of 3e and 4e players, but interestingly all the 3e players said that their opinion of 4e had improved after playing it. More than one used the word "enthused" .
> 
> ...




It definitely plays better that it *first* reads. 

Now that I've DM'd for a year or so I will sit down and read through a few pages of pure crunch and enjoy it, I can imagine how these power will play out in the game. When I first read the PHB my eyes crossed. 

It plays very well and I really enjoy my prep now.


----------



## N0Man (Sep 26, 2009)

I only had 4E come up in conversation with a stranger one time, and there was definitely some negativity.

The thing that really got under my skin was that he obviously knew next to nothing about the game, hadn't played it, but constantly was bashing it with phrases that were straight from the 4E cliche criticism handbooks, many of which aren't even true.

"They tried to copy WoW."
"Every class is the same."
"It's totally dumbed down."

I never claimed 4E was the best version, or the only valid version, or any other such nonsense.  However, I did refute his claims and gave him specific examples of why he was wrong on his generalizations.

He claimed that, "for example... the ranger plays exactly like that other class... I can't remember which, but you know what I'm talking about, right?"

My answer was, "I'm not sure exactly, since afterall not even every Ranger plays just alike.  Are you talking about the type of ranger that is the dual wielding specialist, which is uncommon in itself in 4E, or the type of ranger that is specializing in bows, or the type of ranger that has a beast companion?  Or are you referring to some other class that frequently does damage to 2 targets at will that I'm not thinking of?  Even the Ranger isn't exactly the same as the Ranger?"

I went on to point out that I had 2 Wizards in my notebook, that not only played different from other classes, but other controllers, and even quite different from eachother!  One specialized in lots of powers that had a theme of nature and weather, multi-classed into a divine class, and the other was a wizard (for the cheesegrinder) which had a crazy melee wizard build with tons of weird gimmicks.


----------



## NMcCoy (Sep 26, 2009)

N0Man said:


> "They tried to copy WoW."
> "Every class is the same."
> "It's totally dumbed down."




Not as good as the one I had to deal with, "Wizards are totally overpowered now, they can cast Fireball all day." I patiently replied that no, you can cast Fireball _once_ per day, period, and it doesn't even scale with level anymore, it just does a flat 3d6. They simply scowled at me and replied "Well, there's still ways to make it scale..."

(This was well before Arcane Power was out, and Wizard was widely considered to be the weakest of the classes. I don't know if they were mistaking something else for 4e, or simply venting incoherent "they changed it now it sucks" frustration based on misunderstood rumors.)


----------



## Imban (Sep 26, 2009)

NMcCoy said:


> before Arcane Power was out, and Wizard was widely considered to be the weakest of the classes.




Um, wow. Both at that person who was I guess thinking of something completely different, and this, because Orb Wizards were crazy even from the start, and got crazier in every way with Adventurer's Vault. "You're stunned (save ends)... except Orb of Imposition, Phrenic Crown, and Orb of (Impenetrable Escape/Mental Dominion/Ultimate Imposition). Not even Jesus could save from that."


----------



## Henry (Sep 26, 2009)

Imban said:


> Um, wow. Both at that person who was I guess thinking of something completely different, and this, because Orb Wizards were crazy even from the start, and got crazier in every way with Adventurer's Vault. "You're stunned (save ends)... except Orb of Imposition, Phrenic Crown, and Orb of (Impenetrable Escape/Mental Dominion/Ultimate Imposition). Not even Jesus could save from that."




Funny thing is, most players missed the whole "orb" and "status effects" angle of the wizard, because they were used to wizards being the "save or die" and "direct damage" class. One player in my group back home mainly has a dislike of 4E because the character of the wizard has changed in this manner. He turned his nose at the orb stuff because he couldn't clear a room with a fireball anymore - me introducing him to minions did help a little bit, but it still gave him a dislike because wizards being a "minion killer" is to him a bit like being the best football player in a backwater town - it's nothing special.


----------



## Mercule (Sep 26, 2009)

I have a player a bit like Henry's.  He's always been a wizard fan and was very frustrated for a while because he didn't get to white knight when the party was screwed.  He's since adapted to the role of killing minions and weakening everyone else and does quite well.  I think he'd still be happier with a sorcerer and he feels 4e redefined the wizard a bit similar to how I feel about the TWF ranger (I don't think that word means what you think it means).  But, he acknowledges that it can be a fun role.


----------



## PaulofCthulhu (Sep 26, 2009)

wingsandsword said:


> Just as WotC put fertilizer for an edition war with the "bullet to the head" and "not fun" cracks (among others),




They actually said that?


----------



## Shemeska (Sep 26, 2009)

PIM68 said:


> They actually said that?




"Bullet to the head" yes, multiple times in one of the podcasts.


----------



## Imban (Sep 26, 2009)

Henry said:


> Funny thing is, most players missed the whole "orb" and "status effects" angle of the wizard, because they were used to wizards being the "save or die" and "direct damage" class.




Well, orb + status effects basically *is* "save or die", which is why that's a bit confusing. I agree that if you picked up the 4e wizard expecting to play a blaster, you'd end up mighty depressed, though.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 26, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> "Bullet to the head" yes, multiple times in one of the podcasts.



It was also hilarious and I think I prefer them making jokes than being worry over people that react sensitive to this. D&D is NOT serious business.


----------



## thedungeondelver (Sep 26, 2009)

Man.

I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but what got me hot under the collar was when back in late '98 early '99 when I started getting back in to *D&D* after a decade-plus hiatus, asking around, putting out feelers as to where to get books, looking for information (on the wretched rec.games.frp.dnd, and other places) and basically hitting a wall of "You'll switch to 3rd ed when it comes out.  Just wait."  and "God, why would you want to play that game?" and variations on "Gygax sucks" (I didn't even _know_ Gary at that point and I found that irksome).

Well, needless to say I got books, I got modules, I got players, and I play the game I want.  I also got sick of hearing the above, in different keys, but the same melody over and over.

I'm not so naive as to think anyone here might think that I think that "The other guys started it first" in the overall, but really?  For me, yeah, yeah "they" did.

When the ad push for 4e came around, it was the same stuff...only this time out of the mouths of WotC themselves: *D&D* players have been doing it wrong all along, only now can you really play *D&D* right, "bullet in the head" and so on.

So push, and I push back.

Also?  I as a 39 year old father of two, being the home-maker, I have very little gaming time.  I wish I had more.  Hell, I wish I could drive the Gaming RV around the country, pulling a trailer full of Dwarven Forge and painted minis, spreading the vintage *D&D* gospel! 

But, I don't have that kind of free time.  I have enough time for one game, every couple of weeks.  Plus a little time in the week, on which I occasionally game, as of late, though, usually not.

Why should I spend the time I have to game playing something that right now, I find extremely onerous, on the off chance that I _might_ start to like it or a later revision _might_ make OK?  At least with *ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS* I know that WotC won't release a supplement that will screw up a class, introduce a wholly unworkable spell or rule, and so on.

I guess that's where the split is for me.

I play what I play because I like it; I've complained about the things I don't like because in the past I've been told what I do like is sub-par.


----------



## Roland55 (Sep 26, 2009)

Imban said:


> Well, orb + status effects basically *is* "save or die", which is why that's a bit confusing. I agree that if you picked up the 4e wizard expecting to play a blaster, you'd end up mighty depressed, though.




Lord, yes.

Which is why I've avoided that role entirely.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Sep 27, 2009)

Roland55 said:


> Lord, yes.
> 
> Which is why I've avoided that role entirely.




A good sign of a mature player is voluntarily not going unfun routes like this.


----------



## Toben the Many (Sep 27, 2009)

Latecomer to the thread. 

I did want to pop in and say that I was at DragonCon and had access to a lot of their gaming data. 4th Edition did indeed have a presence there, but only in the form of the RPGA. No "open" games of 4th Edition were running. Also, their RPGA numbers were down this year, while their Pathfinder Society tables sold out. 

As far as the animosity between the editions...I can vouch the same thing. I encountered it anecdotally numerous times throughout the convention. People denigrating 4th Edition, etc, etc. 

As others have said, this is has nothing to do with how well either of those two games are doing. It indicates neither success nor failure with either game. It does mean that 4th Edition does not seem to be popular with the "DragonCon" crowd. 

One thing that a lot of the RPGA organizers speculated is that most of the Living Forgotten Realms games now are being played at home. This is (according to them) killing small, regional gaming conventions. If this is true, I think it would be rather sad. One awesome thing about the advent of 3rd Edition and the RPGA at that time was the explosion of small conventions and the opportunity to meet other gamers from around the country. That said, I have no idea what a good solution would be. Allowing RPGA games to be played at home is great and necessary. But it would be nice if we could give people who went to conventions some kind of carrot.


----------



## Rechan (Sep 27, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> It was also hilarious and I think I prefer them making jokes than being worry over people that react sensitive to this. D&D is NOT serious business.



How _dare_ the people making a new version of something mention things they, and many of their users, did not like about the old version! Let alone make jokes.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Sep 27, 2009)

Ahhh, and once again we have a case of "People who didn't have a problem tell people who did that they don't matter."

_Classy!_


----------



## Roland55 (Sep 27, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> A good sign of a mature player is voluntarily not going unfun routes like this.




Mature?  Debatable ...

Old?  Yep.

Of course, if I could figure out all that status-y stuff ... and learn to enjoy it ... could be different.


----------



## Mallus (Sep 27, 2009)

thedungeondelver said:


> So push, and I push back.



Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Take your D&D preferences too seriously and the world laughs at you. 

(well, okay, _some_ people will laugh at you for playing D&D as an adult in the first place, but you get the idea...)


----------



## billd91 (Sep 27, 2009)

Toben the Many said:


> One thing that a lot of the RPGA organizers speculated is that most of the Living Forgotten Realms games now are being played at home. This is (according to them) killing small, regional gaming conventions. If this is true, I think it would be rather sad. One awesome thing about the advent of 3rd Edition and the RPGA at that time was the explosion of small conventions and the opportunity to meet other gamers from around the country. That said, I have no idea what a good solution would be. Allowing RPGA games to be played at home is great and necessary. But it would be nice if we could give people who went to conventions some kind of carrot.




I believe a large proportion of the LG games reported were home games as well. I don't have any citation but I seem to recall seeing a report that the majority of LG games were home games. So, if the speculation of the RPGA organizers is true, why would LFR be in decline at DragonCon compared to the home game? Or has it just not penetrated that particular community yet?


----------



## Toben the Many (Sep 27, 2009)

billd91 said:


> I believe a large proportion of the LG games reported were home games as well. I don't have any citation but I seem to recall seeing a report that the majority of LG games were home games. So, if the speculation of the RPGA organizers is true, why would LFR be in decline at DragonCon compared to the home game? Or has it just not penetrated that particular community yet?




Yes, indeed, many LG games were played at home. However, the RPGA organizers at DragonCon stated that the trend seems to be going over _more_ to the home games at this point. They cited a number of reasons, the economy being one of them. Obviously, going to a convention is expensive. 

However, they also stated that people are simply skewing further in that direction naturally. From my completely armchair perspective, what this would indicate to me would be a case of, "Hey, I found a group I like. I'm going to go home and game with them." Back at the advent of 3rd Edition, there was this massive buzz and many people either came into the hobby or returned to the hobby. So there was a need to find other people to play with.

In terms of penetration, 4th Edition clearly penetrated the DragonCon crowd very well. There were a fair number of 4th Edition games last year at D*C. However, the word about them at the time was fairly negative. One comment that stuck out in my mind was a lack of any role-playing in the demo module that was run for a table.


----------



## MrMyth (Sep 28, 2009)

Toben the Many said:


> One thing that a lot of the RPGA organizers speculated is that most of the Living Forgotten Realms games now are being played at home. This is (according to them) killing small, regional gaming conventions. If this is true, I think it would be rather sad. One awesome thing about the advent of 3rd Edition and the RPGA at that time was the explosion of small conventions and the opportunity to meet other gamers from around the country. That said, I have no idea what a good solution would be. Allowing RPGA games to be played at home is great and necessary. But it would be nice if we could give people who went to conventions some kind of carrot.




There is definitely a much smaller focus on conventions - but rather than it all going into home games, what I've actually seen is it instead resulting in a much bigger focus on game days. Living Greyhawk was all about the conventions - and as a dedicated player in the setting, they were great, and filled with opportunities to deal with major plot and special events. But... they were also really for the hardcore and most dedicated players, requiring a much larger investment in the plot - not to mention the simple time investment of spending a weekend gaming. 

LFR, instead, is very much geared for bringing in more casual players, and focuses on making things much easier and more welcoming for new players. Emphasizing game days were you have a few tables running, and pretty much anyone can come and join in and check it out. More dedicated elements will surely show up as the campaign continues, but the initial focus has very much been on making things accessible. And... from my experience, it has been very successful. (And according to WotC, the RPGA has been seeing record numbers with LFR.)


----------

