Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396144I also had a series of wierd epiphanies where I was inviting people to try out all kinds of obscure system (I was a playtester for Tprg 2nd Edition, the Kansas Jim version) and having real trouble getting people to show up. I announced a game of AD&D2e almost as a joke and had 4 players within 15 minutes- neighbors.

Never left D&D after that.

That's why I hate D&D players.  Dumbfuck brandwhores who won't play anything unless its got D ampersand D on the cover.  Doesn't matter if its any good or not.

It just needs to be D&D.

Fuck those people with a sandpaper dildo.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396183Having a sound marketing strategy involves having a story, sticking to it, and acting upon it. To do anything else involves people taking a "wait and see" position if they don't just fucking walk away.

Some allegations that WotC did a focus group survey back in June 2009, which possibly led to the 4E Essentials sudden change in direction.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5259687-post28.html

If there is substance to this June 2009 focus group, it sounds like WotC's marketing drones "hit the panic button" shortly thereafter.

I guess rather than trying to go electronic and making D&D something you play on your smartphone/iPad/device of choice, I'd be very tempted to go the other way and embrace the nostalgia/retro angle, almost to the point of irony. Play up the tactile (not tactical, I meant to say tactile) elements, the group activity aspect, and streamline the rules a bit so that it's easier to get into and doesn't require as much of an investment. Definitely a box set -- I think Dr. Who and WFRP3 are on the right track, but it needs to be cheaper.

I wouldn't go for big-box retail distribution, at least not right off the bat. I'd aim mainly for chain bookstores, and specialty gaming stores as well, with possibly a strong organized play program in the latter if the financials make sense. Maybe then going large scale if you can get a distribution partner to make it work.

I know personal electronic devices are getting more popular; I have a smartphone that I'm almost surgically attached to and I want to get a Kindle, Nook, or iPad at some point. But I just don't see them as being something people will want to use for gaming to the point where they replace physical media and accessories, and trying to beat MMOs and online video games at their own game is a losing proposition. And there are plenty of examples of using new technology to supposedly revolutionize existing types of games that haven't really done that (VCR games, DVD games...the list goes on and on). It's not that I don't think people will stop buying Kindles or iPhones or whatever, or apps and books for them. I do, however, think they will see them as having specific uses, which are reading, watching movies/TV, or surfing the Web rather than playing games.

After all, look at poker -- plenty of high-tech ways to play it, but people still want the original experience, with cards, clay chips, specialized tables, and whatnot. There are plenty of other examples out there too.

Quote from: One Horse Town;396205I'm amazed. 20k of publishable material a week is even more than Mongoose require...

I don't see why you're amazed. Professional writing is just not the same animal as freelance writing. A freelance writer writes basically because they want to. They have some real job, such as being a student or an assistant manager at Pizza Hog. When they get home, they unwind for a couple hours by knocking out abut two thousand words of prose. Then the weekend comes and they visit family or some shit. They crank out 10k words a week to relax.

But for the professional writer, the writing actually is the job. They get up in the morning, they eat breakfast, and then they sit down to write. And then they take a lunchbreak, and then they sit down and write some more. And when they can't do it any more, they go do something else to unwind from work.

Writing a thousand words an hour ain't no big thing. So the question of getting twenty, thirty, or forty thousand words on the screen in a week is mostly a matter of getting yourself to work for twenty, thirty, or forty hours. Which in the modern workaholic world is fairly ubiquitous. The really tragic part is that unless you have some sort of staff writer position somewhere (average starting salary $50,000 a year according to Simply Hired), you're going to be getting crap money. 20,000 words is only $600 at freelancer rates. And the time you spend lining up gigs or communicating with developers is totally uncompensated. Without a regular position, your 40 hours a week is going to fill up with time spent emailing developers and waiting for responses and having to abandon projects and shit.

-Frank

Support all editions.  Put all editions into DDI, create character generators and monster builders and such for all editions, and publish Dragon and Dungeon articles for all editions (some more than others).

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396217I don't see why you're amazed. Professional writing is just not the same animal as freelance writing. A freelance writer writes basically because they want to. They have some real job, such as being a student or an assistant manager at Pizza Hog. When they get home, they unwind for a couple hours by knocking out abut two thousand words of prose. Then the weekend comes and they visit family or some shit. They crank out 10k words a week to relax.

But for the professional writer, the writing actually is the job. They get up in the morning, they eat breakfast, and then they sit down to write. And then they take a lunchbreak, and then they sit down and write some more. And when they can't do it any more, they go do something else to unwind from work.

Writing a thousand words an hour ain't no big thing. So the question of getting twenty, thirty, or forty thousand words on the screen in a week is mostly a matter of getting yourself to work for twenty, thirty, or forty hours. Which in the modern workaholic world is fairly ubiquitous. The really tragic part is that unless you have some sort of staff writer position somewhere (average starting salary $50,000 a year according to Simply Hired), you're going to be getting crap money. 20,000 words is only $600 at freelancer rates. And the time you spend lining up gigs or communicating with developers is totally uncompensated. Without a regular position, your 40 hours a week is going to fill up with time spent emailing developers and waiting for responses and having to abandon projects and shit.

-Frank

Don't speak to me like i'm a retard, Frank. I've done it...and abandoned it.

Writing that amount of words is one thing. Making it interesting, usable, making up rules etc is entirely another matter.

Quote from: ggroy;396213Some allegations that WotC did a focus group survey back in June 2009, which possibly led to the 4E Essentials sudden change in direction.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5259687-post28.html

If there is substance to this June 2009 focus group, it sounds like WotC's marketing drones "hit the panic button" shortly thereafter.

I got paid to be in a D&D focus group in 2009.  None of the questions asked seemed like they would have led to the essentials changes.  They were all questions on being a dm.  My experience here-

http://www.hackslash.net/?p=605

Quote from: Captain Rufus;396211That's why I hate D&D players.  Dumbfuck brandwhores who won't play anything unless its got D ampersand D on the cover.  Doesn't matter if its any good or not.

It just needs to be D&D.

Fuck those people with a sandpaper dildo.

This might be comforting to you, but that's not actually how it works.

D&D provides a game experience that other RPGS don't- other RPGs are usually much more about their setting or theme, (or "story") and very rarely about characters getting into battles and accumulating treasure and character building via levelling up. When people sit down to play D&D there is an expectation that there will be adventure, exploration, battles, and treasure. Characters will level up and buy things, and go back to the dungeon again and again. You just don't get that with Gurps or Hero or almost anything else in quite the same way. They can even be fantasy versions of the exact same D&D setting and the D&D setting will win every time because it's not the setting or the story or even the rules that matter, it's what happens during the game.


In effect, D&D appeals to a niche audience that just happens to represent the overwhelming majority of the hobby.

I hear you've spent much of the last year without any game whatsoever. Do you suppose your hostility towards people and resentment of their enjoyment could account for that?

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396256...
D&D provides a game experience that other RPGS don't- other RPGs are usually much more about their setting or theme, (or "story") and very rarely about characters getting into battles and accumulating treasure and character building via levelling up. When people sit down to play D&D there is an expectation that there will be adventure, exploration, battles, and treasure. Characters will level up and buy things, and go back to the dungeon again and again.

Funny that is the bit of D&D I dislike the most.

I go back to D&D becuase its setting independent and I can use it to run any sort of fantasy game I like without much tweaking. In fact that is one of the main reasons I didn't like 3e (let alone 4e) becuase I felt that the 'game' was becoming more important that the characters and the story and the adventure.

Quote from: jibbajibba;396259Funny that is the bit of D&D I dislike the most.

I go back to D&D becuase its setting independent and I can use it to run any sort of fantasy game I like without much tweaking. In fact that is one of the main reasons I didn't like 3e (let alone 4e) becuase I felt that the 'game' was becoming more important that the characters and the story and the adventure.

This is exactly what happens, though. Compare these two sentences:

"Let's play Gurps" and "Lets play D&D".

(Gurps could be any game by the way. I'm not trying to pick on Gurps.)

That first sentence comes with a lot more questions. Like what setting is it? (and how much detail will I need to know..) What will the characters- and especially MY character be doing in that setting? And a lot more work is likely to go into the creation of the sessions (which may not even be adventures, maybe these are just roleplaying negotiations or investigations...) , and so on. Also the up-front workload on the GM is usually fairly high. At a minimum there has to be a roleplaying situation for the players to address, and often enough the GM will have to be involved with character creation for the PCs. The usual answer to the offer "let's play _____" is a bunch of follow-on questions. Potential players are entering into a world of unknowns. Skilled GMs even learn to "pitch" their game sessions ideas. I know I was doing that.

With D&D none of that stuff really matters. The settings and the adventures could be complete unknowns, but players already know what happens in a D&D game. They will be going places and getting into battles, and leveling up. You can certainly do the same amount of work..or more..in D&D, but as far as what players expect to do? There's an easy fall-back mode of looking for adventure and leveling up. A DM who runs out of ideas could just randomly open the monster manual and pick out a monster to run. Everyone is on the same page and the game is familiar. If you do get follow on questions for the offer to play D&D it usually just clarification "Which edition", "can I play a Warden?"

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396263This is exactly what happens, though. Compare these two sentences:

"Let's play Gurps" and "Lets play D&D".

(Gurps could be any game by the way. I'm not trying to pick on Gurps.)

That first sentence comes with a lot more questions. Like what setting is it? (and how much detail will I need to know..) What will the characters- and especially MY character be doing in that setting? And a lot more work is likely to go into the creation of the sessions (which may not even be adventures, maybe these are just roleplaying negotiations or investigations...) , and so on. Also the up-front workload on the GM is usually fairly high. At a minimum there has to be a roleplaying situation for the players to address, and often enough the GM will have to be involved with character creation for the PCs. The usual answer to the offer "let's play _____" is a bunch of follow-on questions. Potential players are entering into a world of unknowns. Skilled GMs even learn to "pitch" their game sessions ideas. I know I was doing that.

With D&D none of that stuff really matters. The settings and the adventures could be complete unknowns, but players already know what happens in a D&D game. They will be going places and getting into battles, and leveling up. You can certainly do the same amount of work..or more..in D&D, but as far as what players expect to do? There's an easy fall-back mode of looking for adventure and leveling up. A DM who runs out of ideas could just randomly open the monster manual and pick out a monster to run. Everyone is on the same page and the game is familiar. If you do get follow on questions for the offer to play D&D it usually just clarification "Which edition", "can I play a Warden?"

Well I woudl get all the Gurps questiosn in a  D&D game as well. The only difference is familarity.
Note in either game I would happily just adlib the whole adventure soup to nuts but there would be a backstroy and a reason for the PCs to be adventuring. I don't do adventuring guilds and shops that sell iron rations next to +1 swords and wands of healing or ancient dungeons that groups of people just head down and explore bumping into random assortments of monsters with no logical existance outside of they are here so you can encounter them have adventures and kill them all.

Okay, a few more business related matters.

As far as writing goes, the writer will be Mike Stackpole.  Tunnels and Trolls fifth edition is by far one of the most readable rpg rule books ever, followed closely by Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes.  Hey!  I guess by jibbajabba's criteria if it had been Mercenaries, Spies, & Detectives: D&D players would like it.  (Actually, to be fair, jibbajabba's right on the mark as far as I'm concerned...)

Art is a little harder to assign.  Tony Dizliteri (or what ever the Planescape guy's name was), Ian Miller (from early Warhammer stuff), and if we can get him Barry Windsor Smith (of Conan and X-Men fame).  That's right, for the evergreen core book the principle will be spend money on good art, not "I like my art like I like my women, fast and cheap."  The look will swing back towards medieval fantasy from the current videogame silliness.

Rules design will be by me because nobody else is humble enough!    But I'll try very hard to make sure it's D&D and nothing else.  I think Gary's original design is very much part of D&D's success and the changes forced on it by others is more of the problem.

The miniatures line will be in hard plastic and designed by Tom Mier, the scale will be 1/48.  Yes I hate scale creep and even the worst offenders are only now reaching 1/48 but I want a real scale that will force compliance on the industry.  Tom is the single best sculptor in the industry.  While the figures won't be painted they will be modular and the stuff will be spread across different sprues.  The green sprue will have stuff like the elf's cape and ork arms and heads.  The light brown sprue will have human hands, faces, and barbarian arms and legs.  The dark brown sprue will be mostly boots, bows, and spear shafts.    The grey sprue will be weapons and armoured bodies.  The sprue with bodies and legs will be in blue and/or red.  All assembly will be insert peg into hole.  The reason for 1/48 instead of 1/64 is that it's big enough to do this.

On the core sprues I think we could get, fighter, magic-user, cleric, theif, elf, dwarf, and halfling as well as some orcs, a troll, and a dragon.  A nice dungeon door that can open and close would be nice if there's room.

Now, even at low, low modern mould cutting prices that's $150k right off the start and I know money can be a problem which is why this will be a randsom model project at times.

In particular the draft of the core book will be available for a while before it goes to print.  Similarly the digital images of the sprues will be shown early on.  Preorders will be taken to fund the expenses, I believe there will be enough interest to make this work.

I've had a few ideas, myself, personally

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396263Skilled GMs even learn to "pitch" their game sessions ideas. I know I was doing that.

I stopped doing that just after high school, almost thirty years ago. Generally these days I'll create an adventure, or theme, or setting, and have the players roll up characters or pick from a selection of pre-made characters. Rolling works better, it provides some randomness or variation in character background, skills, and abilities.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;396263With D&D none of that stuff really matters. The settings and the adventures could be complete unknowns, but players already know what happens in a D&D game. They will be going places and getting into battles, and leveling up. You can certainly do the same amount of work..or more..in D&D, but as far as what players expect to do? There's an easy fall-back mode of looking for adventure and leveling up. A DM who runs out of ideas could just randomly open the monster manual and pick out a monster to run. Everyone is on the same page and the game is familiar.

That may have been true once, but no longer, with the disparate mechanics making D&D a comprehensively different game between editions, hence old school, and of course, the old school rennaissance.

IMG the players don't even know if they have leveled up. If they are paying close attention though, they might notice they can do a bit more damage in melee or get an additional opportunity to attack during a melee round. Likewise the spellcasters will find they can cast an additional spell or two and resist magical attacks better.

In my opinion it was a mistake to allow the players to track character development after the characters were created and once gameplay ensues.

Character advancement should be entirely in the provenance of the GM, as it takes the focus away from the exploration, roleplaying, and adventuring and concentrates that focus instead on maximizing opportunities to advance the character at the expense of the adventure the players are collectively experiencing.

Quote from: GameDaddy;396282In my opinion it was a mistake to allow the players to track character development after the characters were created and once gameplay ensues.