There will always be some new blood to come in and play the current version of D&D (whatever it may be)... but who knows what the demographic distribution is and how it has changed in recent years? My guess is that less and less young people are doing paper and pencil games and going the route of MMORPGs. I would love to see some hard numbers on this kind of thing.
The one thing that bothered me with 3.0 when it came out originally was the promise for support playing on a virtual table top. Later on, D&D Insider looked like it was going to deliver on that promise, but then did not. Honestly, if there is one thing that Wizards could do to help ensure the success of any edition of D&D at this time is to seriously consider developing a complete, easy to use set of tools for playing D&D online in a way that enhances the experience.
A solid set of tools could be sold and additional components for those tools: maps, tokens, music, artwork, expansion packs, could all be sold in addition to the rule books. I think this would be a great thing for Paizo to look into doing as well for Pathfinder.
Oh, and I am about your age and similar experience except that I never have tried 4E.
I think lots of people will get off the train at each edition change, but we all tend to think of ourselves as "typical" whereas I suspect those of us with large collections are, in fact, the unusual ones.
Note that your argument would suggest they shouldn't have made 4E, or 3.5, 3.0, 2E,... Each time they switch they lose some customers, retain some (who presumably splurge on a bunch of new stuff) and attract some new players. The last switch was particularly damaging, apparently, but my impression is that previous edition changes have been a net benefit to the game company involved. I don't see any reason to think that the difficulties in the switch to 4E were due to age group rather than specific factors like marketing, loss of the OGL, PDF removal and, of course, the significant shift in design goals and subsequent differences in gameplay.
Fwiw, in my case being older means I'm much more likely to by a new edition. When I was a kid I had no money and all the time in the world. Nowadays the situation is reversed. I hardly get to play, but still enjoy reading about and collecting RPGs.I don't pretend to be any more representative than anyone else, but just to make the point that there are cohorts of customers likely to lean either way Equally atypical, maybe, is that the more digital it is, the less likely I am to get enthused.
I think that there are plenty of people that will play multiple editions, just like there are plenty of folks who will play multiple systems.
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I think that there are plenty of people that will play multiple editions, just like there are plenty of folks who will play multiple systems.
Yep, D&D is the first RPG which I will actively seek to play different editions of. With games like Shadowrun or Vampire: The Masquerade, when a new edition came out I upgraded and never again played the previous edition. But D&D is different in that I play 3.5 and 4e (currently DMing 3.5 and playing in a 4e game).
I only started in D&D with v3.5 so cannot comment on previous editions (only to say I played literally a couple of sessions of AD&D, not sure if 1st or 2nd ed) and I didn't like the inconsistent mechanics.
However with 3.5 and 4e, each system offers something quite different (though still D&D) that I get something out of both.
Interestingly because PF is so close to 3.5 it doesn't give me anything different - the only thing that makes me play PF is PFS, once that goes I will likely sell my PF books but keep both my 3.5 and 4e books).
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I remain to be convinced by 5e - I think their move away from 4e is a bit panicked as they seemed to get a grip on some of their quality control issues and the game itself strikes me as elegant and intuitive. That said, when 4e came up my group swapped over to 4e without any real debate - I would have preferred PF (initially) but the rest of the group (who have probably played all editions over their gaming careers of 30+ years) simply transferred over without any agonising at all. Habituees of the Paizo boards have always struck me as atypical of the majority of gamers, as the history of Paizo with WotC is complicated and this is reflected in the opinions and attitude to WotC here. Personally, I play PF in the online games I DM (mainly because 3.5 was the extant system when they started) but prefer to play 4e if I can.
I don't think age is as big a factor as individual playstyle and gaming preferences. Some people just aren't interested in trying new systems, being perfectly satisfied with the ones they've been using for years - I have more than one devotee of Chivalry & Sorcery or 1st Edition AD&D among my friends and acquaintances in the gaming community, and they're certainly not going to pick up rulebooks for 5e/D&D Next if they didn't bother switching to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th edition.
Then again, I'm of a younger generation of gamer than you - I started playing around 1991 with the "New, Easy to Learn Dungeons & Dragons" basic boxed set. I've seen two edition changes and one major spinoff (meaning Pathfinder) occur since then, and although it took me awhile to warm up to 4e in particular, I did eventually try all the editions that were published since I began playing and find a way to run them that worked for me and my players.
I actually rather like trying out new stuff and tinkering with rules, so I'll probably be buying 5e. The only mental barrier to me is how the rules will be printed and distributed. I'd love to see WotC take the same approach as Pathfinder or TSR's Rules Cyclopedia, and print one core book that has everything you need to run the basic game in one place at an affordable price point. Having to pay upwards of 100 bucks for yet another Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual is going to be a tough pill for me to swallow, though - primarily because of the cost, but also because that's three more hardbacks taking up room on my shelf and my poor bookcase can't take much more strain. =X
Who knows. It's not coming out for a long time and nobody can even comment on it yet. I'm going to check it out, and if it doesn't suck, I'll buy it. It's as simple as that.
I doubt I'll be buying anything 5e for the same reasons, but I'm sure 5e will do just fine without us.
"Splintering the player base" is just a catch phrase without much actual meaning.
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"Splintering the player base" is just a catch phrase without much actual meaning.
Um...
Then what's your explanation for the "play nice" warning at the top of this forum, or the many complaints by the regular 4e posters that the 4e haters come in here and troll??
Is that not from a splintered fan base???
Your personal experiences may differ, just as mine do, but both of our experiences are just anecdotes from a much greater tapestry...
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Like I said above, the Paizo community is atypical - and that message has been there for years. Most players are far less tribal than the self-selecting sample of people on these boards. I think the problem is probably a lot less acute than maye this fishbowl would have you believe. Certainly, I own both PF and 4e (and consider 4e superior). My players don't even own PF.
I remain to be convinced by 5e - I think their move away from 4e is a bit panicked as they seemed to get a grip on some of their quality control issues and the game itself strikes me as elegant and intuitive.
Pretty much my story as well. Its to early for an edition change for me and I really like a great many elements of 4E.
At its core 4E was something unique - it often felt like WotC, in the later parts of the edition, where trying to minimize some of these elements in an attempt to bring 4E back into a design paradigmn that was simulationistic feeling but if one steps around these elements carefully its pretty easy to emphasize the narrativist base 4E was originally made of and work with that front and centre.
I'm seriously doubtful that 5E will be first and foremost a narrativist edition and while the designers talk about supporting all editions I generally think in this regards one simply has to choose.
The playtest seems to me to be pretty much the designers deciding what the icing on the cake ought to look like but its already been decided what kind of cake it actually is.
With that in mind I'll likely stick to 4E for the foreseeable future. I can't even really say that I expect to play 6th or whatever since I honestly don't really expect their to ever be anything truly like 4E again.
I am more pesimistic on WOTC's attitude on making the content available for players or third parties, versus the system itself. I prefer 4E over every edition of D&D, and PF. However the powers that be had little faith in the product and will develop 5E.
I think it is more important to have a viable virtual table top and offline character builder, and adventures to support both, to see any success in the future. Face it, with the complexity of today's games, and the limited amount of players around the neighborhood, the game is crying for a virtual environment, but at the same time they need to make the game available for those that play at home, and third parties, without getting religious on the copy right protection.
I am trying 4E and fantasy grounds at the moment which is decent, but it could be so much better with a dedicated rule set that is accessible to players and DMs.
"Splintering the player base" is just a catch phrase without much actual meaning.Um...
Then what's your explanation for the "play nice" warning at the top of this forum, or the many complaints by the regular 4e posters that the 4e haters come in here and troll??
Is that not from a splintered fan base???
Whenever I see "splintering the player base," it's been in the context of "Too many fan groups, the brand is in danger of going completely under!" Not necessarily "Rabble rabble, my edition is better than yours!"
I was responding to the former fear, because I don't think there's anything to fear. The player base has been splintering for what? Thirty, forty years now. And D&D is still the biggest lion in the jungle.
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Whenever I see "splintering the player base," it's been in the context of "Too many fan groups, the brand is in danger of going completely under!"
Well, in that context, look at what happened with TSR. They did exactly that...
That had too many products, and spread the base too thin and narrowly missed bankrupting the company (yes, yes, this is a simplistic synopsis, but it does go to the root of the cause)...
So no, I don't see that happening with Wizards. But I think most people when they hear "splintering the fan base" do not think of your definition...
I don't know that the whole "Pen-and-paper gamers tend to be older" line holds up these days. I don't know that it ever did.
Certainly, D&D was more popular in the 80's which means that more people who grew up in the 80's played it. But that doesn't mean that those same people are still playing it. Most stopped. Some got really into the hobby and still play.
But D&D is constantly getting new blood, and plenty of it. I'm not at PAX East this weekend, but WotC runs very large Learn to Play D&D events at both PAX conventions. Reports from this weekend's con is that they - once again - are overwhelmed with people wanting to try out D&D, and it's basically a matter of running out of DMs/tables for them to play with. D&D has gone through a weird cycle of trendy, then lame, and now slowly matured into generally cool, at least in the ever-widening geek subculture.
I don't have any actual numbers to base this on, but I believe there's room to challenge the assumption that D&D (and tabletop roleplaying gaming in general) is dominated by the 40+ year old crowd.