What's up with the Zeb Cook hatred?

[TRP]

Every day I now I have to see ZEB & LORRAINE at the top of the K&KA boards, whether I want to join those discussions or not.

Want cheese with that?

Damn, I deleted that. I didn't like the tone of it after I put it up. Thought I'd gotten it in time. You must have been typing as I was deleting. Too bad you didn't grab the rest of my post which explained that snippet you did include. Taken out of context, I can see your point.

For those who didn't get to read the rest of my post, it basically amounted to a statement that certainly after 20something pages, the OP has certainly been answered, this is now nothing more than a Q&A thread for ex-TSR employees of the post Gygax era, is therefore probably off-topic and likely more appropriate to a more inclusive space .. like DF.

I wouldn't have brought this up again if Steve hadn't saw fit to "bust" me on the deleted post. There's a reason I deleted it, and it likely should have been ignored if I hadn't.

[JLowder]

The changes made (the publication of UA and later books) may have saved the company in the short term, but lead to changes that doomed its wide general appeal, Brand identity and ultimately the company's collapse.

The changes in D&D over time have been largely aimed at giving the game broader universal appeal, making D&D accessible to non-hobbyists or at least easier accessibility to hobbyists. The things many people praise about 1E--the unique voice in the prose, the quirky rules, the difficult and challenging character progression--are all things that peel off potential mass market players. So you're not going to be able to sustain both--a difficult-to-access rule set and "wide general appeal."

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

[Philotomy Jurament]

The things many people praise about 1E--the unique voice in the prose, the quirky rules, the difficult and challenging character progression--are all things that peel off potential mass market players. So you're not going to be able to sustain both--a difficult-to-access rule set and "wide general appeal."

Didn't 1e achieve wide general appeal?

[Flambeaux]

Didn't 1e achieve wide general appeal?

It never hit Monopoly or Chess or Yahtzee! levels of popularity and ubiquity.

General appeal within a tiny niche of the population: good.
Broad, general appeal with millions of units sold every month: much better.

[JLowder]

Didn't 1e achieve wide general appeal?

D&D became known to the public as a brand by the late 70s/early 80s, though often through negative news stories and religious panic propaganda, but it wasn't selling mass market numbers. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but from what I've heard, D&D was a very, very successful hobby game, but not a mass market success. They're two different scales.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

[blackprinceofmuncie]

Didn't 1e achieve wide general appeal?

It never hit Monopoly or Chess or Yahtzee! levels of popularity and ubiquity.

General appeal within a tiny niche of the population: good.
Broad, general appeal with millions of units sold every month: much better.

Note that 2e never hit the "broad, general appeal" target either and (from what I can gather) never topped the success of 1e in the ~1980-84 period. So it doesn't appear that the strategy to simplify the language and mechanics was the key to break-out success either.

[Flambeaux]

Note that 2e never hit the "broad, general appeal" target either and (from what I can gather) never topped the success of 1e in the ~1980-84 period. So it doesn't appear that the strategy to simplify the language and mechanics was the key to break-out success either.

To be clear, I wasn't attempting to suggest that the strategy was successful. But it was a logical decision to make in an effort to "grow" the market.

That RPGs, of any kind, are a product that can't be "mainstreamed" doesn't seem to have occurred to any of the decision-makers. No surprise. Most of them probably had MBAs.

[Philotomy Jurament]

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but from what I've heard, D&D was a very, very successful hobby game, but not a mass market success. They're two different scales.

Ah, I see. I don't think D&D is ever going to be a mass market success on the level of games like Monopoly. It requires too much of a investment (time, more than anything else) to have that kind of broad appeal. (And a D&D that has been modified to achieve that kind of mass market success won't be the same game.) From where I sit, D&D is a hobby game, and I judge its success by that standard.

[blackprinceofmuncie]

To be clear, I wasn't attempting to suggest that the strategy was successful. But it was a logical decision to make in an effort to "grow" the market.

Oh yeah, I knew where you were coming from. I just used your comment as a springboard to point out that not only did the changes not achieve the goal of broad, mass-market appeal, but they appear to have failed to achieve the same level of success in the hobby field that the more difficult to access 1e rules reached.

Of course, at its most successful, 1e had the help of a decent entry-level basic game (a portal by which, if you believe the demographics at places like DF and ENWorld, the vast majority of people in the 1e-boom entered the hobby), which is an advantage that no edition of D&D since 1e has been able to claim.

[JLowder]

Note that 2e never hit the "broad, general appeal" target either and (from what I can gather) never topped the success of 1e in the ~1980-84 period. So it doesn't appear that the strategy to simplify the language and mechanics was the key to break-out success either.

The D&D brand has grown in dollar value and the different editions have brought new people into the hobby. If you go to Gen Con now, compared to the 90s or the 80s (this year will be my 25th or so in a row), you see a slightly different crowd demographic. But true mass market success has eluded everyone who has ever published the game, from Gary to Hasbro. The ironic thing is that, as larger and larger companies take possession of D&D, the pressure to make the game a mass market success grows, but the definition of success used by those increasingly larger companies moves farther and farther from what the D&D brand ever seems likely to achieve.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

[robertsconley]

I'm wondering if the ideal "monster binder" is a digest-sized binder with one monster per sheet: stats on one side, art on the other. (Of course, if you keep running with this idea, you reinvent "monster cards.")

Good reply and you are right. Compared to Harn or StarFleet Battles the Monster Binder had issues and now I remember being annoyed at that. Something to the effect "If they are going to go through the trouble they should have done it better".

I think the Digest Idea is pretty good. It is about the right size. In addition I found that having Monster Cards while running the type of sandbox campaign I like to be great. The few sessions I did of D&D 4th showed me the usefulness of this approach and so I made up some for the GURPS and D&D game I ran. It was easier to manage some aspects a sandbox game with the monsters on cards.

[Falconer]

They may have this for 3.x and/or 4e, I don't know, but I think a "collectible card" for each monster type would do the job just fine. Picture and description on one side, statistics and AC charts (to-hit & to-be-hit) on the other.

[Flambeaux]

The D&D brand has grown in dollar value and the different editions have brought new people into the hobby.

What I'd want to see, not that I'd ever get my hands on it, would be whether or not that growth in dollar value for the product line is real growth or nominal growth.

Is the increased revenue matched by an increase cost of production & distribution, resulting in the same net as when it was a smaller concern with lower sales, lower production values, etc.

What brings this to mind for me, a finance jock by profession, is that I recall working for a major global multi-national several years ago and being surprised that, for all the money that moved in as revenue and out as expenses, they only had a net income for the shareholders of about 6% a year -- which is abysmal from an investment perspective.

Growth in expenses always kept pace with the growth in revenue because of the nature of the business. I wonder if the RPG "industry" faces a similar challenge.

[thedungeondelver]

They may have this for 3.x and/or 4e, I don't know, but I think a "collectible card" for each monster type would do the job just fine. Picture and description on one side, statistics and AC charts (to-hit & to-be-hit) on the other.

There actually were monster cards for AD&D; four sets IIRC. They were not well received.

(I for one would like to get my hands on them but that's just me...)

[WGrinn]

If you want to blame somebody for the way that 2e jumped the shark, you also need to blame the gamers who kept buying everything that TSR was pumping out.

Oh, I've been blaming them for years; decades even*. It's one of the reasons I have to limit my interaction with "mainstream" rpg society to small doses -- if I hang around too long I'm inevitably going to let slip that I hold the vast majority of them in utter contempt, which tends not to go over too well.

I think this is somewhat an unfair accusation. There are many AD&D players, myself included, that never had the opportunity to play 1E as an intro to the game.
There was no internet, no forum, no eBay, there was only the local game store and any adverts in magazines like Dragon. So post 1e was the only thing available for anyone to play with nothing else which to compare.