D&D Next risks Grognard Capture or Tyranny of Choice or both

Can't resist throwing out my 2 cents.

There's a new edition of D&D coming and they claim they're going to 'listen to the people' this time - which makes for a nice PR story, but how true is it? How true can it be, really? There's already thousands of posts on their forums ranging from 'I want the rules to be a lot simpler, please' to 'I think it needs a character point-buy system like GURPS' and I can't imagine how you'd reconcile that.

A move like this doesn't open the game up to new customers. (D&D4e was actually a pretty good stab at doing that - too bad they lost so many of the old guard in the process.) This, trying to bring the old customers who have migrated away, risks Grognard Capture - Greg Costikyan's term for appealing only to the hardcore. When you listen to your fans they tend to want more stuff and that accretion of stuff makes the game more complex and alienates new players.

Me, even back in the days of AD&D, I was driven to The Fantasy Trip because of AD&D's overcomplication. I've come back to it, sometimes for years, only to be driven away again - the long waits between turns as other players weigh tactical options, as the GM takes their turn moving the monsters, the slow pace of 'story' - you're lucky to get through one or two action sequences in a given night - and why I've been playing the indie games (Apocalypse World, Fiasco, Shock, Geiger Counter and recently Monsterhearts and Psi*Run) I've been in love with lately. If D&D came in a rules-lite edition that had no battle map - so the action is all in our heads - like the Basic D&D of my youth - and required little-to-no preparation, like Lady Blackbird or Dungeon World - maybe they could bring me back to try it again ... but maybe not. I'm kind of done with dungeon crawls, period - the promise of D&D for me was always "make a story as you play" and "a bunch of heroes went into a dungeon and overcame some trouble and got the mcguffin and got out" is never much of a story.

Still, supposing WotC does listen to guys like me, and gives me that pick-up-and-play collaborative-story no-tactical-combat (no-dungeon-crawling?) Rules Lite edition, but they also have modular bolt-on rules sets so the grognards can have their kind of fun...  enter your Tyranny of Choice. "Which one should *I* play? What's the D&D that's right for me?" And the kind of paralysis I feel walking into a Coldstone (WoTC may end up having to do a 'popular flavors' list, like Coldstone has on the wall, where they recommend certain combinations of rules for certain players) is compounded - because I need to find other players willing to play with the same combination of rules as me. Not to mention, what if, after all that, there are still 3.5 and OD&D and Red Box D&D purists? 

And ... those risks are why it's kind of exciting to watch. So I signed up to see what's gonna happen. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109 Hell, if they pull it off, it'll be nice to be able to tell strangers that one of my hobbies is "playing D&D" instead of having to say the more elaborate "I play tabletop role-playing games, y'know, like D&D? Except different?"

Comments

[Jay K.]

I'm excited, but honestly, I don't think they'll succeed. Not for lack of trying, but the journey will be fun. I also signed up.

I've never tried Dungeon World or others. No one I know (except you) plays those games. I've read Dungeon World, and it seems intriguing. I'd like to try it out. Any chance I could join you some Saturday afternoon? :)

[RJ Moore]

I think the problem is mainly that you want to play a game that AD&D isn't. It's a low-fantasy survival and resource management RPG. It's not MEANT to encourage flashy action sequences. It's meant to make sure players try very hard to avoid getting killed.