This column has been resonating within me for most of a week. Frankly, since my marriage ended I haven’t found it compelling to write anything of substance. When I first read the press releases for Fourth Edition D&D I was skeptical, then optimistic, then very depressed. Now I am just emotionally exhausted from the whole process. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I can pretty confidently state that the new edition will probably further marginalize the tabletop roleplaying experience. A lot of neat ideas could revitalize the hobby. Some of the most talented people in the business are trying their best to hit on “out of the park” as it were. What I worry about isn’t anything intentional at all. What I am worried about is the unintended consequences of the surrounding technologies. Technology has changed everything, and this is not an exception.
So it appears my prediction was a year late, but generally correct. Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition will soon be a reality. I resist the urge to simply ignore the new edition for several reasons, not the least of which is that I hate people who do that. I have spent the last thirty-odd years watching new editions of my favorite games along with a few hundred games I couldn’t care less about. People hate them, and hate is not too strong a word. I don’t have time to hate anything. It takes entirely too much energy and does nothing productive at all. Not that I don’t dislike a lot of things, some of them even for good reasons.
My father taught me that the only constant in life is change, and the only thing people can’t stand is change. New editions of RPGs are a perfect example of this, a complete tempest in a teapot. Still, it can be more than a little disturbing at times.
I remember my horror at reading Traveller: The New Era. In my neighborhood it became known as ”the new error.” It was just as bad as the awful Twilight 2000 rules-revision it was based on, and did everything possible to screw up what was (in my mind) a fantastic setting. The only redeeming things about that period at GDW were Dark Conspiracy and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, but I digress. There are reasons to dislike new editions. There are even reasons to revile them, just don’t hate. Here are my rules for how to mess up a revision.
#1 No Compatibility
The only thing more annoying than changing things that players love is changing things so that everything that came before is useless. Entire companies are built on the philosophy of forced migration to new rules. This makes existing customers angry, and I think for good cause. There is no ethical defense for forcing players to buy new rules and new games on a scheduled interval. Simply saying “sorry, we need more money and are not only not giving you anything, we are going to actively take things away” is exactly the kind of attitude that is killing the adventure games hobby. The new Fourth Edition of D&D does address this, make no mistake, but it does so in a different way that sounds pretty exciting.
One of the things we’ve learned is that support costs money. With the advent of the Internet, game companies found it became an ominous time-sink that generated no revenue. Customers became increasingly insistent that they have instantaneous support available, updated constantly, and they became increasingly vocal when publishers didn’t provide it – even when that publisher was actually a lone auteur, operating out of his metaphorical basement.
Larger companies such as Wizards and White Wolf first saw this purely as a marketing opportunity and expense. It was generally handled that way, but also provided support and community to their players. As the audience became more demanding these companies realized that they had to generate some revenue, or limit support.
Wizards/Hasbro has decided on a hybrid model. It takes the subscription model of popular online games and adds a second layer of play and support. The monthly fee, unpublished at this time but likely to be between $5 and $10 monthly, will allow not only free access to official D&D online resources, but also allow online play. The additional subscriptions are not required, and you can use some of the support and additional materials online, but they are going to add a new facet to play. We can talk about this more when I actually see the implementation, but the addition of online play may actually reverse some of the short-term damage done to traditional adventure games by World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs.
#2 Not Complete
When Dungeons and Dragons first became Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, back in the dark ages before electric light, it was incomplete for quite a long time. If memory serves it was several years before we had a Players Handbook and a Dungeon Master’s Guide to complete the core rules, and some more time before a complete game was in publication, at least as we understand a complete game today. The idea of having three core books is a fixture of D&D since the original three books were published in the Seventies. I think that idea is flawed on several levels.
No one is complaining that the idea of D&D is incomplete today. Far from it, D&D is an idea that has been very well communicated over the years. The issue is that you cannot simply buy a core book and start playing. Someone in the group has additional expenses and purchases more books, so that the group can play.
Talislanta, Call of Cthulu, and most other RPGs are shipped complete. Even if additional materials are planned there is enough information in the core book that you can play with only one book. One of the reasons I think d20 Modern was a better game than D&D 3e is because the game can be played with only a core book. Right out of the box, as it were. Hundreds of games accomplish all of their goals, including multibook sales, by adding value rather than breaking the game. There is no reason to publish an incomplete game apart from marketing and revenue, and I wish that Hasbro would abandon the model. They are publishing all three books in about three months, which is better at least from the perspective that it won’t be a long time for the basic game. Still, after adding the inevitable Manual of the Planes, Oriental Adventures, Deities and Demigods, Epic Handbook, and Psionics supplements it will probably be another year before we have what Hasbro, and many players, consider a complete core game.
#3 No Transition or Conversions
When White Wolf rebooted the World of Darkness a few years ago they provided a great deal of transition support. Yes, of course this was also a marketing opportunity. Hundreds of dollars in new products were available leading up to the “Big Finish” Armageddon dance number, but it also made the customers feel appreciated and important. It was a very big deal, and if you were reading my column at that time you may recall how skeptical I was at the beginning. As I have said before, I was wrong.
White Wolf did a great job of endgame support for the old and busted World of Darkness. They also offered excellent support for the new version, with PDF previews and frequent Web updates. Finally, they offered conversion resources for players. Conversions cannot be overlooked. I know players who have twenty character sheets in five versions of D&D. Some of them have played these characters since the late 1970s. While they may prefer one of the older systems, they are in active groups and have no choice but to change with the group. Making those changes easy for everyone has kept TSR, Wizards, and now Hasbro from developing animosity with the fans. Refusing to deal with conversions, or purposefully obsolescing or marooning players in old systems, makes players very angry.
Conclusion
I think it is important to note that this discussion does not include the vagaries of background reboots, only rules revisions. While reboots share many similar characteristics with revisions, they have some significant differences too. As a case in point, White Wolf felt that the oppressive weight of the nomenclature and history put an undue burden on new players. They also felt that the rules, having been kludged together over the previous decade, were simply too broken to go forward. Finally, they felt that the explorations of the various books had removed almost all of the mystery from the so-called World of Darkness. All three of these reasons were compelling in and of themselves, and together they required a solution for the game to move forward. The reboot allowed for a long transition period, the company provided fairly robust conversion materials, and support for the previously version tapered instead of being cut off drastically.
In a summary of the HD versus BlueRay DVD debate a few weeks ago the author made an interesting point. The battle between the two formats is brutal, nasty, and long. We had seen similar battles with minidisk, DCC, VHS, Betamax, and others, but this one was unique in one respect. It would be the last hardware format war. Changes in technology had made hardware formats increasingly irrelevant. Major retailers have already begun switching to selling digital formats. Adam Smith called that frictionless production. The companies don’t have to make or sell anything; they just allow the customer to pay for it. I think a similar change is going on with D&D. In a few years the paper RPG may well be as antiquated as Betamax. In my own experience, players are more and more unwilling to make a commitment to play in person. So as wonderful as the new D&D may be, I’m not optimistic – at least not about that part of my life.
My son and I were breakfasting with a friend and her daughter a few weeks ago. Though I have known her mother (who we’ll call E) since long before she was born, this was the first time I had met her daughter (who we’ll call M). The kids were eating with gusto and M mentioned to John how much she hated vegetables. John looked thoughtful and then at me. He explained to M that “hate” wasn’t a word he used. He said that “hate takes too much energy, and I don’t have time to hate.” That was a very proud moment for me. I am sure I beamed. Her mom looked over at me and smiled. It was one of those moments that any parent strives for. The moment of knowing your child learned something perfectly, a moment of optimism for the future.
