What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[Lanefan]

Bob, the 5th level fighter, becomes a 1st level cleric. Fortunately, he thought ahead and bought weapon specialization in mace. However, now that he's a cleric, he can no longer gain any of the benefits of being skilled in a mace. In fact, he's so poor at it, his Thac0 has reset to 20!

Its like becoming a Math major, switching over to learn chemistry, and forgetting how to do Calculus!

Exactly the rationale used when we did away with that rule and made multiclassing work pretty much the same for everyone. Such restrictions as we still have are based on class rather than race, with the proviso that some races still cannot be some classes at all.

On a broader scale - and not really related to the previous paragraph - one thing that's slowly becoming clear out of the murk is that designing a system with solid internal logic all around (rules to fluff to gameplay to believability; no edition has yet hit all four) would go a long way to bringing back the disenchanted.

Lanefan

 

[MrMyth]

Yes, this is what I'm talking about, though I don't think there is a hard answer to your question of how much... though I can tell you when I feel there's to little. If I'm playing Ravenloft and it plays no differently than Forgotten Realms... something is wrong. My point is that there should be enough mechanical tweaks and changes that the feel of the setting comes across in play to both the players and DM's. I honestly wish they had included some mechanics that would make Eberron feel more noir (since I think 4e core covers pulp pretty good.). As for DS, I am not currently playing 4e and am not sure I am going to pick it up, unless it just gets all around rave reviews... otherwise I would probably use my original boxed set + the Dragon article for 3e to play in DS with Pathfinder.

Oh yeah, and I think that is a very good point - even if WotC does fix some of the possible 'issues' that the disenchanted have with it, fixing any one thing alone isn't necessarily going to bring people back. Enough small changes, over the course of time, might do the trick - and hopefully without driving away any existing customers, at that!

Anyway, much appreciated for answering the question - I was just trying to get a sense if this was what you were talking about. I do hear you about Eberron, and honestly... I suspect part of the problem might come from them having adapted elements of Eberron's outlook into core 4E itself. Eberron's Action Points - and other elements in general - seemed to present that style of player narrative and cinematic action that 4E then embraced completely. Making it all the harder to make Eberron itself distinct mechanically from the rest of the game, I suppose...

 

[Herschel]

For me, the classic warlord archetype (Gengis Khan, viking leader, Nigerian warlord, Conan the king, etc.) are fighters, knights, barbarians, etc. that became warlords due to the right mix of natural talent, career path, life choices, and good fortune. A typical/average 4E PC who is a warlord at 18 (or average starting age) with no minions and no significant political or military rank (meaning in-game, with real tangible fluff and crunch implications in the campaign) just doesn't model this archetype at all (again, I'm talking about the average case, don't bother me with odd exceptions).

WoTC could have easily made archetypes like warlord, knight, gladiator, etc. as a theme or template or prestige class or whatever, but they didn't -- NOT because it didn't make sense, but because it didn't match their metagame ideas...

A couple of things: first is that for you descriptor where "Warlord" is more of a title, not a lifelong profession/class. And that's one thing and a personal perspective, fine. But the archtype argument? There are scads of archtypes of young leaders either showing their tactical prowess or abilities beyond their years. From Luke Skywalker to Iron Eagle my youth was filled with them. (Doug Masters and pals for the win! And with extra cheese!)

Kind of like some RL ROTC types, some people train to be military (martial) leaders their whole life. In the game they gain experience and become better at it, but they're always working ON it instead of the old "I now have a +8 BaB and 13 Charisma, I can be a Warlord" towards it. The latter strikes me as more ludicrous.

But prestige classes are gone. You build within your class instead of having to essentially glom on to a new one. Paragon Paths are something I've experienced as a better, more streamlined progression for a character (outside of char-op cheesing Daggermasters and Radiant Servants, etc.) than the old one. It's not entirely different, so it shouldn't shock too many people, but it cleans them up some which is what many (most?) want a new edition to do.

A lot of the elements people say they want are there, just presented in an unfamiliar way. And that's disconcerting to many but that's a human issue, not a system issue.

 

[WizarDru]

In the hypothetical, very specific ideas will bring players back. In the actual, I suspect very little will. Because many of the specific actions already mentioned are either short-term fixes for a specific goal (PDFs) or long-term fixes which just don't appear to be fiscally well-grounded or actionable for WotC (parallel D&D lines, new material for old systems, online support for out-of-print editions, etc.).

I think it's also important to ask the question: who are the 'they' to be brought back? A large part of the discussion makes broad assumptions about 'they', but I'm thinking that many folks aren't actually speaking of the same group. I believe that the OP meant (and I think most folks mean) 'people who stopped being WotC customers are 4e disenfranchised them'. That is, current players of 3.5e who chose to stop buying D&D when 4e came out and they found it not something they wanted.

However, I'm also seeing some posters here indicate that they'd already been lost by 3.5e. I think Pathfinder or 3.75e would not address the issues of that group, as the fixes they wanted generally would have required a 4e-level adjustment to the rules...just not the direction that the 4e team took.

Comparisons have been drawn to the 2e diaspora..but honestly, I don't think the two are the same. 2e's biggest problem, for me, is that it wasn't enough. It was different, but I couldn't say that it changed the game in huge ways, but small ones. LOTS of small ones, but that wasn't what drove me from the game. What drove me from it was a combination of cost and dissatisfaction with the core system. I had played Basic and then AD&D for years by that point...and 2e didn't feel like it addressed my problems with the system. I left for GURPS and other systems and didn't look back. 3E arrived and was a game-changer. It improved the system in tons of ways, kept some of the tenets that were 'D&D' to me but incorporated fixes to design that had appeared in the previous 20 years of RPG development.

To me, 3.5 was 3e's answer to 2e...an incremental change that some did not like and derail system mastery with it's changes (magic missle is level 1 or 2?) but maintaining it's core design. 4e is a much broader change that completely changes major system components. People who were looking for 4e to be like 2e...that is, improvements and corrections on 3e/3.5....were destined for disappointment in the same way that many 2e advocates found 3e to be a serious misstep.

2e's base of customers, however, were either not supporting D&D in strength or the model was too fragile. So much so that when WotC did market research and rebuilt the game for that market segment, many of them felt abandoned. But clearly it worked, as the D&D brand came back stronger than any time except the early 1980s. The question then becomes, which is more beneficial to WotC; bringing back all the 3.x people who left or adopting new players? I don't honestly know the answer...and since WotC's not releasing sales numbers, we can only speculate.

I DO know that on the one hand, I have bought 4e books and play 4e...and my purchasing of 3.5 products had petered out dramatically. On the other hand, I'm not buying nearly as much D&D product as I did 5 years ago. Whether that's a problem for WotC or not, I don't know.

 

[Mallus]

Okay, let me try for something on-topic, even though I still have plenty to say about 1e dual-classing, simulationism, and brand-identity politics...

WotC has me as a customer right now. What they could do to lose me would be not making bold changes to D&D going forward.

I liked 3e --like 2e before it-- but I don't feel the need to buy it again. What I've liked about 4e --and 3e before it-- were the ways they were significantly different from their predecessors. They attempted to do roughly similar things --transport players to violent worlds of fantastic and violent adventure-- using different tools/techniques/methodologies.

Let me repeat, I like that. I enjoy the way new mechanics inform my old playstyle(s), assumptions, and preferences. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something, err, hmmm, look out, a Beholder!

 

[NoWayJose]

But the archtype argument? There are scads of archtypes of young leaders either showing their tactical prowess or abilities beyond their years. From Luke Skywalker to Iron Eagle my youth was filled with them. (Doug Masters and pals for the win! And with extra cheese!)

Kind of like some RL ROTC types, some people train to be military (martial) leaders their whole life...

MrMyth referred to warlord archetypes to help justify 4E warlord class, so I contrasted the 4e warlord class with the actual common warlord archetype.

I never said a young warlord is never possible, I implied it would be rare exception compared to the commonly understood archetype.

In fantasy genres, most young 'warlords' are arguably not Warlords at that stage of their life -- they are infantry soldiers, barbarian adventurers, or some other equivalent of a class. They all have different skill sets and professions starting out. They evolve into warlordness = in game terms, class x that gets a warlord theme later on. That is the common fantasy archetype of a warlord, which plainly, 4E does not model. That's it, that was the point of that one post you picked on.

 

[BryonD]

However, I'm also seeing some posters here indicate that they'd already been lost by 3.5e. I think Pathfinder or 3.75e would not address the issues of that group, as the fixes they wanted generally would have required a 4e-level adjustment to the rules...just not the direction that the 4e team took.

This is true.

When 4E was announced, I was pumped. For about 3 seconds I was in the minority that was loudly defending 4E.

I was not done with 3E. I was still cranking along in a great campaign. But, the prospect of moving forward was very appealing. And once I discovered that the driving ideas of 4E were not my idea of moving forward, my first reaction was not to double down on 3E, but instead to start looking at other systems. It was only conversations with Wulf Ratbane on "3.75" (his contributions of which ultimately lead to his excellent Trailblazer product) that rekindled 3E energy. And then Paizo came along and improved the rules a little, but mainly, to me, put a huge breath of imagination into the system. So that got me really going again.

But, it is certainly easy to imagine how I would have moved on. It has been 10 years. That is longer than I have ever stayed with one single system before.

So, while I readily agree that re-doing 3.5 isn't the silver bullet. I think a new game that maintained the philosophy of 3E would interest a lot of people, whether they still play a 3X game or not.

 

[renau1g]

WotC has me as a customer right now. What they could do to lose me would be not making bold changes to D&D going forward.

I liked 3e --like 2e before it-- but I don't feel the need to buy it again. What I've liked about 4e --and 3e before it-- were the ways they were significantly different from their predecessors. They attempted to do roughly similar things --transport players to violent worlds of fantastic and violent adventure-- using different tools/techniques/methodologies.

Let me repeat, I like that. I enjoy the way new mechanics inform my old playstyle(s), assumptions, and preferences. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something, err, hmmm, look out, a Beholder!

This... I would certainly be bored with playing the same rules for 30 years. Some others are different and still enjoy those rules. I am glad you do (and you're likely wealthier as a result ). I prefer to see changes and therefore attempts to improve the game. They don't always work out perfectly of course, like I dislike rituals and the stealth rules still confuse me, but overall I like the direction they're taking. I loved the switch to 3e, despite having to leave behind all my books, same for 4e. I can't wait to see what 5e has in store as I've really enjoyed every edition of D&D, in fact the only thing I really didn't like was 3.5 as it wasn't enough of a change to justify the cost outlay.

 

[BryonD]

FWIW

Quest for Fun!: Pathfinder Rising

 

[renau1g]

And then Paizo came along and improved the rules a little, but mainly, to me, put a huge breath of imagination into the system. So that got me really going again.

Yes, I agree with this. Paizo has done an amazing job with Golarion and I believe that's a big part of why people are pulled in by the system. The game world is awesome, although I'm not crazy about the anime-art direction, but that's neither here nor there.

Can't wait for the Advanced Player's Guide...or Essentials August/September finds me a happy gamer...