It was Wednesday, approaching 5 p.m., and I was wrapping up one of my game design classes, when one of the students approached me. He looked anxious, like he had to drain the main vein or something.
“Can I leave a little early?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. It’s college. I can’t get all Mr. Hand about it.
Plus, I knew where he was going, and secretly I approved. He didn’t want to be late for D&D Encounters.
Here’s a picture I took a while ago of the dashing Chris Tulach running D&D at Uncle’s. As someone who used to be in Chris’s position, I have to take my hat off to him and everyone else who puts this program together and makes it go. D&D Encounters is the best and most exciting RPG organized play program that’s been released since Living City. Congrats!
The thing about teaching game design is that sometimes it is hard to get your students to play anything other than video games. I mean, let’s face it, most of them grew up on and want to play video games. What many of them don’t understand is that there is a game locked up in all those graphics, sounds, and bizarre storylines (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy). When you tell them that Knights of the Old Republic basically uses the d20 Star Wars engine, they look at you like you’re nuts. You get the same look when you explain that you will want to start with an analog prototype. They video games are created with fiery dust and eye of newt.
Okay, not all of them, but a lot of ‘em.
I’m not a video game hater. I think video games are awesome, but personally I like to get a little closer to the soil of game design. There are a lot of things that analog games provide that computer games just can’t. And I don’t think I am alone.
Having some time to kill, I followed this particular student to his destination—Uncle’s Games in Southcenter Mall. The place where Chris Tulach runs (or usually runs) the D&D Encounters games, as it is just a stone’s throw from WotC. Every time I visit a D&D Encounters site, I am enthused about the future of RPGs. Imagine your stereotypical D&D group. Well D&D Encounters is nothing like it. Sure, there are a good number of hardcore roleplayers hanging about. Most of them are the DMs. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that get excited because the new L5R cards are in, or that the new special edition of Shadowrun has the old Elmore cover. My people; the salt of the earth. But there are also parents bringing in their kids, young professionals who are closet gamers, and just random folks looking for fun and games. After all, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
I think D&D Encounters works, because it didn’t think about what the hardcore RPG audience wanted, but it though about what people who weren’t currently playing D&D—both lapsed players and folks who never played the game—might want. It’s a hard transition to make.
No one feels more entitled than invested RPGers. Now we Americans feel pretty entitled. We don’t want to pay taxes for programs that benefit us directly. We wonder why there is so much crap on television, at the movies, on the book shelves, and so on not realizing we are not some monolithic entertainment block. Or when we do make that realization, we lament stupid people who don’t have our more refined taste (forgetting the Moskowitz principle of horizontal segmentation). If you think about it, it’s really absurd. But RPGers have this expectation that every RPG product or program for a brand should be geared toward them. They supported your product in the past, so they deserve it.
I think part of this has to do with the amount of time and effort RPGers put into their hobby compared to other forms of entertainment. Movies are largely passive. Video games are becoming more and more passive. T.V., Sports, and music, the list goes on. New game design students are always amazed that D&D books are so massive. They find it very daunting. I explain to them, that you don’t need all the books, and in fact, the game has changed so much you don’t even really need books anymore. They are just a repository for the system’s code. A code that runs in the brain of the users, and uses ancient tools like paper, dice, writing utensils, grids, and miniatures. But it is that act, and the fact that the energy used is by this interesting little CPU we call the brain that breeds this entitlement. RPGers are entitled because they are actually using their brains. “How dare you make us use our brains!” they shout, and require more product geared entirely for their purposes (which are often random and strange). Okay maybe I’m exaggerating, but I do it only for effect. Bear with me.
This is the reason it’s so hard to get a beginners product out the door for an established game anymore. The current users notice it’s not designed for them, and ask, “What am I supposed to do with this piece of shit?” Sometimes this makes the company rethink the plan, and add things that the current player does want, often at the expense of those newer gamers. Sometimes the new product is just a piece of crap. No matter what you are going to have those established players badmouth it.
It seems to me, purely through what I’ve observed about the program, that D&D Encounters has really stumbled upon the solution. It creates a more casual style of interaction with the game. It’s the D&D casual game. And it is designed for a new type of gamer.
Casual games work, because they are a reaction to hardcore gaming. People might be interested in something like D&D, but they feel like they must devote their entire life to it, like they see us doing. It’s daunting, it’s scary, and it makes them struggle against the game’s gravity of fun. They don’t join us, because they don’t have that kind of time. Once a week for two hours. Well that’s doable. In playing this more casual form will become more hardcore, but we shouldn’t want them all to. It’s okay for people to only enjoy the game once a week or once a month for a couple of hours. It’s okay for them to tell the rest of the world you don’t have to be an obsessed nerd to play D&D.
And whatever you do, don’t look down on them, and don’t be a jerk. It’s okay for someone to like the game in a different way and frequency than you. You spend as much time on D&D as you want to because you find it fun. The game doesn’t owe you anything. Other people who play the game don’t owe you anything.
You do it because it’s fun. So do the casual players and so-called “tourists.” Let’s min/max that a bit.
Amen!
I do add the caveat that D&D Encounters is fantastic at bringing in a largely ignored segment (everyone not a casual gamer) but that it does not quite please the hardcore gamer. Saracenus and I have managed to bring some 7 full tables of weekly fun to people coming literally out of nowhere to become gamers. Old AD&D guys, young kids and families, 3E gamers, you name it. But the only LFR guy is me (DM and now organizer)! The hardcore are looking for something else. As the emphasis at RPGA shifts to Encounters and Essentials and away from living campaigns, they are either turning to Pathfinder or non-D&D games. An area store that ran LFR every night of the week (often several slots per day) is now running no more than two LFR games a week and often running two living Shadowrun games – with people that never played SR before. While I love playing other systems (Eclipse Phase is awesome!), I do worry about the loss of the hardcore in organized D&D. Hardcore gamers have a lot of experience you want in your programs.
I am separately curious on your take on LFR as compared to other living campaigns. I am also curious on your take on D&D Encounters and why it succeeds where the previous Delve program (clearly aimed at the casual player) failed. I am especially interested in this because when I look at a lot of Gen Con offerings or non-Encounters offerings they seem to often resemble Delves rather than adventures.
So it is important to remember something about casual gamers and hardcore gamers. Sometimes they are the same person. Take Mike (mjtedin, who posted below). Mike has made the transition to hardcore to casual based on what is going on in his life, and lots of people do. Sometimes they come back again. It’s important to have programs for both, but there is varying levels of success for each program.
Now I’m going to say something that will be more than a little controversial. I don’t think a company needs to put a lot of support into its hardcore offerings, the hardcore fans will often pick it up and run with it. This was true for Living City, Living Greyhawk, and Living Forgotten Realms. In fact you want that hardcore investment with a fan-driven program. They are hardcore they want control. On the flip side, they tend to be cliquish and not accepting to N00bs and outsiders.
Why do I think the Delve program failed where Encounters succeeded? Well for many reasons. It was better advertised and better explained. It takes into account how 4e is played rather than the momentum of hardcore D&D fan expectation. It’s a cleaner program in terms of design (both graphic and game). But the greatest factor is time. The delve program usually ran for a full slot, while Encounters creates nice digestible pieces. Most people want to play a game for two hours. Only hardcore groups love five or more.
As a casual gamer, I applaud this post. I went from total D&D nerd to casual gamer around 2001, when I found I just didn’t have the time to keep up with the rules changes. I left that to the professionals and nerds that sit around the table I play at. I usually defer to my DM, whom I consider the alpha DM of world-wide D&D.
Don’t let Mike here fool you, he is a total D&D nerd. Oh, and for the alpha DM comment, I’ll make sure that magic item is in a place that Oriana will find it easy.
Amen.
I have a running battle with gamer entitlement on ENWorld. Lately it is the changes to the DM rewards system that now favors folks running stuff in store, you know the public instead of giving them to folks holed up in their basements.
~~Saracenus
Wait- what? If folks don’t play at a store, they are “holed up in basements”? Perhaps in a dank, dungeonlike basement in their parent’s home?
Good point. There is a middle ground. I don’t think all groups should move to the store and run Encounters for the rest of their days. I think if you are playing D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, whatever, that’s awesome. At the same time, when you are a DM running something for Organized Play, rarely is that program going to be your passion. Getting a little extra somethin somethin from WotC is awesome, and it makes sense they would get more rewards than home game GMing. Home games are often their own rewards. Or sometimes you players buy you pizza, or a big chunk of your iPad (which one of my groups did for me…thanks again guys!)
The interesting thing is that at least in Portland,OR, D&D Encounters (DDE) has spawned several groups of folks to go back to the “basement”, AKA Home, and start more in depth campaigns that DDE just cannot address.
Some still play DDE and others drop away, but we always keep about 29-36 players through out the season.
So, there are folks that started casual and are now drifting into hardcore territory.
Coming back to SRM’s point a lot of the complaints I hear from the hardcore players about DDE are about things that DDE was never intended to fulfill. Many folks only see D&D through the subjective lens of their own experience and cannot believe that a program will be successful unless it caters to their needs and only their needs. They take is quite personally when something is not to their liking. Get over it.
~~Saracenus
I am a DDE DM/oranizer, LFR public and private DM and player, and play in a private home game. I am all over the board.
DM rewards are/were fun, but I can see that sending out all the rewards could get expensive. I don’t know why they didn’t send out Hommlet and the Tomb of Horrors as a straight up DM reward in the first place. Does everyone need a copy of those converted adventures?
I know the vocal minority can drown out the voices of many. Yeah, the angry posts about leaving the RPGA/LFR/DDE are a little over the top- this is the internet, of course. I thought the Gray Hag card was a little weird for a “DM reward” but I’m actually Ok with it- it is a free thing, and I am thankful that I got one.
As someone else pointed out on another thread, I would like to see more local Con support. Something along the lines of stuff they give out in the DDE kits, even if you had to pay a little bit of money for them like the old Con support kits.
Absolutely. I can only speak from my own experience, but the Encounters program has been a great success, and has brought a lot of new players to the game. Here’s hoping Essentials keeps this up!
Can I get an “amen”!?
Amen…oh, probably not from me.