The Mythical New Gamer
I’ve been thinking a lot about the proliferation of starter sets, introductory boxes, and similar gateway products and I’m left scratching my head about whom they are for and who actually buys them. I see the intent. Publishers design the product to create new customers, a laudable and necessary objective, but do they really work? How many people come into the hobby by way of an introductory product?
Image comes from Heath_Bar
For an introductory product to be successful, a potential customer has to be aware of the product in the first place. The customer has to notice the product on the shelf, have heard about it from someone or somewhere, and, most important, have an interest in the pen & paper style roleplaying game instead of some other activity. That’s a fairly specific group of people and one I’m not sure exists in significant numbers.
For starts, the big-box bookstores are vanishing. Yes, you can still find a Barnes & Noble here and there, along with a few smaller regional chains, but few of these stores put introductory roleplaying materials in the paths of potential buyers. The place for these products is not tucked behind the graphic novels or buried in the science fiction & fantasy section. The product needs to sit where potential buyers are likely to go: by the teen fiction, children’s books, on a display in the center aisle, visible en route to the science fiction & fantasy sections. Rare is the employee who knows anything about roleplaying games and rarer still is the employee who plays and actively works to grow the hobby.
So the burden falls to the hobby stores, but here the problem is even worse. For starts, few hobby stores, in my experience, make their money selling RPGs. Game products gather on the shelves for the occasional buyer who does not get all of his or her materials from Amazon.com. Most profits come from CCGs, comics, collectibles and so on. A hobby store is far less likely to get people off the street to wander the aisles and more likely to get people who already shop there for their own specialty item. Even the clerks with the best intentions and sales experience know to focus their expertise on the items that will sell and so most focus their “research” on the items their existing customers want. Learning and mastering RPGs takes time and interest, and, more often than not, clerks who know RPGs push the games they themselves play. If a clerk loves the One Ring, he or she’s not going to push Rifts. So no matter how good your introductory product is, no matter how sexy it looks, the products simply won’t sell if it gets lost amidst the countless other game products sitting on the shelves.
Product placement and effective selling techniques are all well and good, and I’m sure some folks manage to push these products out the door. Hell, if publishers didn’t sell these products, they wouldn’t make them right? But I doubt they sell to 9-year old Johnny with $35 burning a hole in his pocket. I’m far more likely to believe these products sell to existing customers who A) express an interest in a different game system, B) want to complete their collection, or C) want to get someone else into the hobby and believe the introductory product will do what just sitting down with the potential player and playing the game can’t.
I’m not sure the intro product serves customer A at all. While the intro product often provides a stripped down, simplified version, it misleads the customer into believing he or she has a complete product and that the product is somehow representative of the game system on the whole. If the intro product has to simplify the actual game for easy digestion, would it not just be simpler to bypass the simplification process and create a game that is just easy to learn and play? It seems strange to me to create a game with limited appeal due to excessive complexity and then go back and strip out the excessive complexity in the hopes one will lure the customer to buy into the excessive complexity later. Sure, complexity may come in the form of expanded options that could create decision paralysis for the reader, but if this an actual concern, perhaps embracing the “less is more” approach could bypass the need for the intro product in the first place.
There’s not much to say about customer B. This customer, the best kind of customer, buys whatever the publisher produces.
And last, there’s customer C, the evangelist. He or she has the best intentions, doing the grunt work of spreading the word about the game and helping create new players and fans. The introductory product, in my opinion, may be an impediment to growing the hobby. Simply giving an intro product to a kid removes the obligation to teach that kid how to play. Some folks do open up the box and guide the new player through the process, but the intro product is designed to eliminate this exchange of information since it needs to carry all the weight itself.
I think back to when I started playing RPGs and I remember very well the first books and boxes I picked up. The red box was one of my first products and I remember it felt like a game I could play for a while—three whole levels in fact. I fooled around with it a bit, but I didn’t “learn” the game until I actually sat down and played. After that initial experience, I acquired a wide range of roleplaying products, and even played some. Twilight 2000, all the Palladium stuff, Autoduel, MERP, Rolemaster, Mechwarrior, Traveller, Shadowrun, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Star Trek, Star Wars, and even the obscure Hidden Kingdom. I didn’t need introductory products to learn and play these games. I got the book, read the rules, and tried to play. If I couldn’t understand the rules, the fault lay not with the product but with me. I had to study more, try harder, and experiment with the game until I got it. The difference was that I rose to the challenge of mastering the game rather than depending on some hand-holding material to help me along. Looking back, I played through the Basic, Expert, and Companion sets before I “graduated” to the Advanced books and once I did, I never played plain old D&D again. And now, I kind of wish I had skipped over the boxed sets and went straight into the Gygaxian madness that was 1st edition.
I understand what intro sets are supposed to do. I know why we designers and publishers feel we have to produce them, but I really feel the best way to expand the hobby is through the evangelists. We should not expect some potential gamer will opt to buy the intro product on his or her own initiative, not when there are so many other ways to spend entertainment dollars. For me, the ideal product is one that teaches established gamers how to “sell” the game to new players. Rather than a simplified rules engine, my ideal intro product would present practical advice about introducing RPGs to the uninitiated, to explain what they are, offer helpful tips for creating pregenerated characters, advice for helping players create their first characters, and a basic adventure designed to show off different parts of the system. And you know what? This intro product wouldn’t even need to be system-specific. You could just construct a couple of broad adventures—dungeon delve, mystery, and so on, with guidelines for the experienced reader to adapt those adventures to whatever system he or she is teaching. This one product could be a handy tool for any gamer, regardless of game system to spread the word about the game he or she loves.
So tell me. How did you get into gaming? What was your gateway “drug?” Did someone teach you to play or did you buy an intro product, learn to play, and teach others? What intro products have you purchased? Do you still use them? Did they help you learn to play?
This may sound silly, but I learned by listening to the Penny Arcade/PvP podcasts. It’s not that I couldn’t have learned by joining my husband’s group and reading the books, but learning the basics of how the game operates in a safe environment (one where I wasn’t going to be teased for not knowing bits of game culture) got me over my fears of playing. And, to me, that’s what a new player oriented product is striving for.
I have this argument a lot with people who have been playing for a long time. To me, selling new players on the play experience seems weird. I get a lot of the same high from playing a decently well written video/computer RPG as I do from playing D&D. What got me to go for the tabletop version was the chance to be the DM. Now, it’s easy to say that perhaps I’m a very small minority, and that may be true. But if a product can sell me on the idea that I can easily make my own awesome adventures with my friends, it has me hooked and I really don’t think I’m the only one.
Also, one of the things that convinced me to finally join my husband’s group was the idea that we would all be on the same footing since 4e was so new and the changes were so drastic. To be honest, once i learn that someone is an established player, I’m much less likely to want to play with them without interrogating them first. The things that I find awesome about the game are old news to them. In my experience, they tend to care much more about system mastery and “smart” game play whereas I just want to play with some shit and blow things up. And given how balance was in previous editions, they are likely to be afraid to say yes to stuff because they are afraid it will throw off the game.
I stole the Red Box from a store in the 80s. I taught the game. One thing that attracted me was the fact that it was extensible without becoming obsolete. I knew there was a future in Mentzer D&D. Modern box sets feel like I’m supposed to toss them aside after a certain point. I think that’s a big mistake.
One piece of my experience I think matters is that my childhood friends and I each ended up teaching/leading a game of our choice. I was the D&D guy. My friend Shoey introduced Battletech. We ran them back and forth along with other board games and RPGs, all introduced in this manner. I believe this prevented early burnout on games — in our 30s, we all still play.
So the ideal box set would include teaching the game, but it would also be something I would keep using after “graduation,” and it would cross-promote with games that are different enough to inspire some variety. Right now, game promotion tends to cluster in groups of similar games, so that I learn that there are a zillion versions of D&D out there. Uninspiring!
Welcome back Rob, been a while, glad to see you’re still about.
I got into D&D when I saw an advert in a Marvel comic for an early board game. I bought it, in London but suddenly discovered a treasure trove in my first games shop. Then I ditched the board game and went from the Red box quickly to the PHB 1 and so on.
In those early days I was the Evangelist, desperate to learn how to play, eager to get my friends in on the act and make new friends. After a really long break (20 years) I’ve been DM 4thed with a group I meet through a finding players service on ENworld and we meet bi-weekly to run our games, good times.
Ab
I’m always kind of torn with this topic. The original Red Box is what got me into D&D and as you said it was a complete game. I think I could have grokked AD&D, but I was happy with OD&D. My gaming past isn’t important though, it’s the new crop of gamers.
I’ve recently had the honor of bringing in 5 new players to the hobby. Most of them had played at one time or another in their lives (they’re all late 20s early 30s), but none of them had played recently (within 10 years). So when we started the campaign we met at a gamestore and talked about the game and what they needed. I actually told them they didn’t need anything and I could supply them for now until they were sure they were into it. A couple of them really wanted to buy stuff so I suggested the Heroes of the…books.
They wanted to buy the new Red Box because it said beginners or whatever one it. Its an old gripe but we all know the new Red Box has issues. I worry at how much damage it has done in confusing new players when their 3rd level character doesnt make sense with the Heroes books.
Anyway, I do think beginner sets are useful. I know it took me quite a while to explain certain rules like Attacks of Opportunities and Healing Surge usage. A basic D&D set should make it simple by not including these concepts and add complexity later.
My new players ask me what to read and I just have to tell them to read the rules and play the game. I point them to a lot of blogs.
As far as if I play the original boxed set, no. I actually recently sold all of my old gaming stuff. Sure I get a surge of nostalgia when I look at them, but I dont use it otherwise and they just take up space.
I have one player who I know would be a good GM, but shes so scared of all the rules. If there was a simplified version I think she would be more apt to try it. I’m sure I’ll get her to GM eventually, when she knows the rules better.
Personally I love intro boxed sets. Though your post did make me question why.
First off: I got into rpgs with TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes. I learned it the way you learned your games. I took the box off the shelf and read the 8 page Battle Book. I think played through Day of the Octopus with my Cousin running all 4 heroes. Then I went back and read the Campaign book and we played through again using the full rules.
What starter sets have I bought: Various D&D ones including the 3.0, 3.5 ones as well as Keep on the Shadowfell and the later released intro box for 4e. Star Wars (I think it was the Revised Core edition, it came with a Wookie action figure). WEG Star Wars Introductory boxed set. That may be all of them, though I might be forgetting one. I will be picking up the Pathfinder box that I’m sure inspired this post as well.
Why do I buy them? Well I’m already a gamer with a wide variety of experience. I’m buying for reason A you list above. I love to try out new systems and I think intro boxed sets are the perfect way to do this. There are a variety of reasons:
1 – The first and foremost is price point. I would much rather spend $30 to try our an RPG rather then $50 or more on a rulebook (up to $150 if it’s one of those games that has multiple rulebooks required for the DM).
2 – Everything you need to get started in one place. Most boxed sets come with everything you need. I don’t have to go buy special dice, miniatures, counters, character sheets, maps, tiles or whatever the game needs. Everything is there that I need.
3 – Easy to learn and teach rules. It’s much easier to pick up and learn a 20 page rulebook vs. a 300 page book. Especially when the 20 pages contain the core concept of the game. The other 300 are usually special rules and circumstances you don’t need right away. I find even with a ‘watered’ down version of a rule set I can get an excellent idea of what a game is meant to do, how it’s meant to play and if it’s right for me and my group.
4 – Gets to the table quickly. I can usually pick up one of these boxes, call my friends and run a game the same day. I can’t do this with a 300+ page rulebook.
In general buying an intro boxed gives me a great view into a game, usually more then enough to make up my mind if I want to go further at a very good price point.
I got in through word of mouth, at age 10. IThese kids were playing D&D, I asked about it, they let me in to play.
It’s entirely possible I may have eventually seen the game in a hobby store and it’s entirely possible I may have bought it. BUt then again it’s far more likely I never would have noticed it just sitting around on some shelves. Long ago, I once asked a worker at Books-A-Million how much of the RPG stuff they sold. He said hardly ever, and as many days as not no one had to reorganize the RPG shelves, because hardly anyone even lifted a book off the shelf.
Yes, RPG’s are best pushed through evangelists.
My first introduction to RPGs was, like many, the D&D Basic Set, circa 1983 (the “Red Box”).
I got it for Christmas. I read through the rules myself, and became Dungeon Master for my small group of players – my brother Nick and cousins Jason and Steve. I still consider the D&D Red Box to be the best introductory product out there, and it actually (as you stated) felt more like a full game. I was a bit intimidated by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons at the time, so we happily devoured adventures in OD&D all the way through the Companion Set.
The funny thing is, while we were enjoying OD&D, I discovered many other RPGs – Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Marvel Super Heroes, Twilight 2000, GURPS. Most of these didn’t have an easy on-ramp (except MSH, which was really written for a comic fan turned RPGer). But we played them anyway, and had a great time.
It wasn’t until 1989 and 2nd Edition that I really dove headlong into AD&D. I waited 5 1/2 years to buy into the more detailed rules, due to concerns over complexity. I’m not sure if that was a good thing or not for my development as a roleplayer, but I do know that there were dozens of modules I had to “catch up” on once i was invested in AD&D. I could’ve (and probably should’ve) been playing those classic modules instead of being frustrated by some other short-lived RPGs…
My “gateway” drug was the Baldur’s Gate computer games, they lead me to inquire more about D&D with my friends that already played after school on a regular basis. 2e was my start, played everything religiously since and have delved into many other games but only on surface levels (just reading the books) or maybe a one shot here and there.
I did purchase the D&D red box out of some sort of reverse nostalgia since I was too young to experience the first ones. I have used it once to run an intro game for some close family, which they enjoyed but have never used it beyond that. I think that all the hand-holding is a bit silly in gaming, and everywhere else for that matter. I like to consider myself one of those evangelist gamers, in my time I have gotten at least 20 people to become avid tabletop RPG gamers and I’d really like to see some kind of product to help us out more than just intro boxes full of stuff we don’t need.
Big box stores are full of lackluster folks who are just trying to get by like the rest of us, very rarely are there actual knowledgeable folks inside. Though I did get a curious smile once when inquiring about an old Ravenloft novel at my local B&N. Unfortunately D&D gets this kind of treatment from B&N: http://lostlevel.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/redbox.jpg
Tucked away in the back like some kind of red-headed stepchild.
Your local FLGS observation is spot on and I’ve found that more often than not you’ve got the staff there pushing one game due to personal preference, or not pushing anything at all because pokemon and mtg is what fills their coffers. There are 3 shops in my nearby area (by nearby I mean 30 miles because I live in the sticks) and NONE of them run D&D encounters. There’s no interest and most of the lazy sods that work there wouldn’t run it anyway.
Damnit now I’m just getting angry. Everyone is lazy. This piece was great though, keep on kicking ass Rob.
1st edition ad&d, basically a kids older brother had all the books and the whole neighborhood of kids started playing. we spent more time making pcs than playing, we died all the time. it was quite fun. the thing i remember most was just sitting around coming up with characters
I first played by sitting in on games at conventions. Years later, I would meet someone at a summer camp who took me into his older brother’s gaming group and learned AD&D 2e there which is when I really got into it (and would lead to running my own games.)
I think part of the key to the beginner sets isn’t a strictly “pick this up to learn an RPG!” but that the primary audience for board games (which is what these beginner sets resemble) are moms buying gifts. While it may not be a primary entry point into the hobby, they’ll still sell to that audience even if the kid never opens it. And if they do, a certain percentage will go on to become devoted fans.
My reply got long, so I posted it here: http://owenkcstephens.com/2011/10/31/the-beginning/
The mythical new gamer is playing video games, not tabletop roleplaying games.
The best hope we have for the future of our hobby is for the big players to start licensing high quality electronic games that catches the attention of today’s kids. If the kids find the content compelling they’ll be more inclined to check out other material including rpg supplements and novels.
How do I know this will work? Because it’s what got me hooked in 1988. Sure, I had dabbled with D&D/AD&D before then, but it wasn’t until the release of “Pool of Radiance” on my Commodore 128 that Dungeons & Dragons really grabbed ahold of me. Curious about this fantastic setting, I started playing AD&D in earnest and gobbling up any Forgotten Realms novel I could find.
I have four kids, ages 5, 10, 14, and 16 and NONE of them play D&D. Why? Because they’re far more interested in listening to their iPods, chatting with friends on Facebook, or deathmatching on Xbox live. To capture my kids and others their age, Wizards and Paizo need to get cracking on a compelling console/mobile version of D&D quick or be satisfied with the aging customer base they already have.
@Owen, I just wrote about the new Pathfinder Beginner Box and I emphasized how awesome it is because of the content for the new GM. Players have a good idea of how to play a tabletop RPG due to video and computer RPGS. There’s rarely, if ever, an analog for the GM in digital games. Yet, without a GM, there’s no game.
I suppose my years working in a marketing department have jaded me, but for me, boxed sets really represent only the same thing as a trial-size package does for most other consumer products. You get a limited amount of useful product, you get an good idea what future product might be like, but you can only use it for a limited amount of time (in the case of recent boxed RPG sets, 3-5 levels).
Unfortunately, unlike the trial sizes of most consumer products, RPG trials (boxed sets) are sort of forced to “sell themselves”. Which is odd, considering it’s a trial. What the industry really needs, is a barker. Someone to come in on a Saturday at the local bookstore/FLG/Hobby store, put up a little display, and sell the product. I work in the pet food industry, and this kind of thing is done in the big box pet stores all the time. In fact, you occasionally see two or more companies going at it at the same time, each one telling customers the benefit of THEIR product. These barkers don’t work for the store, so it remains neutral. The companies selling the product provide the barker. It might seem silly for an RPG company to do this, but it would be refreshing to see it in the larger stores.
For the record, my first intro to Dungeons & Dragons was through the blue box, a version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. That box introduced my friend & I to the game, and later prompted us to buy the Advanced books when we could scrape together the funds. I was fortunate at the time to have purchased the game from an actual game store (Game Shop – Wichita). The guy at the counter (we knew him only as “Bob”) had a vested interested in ALL kinds of games from classic to board to RPG games. Sadly, that store is now gone, but it’s a ruler I judge all other game stores by.
In terms of joingin the gaming hobby, I got into it by watching my brother and his friends playing through the Isle of Dread included in the Expert boxed set. From there, I was bought the black Basic box set with Escape from Zanzer Tems dungeon and later the rules cyclopedia.
By the time i’d gained the experience playing with my brother as GM, and with his friends, Dark Sun was just coming out and I sold my friends on the idea of a desert world. We played for a few years with just my books until the First Quest box sets with the audio cd’s came out which they bought.
I skipped most of the 3rd edition, but got into 4th edition because of the leaked torrents of the original core books. Without seeing them and the welcome change to the system, I would have skipped over it. I’ve run lots of public demo games for 4e and the lack of a good starter set has made getting new players difficult, the PHB is often too unweildly for new players, and was quickly out of date, the DDI was great, but you lacked any thing physical, the original 4e statrter set was too basic, while the Red Box contained a weird mis-mash of essentials and original and was pretty incompatible. The HotFL book is probably the best starter product for 4e.
I’ve had limited success getting players interested in other systems. The increasing costs of books make people unwilling to shell out on a system they’ve not tried, and some, such as All for One or SLA Industries , really would benefit from a players intro book with cut down character creation options.
One of the best places I have ever seen introductory box sets (and a place they really should go) is in the board game section of stores like Target, Wal-Mart, and Toys R’ Us. As long as the box can provide a full gaming experience for at least a little while and the box art and title are eye catching, that’s a good spot for it.
I got into gaming through a combination of The Older Cousin and introductory box sets. In 1988 (I was ten), my older cousing gave me a pile of his RPG books. These included Lords of Creation (which made no sense to me) and Tunnels and Trolls (which provided fun solo adventures). I enjoyed the T&T stuff and wanted more. My parents took me to the B Dalton Bookstore in the local mall and it was there that I found the Mentzer Red Box. I made the foolish decision to introduce some friends to the game and I’ve been trapped behind the screen watching my plots, settings, and characters get trampled by idiots ever since.
From that point on, I became the advocate. For younger cousins and friends, I have bought countless introductory sets to various games as Christmas, Hannukah, or birthday gifts. For folks closer to my own age, I have brought them into the game myself. The majority of the players I have run for over the years are folks I personally brought into the hobby. On a quick count, I think I’ve introduced between 30 and 40 people to gaming.
Given that, I have to agree with Rob. As an advocate for the game, I value introductory sets as ways to introduce the game to others, but even I didn’t quite get into the game without an advocate myself. I think it was Mike Mearls (in one of the older D&D podcasts) who said it best: “The best marketing we have is still the older cousin.”
My parents played OD&D and my father bought my little brother hero quest or heroscape or some such board game. He played with us but set me up to play Zorath, I think that was what the villain was called. I think his intent was to get me over my shyness. After the booklet ran out we made up our own scenarios and had to houserule the game to account for my father’s out of the box play style. Later I played in many games still too shy to DM, finally with 4E I took the campaign reins and haven’t looked back. I bought the current redbox and its predecessor for my son and nephews. Also being a completist I bought my own copies for my collection. We play weekly together and hear lair assault calling our names.
I got into tabletop gaming by way of video games. Unlike a lot of people here, D&D was not my first tabletop game. It was Shadowrun. They had Shadowrun games on the SNES and Sega Gensis in the early 90′s and I played both of them and fell in love with the cyberpunk/magical fusion. So when I saw Shadowrun game books at my local big book store, I was intrigued. I started reading them in the store. Got my first one as a holiday gift from a friend, bought a couple myself, and shoplifted a few more. I taught myself to play and did an incredibly poor job of it, so badly my friends wouldn’t play with me. In the years since, I’ve bought a few intro products, but rarely because I need to introduce a new gamer or because I want to ease myself into a system. I tend to buy intro products because they have something else I like in them, whether it be maps, miniatures, adventures, or whatever. I’ve got enough experience gaming as both player and GM now that I trust myself to understand any new game I come across and be able to explain it to others in a reasonable way.
I started playing in the 6th grade because my mom thought I might enjoy the school’s D&D club. I had seen the first basic set played at a summer camp but I started with AD&D because that’s what the club ran. I also purchased the purple basic set and ran a pseudo-home game that included action figures and God knows what else. I played the game however it made sense to me at home while in the club I tried to learn the actual rules. Eventually I began DMing the actual game.
I’ve recently been reading over all of the different boxed sets (I now own just about all of them). It is amazing how each edition (often several times) has tried to create intro products. Many of them are really bad, primarily because they just don’t teach the edition well or aren’t of use for more than one audience. The original Red Box is actually pretty good. The 3E box isn’t bad… I think including tiles and minis is a pretty good way to give something to new and experienced gamers.
I agree with everything you wrote, but I also think there is a benefit to intro sets. They are probably sold at a loss as a form of marketing. Even if they don’t quite succeed, they help get the word out. The new Red Box, with marketing on web sites and placement in Target, probably did a good job of reaching out.
I suspect there is validity in starting with “the rules” (PH and DMG) and then release an intro set once the edition has enough product to confuse new people. In each of AD&D, 2E, 3E, and 4E I’ve had at least one time when I was in a store and helped people intimidate by the material on the shelf figure out how to get started. Ideally the intro material has something worthwhile for the experienced user. An intro adventure that helps get new players started is a good goal. Honestly, I would run a good one for adult friends, or perhaps for my kids when they get older. I’ll write it because it doesn’t exist, but I can see the call for it. Getting cool new tiles and neat minis (of the same quality as the ones I normally use) would round it out and make it a solid purchase for many reasons.
As for evangelists… There are many (hundreds?) experienced D&D gamers that would say organized play, in an effort to appeal to newer players, has pushed many of the evangelists out of D&D and into Pathfinder. I don’t completely agree. I think the numbers favor the current policy. At the same time I do think there is a way to bring in new players while retaining experienced players and keeping them as evangelists.
Like you, Rob, I started with the Red Box, which was given to me by my grandmother for my 13th birthday. Two weeks later I bought the Expert Set, and later that year bought the Companion and Master Sets (though I don’t think we ever actually played above 14th level in the end).
Interestingly, the Red Box actually was an example of your statement: “If the intro product has to simplify the actual game for easy digestion, would it not just be simpler to bypass the simplification process and create a game that is just easy to learn and play?”
After a few years of playing this, I jumped into AD&D 2e and never looked back (although I still have all my BECMI materials).
But I was a self-learner…me and my friends played D&D and Star Frontiers for the rest of Grade 7, dabbled a bit in Grade 8 but then I drifted away from them, not picking up RPGs again for a couple of years before I started up a group of which 3 of them are best friends to this day.
That said, I’m also the type who LIKES to learn on his own.
@Brian James: I don’t think it is that drastic. I did feel that way before 4E, but 4th has really done a lot to bring in new players and to be easier for casual players. The average age at small cons has actually dropped for once as a wider audience shows up. At Encounters it is pretty healthy as well. Kids with parents, old and young, casual to frequent and returning from 1E to 4E. That’s a solid start.
@Deadorcs: In theory, the barkers are friends or Organized Play. Encounters does do a good job of this. Kid comes into the store with parent to buy Pokemon, sees the game, wanders over. We get a fair bit of that in our local store. Intro play at PAX Prime did really well, as did the board games. But we need to do more to bring people there.
My first RPG was Toon, played when I was 9 or 10 at a science fiction convention. I had run out of comic books and money to buy more comic books. My parents were busy and weren’t going to give me any more money to buy any more comic books, so I wandered aimlessly into the game room, where a helpful teen
For younger kids, slapstick games may actually be better at introducing them to the concept than a dumbed-down version of a more serious game. It worked for me, anyway. I had a blast that day, and have been hooked ever since. I played my first game of D&D that year (straight into AD&D 2nd), and have never looked back.
hi rob. I just like to say that I enjoyed your article but I also enjoyed the new red box by wizards of the coast. I grab the latest 1 next to the collectable card games in a target store for my son, for christmas, but we couldn’t wait. I had to open it a month and a half early. I was itching to teach him and his friends a game from my childhood d&d. just seeing the game there on the shelf reminded me of 25 years ago when I learned to play with the red box and the blue box. I understand what some say about the incompatibilities with full fourth edition rules. it would be nice if wizards had merely stripped out certain more complex rules and then added those back in when a player picked up 1 of the essentials books.
I’ll keep this short but I think 1 of the most important new books a player could get is a copy of the latest rules compendium. it has been extremely helpful to me with the excelllent index in the back. we played the red box adventure and then I gave the dice to my son and we used the map a couple more times and all of the tokens inside.
It was the AD&D books that got me hooked. Growing up, I saw the Red and Blue boxes sitting up high on a shelf, but they were sent to my brother in the Air Force. But once he returned home, he was huge into the hobby, and I started tagging along. I was enamored by the AD&D Monstrous Manual – the short stories that seemed to be told with every single monster, the stats, there was an enormous complexity I found beautiful there.
I must have made four AD&D sheets without ever having been able to play. Eventually, I was able to cut my teeth on a half-vampire in 3.0 that my brother had helped me make – I was a huge fan of regeneration, and it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at first how anyone could live without that ability.
Needless to say, I know better now. I’ve been gaming for well over ten years, and I haven’t looked back since.
Great to see you’re still alive and well, Rob. Hope to see some more posts from you soon – you’re still one of my favorite reads out there.
I began playing D&D because my older brother and his friends played and allowed me to game with them. This was 1980 and I was six years old. I could not read the rules for myself and was taught by them. I don’t know what edition we played, but I do know it came in a box and had dice that we colored with an included crayon. We continued to play D&D a lot… until we found Ultima for our Apple IIe. Then video games became our source of entertainment. Over the years D&D was always in the back of my mind but I never played because I was interested in chasing girls and there was always a stigma associated with D&D. (Funny how there never seemed to be a stigma associated with video games.)
I returned to D&D when 3rd edition came out. Why? Because I did not enjoy the linear and constrained story and gameplay of video games. (I was engaged by that time so I didn’t really care what my wife thought about my inner geek!)
Regarding starter sets and the red box – it worked for us as kids. I remember looking at the box when I was six years old and seeing “For Ages 12 and Up” on the box cover, thinking that I was doing something I was not allowed to do! But why are these products stamped with 12 & up? Why not introduce a very basic game set for young children (See Heroes of Heislod or whatever that kid-friendly edition that Nina Hess worked on.) D&D is just like cigarettes. We need to get the kids hooked early so that the habit will be very hard to kick when they get older.
Also, have you seen the product placement of the red box at Target? (Well, my local Target at least). It’s not with the other board games in the game section of the store, it’s with the trading cards behind that last register that no one ever uses, tucked deeply into the bottom shelf out of sight.
My intro to D&D was a two page article in Games Magazine, September/October, 1979. The article included a basic description of play, a map with a key and described locations, and the author’s impression of the game. That was all I needed to be hooked on the idea. As the game has evolved from DM-centric improvisation to a player-centric “automated” system, more of the burden falls on the players to know the rules. As this burden increased, players struggled. I believe 4e was a response to this. Modular, balanced rules that were accessible in card form, mean that the players have the important rules in-hand when they play. But the game is more in the hands of the players because of this, and I believe that this has unbalanced it and made it less satisfying.
New gamers, as others have pointed out, come with a gaming vocabulary informed by video games. Most players already know the basics of leveling, character generation, and general goals of play. The mystery that drives players in a video game is the plot or plots built into it. What’s missing in introductory boxes, and in 4e D&D in general, are more tools for DMs to craft this vital portion of the game.
I had an older sister who played 2e right after it came out in 1989. She was in high school and I was just a kid, but that was my first taste. I played TMNT (oh yeah, I loved the Turtles) and the After the Bomb RIFTS game (though, interestingly enough, I’m not sure how I did a very good job of it, since all I had was the character creation rules from TMNT and I don’t think they were complete) and then settled in with a group of gamers that I pretty much created through my own evangelism.
And yeah, while I’m *not* the evangelist I once was (as a student on the advanced level, I quit working when my head gets fuzzy, meaning that planning for an RPG is tough), I have never used a beginners product and don’t think I ever would. The only group that I could possibly imagine buying those things for is my niece. But she’s damned smart and probably could figure out the rules from the core books easily enough.
From a sociological perspective, however, I think the data backs up your theory. People get into new hobbies and join new movements and groups based on their network connections. How this works runs the gamut of variations, but it works from church involvement to high-risk activism (for example, the students who were involved in the Freedom Summer [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Summer] were generally recruited to a high risk activity through interpersonal contacts and were more likely to attend if they had good, strong ties with others who were working. The same is true of hobbies. Big marketing firms know these things and use it to their advantage, the question is whether or not the gaming industry can figure out a way to essentially plot new network nodes that will evangelize about the game to their peers.
I read articles about RPGs in a computer magazine, and they fascinated me even though I didn’t really understand what RPGs were about. It was the late eighties and I was 12. Later I saw a friend play Red Box D&D, and I finally got one of my own. Have been a roleplayer ever since. Somehow I doubt that the new Red Box will become as legendary.
My brother got me started when I was 5 with the pink box basic set. Needless to say he didn’t like playing with me until I got a bit older but I stuck with D&D throughout my youth.
We got all of our 1st edition books from a local drug store in Utah called Waynesguard. AD&D was very heavy for me so I stuck with the basic box sets (even immortals) before jumping onto 2nd edition AD&D full force at the age of 14.
I truly mastered the game my sophomore year when I met a bunch of senior football players who played the game. They were the best group I’ve ever played with…
[...] this week Robert Schwalb posted his Mythical New Gamer article over on his blog. In the post he expresses his skepticism about the success of introductory or [...]
My wife had played D&D as a kid, and I had a buddy who had a 2e Player’s Handbook that we used to try to create characters, but never actually played. My wife and I saw the D&D 3e introductory box set in a bookstore and decided to try it out. We had fun for a few weeks but never really found a group that worked for us.
We got into 4e about eight years later when a friend of our invited us to start a new campaign with him and his wife and another friends of ours. We got the PHB and never looked back.
I got into role playing games through the old yellow box Marvel Super Heroes, published by TSR. One of my friends saw me playing it with some other friends and told me about another game TSR made called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Interestingly enough, looking back on it, many of those who enjoyed the Marvle Super Hero games didn’t like the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Mind you were were using the Marvel game more like pre-Heroclicks in that it was mostly combat oriented but…
I’ve never used an Intro Box, be it red or any other color. After years of hearing about but not being able to play games like D&D and Star Frontiers (in rural Oklahoma), I finally got to really play the game in college. I *have* introduced various RPGs to dozens (at least) of people, and I’ve looked at several intro products, but never really bought into them.
There are some cool parts to the Red Box (for example); While almost any half-decent DM can put together an introductory adventure with character generation or pre-generated characters, handing that DM a professionally written and presented adventure (and maybe pre-gen characters) is pretty much pure improvement. The solo `build a character’ part of the Red Box seems like a good idea, although I’d personally suggest making that kind of thing a free download, app, and web-app.
For getting new people into the game, I suspect that D&D Encounters is a stronger vector than the Red Box, and gaming conventions (GenCon, PAX, etc) might usher more people into D&D than the intro box. My belief is that the Red Box is most useful in the hands of an experienced person trying to show the game to someone (often, several someones) who are new.
What I’d like to see is *more* on-ramps into RPGs, not *bigger* on-ramps (that’s why Paizo’s $35 product confuses me). Gaming is a standard part of our (pop) culture these days; nobody comes to D&D from a vacuum anymore. We have D&D board games, Facebook games, and video games already; each of these should have a `bridge product’ (ideally, more than one) that tells an interested person about the table-top RPG, using the language of the games they know. The Facebook game should have a button that prints/downloads a usable character sheet of your FB character – and a link to the character builder. The board games ought to include (directly or via download) a scenario where one person is the DM. I ought to be able to go to the D&D web site and look at a character sheet (maybe several) for every notable character or monster that appeared in a D&D video game or novel for the past N years (where N is as large as you can afford to have crowd-sourced submissions reviewed). Intro scenarios ought to be available in game stores using a format more akin to the old Cheapass Games than the modern $50 boxed board game, or just make them primarily downloadable PDFs. We ought to be able to play simple/solo adventures on our ios/android phones and tablets, and more complicated ones on our xbox/playstation/nintendo consoles.
These are the ways people get into `gaming’ these days. With a little effort, this could be one common way for people get into RPGs as well.
I was introduced to the culture/community through board games. Axis and Allies and Hero Quest at my buddy’s house. Then we graduated to 2e AD&D, which my buddy had learned about from his older brother. And boom, I was hooked. Eventually (years later when my friend and our crew were no longer interested in D&D) I traded all my Magic cards for all his D&D books and I was set…as soon as I found a new group (which I did).
That said, there is some value in looking at new gamers of today. I’ve had three distinct experiences with this. My 5 year old son has been introduced to the gaming world through the Adventure system games. I know he’s not technically old enough to play, but he does alright and since it’s a cooperative game I can help him out easily enough.
Then there’s the guy in my group who joined us as a new player, who was introduced through CCGs (Magic, specifically). He was hanging out at the game store anyway, 4e was coming out, he thought he’d check it out and we had an arrangement with the game store to game with a new group of players…and with that like that, he was hooked. He plays more D&D than anyone else in the group these days. Probably more than the rest of us combined.
Lastly, there’s the young teens. I’m a teacher, they found out about my D&D podcast, and asked a lot of questions about the game. Eventually I told them that if they could find enough people interested in playing, we’d start an after school club. This is where the beginner boxes work well. I used the first 4e beginner box for them (the blue one before the red one) to get them started and then jumped into the Scales of War adventure path from DDI. It was the perfect toe in the water experience to get them into further elements of the game. It’s been several years but I still get emails from them now and then asking me about gaming stuff.
So I guess there might be a place for the beginners boxes, but it’s not a large place. So long as the publishers know what it’s there for and keep their expectations in check they’re doing just fine.
I think this entire article is a waste of time, and I’ll tell you why: you have no idea who your Big Box customers are. Stop worrying about what the demographic is. If you don’t have the data, then you simply don’t know. Guess all you want. You know that someone is buying them. Units are out there. Thousands and thousands of them. But the bottom line is: you don’t know. Until you know, you have no way to gauge whether they are effective or not.
The real problem is: WotC isn’t tracking the data. Until you and the development team have direct feedback to the info you need, all you can do is speculate (which is always subject to bias). All that information can be captured (easily!). If you want to roll a big ball up the hill, try getting a feedback loop for Big Box products in place. Suggest offering a year’s free subscription to DDi to Big Box buyers if they fill out an online survey. Establish an incentive program for feedback response.
Until then, you are developing “into the wind.” Rest assured though: you always need to be acquiring new customers. Always. Always always always.
Erol Otus Basic D&D. Early 1980s, I was 10 or 12. Mum, Dad, my two brothers, all of us at the table to play this Dungeons and Dragons thing for the first time, arriving at the Keep on the Borderlands.
My mum drew the most amazing picture of the keep based on the description my brother read out.
(and tears))
Through video games, and the accidental find of 4th edition material at my then local library.
I support the idea of a beginner box, but even more than that I insist that this hobby needs some good PR and marketing people to push this product into the hands of people more like me, sitting on the fringes, not sure if they want to pick it up, and the people in related geekish hobbies, especially computerized gaming. Ads in comic books, gaming magazines, web sites, fantasy movies, etc. There is so much more of a market than I think people expect for the fantastic. I really do think the only thing keeping this hobby from being more prolific is the stigma, and the closed nature of the hobby of roleplaying games as it currently stands.
Beginner sets are good, but only if there is a market. More important I think are core boxed sets. When a member of a gaming groups wants to get all his own books, it should be easy for him to get the core set and begin running his own games if he wants. When it comes to marketing these days, it’s obviously got to be online and involve video games. Video gamers are the most obvious choice for people who may want to learn to play D&D and any other table top RPG.
White Wolf at one point created series of books for World of Warcraft and Everquest to be played on the table, but there is an obvious tie in here. A series of successful D&D themed video games with crossmarketing might help sell those kinds of things, but also I’d suggest finding ways to advertise with or tie into other fantasy games. Any video game sites online that cater to fantasy games should be advertised with as well. I’d also recommend cutting Atari’s strings on the D&D license. The most successful D&D products have been the Gold Box series created by TSI and Infinity Engine games created by Bioware and black isle. I think the Troika Temple of Elemental Evil game had serious potential but it was mismanaged terribly.
As for getting into gaming, I was 8 and my neighbour had gotten some D&D stuff from his older brother. The first module we ran (he was the DM) was about an elf with 2 war dogs. O2 – Blade of Vengeance I believe. I don’t remember how much we played together beyond that module. It was a long time ago, but that was the catalyst.
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