In the meantime, if you’re not too entrenched on Vilya yet, Nimrodel is a curious mix of sometimes-dead and sometimes-crowded but I’ve never had to sit in a queue to get in. I’m expecting to start some new characters with a few friends come November 18th, when Mines of Moria launches. (I totally dig the new Warden class.)

Depending on how many new folks show up, we may form our own Kinship.

Regarding the edition cycle, that comes as a bit of a shock. I would have assumed, incorrectly it seems, that you would want to carry your old players into the next edition, but I sort of see why that is considered a plus; especially when you consider the glut of games and the relatively small population of gamers.

Brad, what LOTRO server do you play on? I’m on Nimrodel and back into the game in a big way, lately.

I know some people who devote a lot of time to WoW when they can’t get their gaming group together. I’m confident that there are people out there who play WoW instead of D&D because it better serves their dungeon-and-loot fix, but also don’t have an interest in narrative RPGs; meaning folks who don’t play WoW instead of D&D, like you Brad, without pursuing RPGs otherwise. Whether they would have played D&D in WoW’s absence is doubtful, just given the volume of WoW players versus the volume of D&D players prior to WoW’s launch.

Also, the edition cycle being what it is in all hobby games (D&D included), retaining old players is a bonus, but not the point. If you’ve molded 3E into just what you like, what was the likelihood that any incarnation of 4E would lure you away from your investment in 3E? Probably I should break off and write a post about the edition cycle, if only because I’ve yet to write one here, for some reason.

My group has ‘house ruled’ 3E to be almost exactly what we want in a system, though we do like point based rather than level based systems better, that is not something that 4E brings to the table. To us the 3E system is nice and easy, and it does not get in the way of the dm or pc narrative, and lets us focus on those rather than the game mechanic. That is of course our opinion.

I do think that Will brings up an interesting point about ‘drafting’ alongside MMO’s, that would make more sense to me as a positioning strategy. While I don’t have my pulse on the gaming community, either the designers or the players, I personally know only two types of people that play WoW. There are those that play pen and paper RPGs along with MMOs, and those that only play electronic MMOs.

I don’t see either format really influencing each other at least as far as people choosing what they play. I don’t know anyone for example, that has given up one for the other. Part of that is probably due to the fact, as Will stated, that you can play an MMO for an hour or two easily, and playing D&D is something you plan for in advance.

If the majority of people who play RPGs liked the dungeon crawling, get the loots, and combat focused play style than MMOs would be a big draw. Why spend all that time coming up with a world and creating characters, rolling dice when you can just play a game? I don’t know if that reflects a majority of the pen and paper gaming world though. If it does than 4E was a smart move, if not than the opposite would apply.

By “real narrative,” I mean something like “A dramatic story that has a beginning, middle, and end, and which attracts its audience’s emotional investment based on their hopes and fears for what will happens to the story’s characters.” To that, for games, I would add the caveat that the audience’s emotional concern in a “real narrative” should not revolve around their interest in winning the game. That is, to hope that one’s character levels up is insufficient.

Sadly, I lost another UFS game at lunch yesterday. I find it barely believable that Rob managed to assemble such a deck in a draft league.

Certainly this is not a fight against MMOs, but rather an attempt at drafting by riding along behind them. D&D isn’t contrary or an alternative to MMOs, it goes great with them. That, I think, is their strategy, and I don’t think it’s a bad one.

I don’t know what you mean by “real narrative,” though that sounds like an implied, snobbishly pejorative argument. As in, “Even if you can tell a story with D&D 4E, it won’t be a real narrative.” Certainly, in my opinion, 4E is better positioned for player/DM-controlled narrative than 3E was, and the books certainly talk more about story than the last edition did.

You’ve cited two recurring criticisms of 4E — its hope to be an MMO and its low narrative focus – which plenty of folks have certainly pointed at the new game. I think those folks are largely wrong.

I wish we’d played it when you were up here, now.

My bona fides thusly established, I don’t think D&D can win a long-term brand fight with MMOs by positioning itself as being similar to them, but not as good.

One counter-argument might be that D&D can never win a long-term brand fight with MMOs period, but frankly, “This too shall pass” applies as much to World of Warcraft as much as it does to cars that burn gas and horses as the chief muscle-power of agriculture.

I think that real narrative, which I understand is not a suit to which 4E plays, is compelling enough that computer-based games will eventually come around to doing them well.

I wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser for D&D to position itself for that day, instead of eking out a rung on the latter somewhere below the also-rans of the MMO world.

In other news, I won my lunchtime UFS match today.

I’m with Mr. Bistro, insofar as I don’t think Wizards was trying to copy WoW. I think the D&D design team was willing to learn the lessons revealed by WoW’s 10 million playtesters and uncounted man-hours of play, and wouldn’t they have been stupid to do anything else?

What D&D 4E does, in my estimation, is position itself closer to MMOs so that it’s easier for players to make the jump over to tabletop play from online play. Standing near WoW also makes it easy for customers to compare them, which throws similarities AND differences into contrast. D&D actually does quite a bit to show off what it does differently (and better) than WoW, which is to be independently narrative and house-ruled.

A great many established RPG players (see RPGnet) noticed only that D&D had moved closer to WoW, because there’s nothing remarkable to them about the fact that D&D is customizable and narrative. But getting the same old customers to buy D&D, I think, wasn’t the big worry for Wizards, anyway.

Recent reading on marketing that I’ve done suggests that you’re unlikely to be successful competing with the category leader by being similar to it. Instead, the winning strategy is apparently to pick a point of distinction and make that your thrust.

A lunchtime UFS league has just started up at FFG; that what I’ve been playing. Yesterday, new UFS developer (and recent world champion, no less) James Hata schooled my ass in predictable fashion.