Basic rules for starting and advertising 5th Edition D&D

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Sun Jan 02, 2011 6:44 pm

shadzar... there are some things we need to go over. Let me address your points in order:

1) All right, your point here is that "If you sell the name D&D, you're not actually going to get any product". You are wrong. Selling D&D's name means more people think about it and talk about it. Even if their sole interest is in farmville-style facebook apps, they're still playing it! Which means they're posting statuses about it and telling their friends about it. I'm totally fine if 50% of those who play "D&Dville" end up not playing actual D&D, because they're encouraged another 50% to do so. These people aren't supposed to turn into crazy fanboys after playing a game, but the assumption is that they'll start thinking more about D&D, and perhaps be curious enough to be the starter pack.

2) So movies don't work. That's good, because we're not making any of those.

3) wait... did you just say that PEOPLE ON A TTRPG FORUM who HAVE NEVER TOUCHED AN RPG IN THEIR LIVES spout about PLAYING D&D ALL THE TIME?

You need to realize what an awful statement that is. Firstly, you don't know that, because they're people on the internet, which means they have total anonymity if they want it. And secondly, the people on ENWorld of GITP or whatever are NOT the people we're concerned about. We're concerned about your average commuter or college student, not the pale-skinned, Mtn Dew-drinking crazies who are obsessed with integrating themselves into a geeky culture.

4) All right, argument about the facebook app again. The point you seem to be trying to make is that the app won't attract people to the real D&D. You just need to know that your point doesn't make sense. It might not attract a LOT of people, and they might not be super-obsessed with D&D, but we're still attracting SOME people. And since D&Dville is an easy kind of game to make and people who don't buy will be circulating the name D&D around for a loooooong time, it will pay off. This doesn't need to be a magnet to attract an army of players.

5) "Original D&D.... decent product". INCORRECT
The original D&D was an unbalanced piece of garbage. However, it came out at the right time, and people jumped on board. Same reason Harry Potter is popular. So unless you're advocating WotC sits on its ass for the rest of eternity waiting for an equivalent opportunity to appear (hint: it won't), you'll need to revise your statement.

6) all right, you just said "if 5th edition is worthy.... blah blah blah". Bro, just because something is GOOD doesn't mean you DON'T NEED TO ADVERTISE IT. Please understand that. WoW is amazingly popular, and they still got Mr.T on TV to talk about being a mowhawk. Force Unleashed and Mass Effect 2 were fantastic, but people still made trailer and advertised in all the gaming magazines.

Try to understand that advertising is a good thing, word of mouth isn't as good, and if 5e has the right ads, it will sell well. Just like everything else. in. the. world.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 11:04 am

1. but name dilution IS a problem. Jello, Xerox, Band-Aid...when everything is Xeroxed, then does it matter if you buy a Xerox machine, or jsut any machine that will copy....same for D&D...when jsut anything is D&D...the actual game D&D has no more meaning...

2. D&D: Book of Vile Darkness starts filming outside of New Orleans next month after having filmed in asia/europe already and is scheduled for an end of this year release date....movies are still coming

3. gotta love strong drugs for the flu... "people claiming to play D&D, but have never touched a D&D book just calling any old thing they play D&D instead." im sure you have seen them before..the kind that plays WoD or something but goes around telling people they play D&D just because they want to be kewl rather than jsut say they play WoD or TTRPGs.

4. again this goes back to 1 and 3...the name comes to mean nothing when it has no focus....stop selling BRANDS, and start selling PRODUCTS. used to go to the store buy Monopoly, and everyone knew what you got and what you went looking for. Now it is having such and identity crisis, Dr Ruth, Dr Phil, and Sigmund all 3 couldnt help it. same for D&D.

D&D isnt like baseball. you cant sell baseball, only baseball equipment. the name baseball brings with it specifics. or to go even older and better world known, you cant sell chess. but this is what you are trying for by name recognition, but have a facebook app, and those only using it and claiming to play D&D are diluting the name to where D&D cannot be recognized. D&D has no meaning anymore because people have bastardized it. it is no longer a tabletop RPG, but whatever silly little thing people play and jsut want to say they are playing D&D...people playing the SSI games didnt say when asked, "i am playing D&D". they said "i am playing dark queen of krynn series", "eye of the beholder", etc. HELL even people playing Baulder's Gate wouldnt claim to be playing D&D unles they wanted to be laughed at by computer gamers and tabletop gamers...they claimed to be playing Baulders Gate. laughed at not for playing it, but being too dumb to know what they were playing. people playing Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards didnt claim they were playing D&D when they bought stripped lubricated lubbers at the quickie mart in the game. but NOW people playing WoD, Bleach, Naruto [enter d20 rules system game here] claim to be playing D&D. Might as well claim to be playing D&D when you play the online flash game A Quest for Idle since it is an RPG game with inventory and money and similar things to D&D, and for the most part plays like most player do.

How many people use Johnson's and Johnson's adhesive bandages when they go looking for a "Band-Aid"?

So stop trying to get people to drink the "Kool-Aid", and let them try a refreshing flavored drink mix. Dont try to turn D&D into just another flavored drink mix by it becoming the kool-aid.

5. huh? i was talking about product advertising with original D&D, and you more to product quality....my point wasnt it was the best...it was it started something with LITTLE advertising.

6. do you think McDonalds will go out of business if it doesnt sell its new McFap to people? all they lose is the investment in the McFap, because people will still by the Big Mac, McDLT, McChicken, etc as long as they are made.

My bologna has a first name its O-S-C-A-R, my bologna has a second name its M-E-Y-E-R....

when was the last time you heard that on TV or radio? they dont need it anymore, because it isnt going anywhere. they dont need to advertise. they dont need to make it kosher...they dont need to do anything but sit back and let the people who want it buy it and rake in the profits.

now it is hard to compare a consumable with a non cosumable..but at the rate things are going with the whole DDI and requiring to pay monthly to play D&D....it might as well count as a service rather than a game now..and services are consumables...because you can use them up.

MANY years ago i heard about a TRON sequel. then close to a decade ago i heard about it again. then a few months ago i heard it was coming. the week before its release i saw TWO commercials for it. one on CN and the other on NickToons. Might have been more on Disney...but cant find that after the channels were renumbered for the 3rd time this year...i have seen a few more commercials since TRON actually came to theaters. it didnt need some big advertising and it had been stagnant for almost 30 years. one single movie that well known...no big ad campaign that i saw. (could be my cable company and trying to hide or demo ads...)

the point is no matter how much you spend to advertise something, a crap product will be a crap product and people will say so, and a good one will be a good one and people will say so. you cant pay people to buy your product. word of mouth will have the highest impact...now even moreso with the internet v/blogging and other crap. you can make a facebook app to TRY to control the way the product looks, but 1000 other people can make facebook pages saying just how crappy it is and all their friends like those pages, and your facebook app gets overlooked.

again just using the facebook app as an example of a needless way to advertise...like the past everyone thought it had to be in the Sears catalog to be good..bad they grew up; and also as a way to show how such a thing can make the problem worse with diluting the product to being jsut a name with no meaning...but WotC has already secured that the name D&D has no real meaning and just a generic term for some kind of RPG...or was...now more or less just some product line made by HASzards and related hobby products made by other people...

D&D doesnt need an iPhone app, or any of this other shit that the ADD generation who cant focus on one thing think they need. it and people need to learn once again to focus.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 3:28 am

1. Honestly, the moaning about "it's not D&D!" is ridiculous. This marketing is to get people excited about 5e. And the way that happens is with publicity--the facebook app is a good idea, ads in magazines are a good idea, comics are a good idea because they ALL GET THE WORD OUT. When people see a tiny little flash player game about D&D 5e, it'll pique their curiousity and increase the chances of them going to their FLGS and picking up a copy. "Diluting" the brand is the price people are willing to pay in order to sell more copies of a game. Because selling is money. And money is good.

2. You missed my point. Not gonna bother.

3. I actually haven't encountered one single person like this. Somebody else should take up this point; I'm putting it aside.

4. ADVERTISING SELLS PRODUCTS!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS HOW THINGS WORK!!!!!!!!! Stop obsessing about how D&D is becoming a brand. If we're making it a brand AND we're selling products in the books, cool. If we're not making it a brand BUT we're selling the books, cool. If we're creating a culture where rulebooks are put on shelves to look pretty, but we're still selling the goddamn books, that's cool too. Because we're trying to sell products here.

5. You said that advertising is unnecessary, because a good product sells itself well. And you cited an example of the original D&D selling well because it was good. I shut your example down by saying the original D&D was godawful. Therefore, you have no evidence to support your claim.

6. Ramble ramble ramble ramble... first off, I don't know what sort of culture you're exposed to because I may have seen the Tron commericails 30-40 times... in other news, did this section actually have a point? You seem to be jumping from idea to idea, and I can't refute something that doesn't have a point.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 4:00 am

...It seems awful soon for 5E talk. They should wait till like 2015 at the earliest.

I think it should probably launch with a fully-produced video game that emphasizes what's new and fun about the edition. I've been wanting a 4E video game and it looks like they only they're they're doing is some hack-and-slash for XBLA.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 6:14 am

I dunno, Krakatoa. Have you seen the 4e deathwatch thread? Stuff is declining like mad... especially after PF beat 4e in sales.

EDIT: Hmmmmmm I'm gonna guess you HAVE seen the thread, since you've commented in it like 6 times...

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 6:23 am

Other than the apparent misfire of trying to sell the Red Box at mainstream outlets, I'm not sure by what logic you can say 4e is failing, at least not via anecdotal evidence from your FLGSs.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 6:34 am

There's some sales figures a few around here throw around

Or, how about this. Go to your local game store, and ask them how 4e is selling compared to 3.x did two years after 3.x came out?

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 6:51 am

We're getting off topic, will respond in the other thread.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 4:51 pm

Maxus wrote:Or, how about this. Go to your local game store, and ask them how 4e is selling compared to 3.x did two years after 3.x came out?

I don't want to say you can't compare 3 with 4, but the circumstances of the birth of 3 compared to the birth of 4 is as different as day is from night.

3E was the first real "edition" of WOTC, after the "dark tea time of the soul" period of the demise of TSR and the removal of the Wicked Witch from the genre.

Thus the release of 3 E which took 3 years was well anticipated.

As opposed to that of 4E which was probably two years premature and the worst handled release of any edition ... ever. (Compounded with a number of "releases" that had nothing to do with the edition, such as their moronic web initative and that MtG Gleemax monstrocity.)

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Feb 06, 2011 8:04 am

FatR wrote: On the other hand you want your product to be shiny and glossy, with enough eye candy for the same kids and teenages to be actually drawn to it. The first pseudo-RPG to appear here in late 80s actually had kick-ass art (compared to the standards of the times), and this probably was the main reason why quite a few schoolkids (myself included) were drawn to it.
I'm not sure if it is possible to make your books sufficiently gorgeous while remaining under the above-mentioned price tag. You will need to advertise your stuff too, although considering how many shitty books had at least some advertising campaigns here, this probably won't take much money.
Oh, and of course your game should be simple enough for teenagers in the first place, or you will fail.

I think the best way to do this is to have a three-tiered approach for your game.

1) A boxed set. The boxed set will have sufficient rules to let you go up 1/4th of the way through the game. So if your game has 20 levels in it, it goes up to level 5. Your stuff is really stripped down. There are some guidelines, DragonStrike style, to making your own adventures but for the most part you're expected to run stuff out of the box. Regardless, the game will be fully compatible with stuff from other lines, so someone who owned the actual books could totally important their character into the basic game and play along.

The boxed set will have maps, tokens, and dice. As for maps, screw having cardboard boards like I earlier mentioned. You should seriously have like about 10 pages of double-sided glossy inserts that unfold to a .75m x .50m map on each side. Player characters get plastic miniatures, monsters get tokens. They'll also come with premade character cards. There will be 25 character cards total, meaning that 5 of what we perceive to be the most popular character classes (paladin, assassin, wizard, artificer, and barbarian) will have a character card for levels 1-5. This is to accommodate the new/lazy/not enough time people who don't have time to go through character creation; there will still be character creation rules and powers in the player's handbook.

2) Inexpensive, thrifty softcover books printed on newsprint. You should be able to buy a PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual for under 29.99 U.S. Dollars. Or if you buy the entire set, you'll get some dice to go with it. Unlike the boxed set, this will cover the full range of rules from level 1 to whatever. I'd also like to reiterate that it will be fully compatible with the boxed set. I can't stress this enough. Anyway, these books will be small on the artwork, small on the font, and minimize the white space. Black and white pictures will still be used, but a lot more sparing (as in one half-sized picture every 4-5 pages). They'll be written in teeny-tiny iPhone font to save space. The covers will still be badass works of art however. In fact it's pretty important that these books have the best cover artwork. You may or may not want to have some glossy full-color inserts in the middle or back of your book. I say having about 10 pages of good-as-shit full color artwork would help reduce the chintziness factor and would definitely be a 'go' if it doesn't jack up the cost too much.

3) The books that we've been used to for the past three editions. You know, the kind with glossy paper, tons of artwork, big and thick, 29.99 US dollars each? The content will be close to but not identical to the newsprint version. The resolution mechanics and such will be exactly the same, but there will be feats, powers, and magical items exclusive to the premium book. Same for the newsprint version. That way the min-maxxers will be compelled to buy both. But they'll still have, artwork aside, 90% of the same content.

However, this policy of mis-matched crunch will ONLY apply to the core book. Splatbooks in the future will only differ in presentation quality and typesetting. Why? See below.

Finally, as far as introducing their products into foreign markets go, I have yet to see any reason why D&D should stick to its strategy of just releasing type three books. Threads on TGD and blogs that hogarth link me to repeatedly beat into our heads that American TTRPGs are just Too Goddamn Expensive. Unless your product catches fire in a non-Canadian/American market, you should just translate the boxed set and the paperback version and sell THAT. I'm still not sure if 10 U.S. bucks is too expensive. Maybe we should look into knocking it down to 7-8 dollars. I'm not sure how feasible that is.

Regardless, when they write books from now, unless it's for some marginal fanboy crap like 'Furries of the Forgotten Realms', the holders of the IP should specifically write books for the paperback edition. Why? Because it'll be a lot easier to convert product from the inexpensive book to the premium book. I'm not a typesetting guy, but I imagine that it would be a LOT easier to get S&F/S&S/T&B/MotW into a glossy hardcover edition you would be proud of selling than it would be to dice up the Spell Compendium into four separate thin paperbacks.

That said, even though Canadian/American gamers pretty much expect hardcover glossies (probably in color, too) to be the norm, I still think that a sizable chunk of the population could be convinced to give D&D a shot if they could pick up a softcover PHB for 10 dollars.

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Sun Feb 06, 2011 6:16 pm

I think we need to get some numbers on the sales of the paperback rules compendium, HOTL and HOTFK, but my suspicion is that you're correct, Lago.

I don't even -play- 4e, and I picked up the above just because they were cheap and I might maybe decide to drop in on a couple of the D&D Encounters sessions locally. I ended up getting them for about 15 bucks per after discounts and such.

Playing to that price range, and then having 29.99/each glossies as the "Collectors Edition" much like the old leatherbound versions could be quite the selling point.

At that rate, you could potentially even break things out even further. Do a no-frills Core Rules softcover, and then sell magazines/smaller paperbacks with class data in them.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:14 pm

I agree with Lago on the boxed set, and from there I disagree. The world isn't what it was in our days. By the time 5E comes out (Rome wasn't built in a day) the number of potential buyers with ipads will be massive. Save the trees, and put everything for ipad download. Bells and stuff like char editors and tools for players and DMs. Eye candy is nice but it needs to go for a more modern teenager.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 12:44 am

Well, tzor, I think D&D should also expand into markets outside of NA--I don't know how much the EU gaming market would like to play on their whiz-bang electronic devices but I doubt it's very much. Hogarth's links have led me to believe that tabletop gamers are middle/upper-middle class mostly in NA and that outside of Canada/US they tend not to have as much bread.

I also think iPads are still pretty gimmicky. I'm in the D&D and anime club (sigh) on my campus at a pretty 'rich person' campus and I don't actually see many people with those. iphones, yes. Laptops, yes. Those? Eh.

Finally, you do actually want to have a bookstore, comic book, and video game store presence. Don't get me wrong, I DO think people should sell .pdfs online but if you're going to try to grow the base you need to have some boots on the ground and have a physical product. It's easier to convince someone to drop 8 bucks on a Player's Handbook while they're looking for manga in Barnes and Nobles than it is to convince some customer trawling the Interwebs to go to DriveThruRPG.com and buy your book.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 3:29 pm

In a WotC thread complaining about the DDI service (which are becoming more and more common

) one of the posters mentioned that the D&D developers would look a lot less stupid if they stopped promising features months ahead of time and just announced when they had something new when it was made.

I find that point of view rather interesting. Since tabletop RPGs aren't, if done correctly, a flash-in-the-pan enterprise unlike video games, it makes me wonder how many extra customers you attract by advertising for a feature months before it's supposed to be released. It certainly can't be enough so that it makes up for potential egg on your face for not having something when it's advertised to be out, right?

Then again, it's not like they were promising the moon or anything. WotC promised a VTT and at least three third-party sites have made one for 4E D&D on their own. Hell, there are several guys on the boards who state that they've been invited to the VTT playtest.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:20 pm

I am genuinely unclear as to how you can fail to produce 120 pages of preview content in a month. Not only can you seriously just post page after page of fan fiction, and if I'm in the mood (and not moving out of my flat because my landlord is a psycho douche who won't fix the heat even though it is fucking -14 degrees outside), I write four pages of fanfiction per day (2000 words), after school.

So... in a month, I could crank out 120 pages of fanfiction. By myself. Without pictures, interviews, actual game mechanics, or straight lifts from upcoming material that is in the editing process. But of course, we do have all those things too. I mean that the word count is seriously just the fanfiction productions of one unpaid fanboy in his fucking free time.

-Username17

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:45 pm

I'd love to see newsprint softcover release, like my old "McElligot's Pool" from when I was a kid.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 5:04 pm

One of the deals about the boxed sets is that instead of releasing a generic adventure set, you could release several of 'em with minimal editing. Here's what I mean:

[*] First you release the generic heroic fantasy boxed set with the basic classes and rules in it.
[*] 3-4 months after that you release the Forgotten Realms boxed set. It's similar to the original boxed set but has some distinct changes; the starter races are different, they have a couple of new classes, the magical item and monster lists are totally different, and it has a different set of maps and tokens.
[*] A year after your edition launches, you launch a furry Gamma World boxed set, with much the same strategy as the FR boxed set.
[*] Two years after your edition launches, you release a Dark Sun boxed set. Only instead of just going from level 1-5, it goes from levels 5-10 (or whatever). It's backwards compatible with the core rules, the book-based campaign setting, and other boxed sets, but if you're playing the boxed set it assumes that you start at level 5.
[*] Two and a half years after 5E, you release an Epic Adventures boxed set that goes from 15-20. Same deal; same basic rules, totally different particulars. You actually want to skip levels 10-15 in order to convince the players looking for continuity between the sets to buy the actual books.

FrankTrollman wrote:So... in a month, I could crank out 120 pages of fanfiction. By myself. Without pictures, interviews, actual game mechanics, or straight lifts from upcoming material that is in the editing process. But of course, we do have all those things too.

FrankTrollman, you're not far off from the truth. Check the author bylines of stuff printed in January and February. The vast majority of that stuff is from Robert J. Schwalb. And considering that he's also been writing sourcebooks and AFAIK is in charge of digital content I'm not surprised that the output has slowed to a trickle.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 5:34 pm

I know that this is water under the bridge, but re-reading this thread makes me think that a 2D character visualizer is the way to go.

Why? Pretty simple. Because it synergizes better with the latest advancement in grognard technology. Introducing: the do-it-yourself tokens!

That's right. One of 5E's newest products should seriously be a sheet of circular magnetic or cardboard punchouts that are blank on the top. You, as the player, can purchase blank sheets of stickers and print out whatever images you like on them. The 5E property holders can even hand out Official WotC Sticker Sheets that you can use with the Official WotC Sticker Arranger Program whereupon you can print out the sticker sheets for you to put upon the tokens.

I'm so smrat that I scare myself sometiems.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:38 pm

FatR wrote:I'm not sure if it is possible to make your books sufficiently gorgeous while remaining under the above-mentioned price tag.

I'm trying to come up with a nice ratio of 'shinies' (color artwork, kickass covers, etc.) that will meet both of your demands but I don't know what the proper ratio is. I have a firmer idea for the glossy deluxe NA editions, but not for a proposed newsprint set of books.

Do you know how expensive it is to do B&W artwork? A newsprint version may have to lean heavily on that in order to make the game sufficiently shiny with the occasional glossy insert of a battle. I'm not sure how much B&W artwork you need in your book to make it attractive to the casual passers-by though.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:51 pm

Lago wrote:Do you know how expensive it is to do B&W artwork? A newsprint version may have to lean heavily on that in order to make the game sufficiently shiny with the occasional glossy insert of a battle. I'm not sure how much B&W artwork you need in your book to make it attractive to the casual passers-by though.

Gaming companies traditionally pay very little for B&W artwork. Like fifty bucks a piece. I have no idea what a "real" company like Hasbro pays. Salaried Illustrators make like $43,000 a year, and I think you could get a lot of B&W work out of two or three good ones.

-Username17

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:53 pm

Small-time illustrators doing piece work for indie publications charge out the butthole for B&W, unless they are your friends. At least in my experience. Best bet is to find talented fanboys who will work for credit/comp copies.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:42 pm

Lago you've spent enough time contemplating 5th Edition that I actually feel as though you wanna release a game. So here's a quick question. If you could, and had the material all down but releasing it under the WOTC logo wasn't plausible, how would you go about getting your game on the market?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:58 pm

If I wasn't allowed to continue the D&D product line at all then almost everything I've said becomes totally moot. In fact I think that my best bet if I couldn't use the D&D trademark altogether would be to switch to Urban Fantasy, since UF is a lot more popular nowadays than heroic fantasy--see Buffy, Twilight, Harry Potter, Heroes, Final Fantasy, Dresden Files etc. Personally, I'd be a lot more excited about constructing an urban fantasy/superheroic game from scratch (starts out at Buffy level, tops out at modern-age JLA) than another fantasy heartbreaker, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.

Ignoring THAT though, I'd still say that it depends. It'd depend on my starting point if I wasn't using the WotC logo. Some plausible scenarios:

[*] I am a company that has never produced a TTRPG before but I have produced another product that people liked of the RPG type--such as Bioware.
[*] I am a rival TTRPG publisher (White Wolf, CGL, GW, etc.) who has a history of TTRPG product lines and am trying to take D&D's market share.
[*] I am an indie publisher who completed my product in all of the formats as a labor of love and all of my expenses come out of my pocket.
[*] I am said indie publisher but I'm also rich as hell, enough so that I can drop 5 million dollars a year for the first three years.

Unless you give me one of those starting conditions I can't really answer your question all that well. I can give you some generic strategy: for example, I would release my product as soon as 4E gets the axe. I would lean extra-heavy on video game production and celebrity pimping. I would avoid marketspeak about the changes my edition made to earlier versions of D&D. I'd also go out of my way to avoid badmouthing WotC.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:44 am

All right, folks, here's my revised boxed set.

The boxed set is specifically designed to look more like a board game than, well, the book shape most boxed sets come in. I recommend dimensions of 10' x 16' x 2'.
Comes with a free CD which has artwork, podcasts, and a sample of applications; one of the applications will be a token printer where you can crop images and print them out on a sticker sheet which you then attach to some cardboard tokens. It also comes with a code that gives you one 1-month subscription to DDI.
Comes with 30 premade monster and PC tokens. Some of the monster tokens will be large/huge sized. Also comes with a sheet of blank cardboard tokens and stickers.
Has a plastic 'gridifier'. It is a slightly raised plastic lid that is opaque around the edges but has a transparent middle with a grid pattern on it. By placing one of the maps that come with the game (or that you make yourself) underneath it you can instantly have a battlemat that's divided into 1' squares. You can draw on the top with a dry erase marker if you want to; the set will come with a black D&D dry erase marker. This gridifier is about the size of the boxed set.
Cardboard DM screen, with the mini-rules arranged in alphabetical order. This goes underneath the gridifier in order to reduce scratching.
Comes with 10 double-sided glossy maps. These already have the grids built into them if you don't want to use the raised plastic lid.
Comes with a set of purty plastic dice. Two d20s, 4d6s, a d12, a d10, a d100, a d4, and a d8.
Comes with a D&D bookmark. Whee.
Comes with miniature versions of the PHB and DMG/MM, condensed into two pamphlets. These will only go up to level 5. While the DMG and MM will be stripped down from the core rulebooks, they will not deviate from the rules. They are weighted in such a way though so that the 'simpler' monsters like brutes and blasters will take up the majority of them.
Assuming that you start with 25 classes, it comes with 20 character cards.
There are three filled-out double-sided character cards (sheets) for levels 1-5 for the Warlord (Fighter), Rogue, and Wizard (Blaster Variant). There are 9 character cards for levels 1 and 3 for the other classes. So 36 character cards. These are to hand to new people who just want to pop in for a game. Since they're for new people, the pre-selected gear and powers emphasize mindless attacking in order for the new people to grok it better and to confuse them less with tactics. The cards are about the size of cases for modern video games.
The game comes with three miniature 20-page pamphlets that are self-contained adventures for the DM to run (levels 1-2, 2-4, 4-5). They are arranged in such a way so that the DM doesn't have to look at the DMG; they can just look at the screen and the pamphlets to figure out what to do. Only if they want to make their own adventures or something completely out of left field comes do they need to look at the DMG. The adventures will lean heavily towards dungeon crawling but will have breakpoints to ease the players into new mechanics. For example, the first adventure should have people doing elementary skill rolling and teach people how to do a level up. The second module will introduce some basic monster tactics into the mix such as attacking from cover, from shadows, having a wall of melee guys while ranged guys shoot from the back, etc.. The second module will also have some points in it that will reward people for basic in-game common sense such as purchasing water, having rope available, etc.. The third module will have a skill challenge in it, the first chance for players to experience the joy of grabbing treasure mid-adventure, and a boss that's actually a challenge. The miniature adventures will purposely be kept easy as not to discourage the new players.

The point of this whole endeavor is to make the boxed set look and feel like a board game so that new people can know what's going on after a 20-minute explanation and no one needs to fumble through the books in the middle of the game. People unfamiliar with TTRPGs should be able to go 'oh yeah, when I put these glossy maps underneath the gridifier and place tokens on it it totally looks and feels like a board game--now I'm in familiar territory!'. I think it's kind of sad that a lot of people are unable to handle abstraction, but them's the breaks. I think that if you keep all of the pamphlets and books softcover you could get a boxed set going for under twenty dollars.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 2:38 am

I'll go with option 3 as you are putting a lot of thought/heart into it basically on your own. How would you get your game supported? Honestly you've laid down enough forum space and I'd guess have enough ideas somewhere or another to pull a full game out of your ass at this point. Considering the gaming market would you, as basically an independent, get some support from "named" companies? What would be the game plan?