(Not)Understanding The D&D Geek

I think everyone can agree that Wizards of the Coast has issues with 4e and it’s digital initiative.

Yesterday’s announcement of the demise of the Gleemax Gamer Social Network experiment and the continued fan backlash over everything 4e is eating up at Wizards’ reputation as the trustworthy keeper of two of the world’s most popular hobby-gaming franchises.

I think Wizards knows this and is taking steps to deal with this.

Yesterday a friend of mine posted on Twitter about how he hated to be told by some stranger how to run is business. While I can sympathize, this morning I realized that there are cases where a business should stop and listen to the best possible consultants: Paying clients.

Having been a RPG customer for more than 25 years (15 buying and playing D&D) and having developed a community voice in the last year, I think I’m qualified to offer my views on Wizard’s marketing strategies of the last year.

Know your geeks

The past, current and future clientele of D&D are mostly geeks. I define them as people who spend a lot of time and energy mastering and enjoying their favorite hobby. The inherent technical challenge of mastering said hobby being part of the geek’s appeal for it.

D&D 3.x was an ever changing system that was a challenge to master. Us committed geeks did. We bought countless books, we poured over them, we tinkered with the rules and we created awesome campaigns.

Yes, D&D 3.5 (and its predecessors) had warts and some less than stellar components. Still we mastered them. The more adventurous of us even opened the game’s hood and fiddled with the engine to get rid of the warts we didn’t like (Save or Dies comes to mind).

We spent ungodly amounts of time templating leveled monsters for our adventures. Some of us then saved time by trading them in the safe harbor that was the OGL and in the less safe, but unpatrolled waters of forums and fan sites. We even bought the later Monster Manuals and adventure paths to stop spending so much time on prep.

A geeky fumble…

Then came Wizards of the Coast with the much awaited (albeit not enthusiastically) announcement of 4e and the slew of designer blogs on Gleemax/pre-D&D Insider.

While I was eager to see the new game and the previews did turn out to be more promising than I anticipated, what was the key message I continually got from it all?

D&D 3.5 was too hard, broken in places, too complex! D&D 4e will be simple, awesome and easy! No more spending hours prepping!

Huh, excuse me…. Is that how you reward us for all those efforts we spent on your game in the last 8-9 years?

We all agree that D&D 3.X had issues. Hell we’ve been playing with them for so long, but we learned them! We tamed them or at the very least we learned how to circumvent them and still had fun. We even grudgingly followed through the dubious necessity of upgrading to 3.5.

I think the biggest gaffe of 4e’s release is how the geek clientele was treated by the various ‘Change Agents’ of Wizards of the Coast. There was something not quite patronizing, a bit ‘we know better’ and a lot ‘this is soooo much better’ in the corporate message

I think 4e would have been better received if the changes had been presented as a dialog (however one sided it needed to truly be) in the lines of:

“How about them Save or Dies huh? Do anyone hate them as much as we do? Here’s how we think we could address them”

“How do you deal with an underpowered PC that sits on the side while the Wizard nukes the Battlemap? We think it would be more fun for the average gamer if we proposed a more balanced apporoach for 4e!”

I’m sure people more versed in the transition from 3.x to 4e will chime in and say that’s what the 4e design/marketing teams tried to do.

Well I believe the message was not properly delivered.

Instead, I’m willing to bet that many geeks got the impression that the 4e team decided what was fun and kept pointing to the less than stellar parts of 3.5 to drive the points home, regardless of how much fun we actually had with those very same parts! (Don’t quote me out of context please… he he he)

Geeks on both side

I don’t blame the designers though, because here’s the thing, the D&D 4e designers are geeks too! If there’s one thing you can’t do is stopping geeks from talking about something they love and spent so long tinkering with.

They did, and I’m happy they did… only they could have reined in their geekiness to spare ours.

I think what went bad was marketing’s leadership (or lack of) about shaping the message to the geek clientele and from the geek employees.

I realize that there are countless variables I can’t possibly know about that led to this publicity fiasco (the word is not too strong). There was the obvious power struggle behind the license, there were IP issues and Hasbro’s lawyers to deal with.

Plus, let’s turn the mirror around for a minute, there’s just no WAY to please geek fans when a major change is in the air. Trying to do so is corporate suicide, some people had to be pissed off, that’s the price of change.

However, the path that was chosen ended up causing unnecessary damage.

Here’s to next time and hoping that the geek psyche is better understood. Have a look at Magic’s R&D’s web content (and the content of Starcitygames.com) in the Ravnica years/8th Edition years, that was transition well done.

Taking too much on one’s shoulders

I think that Wizard of the Coast has tried to be a Hydra with way too many heads and it’s collapsing under it’s own weight. By shooting all over the place with printed games, digital initiatives and mass/viral marketing campaigns they managed to fail in multiple places. This makes the company look unprofessional and fuel the online pundits that gleefully chime in with easy (but well deserved) ‘I told you so!’s

The recent mea culpa and refocusing of efforts might be a step in the right direction, but the specter of the post 3.0 mass layoffs makes me a cautious customer (i.e is it going to be better or are they just going to throw a lot of people out on theirs asses and hope for the best with freelancers).

It’s a shame because D&D 4e is a very nicely designed game that brings heroic fantasy roleplaying in a new, not all that unfamiliar direction.

Let Geeks/Fans do what they do best.

I don’t think it’s too late to make the game reach it’s full early-life potential, a change of the message and the underlining philosophy is however necessary.

I think that the designers/developers should start pointing toward the (maybe hidden) complexities of the new game instead of comparing them to their equivalent from 3.5 all the time.

For example, they should start to massively sell geeks on the lie that monsters in the Monster Manual are. They need to show us just how downright easy it is to create a thousand monsters by tweaking the MM ones. They need to flood us with examples of properly created Skill challenges and dare us to do better!

If this has already been done, I blame poor research. Regardless, the message needs to be stronger to balance out the pundits and critics.

Heck just look how much fan work has been invested in trying to ‘fix’ the Skill Challenges on Enworld. D&D 4e has now got it’s dedicated Geek Squad working at its rough edges (and its got some too, just ask Graham what he thinks of how character size interacts with weapon). This is an opportunity that needs to be grabbed much more vigorusly by Wizards of the Coast.

There’s a lot of potential fan/geek goodwill, just waiti to be tapped, to turn this thing around. Maybe enough to balance out the hate.

So here’s my suggestion to better sell 4e to the world:

The D&D Geek Manifesto

Wizards of the Coast, we ask you to do what the hobby has always done to make 4e a success.

Let the fans spread out the word, help US teach the game to others.

Make us some bitchin’ published adventures. Create non-RPGA gaming material that we, the fans, can use in cons and game stores*.

We, the current gamers, are your future livelihood. We will buy your supplements, we will teach the game to new players.

Don’t underestimate the power of the online writing community. RPG blogging is still in it’s infancy but its influence will rise.

We have the time and the energy to make a true, long term viral marketing campaign.

All we ask for, is your support and your help!

Continue making good games.

Hire more designers/writers.

Re-think your marketing campaigns.

We the fans will handle the rest!

Chatty DM

*I will be a DM in 2 of Montreal’s biggest cons in the next year, I’d love to have some exclusive D&D material for that!

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