chuckro | Random comparison of D&D and comics

It occured to me that Wizards of the Coast is attempting to do with D&D what my dad (and I) has been saying for many, many years: Find and target a new audience, rather than trying to keep selling to the aging fanboys.

I recently bought a new stack of D&D4E books: Players Handbook 2 and 3, Dungeon Masters Guide 2, Monster Manual 2, and the Dark Sun Creature Compendium. DMG2 specifically struck me with how much it's aimed at the not-quite-novice DM, most likely someone who started gaming with the 4E DMG1. It's still useful for someone like me who's been gaming for nearly two decades, but it's not specifically aimed at me. It's aimed at 14-year-old me, who was relatively new to the hobby and needed a big book of "how to run better games".

The older fans complained about the advent of 4E and all the changes--it's too reliant on miniatures, it's too much like an MMO, it's too different from 3E--but thinking about it, the folks at Wizards made a very clever, calculated decision in making the changes they did. They wanted to make the game specifically attractive and accessable to a new generation of middle school/high school nerds. This means they build a new market for the next decade, while still knowing that us old-timers will buy anything they publish anyway, we'll just bitch more.

4E, for some time now, has elicted a glee in me reminiscient of when I bought my first 2E box set, back around 1992. 3E never did that.

Now, if only DC Comics could figure that out.