So according to the promo copy, the new starter set is a "board game." Given the tokens and play maps and character cards and what not, sure, you want to call it a "board game," I'll allow it.
What's concerning this particular DM is there's no mention of advancement. Like...is there an actual adventure module here? And for what levels? Level 1-3? Level 1-6? Is there any leveling at all? Or are we just moving markers around the map and resolving combats with d20? Like, you know, in a "board game."
Was planning on taking my group through this from level 1. Maybe that's not what this product is about?
No, it's not a "board game", that's just the language they're using to onboard the exact people it's aimed at. The target demographic of starter sets are people for whom the term "tabletop roleplaying game" doesn't mean anything, but board game does. And both those terms exist within the same sphere of "traditionally in person, traditionally analogue, social gaming experience's"
There may not be any level progression, it sounds like the adventures are designed to give a breadth of experience rather than depth:
40-60 hours of play featuring Combat, Exploration, and Roleplaying adventures
If you're not a beginner looking to onboard your friends into "this D&D thing", this may not be the product for you. But D&D starter sets that lean more into resembling a board game for the sake of accessibility and ease of play are far from new things.
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time. Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
They would actually get more confused if someone called it a board game because i would show them a Vinyl mat that i would draw battle maps on and it was blank, and they would ask stuff like "you draw the game board? Isn't that cheating?" then i would have to explain it wasn't a board game, and this was a battle map, not a game board with a start and finish.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
I'd guess it's mostly to get it showing up in the board game sections of online shopping in places like Amazon or the big chain stores like Target and Wal-Mart and otherwise just more likely to pop up in searches.
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time. Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
I highly doubt you've onboarded a number of people to the hobby that amount to even a tenth of the promo's reach. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time. Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
I highly doubt you've onboarded a number of people to the hobby that amount to even a tenth of the promo's reach. The plural of anecdote is not data.
My point, that seems to have passed you by, is that even people who don't play the game decades ago, have a general concept of what a Tabletop game is.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Looks more like people are bemused and confused and not panicking.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time. Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
They would actually get more confused if someone called it a board game because i would show them a Vinyl mat that i would draw battle maps on and it was blank, and they would ask stuff like "you draw the game board? Isn't that cheating?" then i would have to explain it wasn't a board game, and this was a battle map, not a game board with a start and finish.
That was literally decades ago. I was there too. Home computers barely existed yet so people still used pen and paper a lot more than they do today.
But if you did play back then, you might remember a little board game called Dungeon, which was an actual board game version of D&D. The only real difference between a board game and playing with minis on a vinyl mat is that, with the latter, you can easily change the board. Getting hung up on what it is being called is just that.
Oh, and if you are from that era, you probably also remember when wargames were cardboard pieces on paper maps, or even minis on a table or even floor, in fancier games, with molded scenery, often even hand crafted. Again, essentially massive, super complex board games, but with relatively easily changeable boards. 0e came from those roots, being initially a fantasy extension for the Chainmail medieval minis rules, then adding RPG elements and eventually becoming small unit heroic fantasy focused instead of the large unit/army scale it was derived from.
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time. Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
I highly doubt you've onboarded a number of people to the hobby that amount to even a tenth of the promo's reach. The plural of anecdote is not data.
My point, that seems to have passed you by, is that even people who don't play the game decades ago, have a general concept of what a Tabletop game is.
Do they, though? At its height, I remember there being game stores on every second street corner. That simply isn't a thing any more. There just isn't enough interest or profit in it to sustain that and that has been true since sometime in the 3.5e era back in the 90's or so.
Also, back then, they were just RPG's to us. No one thought to add 'tabletop' until much later. But when the Big Bang characters are sitting around playing Talisman, a board game, are they not also playing an RPG? On a tabletop?
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time. Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
I highly doubt you've onboarded a number of people to the hobby that amount to even a tenth of the promo's reach. The plural of anecdote is not data.
My point, that seems to have passed you by, is that even people who don't play the game decades ago, have a general concept of what a Tabletop game is.
My point, that seems to have passed you by, is that even people who don't play the game decades ago, have a general concept of what a Tabletop game is.
Very many absolutely do not. Take my colleagues: None of them have any clue what so ever. Literally not a single one, out of a couple hundred younger people. None.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
The number of people who say what's that whenever I mention Dungeons & Dragons is nearly 100%. Or they'll say oh I've heard of that is it fun? But then when I try to tell them about it they're like what is that how does that work it sounds complicated. Because they haven't actually heard of it they've just heard the name of it.
This product is aimed for those people. They can see it on a shelf, in a Walmart even, and go hey that's that Dungeons & Dragons that my coworker was talking about the other day maybe I'll try it. And it won't be diving in the deep end and trying to figure out building a character and character sheets and manuals and everything on their own. It'll be like a board game easy to understand even for someone who has only heard the words Dungeons and Dragons but doesn't actually know what they mean. And then hopefully they get such an enjoyable experience from that that they want more and they're willing to dig deeper and actually get into the hobby.
My LGS lists it under board games on their website, which took me a long while to figure out, because it's not intuitive. It's fine for Amazon, because you generally don't search board games when looking for it - you just type it in.
To me, D&D is fundamentally different from a board game. Before I knew what D&D was, if I'd ordered it from a board game section on a website, I'd have been expecting something akin to Monopoly or perhaps Labyrinth. I'd have been annoyed to receive a game that only relates to board games by having dice and the optional use of a board.
Even the name TTRPG would be better. Even before I knew what they were, the RPG was enough of a clue to get the idea across that it's an RPG, not a chase around the board. Indeed, that was how I was introduced to D&D, and it gave me a good enough impression to get into the hobby.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
My LGS lists it under board games on their website, which took me a long while to figure out, because it's not intuitive.
It's not intuitive for you as someone who is very engaged with the TTRPG space. You're like at the top level of engagement—posting in a community space dedicated to one specific TTRPG. However, if someone is just "looking for that D&D thing with the dice and the tokens because it looks cool", it's an intuitive space. You play it at a table with dice and stuff, it's probably a board game, there's a very good chance they don't know what a tuhtuhruhpug is or what "roleplaying" means in this context.
It's important that this product isn't designed for anyone participating in this discussion, especially if your post count is post count is above double digits. If you're on D&D Beyond and posting on the forums about a future product, you are at the point of engagement with the hobby where you are not the target demographic for a starter set.
Read the next paragraph - it wasn't intuitive when the grand extent of my knowledge was Gygax rolling dice to make his decisions on The Simpsons. It wasn't that long ago when that really was the extent of what I knew. I would have been very confused had I ordered it thinking it was a board game.
What was an RPG to me? Oblivion. Skyrim to younger folks. Which, as it turns out, isn't too far off the mark. The TT confused me, sure, but I was much closer to understanding the game than thinking Monopoly or Catan.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
My point, that seems to have passed you by, is that even people who don't play the game decades ago, have a general concept of what a Tabletop game is.
And many people have never heard of one let alone played it. D&D is for all groups including both of those two, ESPECIALLY a Starter Set which is by definition a product intended to be usable by total newcomers to the space.
This is an xkcd comic I think about often when conversations within an engrained community try to predict the level of familiarity of the general populace. As a community, of course we know what a TTRPG is, and, by how human association tends to work, many of us travel in circles with sufficiently similar mindsets that many members of our circle are going to have some passive familiarity with the same hobbies, even if they do not partake themselves.
I expect market research has shown that a lot of people outside the traditional D&D demographic see the game as a board game, using that overarching label to refer to any type of game one sits around a table and plays. Is that entirely accurate, no. But is also very much not outside the realm of probability.
For those already in the know, the branding of D&D is sufficient to entice those players. The term TTRPG adds nothing to the enticement - D&D is so ubiquitous that it is more well known than the genera itself, so moving from a slice of the marketing pie to a smaller slice with overlap is not necessarily helpful, even if it promotes accuracy. Invoking a term like board game, which has wider appeal than the term D&D, makes sense to me for a starter set. The point of the product is to make it self-contained and easy to run (much like a board game) and entice players who are new. Particularly since D&D has a reputation for being intimidating, the usage of terminology that makes it feel more familiar just seems like good marketing to me.
Really not something I can understand getting worked up over. If they use board game because they think that makes more sense for marketing? Sure, makes sense to me. If they used TTRPG because it is more accurate? Also makes sense. Really not something that seems worth making any kind of a big deal over.
The shift toward calling RPG box sets "board games" has been going on for years now and coincides with vendors like Target and Walmart starting to carry such games.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
For clarity, I don't care if they call it a board game. Would care more if there's no level advancement, because I'd like to take my group through the Borderlands for old time's sake.
For clarity, I don't care if they call it a board game. Would care more if there's no level advancement, because I'd like to take my group through the Borderlands for old time's sake.
Then play the module Keep on the Borderlands.
As for this latest marketing foray by wotc, it is not surprising. Anything to make a buck, no matter how far it strays from the essence of D&D. This is the same company that created Monopoly GO, which has only one thing in common with real Monopoly: the name...no that is not true. The street names are the same. Why would anyone expect less or more from hasbro with this new board game.
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So according to the promo copy, the new starter set is a "board game." Given the tokens and play maps and character cards and what not, sure, you want to call it a "board game," I'll allow it.
What's concerning this particular DM is there's no mention of advancement. Like...is there an actual adventure module here? And for what levels? Level 1-3? Level 1-6? Is there any leveling at all? Or are we just moving markers around the map and resolving combats with d20? Like, you know, in a "board game."
Was planning on taking my group through this from level 1. Maybe that's not what this product is about?
No, it's not a "board game", that's just the language they're using to onboard the exact people it's aimed at. The target demographic of starter sets are people for whom the term "tabletop roleplaying game" doesn't mean anything, but board game does. And both those terms exist within the same sphere of "traditionally in person, traditionally analogue, social gaming experience's"
There may not be any level progression, it sounds like the adventures are designed to give a breadth of experience rather than depth:
If you're not a beginner looking to onboard your friends into "this D&D thing", this may not be the product for you. But D&D starter sets that lean more into resembling a board game for the sake of accessibility and ease of play are far from new things.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Most of the people i have onboarded to the hobby, even Pre 5E, knew what a Pen and paper roleplaying game was. The ones who didn't got it after a simple explanation most of the time.
Prospective players are not as out of touch as to need something renamed that drastically.
They would actually get more confused if someone called it a board game because i would show them a Vinyl mat that i would draw battle maps on and it was blank, and they would ask stuff like "you draw the game board? Isn't that cheating?" then i would have to explain it wasn't a board game, and this was a battle map, not a game board with a start and finish.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
I'd guess it's mostly to get it showing up in the board game sections of online shopping in places like Amazon or the big chain stores like Target and Wal-Mart and otherwise just more likely to pop up in searches.
Oh boy, more "Thing announced, P A N I K" cycles.
This feels harmless.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I highly doubt you've onboarded a number of people to the hobby that amount to even a tenth of the promo's reach. The plural of anecdote is not data.
My point, that seems to have passed you by, is that even people who don't play the game decades ago, have a general concept of what a Tabletop game is.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Looks more like people are bemused and confused and not panicking.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
That was literally decades ago. I was there too. Home computers barely existed yet so people still used pen and paper a lot more than they do today.
But if you did play back then, you might remember a little board game called Dungeon, which was an actual board game version of D&D. The only real difference between a board game and playing with minis on a vinyl mat is that, with the latter, you can easily change the board. Getting hung up on what it is being called is just that.
Oh, and if you are from that era, you probably also remember when wargames were cardboard pieces on paper maps, or even minis on a table or even floor, in fancier games, with molded scenery, often even hand crafted. Again, essentially massive, super complex board games, but with relatively easily changeable boards. 0e came from those roots, being initially a fantasy extension for the Chainmail medieval minis rules, then adding RPG elements and eventually becoming small unit heroic fantasy focused instead of the large unit/army scale it was derived from.
Do they, though? At its height, I remember there being game stores on every second street corner. That simply isn't a thing any more. There just isn't enough interest or profit in it to sustain that and that has been true since sometime in the 3.5e era back in the 90's or so.
Also, back then, they were just RPG's to us. No one thought to add 'tabletop' until much later. But when the Big Bang characters are sitting around playing Talisman, a board game, are they not also playing an RPG? On a tabletop?
Some may, the majority don't
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Very many absolutely do not. Take my colleagues: None of them have any clue what so ever. Literally not a single one, out of a couple hundred younger people. None.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
The number of people who say what's that whenever I mention Dungeons & Dragons is nearly 100%. Or they'll say oh I've heard of that is it fun? But then when I try to tell them about it they're like what is that how does that work it sounds complicated. Because they haven't actually heard of it they've just heard the name of it.
This product is aimed for those people. They can see it on a shelf, in a Walmart even, and go hey that's that Dungeons & Dragons that my coworker was talking about the other day maybe I'll try it. And it won't be diving in the deep end and trying to figure out building a character and character sheets and manuals and everything on their own. It'll be like a board game easy to understand even for someone who has only heard the words Dungeons and Dragons but doesn't actually know what they mean. And then hopefully they get such an enjoyable experience from that that they want more and they're willing to dig deeper and actually get into the hobby.
My LGS lists it under board games on their website, which took me a long while to figure out, because it's not intuitive. It's fine for Amazon, because you generally don't search board games when looking for it - you just type it in.
To me, D&D is fundamentally different from a board game. Before I knew what D&D was, if I'd ordered it from a board game section on a website, I'd have been expecting something akin to Monopoly or perhaps Labyrinth. I'd have been annoyed to receive a game that only relates to board games by having dice and the optional use of a board.
Even the name TTRPG would be better. Even before I knew what they were, the RPG was enough of a clue to get the idea across that it's an RPG, not a chase around the board. Indeed, that was how I was introduced to D&D, and it gave me a good enough impression to get into the hobby.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Read the next paragraph - it wasn't intuitive when the grand extent of my knowledge was Gygax rolling dice to make his decisions on The Simpsons. It wasn't that long ago when that really was the extent of what I knew. I would have been very confused had I ordered it thinking it was a board game.
What was an RPG to me? Oblivion. Skyrim to younger folks. Which, as it turns out, isn't too far off the mark. The TT confused me, sure, but I was much closer to understanding the game than thinking Monopoly or Catan.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
And many people have never heard of one let alone played it. D&D is for all groups including both of those two, ESPECIALLY a Starter Set which is by definition a product intended to be usable by total newcomers to the space.
This is an xkcd comic I think about often when conversations within an engrained community try to predict the level of familiarity of the general populace. As a community, of course we know what a TTRPG is, and, by how human association tends to work, many of us travel in circles with sufficiently similar mindsets that many members of our circle are going to have some passive familiarity with the same hobbies, even if they do not partake themselves.
I expect market research has shown that a lot of people outside the traditional D&D demographic see the game as a board game, using that overarching label to refer to any type of game one sits around a table and plays. Is that entirely accurate, no. But is also very much not outside the realm of probability.
For those already in the know, the branding of D&D is sufficient to entice those players. The term TTRPG adds nothing to the enticement - D&D is so ubiquitous that it is more well known than the genera itself, so moving from a slice of the marketing pie to a smaller slice with overlap is not necessarily helpful, even if it promotes accuracy. Invoking a term like board game, which has wider appeal than the term D&D, makes sense to me for a starter set. The point of the product is to make it self-contained and easy to run (much like a board game) and entice players who are new. Particularly since D&D has a reputation for being intimidating, the usage of terminology that makes it feel more familiar just seems like good marketing to me.
Really not something I can understand getting worked up over. If they use board game because they think that makes more sense for marketing? Sure, makes sense to me. If they used TTRPG because it is more accurate? Also makes sense. Really not something that seems worth making any kind of a big deal over.
The shift toward calling RPG box sets "board games" has been going on for years now and coincides with vendors like Target and Walmart starting to carry such games.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
For clarity, I don't care if they call it a board game. Would care more if there's no level advancement, because I'd like to take my group through the Borderlands for old time's sake.
Then play the module Keep on the Borderlands.
As for this latest marketing foray by wotc, it is not surprising. Anything to make a buck, no matter how far it strays from the essence of D&D. This is the same company that created Monopoly GO, which has only one thing in common with real Monopoly: the name...no that is not true. The street names are the same. Why would anyone expect less or more from hasbro with this new board game.