Monopoly or Poker?

[zeraser]

Just a quick D&D thought-exercise: J. Maliszewski has suggested that the most sustainable model (not sure if those were his exact words) for D&D might look like Monopoly: A single product including everything one needs to play a game whose rules fit on the inside of the box. That sounds pretty good to me, but I wonder if an even better target might be poker, a game whose rules are traditional (and subject to much variation) and whose supplies—i.e., the cards—are readily available.

Obviously nobody's making any money selling "poker" per se, but if you think about the "poker industry"—televised games, for instance—it's still transactional (leaving aside the very concrete betting transactions in poker). Maybe someday that's what we'll have: a free D&D whose economy is located mostly in its popularity as a spectator sport.

(Naturally this would have a require a pretty severe reorientation of WotC's conception of the game!)

[owlorbs]

I remember years ago when poker began being televised one of my D&D evangelist friends remarked that he wished it was D&D that people were watching (and D&D would then spread like wildfire across the nation).

My office plays poker every wednesday. Oh what could have been.

[Falconer]

The D&D / AD&D brand split was actually kind of genius, if you think about it. Especially when the D&D brand was very limited — at one point, it consisted of Holmes Basic, Borderlands, and a handful of accessories. I know it won’t happen, but I wonder what would happen if Hasbro were to abandon the D&D brand for the next 40 years, EXCEPT for a single, mass-produced D&D (Holmes+B2) set, which they would put in every Toys "R" Us, Barnes & Noble, and Walgreens.

[Deleted]

Combine Basic and Expert D&D into a single box, label it Classic D&D, sell it next to Clue.

[Stormcrow]

You probably get Wil Wheaton to host it.

[scottenkainen]

Falconer and Ptingler need to be put in charge of the D&D brand right now -- their combined idea is far superior to anything being playtested by WotC.

~Scott "-enkainen" Casper

[owlorbs]

Feb 7, 2013 19:33:57 GMT -6 @ptingler said:

Combine Basic and Expert D&D into a single box, label it Classic D&D, sell it next to Clue.

I would buy 10 of these.

[oldkat]

In order for D&D to winover a GP in the same way as M or P has, it would have to be stripped down and simplified, elsewise, the near limitless variables would crush the game from the get go.

Imagine the D&D philosophy applied to M or P. In instance M, the player lands on New York Avenue, and rather than just having the option of buying it, ignoring it, paying rent, he decides to excavate a sewer and subway system beneath it in order to charge higher than the normal listed fees/rent. Players would protest and boycott such notions as they are not, per the rules, viable options. Suppose in P, the player is dealt a 3,4,5,6,7 and instead of acknowledging it as a straight, says all odd cards are magical, thus, he now has a full house. I imagine the reaction from others would be the same.

Too many variables in our game(which works in our game) does not translate easily into few variables without protest.

[aher]

Feb 7, 2013 13:31:47 GMT -6 zeraser said:

... like Monopoly ...

Gary Gygax once used "Monopoly" as a simile for a "one-shot" RPG, i.e., "not campaign-oriented." Here is the full quote:

SHADIS: Who do you see as the innovators in the role-playing industry?

GYGAX: ... There is some neat stuff out there. I like Paranoia but it's a very frustrating game because everybody dies all the time. It's not a campaign-oriented game. You put it on the shelf and pull it down like you would "Monopoly" and play one or two sessions when you are tired of what you usually play.

Quoted from Shadis Issue No.# 4, Volume I, Number 4, August 1990, in the article, "Shadis Interviews: Focus: E. Gary Gygax The Grandmaster," pages 22-26.