1) Sold by WotC but not as D&D

Becomes a reasonably popular game, but doesn’t sell well enough to justify continued WotC investment. Line receives much less support product, is ended in third year.

2) Sold by White Wolf

Different enough from other White Wolf products that it gets a lot of grief from WW fans, but attracts a player base just the same. Gets a trickle of new releases a year. Survives as the “Fantasy Macintosh” alternative to D&D’s “Fantasy Windows”.

3) Sold by New Game Company

Eventually sells out initial print run of 5,000 copies in the bankruptcy half-cover-price liquidation.

4e is a moderately interesting tactical combat game with an adequate, if sparse, system for role-playing tacked on. But by taking the names of things from D&D, and then making them NOT the things that have had those names or attributes for the past 30 years, it sets off a significant cognitive dissonance! Fighters aren’t Fighters, they’re Tanks! Rogues aren’t Thieves, they’re Strikers! Vancian Magic is gone… except for Daily Powers, which give you two choices, only one of which can be MEMORIZED for the day! What the hell?! This isn’t D&D!

If 4e were *just* called 4e, and not Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition, I’d be more willing to accept it for itself, and not the bastardization and mutation of 30 years of creative ideas.

Dungeons and Dragons is every thing I don’t look for in a roleplaying game. I enjoy simple, abstract combat with lots of custimation of a characters with options that have negative effects on my character for the sake of a positive roleplaying experience.

I play D&D purely for the name. I do enjoy the system as is, but I wouldn’t play it as anything else if it didn’t have a strong brand (as I also play Star Wars saga).

There are things I do not.

The reality is that I would not have chosen to play 4E if it were not “D&D” (if someone else had introduced the game and asked me to play I may well still have played it – but it wouldn’t have been my initiative).

But to be fair – I would ALSO most likely not have been playing 3.x if it were not “D&D”. And if it comes down to it – I’d clearly rather be playing 4E than playing 3.x at this point.

Sure – I would probably have been even happier with an evolution of OD&D or AD&D that adhered more closely to its roots. But outside of my own head that perfect game – incorporating the best ideas of the last 30 years while avoiding the traps of 3.x-style ‘character customization’ and 4E-style ‘mechanics homogenization’ – just doesn’t exist.

But the reality is: I don’t play D&D for the system – the system is secondary (at best). So I’m happy to play whatever is ‘popular’ because popularity leads to more players/DMs and more players/DMs lead to more play opportunities.

And that is what really matters.

Carl

Which goes into the whole thing of marketing and popularity and whatnot. I don’t play, say, Burning Wheel or Dogs in the Vineyard. Does that make them bad?

Maybe the next thing that you should ask is: If the Palladium Fantasy rules were called D&D, would more people play? Or, if WoD made a high-fantasy game, and called it Gamer, the min/maxening, would people play that instead?

I like the smooth power progression, transparent mechanics, exception-based system, flexibility, ease of adventure development and general philosophy of 4e. I don’t like some things as well, but it’s a brand I trust and a genre I love. But then, I’m a PC, too.

So in other words, yes, I’d have bought them for their own merits and probably enjoyed it more without the D&D label. I hold a contrarian view, though, and rather than nostalgia, I tend to feel irritation that people forget that there is more to Roleplaying than D&D.