This could be a great marketing opportunity for the print D&D line. Kids who play the computer/console games also pore over the lore of cheats and hints every bit as avidly as any games lawyer. An official D&D Hint Book that had an introduction to pen & pencil D&D could bring in some kids; or giving some shelf space to the manuals in the vidgame store.

Players can write modules for Neverwinter Nights, including doing live DMing of the NPC's they create. This makes the computer a virtual tabletop for a DM and players. If this is a commercial success, along with The Sims, we may well see a greater variety of RPG's brought out in this medium.

Perhaps, but I have serious doubts about this:

"More than three million enthusiasts play the Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper game at least once a month, and Infogrames believes this will translate into a successful launch on Game Boy Advance," said Jeff Sehring, senior marketing manager at Infogrames' Minneapolis studio.

I doubt it. Like in the mainstream thread where Ron said that a D&D movie will do well if it's good, but this rarely carries over to the print RPG. I think it's the same thing here. If the game is good, it will do well, but it won't convince very many to go look at the RPG. Or such is my belief.

The graphics on a Game Boy Advance are pretty good; color, too.

The interesting thing that a GBA can do is that in can be cabled to another one, and characters can interact between the two machines. This was the big draw for Pokemon--the kids could "train" Pokemons and then match them against another player's Pokemon.

Think of two RPGers with their respective stables of characters being able to have matches or adventures, any time, without a table. Up to four GBA's can be linked together at a time. When more than one GBA is linked, the processing is distributed for more complex game generation.

A generation is growing up with a great deal of familiarity with electronically mediated RPG's and several RPG core concepts--character generation, character advancement, character stats, combat, campaigns. I would think this would make it a lot easier to recruit tabletop players from the general population.

MK Snyder wrote: A generation is growing up with a great deal of familiarity with electronically mediated RPG's and several RPG core concepts--character generation, character advancement, character stats, combat, campaigns. I would think this would make it a lot easier to recruit tabletop players from the general population.

I think you're focusing too much on adults.

The kids I know who now play RPG's played computer mediated RPG's (pc and platform) before they played print RPG's; they came from families in which the adults did not play RPG's.

Interesting, Maryanne. But I wonder if these kids of whom you speak are really a significant number or not. I mean, media cross-sales do happen.

But I think I have drifted slightly off-topic with this. Does the video game make RPG more acessable was the concept before the panel. I suppose it does since the people who play the video game would have been exposed to many of the mechanical concepts and whatnot of an RPG, or just D&D in this case. I still have my doubts as-to how many will actually go from video game to RPG. But people who play the video game will have a leg-up on learning RPG concepts.

OK, I just picked up "Eye of the Beholder" for the family. (Includes me!)

Players form a party of four characters and send 'em through the sewers of Waterdeep.

Characters can be any of six races; the four classes; players "roll" the stats, pick feats, and buy skills with points; magic users have spell lists; characters get more skill points and spells as they levelup.

The player chooses the party's order of adventuring. There are "attacks of opportunity". The player chooses whether or not to engage in combat with NPC's and monsters or conversation; player also directs characters to manipulate or examine objects and must choose from the character's skill set to exercise the skill.

Pretty darn good lesson in D&D, if you ask me.

Curiously enough, there is no crossover marketing effort to the paper RPG at all. No mention of the print edition. If anything, the D&D logo is selling the electronic product, not the other way around.

MK Snyder wrote: Curiously enough, there is no crossover marketing effort to the paper RPG at all. No mention of the print edition. If anything, the D&D logo is selling the electronic product, not the other way around.

Hi Jack and Mk,

I think that maybe there's no direct benefits from this (no cross-sells from video game fans to rpg books) but the potential indirect benefits exist IMO.

Considering my experience (and those of quite many RPer that I know), cross media facillitation of accessibility do exist. I was introduced to rpg via "solo adventure books"(translation ?) ("livres dont vous êtes le héro" for the french speaking audience), bought to my by my mother as a means to make me read more. Then I discovered almost by mistake some books that were very close, but who requiered a game master to run the adventure for the other player(also quite easely available. "L'oeil noir" (the black eye). It's a very simplistic german roleplaying game that made it's way in the supermarket (along with Chill) for a time. So I bougth the box...and voilà, I was a roleplayer.

Back to my point. At this time, rpg were almost not known in France execpt in really big city (think Paris). Discovering that you could play the hero of a pre-made story by reading certain paragraphs in a book really was a great facillitator to go toward rpgs. The only think to say was:" RPGs, you know, like the books were you are the hero, but with far more liberty..." and it was clear.

So yeah, the players who today buy this video game maybe won't go tomorrow buy rpgs'books, but still, he will have the knowledge of basicaly what is an RPG. So in a few year, when he'll want something else, he won't be totally in the dark when he look to the stange books with the d&d logo.

Just' my two cents, take care.

Fabrice.