Taking a look at the current RPG players, how many can you say have been reading the current titles? A very small do whether it is because they don't have the disposable income for them or they don't like what has been recent is irrelevant. Honestly pretty much majority of our core doesn't read the current DCU and if they do it is few titles mainly within the Batman-verse (and let's toss in the fact that in the DCnU Batman and Green Lantern pretty much don't change much).
But see, that's the thing. This RPG has lasted since 2004 and is ending on it's 9th season. It started off of a cutoff point that was very firm in the comic books and very much dictated by what was happening currently in the books. But it wasn't confusing when everything started, the biggest pitfall was struggling between simplistic posts and actual fan-fiction styled storytelling. We made it work even with the Infinite Crisis/Our Worlds At War cutoff point, so I don't think that was ever going to be the issue. Would changing it to DCnU make it easier? Absolutely. But it wasn't a real factor beforehand, because we were only using those stories as a basis and going straight into our own stuff. If I ever had to look up history on, for instance, Nightwing, I had the entire internet at my disposal and could find it with ease. And only for a throwaway line, at most.
The reason we're rebooting this to make it clearer for new players is because of
our continuity. The stuff that can't be easily digested over wikipedia, because let's face it, even in our wiki we tend to go into a bit more detail than what's outlined out of DC's stories on the actual wiki - which makes it frustrating for people who just want to get to the essential stuff. We haven't perfected the streamlining aspect of the wiki yet, which is understandable. But it can be hard for someone new to go through all of that, especially when coupled with the fact that we don't update the wikis as often as we probably should. Given the length of our player-created continuity, is also seems pretty intimidating to step into a role that has been inhabited by so many Hypesters before, with their own ideas of how a character acts or works in the universe.
So it wasn't mainly a matter of the source material being too vast. It's our stuff that became too much to digest. That's why the reboot idea came to be, because we were operating off of our own material rather than the books, and people outside of the grid were left scratching their heads at something they didn't want to shift through multiple IC threads to be able to understand.
So who is to say that some of the people who do not read because they dislike the current content means that new players will not want to play because of what WILL be the soon current content?
But that is what I'm saying. People outside of the RPGs, the general consensus of that crowd, seem to dislike most of the changes. And they would potentially make up some of the new blood if they were ever going to join up. People who are well versed and people who aren't. Hell, the people in the Comics forums make me look like a casual fan of even the titles I read on a regular basis, so I'm considering what they would want if they were to join. And what I've gathered so far is that they really wouldn't have wanted this to be DC's ultimatum to attract new readers. Talking to my own friends, I've gotten that feeling too, even when it's something that I personally like out of the DCnU continuity.
People play these characters because they love them and want to write them. In the end, in these games majority of players do 100% user content. Not all do what someone like myself does and constantly makes references and stories and sequels that spin off of old cannon that I'm familiar with with Aquaman for example. Many people all they need is the general personality and simple history of a character, and boom...pick them up.
Yeah, I agree, but they'll do that regardless of what the cutoff is. Making it DCnU based would make what comes before more vague for them, but I doubt they'd lean on the stories anyway if it were a Brightest Day/Flashpoint continuity. Outside of Hal Jordan's resurrection in Rebirth, not much was taken from Infinite Crisis during that first season because we went directly into our own stories.
DCnU makes it easier. I'll agree wholeheartedly with that. But not to such a large degree that it'd be impossible to attract new players with a Brightest Day continuity cutoff. The information age just makes it that much easier for someone to read up a general synopsis for anyone they're looking to pick up. For instance, I know jack about Plastic Man's mythos. But if I went to his wiki page, I could play him in this version of the game or any other.
