Yes, D&D has always been on top in the TTRPG market, with various challengers over the years that fell short or couldn't sustain their momentum. On a relative scale though, that success was minuscule compared to the current popularity of 5E, and that's absolutely due to factors like social media/streaming -- i.e., CritRole and WotC.
Are we talking about absolute or relative size here?
In terms of absolute size, yes, D&D 5e is "bigger" than any other edition. RPGs are bigger than ever before right now. Some of this is due to Critical Role. Some is due to crossover appeal of MTG with D&D, which is the other major WOTC property. In total units sold, more total RPG units (books, PDFs, online versions here, whatever) are sold these days than ever before.
In terms of relative size, that is, in a pie chart, how big D&D's "wedge" is relative to the other wedges, D&D's been been most of the RPG pie from 1974 to today. If you looked at a time lapse of that pie wedge size, it would probably look like a static image. D&D has maintained a stranglehold on the industry all along. They got there first, took over the "pie" as it were, and never relinquished it, even during their "down turns." Nobody else has more than a tiny itty bitty little slice.
Go back into the 1980s... 1983-1985, there was a Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on network television. Was there ever a Champions cartoon? Gamma World? Star Frontiers? Rolemaster? Traveler? There was a D&D movie in 2000. Sure, it was awful. But where is the Savage Worlds movie? Champions? Star Frontiers? Pathfinder? There have been D&D novels. D&D comic books. D&D boardgames. Where are the Champions novels? (OK, there were a couple of Champions comic series, but they all bombed in < 6 issues.) Pathfinder comics? Savage Worlds board games? Star Frontiers novels? Etc.
I don't disagree that the total scale of the industry has grown. The same thing has happened to movies and other entertainment industries -- a "big hit" in the 1970s would be considered a loser (financially) today, in movie terms. But in relative terms, D&D started out as the giant, was the giant throughout the last 40 years, and remains the giant.
And, I think this is a big source of the hate, to get back onto topic. People who like RPGs but not D&D resent that it has been king of the hill for so long. And to be fair, its "king of the hill" status is certainly not justified by anything mechanical in the rules, nor the quality of its products. Almost every other rule set I have ever read for RPGs has been mechanically superior to D&D, had fewer loop holes, and been less "pretzely." It's one thing when the king of the hill is demonstrably the best. But when the king of the hill is just king because of getting there and planting the flag first, there's a lot of frustration. It's the same reason people use, but hate, Windows. (And Microsoft was successful in much the same way as D&D -- by getting there first, and becoming the default, even though its product is mediocre and definitely not the best in the market in terms of quality.)
Arguing that "because Critical Role, D&D is super popular today, more than ever before," is like arguing that, "because of Windows 10, Microsoft is super popular today, more than ever before." Windows 10 did not make MS the juggernaut... Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, etc. did.
It has always been the "King of the Mountain" so to speak.
It was the first (it's basically the trope-namer), it got a bunch of media attention well before the others, and it's had hasbro's marketing budget for over 20 years. Recall how poorly AD&D was doing in the 90s.
Not that poorly. That was when I discovered TTRPGs, and it was through 2e, muh foist lrv.
I have no doubts that there are people that still play WoD, but I doubt there is any where near as many people playing now as there was in the 90s. I still have my 2nd edition WoD books and even play from time to time, but it is normally brief campaigns and generally during the month of October.
It is still the only time I have ever been involved with LARPing of any kind.
Well, to be fair, that is the most emo TTRPG ever and that was the most emo decade in living memory..
I have no doubts that there are people that still play WoD, but I doubt there is any where near as many people playing now as there was in the 90s. I still have my 2nd edition WoD books and even play from time to time, but it is normally brief campaigns and generally during the month of October.
It is still the only time I have ever been involved with LARPing of any kind.
Well, to be fair, that is the most emo TTRPG ever and that was the most emo decade in living memory..
I have no doubts that there are people that still play WoD, but I doubt there is any where near as many people playing now as there was in the 90s. I still have my 2nd edition WoD books and even play from time to time, but it is normally brief campaigns and generally during the month of October.
It is still the only time I have ever been involved with LARPing of any kind.
Well, to be fair, that is the most emo TTRPG ever and that was the most emo decade in living memory..
It was/is GOTH not emo lol
The bravest thing that White Wolf did was actually bring about the apocalypse they spent so long talking about. But it did add a level of finality to the system that made it hard to then get back into. I know this from experience, we played through the apocalypse storyline and then struggled to get motivated to remain with white wolf and switched systems to a different game.
I have no doubts that there are people that still play WoD, but I doubt there is any where near as many people playing now as there was in the 90s. I still have my 2nd edition WoD books and even play from time to time, but it is normally brief campaigns and generally during the month of October.
It is still the only time I have ever been involved with LARPing of any kind.
Well, to be fair, that is the most emo TTRPG ever and that was the most emo decade in living memory..
It was/is GOTH not emo lol
That depended on who you played with. 🤣😂🤣
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent more time playing WoD than D&D & Shadowrun combined. But a lot of the WoD products shoulda come with a staple gun so people could permanently attach the back of their hand to their forehead.
Yes, D&D has always been on top in the TTRPG market, with various challengers over the years that fell short or couldn't sustain their momentum. On a relative scale though, that success was minuscule compared to the current popularity of 5E, and that's absolutely due to factors like social media/streaming -- i.e., CritRole and WotC.
Are we talking about absolute or relative size here?
In terms of absolute size, yes, D&D 5e is "bigger" than any other edition. RPGs are bigger than ever before right now. Some of this is due to Critical Role. Some is due to crossover appeal of MTG with D&D, which is the other major WOTC property. In total units sold, more total RPG units (books, PDFs, online versions here, whatever) are sold these days than ever before.
In terms of relative size, that is, in a pie chart, how big D&D's "wedge" is relative to the other wedges, D&D's been been most of the RPG pie from 1974 to today. If you looked at a time lapse of that pie wedge size, it would probably look like a static image. D&D has maintained a stranglehold on the industry all along. They got there first, took over the "pie" as it were, and never relinquished it, even during their "down turns." Nobody else has more than a tiny itty bitty little slice.
Go back into the 1980s... 1983-1985, there was a Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on network television. Was there ever a Champions cartoon? Gamma World? Star Frontiers? Rolemaster? Traveler? There was a D&D movie in 2000. Sure, it was awful. But where is the Savage Worlds movie? Champions? Star Frontiers? Pathfinder? There have been D&D novels. D&D comic books. D&D boardgames. Where are the Champions novels? (OK, there were a couple of Champions comic series, but they all bombed in < 6 issues.) Pathfinder comics? Savage Worlds board games? Star Frontiers novels? Etc.
I don't disagree that the total scale of the industry has grown. The same thing has happened to movies and other entertainment industries -- a "big hit" in the 1970s would be considered a loser (financially) today, in movie terms. But in relative terms, D&D started out as the giant, was the giant throughout the last 40 years, and remains the giant.
And, I think this is a big source of the hate, to get back onto topic. People who like RPGs but not D&D resent that it has been king of the hill for so long. And to be fair, its "king of the hill" status is certainly not justified by anything mechanical in the rules, nor the quality of its products. Almost every other rule set I have ever read for RPGs has been mechanically superior to D&D, had fewer loop holes, and been less "pretzely." It's one thing when the king of the hill is demonstrably the best. But when the king of the hill is just king because of getting there and planting the flag first, there's a lot of frustration. It's the same reason people use, but hate, Windows. (And Microsoft was successful in much the same way as D&D -- by getting there first, and becoming the default, even though its product is mediocre and definitely not the best in the market in terms of quality.)
Arguing that "because Critical Role, D&D is super popular today, more than ever before," is like arguing that, "because of Windows 10, Microsoft is super popular today, more than ever before." Windows 10 did not make MS the juggernaut... Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, etc. did.
There was a Champions MMO. It actually was pretty good, but was competing with other, much bigger MMO's. And DNDO may have lasted but it is tiny compared to Everquest, let alone WOW.
Speaking of WOW, Warhammer and Warhammer 40k have RPG's too. Warcraft has an RPG. You figure Games Workshop or Blizzard have no advertising budgets?
I'm pretty sure WotC's advertising budget is kept almost entirely separate from that of other divisions of Hasbro anyway. The thing with advertising is that the far, far greater part of it is not spent or meant to get you to adopt a product - it's to get those who've adopted a certain type of product to pick yours over others. Coca-Cola doesn't spend money trying to make people drink sodas, they try to get soda drinkers to drink Coke, Fanta or Sprite instead of Pepsi or 7-Up. TTRPGs are largely the same - most of the ad money isn't spent with the intention of trying to get people who've never played anything like them to give it a try, it's to get those who want to to play yours instead of others. That's why Kickstarter campaigns for new RPGs spend little or (much more likely) no time explaining RPGs in general or how fun or interesting they are; they focus everything on explaining why theirs is so great that you should back it, because they know 99% of those checking out the campaign are players already and don't need to be enticed into playing in the first place.
D&D is no different. WotC struck gold with Critical Role (to the best of my knowledge not through any action of their own, but because brand recognition and some mechanical considerations caused Matt and the gang to switch from Pathfinder to 5E), but that's not where WotC's (never mind Hasbro's) ad budget gets spent. Influencers in general have certainly affected marketing and advertisement, but the basic principles still largely hold true. You don't see the Kardashians picking up endorsement contracts from TTRPG companies or dice manufacturers or other ancillary industries, because trying to bring in new players like that is more than likely not going to give a good return on investment. You do see plenty of sponsorships and collaborations with people who've been playing TTRPGs for decades and have a decent following on social media because of that. It's not about getting a bigger pie, it's about getting a bigger piece of it. The bigger pie part comes from the player base itself, getting others interested and bringing in new blood. And some money from the budget gets set aside for that, absolutely - just not a lot of it.
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Go back into the 1980s... 1983-1985, there was a Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on network television. Was there ever a Champions cartoon? Gamma World? Star Frontiers? Rolemaster? Traveler? There was a D&D movie in 2000. Sure, it was awful. But where is the Savage Worlds movie? Champions? Star Frontiers? Pathfinder? There have been D&D novels. D&D comic books. D&D boardgames. Where are the Champions novels? (OK, there were a couple of Champions comic series, but they all bombed in < 6 issues.) Pathfinder comics? Savage Worlds board games? Star Frontiers novels? Etc.
There was a Vampire the Masquerade tv show. It was terrible. There have been quite a few WOD video games of ... varying quality. White Wolf very solidly claimed the 2nd runner up to D&D in it's heyday. Now ... well they basically let a really regressive and problematic old fan get in charge of the company. It didn't work out very well for them.
One could also note that while Champions-the-RPG has had no TV shows or the like, it does have a successful, long-running MMORPG I've actually played a good several hundred* hours of in the past. And also it's the RPG system for the entire super hero genre, which has just a wee bit more media presence than D&D.
BioWizard is likely more correct than I like, though. I know a lot of my anger and frustration with D&D 5e is the fact that every single game EVER is always D&D 5e, all the time, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever... You can't escape it, you can't get away from it, you can't play anything else, you can't do anything else. If you want to participate in a tabletop RPG campaign/session? That game's gonna be 5e. And while 5e is good at some things and bad at others, I am heartily sick unto death of it being the actual factual only game in town.
One could also note that while Champions-the-RPG has had no TV shows or the like, it does have a successful, long-running MMORPG I've actually played a good several hundred* hours of in the past. And also it's the RPG system for the entire super hero genre, which has just a wee bit more media presence than D&D.
BioWizard is likely more correct than I like, though. I know a lot of my anger and frustration with D&D 5e is the fact that every single game EVER is always D&D 5e, all the time, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever... You can't escape it, you can't get away from it, you can't play anything else, you can't do anything else. If you want to participate in a tabletop RPG campaign/session? That game's gonna be 5e. And while 5e is good at some things and bad at others, I am heartily sick unto death of it being the actual factual only game in town.
So basically... whichever RPG game is the most popular at any given time is the one that you'll hate the most?
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Heh. No. I wish there was variety. Competition would be better for everybody - if Wizards had to actually work for its money, maybe books like Tasha's Cauldron wouldn't be so terrible.
Wizards currently more-or-less holds a monopoly on the TTRPG space. Monopolies are never good. If there were other credible options - and who knows, we might start seeing more as the hobby inches and crawls its way out of neckbeard basements and into the limelight - then each one of them would have to do a better job of maintaining their users, and we'd all have more and better games to choose from.
I know a lot of my anger and frustration with D&D 5e is the fact that every single game EVER is always D&D 5e, all the time, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever... You can't escape it, you can't get away from it, you can't play anything else, you can't do anything else.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated."
Oh wait, that's another RPG that I can't get anyone to play... Star Trek Adventures.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I know a lot of my anger and frustration with D&D 5e is the fact that every single game EVER is always D&D 5e, all the time, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever... You can't escape it, you can't get away from it, you can't play anything else, you can't do anything else.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated."
Oh wait, that's another RPG that I can't get anyone to play... Star Trek Adventures.
Attempts I have seen with Star Trek the RPG run into a major problem. Star Fleet is military and there is a chain o command. And most players resent the concept of being part of a chain o command. You really need the right players and that makes it that much tougher.
That kind of applies to all types of RPGs, including D&D, even if not to all equally. D&D's beer and pretzel fantasy flavour is pretty accessible, but it's still not for everyone. Then again, my TTRPG of choice is L5R (third ed preferably, though I can be flexible) and that's definitely on a whole other end of the spectrum.
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Attempts I have seen with Star Trek the RPG run into a major problem. Star Fleet is military and there is a chain o command. And most players resent the concept of being part of a chain o command. You really need the right players and that makes it that much tougher.
I would think that anyone who wants to play a Star Trek game would be happy to RP the chain of command. I know I would.
Saying "players might have an issue with the chain of command" in a Star Trek game is like saying, "players might have an issue with fighting scary horrors that are so powerful you can't even hurt them" in a Call of Cthulhu game. Or saying, "Yeah, let's play Champions," and then resenting that they have to make up a superhero. That's what those games are about. Presumably, someone agreeing to play these games would be aware of this and want those things.
I mean... they may as well also complain that the whole game revolves around being on a starship and exploring strange new worlds.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I know a lot of my anger and frustration with D&D 5e is the fact that every single game EVER is always D&D 5e, all the time, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever... You can't escape it, you can't get away from it, you can't play anything else, you can't do anything else.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated."
Oh wait, that's another RPG that I can't get anyone to play... Star Trek Adventures.
Attempts I have seen with Star Trek the RPG run into a major problem. Star Fleet is military and there is a chain o command. And most players resent the concept of being part of a chain o command. You really need the right players and that makes it that much tougher.
That kind of applies to all types of RPGs, including D&D, even if not to all equally. D&D's beer and pretzel fantasy flavour is pretty accessible, but it's still not for everyone. Then again, my TTRPG of choice is L5R (third ed preferably, though I can be flexible) and that's definitely on a whole other end of the spectrum.
Most DND groups though (and most other RPG's) do not have formal chains of command within the party, though. The same issue does apply to D&D campaigns where that exists but it is not a structure intrinsic to the game itself.
I didn't mean formal command structures necessarily; I meant every RPG has aesthetics or vibes or aspects that make it that RPG, but that aren't necessarily all that palatable to everyone. Players who don't like Lovecraftian horror will steer clear of Call of Cthulhu. Not everyone is up for playing in L5R's rigidly formal Emerald Empire with all its societal rules. I know players who don't like the superhero RPG genre. Sure, Star Trek's formal chain of command may put some people of but TTRPGs putting people off in some way is not unusual.
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Sure, Star Trek's formal chain of command may put some people of but TTRPGs putting people off in some way is not unusual.
Yes.
And presumably people who are agreeing to play a Star Trek game would not be surprised or "resentful" that there is a chain of command. They'd be expecting to RP about that.
Just like people who play D&D are not usually surprised or resentful that there are fantastical creatures, magic spells, or divine intervention in D&D.
This reminds me of the line from Big Bang Theory, when Howard complains that while playing D&D, they went into a dungeon and encountered a dragon. Sheldon asks, "When you play chutes and ladders, do you complain about all the chutes and all the ladders?"
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Why does D&D get so much hate? Because that's a popular thing to do to anything that is successful. 5th Edition D&D is very successful, so much so that while built for heroic fantasy, it can do an adequate job in other genre. We have seen a lot of horror related products, and from the looks of things a setting expansion for the Feywild and adventures in that setting are peeking over the horizon. It looks rather like they are trying to broaden the appeal of D&D into the grade school children's market. Cute fluffy bunny-men, Tiny creatures of all sorts, Owl-men, and that sort of thing are perfect for that sort of thing.
I feel hesitant about that. I wouldn't use D&D for my grade school aged children. There is a rating system for games, which hasn't yet been applied to roleplaying games, but I'd call D&D a "T-for-Teen" kind of game. Killing things, especially cute things, isn't really my idea of fun, nor would I expect anyone else to find it fun unless they had to do it for some reason or other.
With a setting book for the Feywild and some adventures to use in it, we could combine what we learned about the horror genre to present a great version of what Celtic myth and legend presented. Their version of the land of the Fair Folk was a wonderful but highly dangerous place that mortals should rightly fear to set foot in.
Myself, I love D&D, I love to play in it, I love to DM in it. I've tried many other games. I wish I could have convinced my players to try out Shatterzone. It had a card based system that allowed skill resolution, players to add in plot elements, ways to aid other players in different ways... It really was awesome and I wish there was a D&D version. That's where the hate comes from. There could be a D&D version, D&D would do an adequate job with it, and people just hate that.
With a setting book for the Feywild and some adventures to use in it, we could combine what we learned about the horror genre to present a great version of what Celtic myth and legend presented. Their version of the land of the Fair Folk was a wonderful but highly dangerous place that mortals should rightly fear to set foot in.
Yes, yes, yes. The real fae are terrifying, perhaps more so than any undead stalker or tentacled horror. I would love a campaign that does them justice.
For my two cents, I don’t think the cutesifying is so much aimed at grade-school kids, but at the “wacky hijinks” crowd coming in via streams. The fact that Critical Role is one of the more serious/dark is…unfortunate, as it’s still often on the fluffy side.
That said, if a kid is old enough to enjoy Lord of the Rings, they’re old enough to play D&D. I feel like that, not any specific age, is the best measure. I started in grade school after reading The Hobbit, and I think that was fine.
Heh. No. I wish there was variety. Competition would be better for everybody - if Wizards had to actually work for its money, maybe books like Tasha's Cauldron wouldn't be so terrible.
Wizards currently more-or-less holds a monopoly on the TTRPG space. Monopolies are never good. If there were other credible options - and who knows, we might start seeing more as the hobby inches and crawls its way out of neckbeard basements and into the limelight - then each one of them would have to do a better job of maintaining their users, and we'd all have more and better games to choose from.
Sounds great, dunnit?
Wizards does work for its money, and there is competition. I do not think Wizards' current near monopoly is due to anything obnoxious Wizards has done (at least not publicly that any of us know about), and they certainly cannot afford to do nothing if they wish to maintain that monopoly. In my opinion, I think the monopoly is due to the failure of Wizards' competitors to provide a good alternative to D&D, or at least they have not marketed their products properly (either due to mistakes or a lack of resources) if they do have something good. Basically, the monopoly exist because the competition quite frankly just sucks, in one way or another. I think the only decent competitor is Pathfinder, and that is about it.
Another thing to consider is that D&D, Pathfinder, etc. in a sense are more similar to platforms/ecosystems (XBox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, etc.) than games, and most people generally stick to playing videogames on only one or two platforms. For example, very few people are going to own all three Xbox One, PS5, and Switch; at most, if people do own two consoles, the second one is generally just for exclusives. The issue with Call of Cthulhu and Champions is that they paint themselves into a niche, and stuff like Star Wars and Warhammer even more so, and these systems play very specific kinds of games. And since D&D can basically do any genre (and any IP too with a bit of effort) and Wizards have presented it as such, the casual gamer is not going to bother to switch to a niche system when good old D&D can do almost anything. And even if D&D cannot do something, there are a bunch of third party options and free stuff out there on top of homebrew that can make D&D work the way you want it to work.
Additionally, the TTRPG market is also tiny, and it probably is not big enough to support that many companies, and probably not at the size of Wizards and Paizo either. And based on my observations on this website, a significant fraction of people are also super stingy and entitled; unprofitable consumers on top of small market size are not exactly ideal conditions to start a business, let alone grow and thrive. In contrast, the videogame market is massive, so even though Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Google, and Apple fragment the market, each still get a huge slice of customers, and with that level of economy of scale, you can reduce cost and serve even the least desirable consumers. And on the consumer side of things, a lot of us already know how difficult it is to just get a D&D game going, and getting an obscure TTRPG going is going to be even harder, which just further enforces the feedback loop of centralizing around D&D and not giving other companies and their products much of a chance.
I agree that we basically have wait for the market size to grow bigger. But even then, I am not sure we will ever get to that point. TTRPG as a hobby itself is also problematic as it is quite frankly super dull and boring for most people; sitting around a table playing pretend is as fun as watching paint dry for many people. In my group of friends, videogames, movies, and dining out are universally appealing and most of us would not mind playing board games either, but only about a third of us would want to play D&D.
For my two cents, I don’t think the cutesifying is so much aimed at grade-school kids, but at the “wacky hijinks” crowd coming in via streams.
I think the streams kind-of have to do this because they are not primarily a game session so much as a form of entertainment. If you ever watched people actually sitting down playing regular-old D&D without something like wacky hijinks or some other form of "performance" along with the game itself, most people would be bored out of their minds.
The problem becomes that people who are introduced to RPGs via streams expect the game to play like this around their own table, and I guess D&D is now trying to provide them with rules to help them do that.
Are we talking about absolute or relative size here?
In terms of absolute size, yes, D&D 5e is "bigger" than any other edition. RPGs are bigger than ever before right now. Some of this is due to Critical Role. Some is due to crossover appeal of MTG with D&D, which is the other major WOTC property. In total units sold, more total RPG units (books, PDFs, online versions here, whatever) are sold these days than ever before.
In terms of relative size, that is, in a pie chart, how big D&D's "wedge" is relative to the other wedges, D&D's been been most of the RPG pie from 1974 to today. If you looked at a time lapse of that pie wedge size, it would probably look like a static image. D&D has maintained a stranglehold on the industry all along. They got there first, took over the "pie" as it were, and never relinquished it, even during their "down turns." Nobody else has more than a tiny itty bitty little slice.
Go back into the 1980s... 1983-1985, there was a Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on network television. Was there ever a Champions cartoon? Gamma World? Star Frontiers? Rolemaster? Traveler? There was a D&D movie in 2000. Sure, it was awful. But where is the Savage Worlds movie? Champions? Star Frontiers? Pathfinder? There have been D&D novels. D&D comic books. D&D boardgames. Where are the Champions novels? (OK, there were a couple of Champions comic series, but they all bombed in < 6 issues.) Pathfinder comics? Savage Worlds board games? Star Frontiers novels? Etc.
I don't disagree that the total scale of the industry has grown. The same thing has happened to movies and other entertainment industries -- a "big hit" in the 1970s would be considered a loser (financially) today, in movie terms. But in relative terms, D&D started out as the giant, was the giant throughout the last 40 years, and remains the giant.
And, I think this is a big source of the hate, to get back onto topic. People who like RPGs but not D&D resent that it has been king of the hill for so long. And to be fair, its "king of the hill" status is certainly not justified by anything mechanical in the rules, nor the quality of its products. Almost every other rule set I have ever read for RPGs has been mechanically superior to D&D, had fewer loop holes, and been less "pretzely." It's one thing when the king of the hill is demonstrably the best. But when the king of the hill is just king because of getting there and planting the flag first, there's a lot of frustration. It's the same reason people use, but hate, Windows. (And Microsoft was successful in much the same way as D&D -- by getting there first, and becoming the default, even though its product is mediocre and definitely not the best in the market in terms of quality.)
Arguing that "because Critical Role, D&D is super popular today, more than ever before," is like arguing that, "because of Windows 10, Microsoft is super popular today, more than ever before." Windows 10 did not make MS the juggernaut... Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, etc. did.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Not that poorly. That was when I discovered TTRPGs, and it was through 2e, muh foist lrv.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Well, to be fair, that is the most emo TTRPG ever and that was the most emo decade in living memory..
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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It was/is GOTH not emo lol
South Park: Goth vs Emo
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
The bravest thing that White Wolf did was actually bring about the apocalypse they spent so long talking about. But it did add a level of finality to the system that made it hard to then get back into. I know this from experience, we played through the apocalypse storyline and then struggled to get motivated to remain with white wolf and switched systems to a different game.
That depended on who you played with. 🤣😂🤣
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent more time playing WoD than D&D & Shadowrun combined. But a lot of the WoD products shoulda come with a staple gun so people could permanently attach the back of their hand to their forehead.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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I'm pretty sure WotC's advertising budget is kept almost entirely separate from that of other divisions of Hasbro anyway. The thing with advertising is that the far, far greater part of it is not spent or meant to get you to adopt a product - it's to get those who've adopted a certain type of product to pick yours over others. Coca-Cola doesn't spend money trying to make people drink sodas, they try to get soda drinkers to drink Coke, Fanta or Sprite instead of Pepsi or 7-Up. TTRPGs are largely the same - most of the ad money isn't spent with the intention of trying to get people who've never played anything like them to give it a try, it's to get those who want to to play yours instead of others. That's why Kickstarter campaigns for new RPGs spend little or (much more likely) no time explaining RPGs in general or how fun or interesting they are; they focus everything on explaining why theirs is so great that you should back it, because they know 99% of those checking out the campaign are players already and don't need to be enticed into playing in the first place.
D&D is no different. WotC struck gold with Critical Role (to the best of my knowledge not through any action of their own, but because brand recognition and some mechanical considerations caused Matt and the gang to switch from Pathfinder to 5E), but that's not where WotC's (never mind Hasbro's) ad budget gets spent. Influencers in general have certainly affected marketing and advertisement, but the basic principles still largely hold true. You don't see the Kardashians picking up endorsement contracts from TTRPG companies or dice manufacturers or other ancillary industries, because trying to bring in new players like that is more than likely not going to give a good return on investment. You do see plenty of sponsorships and collaborations with people who've been playing TTRPGs for decades and have a decent following on social media because of that. It's not about getting a bigger pie, it's about getting a bigger piece of it. The bigger pie part comes from the player base itself, getting others interested and bringing in new blood. And some money from the budget gets set aside for that, absolutely - just not a lot of it.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
There was a Vampire the Masquerade tv show. It was terrible. There have been quite a few WOD video games of ... varying quality. White Wolf very solidly claimed the 2nd runner up to D&D in it's heyday. Now ... well they basically let a really regressive and problematic old fan get in charge of the company. It didn't work out very well for them.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
One could also note that while Champions-the-RPG has had no TV shows or the like, it does have a successful, long-running MMORPG I've actually played a good several hundred* hours of in the past. And also it's the RPG system for the entire super hero genre, which has just a wee bit more media presence than D&D.
BioWizard is likely more correct than I like, though. I know a lot of my anger and frustration with D&D 5e is the fact that every single game EVER is always D&D 5e, all the time, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever... You can't escape it, you can't get away from it, you can't play anything else, you can't do anything else. If you want to participate in a tabletop RPG campaign/session? That game's gonna be 5e. And while 5e is good at some things and bad at others, I am heartily sick unto death of it being the actual factual only game in town.
Please do not contact or message me.
So basically... whichever RPG game is the most popular at any given time is the one that you'll hate the most?
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Heh. No. I wish there was variety. Competition would be better for everybody - if Wizards had to actually work for its money, maybe books like Tasha's Cauldron wouldn't be so terrible.
Wizards currently more-or-less holds a monopoly on the TTRPG space. Monopolies are never good. If there were other credible options - and who knows, we might start seeing more as the hobby inches and crawls its way out of neckbeard basements and into the limelight - then each one of them would have to do a better job of maintaining their users, and we'd all have more and better games to choose from.
Sounds great, dunnit?
Please do not contact or message me.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated."
Oh wait, that's another RPG that I can't get anyone to play... Star Trek Adventures.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
That kind of applies to all types of RPGs, including D&D, even if not to all equally. D&D's beer and pretzel fantasy flavour is pretty accessible, but it's still not for everyone. Then again, my TTRPG of choice is L5R (third ed preferably, though I can be flexible) and that's definitely on a whole other end of the spectrum.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I would think that anyone who wants to play a Star Trek game would be happy to RP the chain of command. I know I would.
Saying "players might have an issue with the chain of command" in a Star Trek game is like saying, "players might have an issue with fighting scary horrors that are so powerful you can't even hurt them" in a Call of Cthulhu game. Or saying, "Yeah, let's play Champions," and then resenting that they have to make up a superhero. That's what those games are about. Presumably, someone agreeing to play these games would be aware of this and want those things.
I mean... they may as well also complain that the whole game revolves around being on a starship and exploring strange new worlds.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I didn't mean formal command structures necessarily; I meant every RPG has aesthetics or vibes or aspects that make it that RPG, but that aren't necessarily all that palatable to everyone. Players who don't like Lovecraftian horror will steer clear of Call of Cthulhu. Not everyone is up for playing in L5R's rigidly formal Emerald Empire with all its societal rules. I know players who don't like the superhero RPG genre. Sure, Star Trek's formal chain of command may put some people of but TTRPGs putting people off in some way is not unusual.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Yes.
And presumably people who are agreeing to play a Star Trek game would not be surprised or "resentful" that there is a chain of command. They'd be expecting to RP about that.
Just like people who play D&D are not usually surprised or resentful that there are fantastical creatures, magic spells, or divine intervention in D&D.
This reminds me of the line from Big Bang Theory, when Howard complains that while playing D&D, they went into a dungeon and encountered a dragon. Sheldon asks, "When you play chutes and ladders, do you complain about all the chutes and all the ladders?"
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Why does D&D get so much hate? Because that's a popular thing to do to anything that is successful. 5th Edition D&D is very successful, so much so that while built for heroic fantasy, it can do an adequate job in other genre. We have seen a lot of horror related products, and from the looks of things a setting expansion for the Feywild and adventures in that setting are peeking over the horizon. It looks rather like they are trying to broaden the appeal of D&D into the grade school children's market. Cute fluffy bunny-men, Tiny creatures of all sorts, Owl-men, and that sort of thing are perfect for that sort of thing.
I feel hesitant about that. I wouldn't use D&D for my grade school aged children. There is a rating system for games, which hasn't yet been applied to roleplaying games, but I'd call D&D a "T-for-Teen" kind of game. Killing things, especially cute things, isn't really my idea of fun, nor would I expect anyone else to find it fun unless they had to do it for some reason or other.
With a setting book for the Feywild and some adventures to use in it, we could combine what we learned about the horror genre to present a great version of what Celtic myth and legend presented. Their version of the land of the Fair Folk was a wonderful but highly dangerous place that mortals should rightly fear to set foot in.
Myself, I love D&D, I love to play in it, I love to DM in it. I've tried many other games. I wish I could have convinced my players to try out Shatterzone. It had a card based system that allowed skill resolution, players to add in plot elements, ways to aid other players in different ways... It really was awesome and I wish there was a D&D version. That's where the hate comes from. There could be a D&D version, D&D would do an adequate job with it, and people just hate that.
<Insert clever signature here>
Yes, yes, yes. The real fae are terrifying, perhaps more so than any undead stalker or tentacled horror. I would love a campaign that does them justice.
For my two cents, I don’t think the cutesifying is so much aimed at grade-school kids, but at the “wacky hijinks” crowd coming in via streams. The fact that Critical Role is one of the more serious/dark is…unfortunate, as it’s still often on the fluffy side.
That said, if a kid is old enough to enjoy Lord of the Rings, they’re old enough to play D&D. I feel like that, not any specific age, is the best measure. I started in grade school after reading The Hobbit, and I think that was fine.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Wizards does work for its money, and there is competition. I do not think Wizards' current near monopoly is due to anything obnoxious Wizards has done (at least not publicly that any of us know about), and they certainly cannot afford to do nothing if they wish to maintain that monopoly. In my opinion, I think the monopoly is due to the failure of Wizards' competitors to provide a good alternative to D&D, or at least they have not marketed their products properly (either due to mistakes or a lack of resources) if they do have something good. Basically, the monopoly exist because the competition quite frankly just sucks, in one way or another. I think the only decent competitor is Pathfinder, and that is about it.
Another thing to consider is that D&D, Pathfinder, etc. in a sense are more similar to platforms/ecosystems (XBox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, etc.) than games, and most people generally stick to playing videogames on only one or two platforms. For example, very few people are going to own all three Xbox One, PS5, and Switch; at most, if people do own two consoles, the second one is generally just for exclusives. The issue with Call of Cthulhu and Champions is that they paint themselves into a niche, and stuff like Star Wars and Warhammer even more so, and these systems play very specific kinds of games. And since D&D can basically do any genre (and any IP too with a bit of effort) and Wizards have presented it as such, the casual gamer is not going to bother to switch to a niche system when good old D&D can do almost anything. And even if D&D cannot do something, there are a bunch of third party options and free stuff out there on top of homebrew that can make D&D work the way you want it to work.
Additionally, the TTRPG market is also tiny, and it probably is not big enough to support that many companies, and probably not at the size of Wizards and Paizo either. And based on my observations on this website, a significant fraction of people are also super stingy and entitled; unprofitable consumers on top of small market size are not exactly ideal conditions to start a business, let alone grow and thrive. In contrast, the videogame market is massive, so even though Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Google, and Apple fragment the market, each still get a huge slice of customers, and with that level of economy of scale, you can reduce cost and serve even the least desirable consumers. And on the consumer side of things, a lot of us already know how difficult it is to just get a D&D game going, and getting an obscure TTRPG going is going to be even harder, which just further enforces the feedback loop of centralizing around D&D and not giving other companies and their products much of a chance.
I agree that we basically have wait for the market size to grow bigger. But even then, I am not sure we will ever get to that point. TTRPG as a hobby itself is also problematic as it is quite frankly super dull and boring for most people; sitting around a table playing pretend is as fun as watching paint dry for many people. In my group of friends, videogames, movies, and dining out are universally appealing and most of us would not mind playing board games either, but only about a third of us would want to play D&D.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
I think the streams kind-of have to do this because they are not primarily a game session so much as a form of entertainment. If you ever watched people actually sitting down playing regular-old D&D without something like wacky hijinks or some other form of "performance" along with the game itself, most people would be bored out of their minds.
The problem becomes that people who are introduced to RPGs via streams expect the game to play like this around their own table, and I guess D&D is now trying to provide them with rules to help them do that.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.