Yeah looking at that data even both versions of Pathfinder together are only half of D&D’s numbers and everything else is so far behind it’s in a different race. I don’t think D&D is going anywhere, it’s numbers may drop with other competition but it’s got a very big lead to close and it can lose a lot of ground before second place is even coming close. There’s also that with the exception of Daggerheart (largely driven by CR’s fanbase) none of the “D&D killers” announced after the OGL seem to have gone anywhere. They either released and largely faded from view like Tales of the Valiant or the initial hype has died down almost entirely except for the YouTube channels of the companies making them
The way I see it, D&D's popularity can only be explained by one of two reasons.
Either....
D&D is the classic example of a popularity paradox, which includes and is primarily the result of social proof, aka the psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior. This, with the added bandwagon effect, and you end up with a game that has an inexplicable popularity despite being a product that should not be competitive against other similar products.
For example, the books are lower quality than what is standard, the writing is sub-standard by any measure, game design is mediocre if not poor at best, and the books and services are at least 3x more expensive than most RPG's. Most people don't choose to play D&D, it's a construct of the social effect of other people playing so you play it too.
Anyone who plays any other RPG is going to be aware of this fact on some level, it almost doesn't matter what you choose. I mean I just got the Daggerheart box, it was 60 box, the quality of the book is not even comparable, neither is the writing and design work. Love it or hate, it's an objectively better value product by any standard of measure that isn't preference-based.
There is, of course, the other possible explanation, which would explain a lot, especially given that the popularity of D&D has lasted over 5 editions. Which is that D&D has an intangible, ineffable quality that appeals on some more primal level. There is something between the lore, the unique encoding of the general structures (class, level, species, hit points etc..), and its history that just appeals instinctively to most people.
Personally, I think it's the latter. When it comes to RPG's I'm not sure book quality, price, writing quality or even design quality matters as much or has as much impact on the appeal of a game as the more intangible things. I mean I play 1st edition AD&D whenever I can, but you can't claim that the quality of the books is great or that the writing is fantastic or the design. I mean, even by 1980's standards, it wasn't great, by today's standard, it doesn't even approach an acceptable level, yet for nearly 40 years I have been drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Why?
I have no idea. 5e may be to this generation of players what 1e is to mine, but I can say this. There is a point, at which you pick up a modern, high-quality game with excellent writing and amazing mechanics and realize that, no matter how you justify anything, THIS, is clearly much better. Yet in all the times that has happened to me, I have always, eventually stumbled back to D&D. I can't really explain why that is, but I know for certain its not because I think its a better game.. not by any stretch of the imagination. It simply is not and it has never been, there objectively far better games out there and I have played plenty of them... But D&D.. is unique and ineffable.
I can say however that today, Its harder to make the distinction between "official" D&D and "unofficial" D&D. Shadowdark, Tales of Valor, DC20, Draw Steel, Pathfinder and especially now with Shadowheart. If Wizards of the Coast slapped a D&D label on any of these games and called it 6th edition, I don't think anyone would know the difference or would be able to tell. All of those games make sense and could very well be official D&D if we didn't already know about them as something else.
The way I see it, D&D's popularity can only be explained by one of two reasons.
Either....
D&D is the classic example of a popularity paradox, which includes and is primarily the result of social proof, aka the psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior. This, with the added bandwagon effect, and you end up with a game that has an inexplicable popularity despite being a product that should not be competitive against other similar products.
For example, the books are lower quality than what is standard, the writing is sub-standard by any measure, game design is mediocre if not poor at best, and the books and services are at least 3x more expensive than most RPG's. Most people don't choose to play D&D, it's a construct of the social effect of other people playing so you play it too.
There is, of course, the other possible explanation, which would explain a lot, especially given that the popularity of D&D has lasted over 5 editions. Which is that D&D has an intangible, ineffable quality that appeals on some more primal level. There is something between the lore, the unique encoding of the general structures (class, level, species, hit points etc..), and its history that just appeals instinctively to most people.
This is a false dichotomy. Both could be true, in whole or in part.
The first one is certainly true in part. RPGs exhibit network effects. The games you play will usually be the ones the people around you play. Call of Cthulhu is big in Japan, I'm told, so a larger percentage of Japanese players take up CoC than the percent of Americans who do.
D&D is big almost everywhere. It's one of only two RPGs I know of that ever really entered popular awareness in the US. (Vampire is the other.) Even the satanic panic spread awareness of the existence of the game. It had a Saturday morning cartoon, and several movies of varying qualities. More recently, Critical Role and such. People have heard of D&D in a way they haven't heard of Pathfinder.
Because people have heard of it, and because it has more players, people are more likely to get into D&D than other games.
This is the case whether or not it's a good game.
As for the second, it's probably not so much that it's got an "instinctive appeal", as that it's an accessible game. People (again, at least in the US) get the idea of the generic fantasy setting in bits and pieces as they grow up, so they think they have some idea of what it's about. (Knights, wizard, dragons, princesses, etc.)
Similarly, the class and species structure makes it very easy to get going. Pick a box, pick another box, boom! You're playing. Your DM sends you to kill some orcs/bandits/skeletons, you fight them. You'll figure out the whole "role playing" thing as you go. In the mean time, you can play some kind of stereotype of your class.
More free-form systems, even if they're less mechanically complex (so, not GURPS), make you figure out who you're playing before you get to play. I suspect part of Vampire's success was similar: the premise and the clans give you the same defined box plus rudimentary personality.
Someone get back with me when there is a Pathfinder major movie or a Pathfinder video game that not only wins Game of the Year but sweeps all five major game award ceremonies (something never done before), or an Amazon Daggerheart anime series (100% Rotten score for all three seasons), or official US Govt Daggerheart postage stamps, or when one of them makes it on the front of Time Magazine, or when Girl Scout camps start hosting week-long Pathfinder themed camps...
I think DnD will be just fine for the foreseeable future.
What a "strange" way to say that people are dumb to like D&D
That might be what you heard, but that is not what I said/wrote. I'm simply pointing out that in the wider world of RPG's, few games have a popularity paradox associated with them. Just because you are subjected to it and embrace it, doesn't make you stupid, it makes you normal.
My larger point is that social proof doesn't explain how the game has remained popular and at its height it remains for 50 years, there is something a bit more intangible that must explain it. I personally don't think it's because "it's a well-designed game", but I do think that it has a quality about it that attracts people despite or perhaps because of inherent mechanical flaws.
Its not really a whole lot different than eating at McDonalds. We all know better food exists, we know it's not healthy, hell, it barely qualifies as food if you ask me, but people still eat it in large numbers and have done so for decades. Why? Why would people intentionally eat food like that? The answer is that there is something about that food people like clearly, there is no accounting for taste or preference, it just IS.
In the case of D&D I do think there is an ineffable quality there that people are inherently drawn to and while some try to explain it, any explanation individually is easy to tear apart and in a pretty objective manner. For example you could say as someone did that its because it has a species/class/level system... true that could be it, but there are tons of games that have that and most of them do it in an objectively superior way from a design perspective. Believe it or not there are balanced, functioning species/class/level RPG's out there.. lots of them. Why would anyone choose one that is inferior? You could then say, well you have classic/nostalgic classes like Rangers, Bards, Paladins etc... well, again, lots of games have that and most of them are better designed.
You could also simply assume that this is my subjective opinion, but I think inherently most people understand and are consious of the fact that 5e D&D is not a particularly well put together game, disputing that its good design and better than all the others is a bit like arguing that McDonalds has the best food. I think we all know that this is not true and while you might see that as an opinion, I would argue it's an objective fact.
It doesn't make anyone stupid for liking it anyway.
It's very much best not to put words in people's mouths, as much as we can help it.
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Some times you forget totally the no-English-speaker market. D&D has got most "brand power" and it was the first to be translated into other languanges. In the second half of 90s in Spain Word of Darkness was more popular than D&D because the released of translations had stopped. I have bought some Pathfinder and Starfinder books, but the candency of translations was relatively slow. Now I am not interested into the translatations of the 2nd ed.
Most of players would rather to use only a little number of systems. If they want to spend money into sourcebooks focused into crunch then D&D is the best inversion. The fluff or background may be interesting, but these only need be read once or two.
When I was a child in the 80 in Spain, Spiderman, Hulk and Superman were known by the masses, but the Avengers, Batman or X-Men were totally unknown among the no-geek people. D&D was only a cartoon show and nobody knew about the TTRPG. Even the Endless Quest gamebooks may have been more popular.
D&D is the number one in the TTRPG industry, but if we talk about videogames, then the franchise is only a little fish. And Hasbro is more interested into the videogames sector.
In the end the people will realises when a text is written by an AI. These are horrible to tell jokes. AI-art needs a lot of work to create pictures with two or more characters in cinematic/dinamic poses or different viewing-angles. The AI can't be so creative to find solutions or to tell about what tricks were used by the main characters against their enemies.
My larger point is that social proof doesn't explain how the game has remained popular and at its height it remains for 50 years, there is something a bit more intangible that must explain it. I personally don't think it's because "it's a well-designed game", but I do think that it has a quality about it that attracts people despite or perhaps because of inherent mechanical flaws.
It is a "well-enough designed game". Its big advantage is network effects, but the relatively low barrier to entry for new players (given some interested novices, a DM can probably get them up to sufficient speed to start in on a first level adventure in a single session) combined with enough complexity to give people who like rules stuff to learn for higher levels, is something a lot of other RPGs fail at (a lot of them are either overwhelming complicated to start, or are designed to be rules lite and lack options for complexity).
To try and assert there's a singular reason for D&Ds historic, current, and on-going success is over-simplifying things and taking too narrow a view. There are many factors at play including but not limited to
In-market familiarity - It's very unusual to find someone in the English-speaking TTRPG space who hasn't heard of D&D
Out-of-market familiarity - D&D is the Nintendo, Xerox, Kleenex, or Sellotape of TTRPGs. Even if someone isn't in the space, they've likely heard of it
Notoriety and infamy -- No other TTRPG has a film dedicated to the dangers it poses. I saw a Brighton Fringe play about D&D and the Satanic Panic called B.A.D.D - Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons
Legacy - The game is 50 years old, something few gaming IPs can rival
Low Bar to Entry - It's very easy to get into D&D. This is for a multitude of reasons; WotC promoting onboarding, ease of finding people to play with, the games design, etc
High Ceiling of Complexity (Relative to entry) - You can push D&D quite far in complexity, even within just 5th edition. What with homebrew and third party content, prior editions, and various spin off sub-systems, there's a lot of complexity to explore
Third party content - D&D is profitable for other TTRPG content creators to make content for, so this incentivizes more content which expands D&D both vertically (complexity) and horizontally (theme, genre, etc)
Persistent media presence - D&D is active in the gaming cultural zeitgeist, both due to content creators talking about D&D (the good and the bad) and WotC engaging with various social media platforms
TTRPG reference point - Even when people don't play D&D, it's still often a touchstone within other systems as a conceptual reference point
Legacy design retains players - there is a throughline of D&D's design legacy, some of it practical, some of it sacred cows. That helps retains players which then means the player base is diverse
Inclusive design - This is a more recent evolution of the game, but it caters to a very wide audience and that breadth of appeal appears to be growing
Evolves and adapts - D&D changes, although for better or for ill is subjective
There are many more I could list, and it's interesting to note how many of these points seem to come in contradictory pairs. My point is however is that D&D has a lot of strengths, more than enough to carry it into the future and it'd take something very specific, focused, and intentional to "kill it". At least in my opinion.
2: A conspiracy requires conspirators. As far as I know, no one here thinks that Hasbro/WotC has a conspiracy to stop making D&D. If anything the corporate entity is looking to make more money from it not less.
Just a side note, but most "conspiracy theories" don't actually require conspirators in the real sense, only the implication that associated entities are conspiring. That's why it's a theory not a fact.
As a corrollary to things that Davyd said I'd like to point to Traveller RPG.
Created in 1977, so 48 years old, by GDW.
Eleven separate "versions".
Lots of third party content.
Almost zero 'public zeitgeist' awareness.
Traveller is a great game beloved by many, but it's nowhere near the "billion in revenue in 2024" Hasbro IP that is Dungeons and Dragons. D&D has name recognition by people who don't even play board games, let alone TTRPGs. Not only would it be a massively wrong business decision for Hasbro to move away from a profitable division when their physical toy lines are failing, but it would be potentially a litigious decision from a shareholder POV.
2: A conspiracy requires conspirators. As far as I know, no one here thinks that Hasbro/WotC has a conspiracy to stop making D&D. If anything the corporate entity is looking to make more money from it not less.
Just a side note, but most "conspiracy theories" don't actually require conspirators in the real sense, only the implication that associated entities are conspiring. That's why it's a theory not a fact
It's being characterised as a conspiracy theory to be derogatory to those who hold that D&D isn't in a healthy position, but I've never seen anyone claim that there really is anything like an actual conspiracy. Instead, what I see a lot is that the claim that WotC/Hasbro has put profits over the health of the game, which will eventually cause it to die.
It's a valid concern. I've seen it happen - companies try to turn something from a labour of love that also brings in the money into a cash grab, the product/service/etc loses what made it popular, and it dies. It's also pretty undeniable that WotC has, at times at least, made that mistake. I know it's getting old now but it's also the most obvious and undeniable example, but look at Spelljammer. That had so many issues, most of which could have been easily avoided had they taken basic steps to ensure quality. Instead, they tried to cut corners, make a bit of extra cash by not having multiple sets of eyes on what was being published, etc. The kind of thing that chases short term profits at the cost of long term health of the game.
Now, the real question is whether these misteps are enough to kill the game, or whether it's able to suck it up and keep going. Personally, I don't think so. I think D&D has hit critical mass that so long as that there is some sense at WotC and they don't become numb to the complaints, then D&D will be fine. Spelljammer didn't kill it. OGL didn't kill it. So long as it's not every release that they try to pull a Spelljammer...D&D will survive and be pretty profitable.
Which is also why I wince every time people try to whitewash the criticisms. WotC needs to be responsive to the concerns and desires of the players. If players don't get their point across, they'll leave and play something else...which is exactly the kind of problem that undermines the health of the game.
That was a bit of a steam.of.consciousness that wasn't really directed at anyone...
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
2: A conspiracy requires conspirators. As far as I know, no one here thinks that Hasbro/WotC has a conspiracy to stop making D&D. If anything the corporate entity is looking to make more money from it not less.
Just a side note, but most "conspiracy theories" don't actually require conspirators in the real sense, only the implication that associated entities are conspiring. That's why it's a theory not a fact.
A Conspiracy Theory is not what I said. I said what I meant there, a Conspiracy requires Conspirators. It's what the definition of a Conspiracy is. A group of people who in secret make a plan to do something.
However I will make one other comment on this thread, because yes I use hyperbole saying a million to one, it was a figure of speak from where I am referring to a big disparity between the big company and the smaller companies.
Paizo and D&D only real competitor in 2012 was making about $16 Million USD in 2012 (estimate based on declared revenues) they are making about $46 per year now. But this is about 2010~2014 D&D vs Paizo.
Well Hasbro is a publicly traded company, but as a parent company they are not required to give all the details of their subsidiaries only their own numbers. But Hasbro indicated earnings of $100 million in 2012 from the Dungeons and Dragons Brand. That is not clear if it was from 4th edition sales, or a mix of 4th ed and other things. But it gives a number to maths with.
The actual ration is approximately 16:1 give or take a bunch because it's all estimates to start with.
That said, the growth in Paizo is reflected in the Growth of D&D as a Brand. So odds are the pie looks similar today as it did in 2012. Although due to market share increasing, the 3rd party companies are now carving a nice chunk of the total.
Note I will not change my wording in the opening post, as it wasn't meant to be the actual number, as I was too lazy to look them up a couple of days ago as I was feeling sick due to an ear infection. I stand by my old style speech patterns and hyperbole when it's an obvious hyperbole. It will take me a million years to change the way I speak. ;p
2: A conspiracy requires conspirators. As far as I know, no one here thinks that Hasbro/WotC has a conspiracy to stop making D&D. If anything the corporate entity is looking to make more money from it not less.
Just a side note, but most "conspiracy theories" don't actually require conspirators in the real sense, only the implication that associated entities are conspiring. That's why it's a theory not a fact
It's being characterised as a conspiracy theory to be derogatory to those who hold that D&D isn't in a healthy position, but I've never seen anyone claim that there really is anything like an actual conspiracy. Instead, what I see a lot is that the claim that WotC/Hasbro has put profits over the health of the game, which will eventually cause it to die.
That last is a legitimate criticism, though in practice it not infrequently boils down to "they're not doing what I, personally, think they should be doing".
Where it gets into conspiracy theories is when people are saying things like "5e24 is selling incredibly badly. All the public statements are lies, including the audited shareholder report", or "D&D is being turned into a candy crush style freemium digital game, and they're abandoning tabletop players" where they are constructing an alternate reality based on inadequate to nonexistent evidence, and asserting its truth. (And those are both things I have seen claimed here.)
Oh, sure. And that (setting up a narrative that everyone's lying) is really frustrating (and I don't know if you've noticed, but I fight back against that too), since it's essentially "I'm right because I say so, and any evidence to the contrary is merely the result of lying". However, the discussion is revolving around some kind of conspiracy to destroy D&D...which is the opposite of what you're describing (the claim that there's a conspiracy to pretend D&D is doing awesome even when it's not to keep it from imploding).
My wording is in part because I don't really consider "they're lying on reports" to be, by itself, conspiracy. Conspiracy would be a concerted effort across multiple groups to achieve an secret goal by subverting their ostensible purpose. Perhaps I'm setting the bar too high, but the claims I'm seeing don't really seem to raise to that level. It's just "they're not telling us the truth".
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A conspirancy should be a group with a secret plan, and the closest one to this would be a big company what wanted to acquire Hasbro.
Today we are in the second golden age of D&D. It is more popular than ever, but Hasbro really doesn't want to sell more D&D books, but D&D videogames, and this is a different industry.
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Yeah looking at that data even both versions of Pathfinder together are only half of D&D’s numbers and everything else is so far behind it’s in a different race. I don’t think D&D is going anywhere, it’s numbers may drop with other competition but it’s got a very big lead to close and it can lose a lot of ground before second place is even coming close. There’s also that with the exception of Daggerheart (largely driven by CR’s fanbase) none of the “D&D killers” announced after the OGL seem to have gone anywhere. They either released and largely faded from view like Tales of the Valiant or the initial hype has died down almost entirely except for the YouTube channels of the companies making them
The way I see it, D&D's popularity can only be explained by one of two reasons.
Either....
D&D is the classic example of a popularity paradox, which includes and is primarily the result of social proof, aka the psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior. This, with the added bandwagon effect, and you end up with a game that has an inexplicable popularity despite being a product that should not be competitive against other similar products.
For example, the books are lower quality than what is standard, the writing is sub-standard by any measure, game design is mediocre if not poor at best, and the books and services are at least 3x more expensive than most RPG's. Most people don't choose to play D&D, it's a construct of the social effect of other people playing so you play it too.
Anyone who plays any other RPG is going to be aware of this fact on some level, it almost doesn't matter what you choose. I mean I just got the Daggerheart box, it was 60 box, the quality of the book is not even comparable, neither is the writing and design work. Love it or hate, it's an objectively better value product by any standard of measure that isn't preference-based.
There is, of course, the other possible explanation, which would explain a lot, especially given that the popularity of D&D has lasted over 5 editions. Which is that D&D has an intangible, ineffable quality that appeals on some more primal level. There is something between the lore, the unique encoding of the general structures (class, level, species, hit points etc..), and its history that just appeals instinctively to most people.
Personally, I think it's the latter. When it comes to RPG's I'm not sure book quality, price, writing quality or even design quality matters as much or has as much impact on the appeal of a game as the more intangible things. I mean I play 1st edition AD&D whenever I can, but you can't claim that the quality of the books is great or that the writing is fantastic or the design. I mean, even by 1980's standards, it wasn't great, by today's standard, it doesn't even approach an acceptable level, yet for nearly 40 years I have been drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Why?
I have no idea. 5e may be to this generation of players what 1e is to mine, but I can say this. There is a point, at which you pick up a modern, high-quality game with excellent writing and amazing mechanics and realize that, no matter how you justify anything, THIS, is clearly much better. Yet in all the times that has happened to me, I have always, eventually stumbled back to D&D. I can't really explain why that is, but I know for certain its not because I think its a better game.. not by any stretch of the imagination. It simply is not and it has never been, there objectively far better games out there and I have played plenty of them... But D&D.. is unique and ineffable.
I can say however that today, Its harder to make the distinction between "official" D&D and "unofficial" D&D. Shadowdark, Tales of Valor, DC20, Draw Steel, Pathfinder and especially now with Shadowheart. If Wizards of the Coast slapped a D&D label on any of these games and called it 6th edition, I don't think anyone would know the difference or would be able to tell. All of those games make sense and could very well be official D&D if we didn't already know about them as something else.
This is a false dichotomy. Both could be true, in whole or in part.
The first one is certainly true in part. RPGs exhibit network effects. The games you play will usually be the ones the people around you play. Call of Cthulhu is big in Japan, I'm told, so a larger percentage of Japanese players take up CoC than the percent of Americans who do.
D&D is big almost everywhere. It's one of only two RPGs I know of that ever really entered popular awareness in the US. (Vampire is the other.) Even the satanic panic spread awareness of the existence of the game. It had a Saturday morning cartoon, and several movies of varying qualities. More recently, Critical Role and such. People have heard of D&D in a way they haven't heard of Pathfinder.
Because people have heard of it, and because it has more players, people are more likely to get into D&D than other games.
This is the case whether or not it's a good game.
As for the second, it's probably not so much that it's got an "instinctive appeal", as that it's an accessible game. People (again, at least in the US) get the idea of the generic fantasy setting in bits and pieces as they grow up, so they think they have some idea of what it's about. (Knights, wizard, dragons, princesses, etc.)
Similarly, the class and species structure makes it very easy to get going. Pick a box, pick another box, boom! You're playing. Your DM sends you to kill some orcs/bandits/skeletons, you fight them. You'll figure out the whole "role playing" thing as you go. In the mean time, you can play some kind of stereotype of your class.
More free-form systems, even if they're less mechanically complex (so, not GURPS), make you figure out who you're playing before you get to play. I suspect part of Vampire's success was similar: the premise and the clans give you the same defined box plus rudimentary personality.
What a "strange" way to say that people are dumb to like D&D
Someone get back with me when there is a Pathfinder major movie or a Pathfinder video game that not only wins Game of the Year but sweeps all five major game award ceremonies (something never done before), or an Amazon Daggerheart anime series (100% Rotten score for all three seasons), or official US Govt Daggerheart postage stamps, or when one of them makes it on the front of Time Magazine, or when Girl Scout camps start hosting week-long Pathfinder themed camps...
I think DnD will be just fine for the foreseeable future.
That might be what you heard, but that is not what I said/wrote. I'm simply pointing out that in the wider world of RPG's, few games have a popularity paradox associated with them. Just because you are subjected to it and embrace it, doesn't make you stupid, it makes you normal.
My larger point is that social proof doesn't explain how the game has remained popular and at its height it remains for 50 years, there is something a bit more intangible that must explain it. I personally don't think it's because "it's a well-designed game", but I do think that it has a quality about it that attracts people despite or perhaps because of inherent mechanical flaws.
Its not really a whole lot different than eating at McDonalds. We all know better food exists, we know it's not healthy, hell, it barely qualifies as food if you ask me, but people still eat it in large numbers and have done so for decades. Why? Why would people intentionally eat food like that? The answer is that there is something about that food people like clearly, there is no accounting for taste or preference, it just IS.
In the case of D&D I do think there is an ineffable quality there that people are inherently drawn to and while some try to explain it, any explanation individually is easy to tear apart and in a pretty objective manner. For example you could say as someone did that its because it has a species/class/level system... true that could be it, but there are tons of games that have that and most of them do it in an objectively superior way from a design perspective. Believe it or not there are balanced, functioning species/class/level RPG's out there.. lots of them. Why would anyone choose one that is inferior? You could then say, well you have classic/nostalgic classes like Rangers, Bards, Paladins etc... well, again, lots of games have that and most of them are better designed.
You could also simply assume that this is my subjective opinion, but I think inherently most people understand and are consious of the fact that 5e D&D is not a particularly well put together game, disputing that its good design and better than all the others is a bit like arguing that McDonalds has the best food. I think we all know that this is not true and while you might see that as an opinion, I would argue it's an objective fact.
It doesn't make anyone stupid for liking it anyway.
It's what you're trying not to write, but isn't what you didn't write.
It's very much best not to put words in people's mouths, as much as we can help it.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I will try, but is difficult when a judgment is hidden in the middle of an "elaborate" text.
We have an expression here, "Going with the herd," which is just another way of saying that people are stupid and ignorant for following a trend.
Some times you forget totally the no-English-speaker market. D&D has got most "brand power" and it was the first to be translated into other languanges. In the second half of 90s in Spain Word of Darkness was more popular than D&D because the released of translations had stopped. I have bought some Pathfinder and Starfinder books, but the candency of translations was relatively slow. Now I am not interested into the translatations of the 2nd ed.
Most of players would rather to use only a little number of systems. If they want to spend money into sourcebooks focused into crunch then D&D is the best inversion. The fluff or background may be interesting, but these only need be read once or two.
When I was a child in the 80 in Spain, Spiderman, Hulk and Superman were known by the masses, but the Avengers, Batman or X-Men were totally unknown among the no-geek people. D&D was only a cartoon show and nobody knew about the TTRPG. Even the Endless Quest gamebooks may have been more popular.
D&D is the number one in the TTRPG industry, but if we talk about videogames, then the franchise is only a little fish. And Hasbro is more interested into the videogames sector.
In the end the people will realises when a text is written by an AI. These are horrible to tell jokes. AI-art needs a lot of work to create pictures with two or more characters in cinematic/dinamic poses or different viewing-angles. The AI can't be so creative to find solutions or to tell about what tricks were used by the main characters against their enemies.
It is a "well-enough designed game". Its big advantage is network effects, but the relatively low barrier to entry for new players (given some interested novices, a DM can probably get them up to sufficient speed to start in on a first level adventure in a single session) combined with enough complexity to give people who like rules stuff to learn for higher levels, is something a lot of other RPGs fail at (a lot of them are either overwhelming complicated to start, or are designed to be rules lite and lack options for complexity).
To try and assert there's a singular reason for D&Ds historic, current, and on-going success is over-simplifying things and taking too narrow a view. There are many factors at play including but not limited to
There are many more I could list, and it's interesting to note how many of these points seem to come in contradictory pairs. My point is however is that D&D has a lot of strengths, more than enough to carry it into the future and it'd take something very specific, focused, and intentional to "kill it". At least in my opinion.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Just a side note, but most "conspiracy theories" don't actually require conspirators in the real sense, only the implication that associated entities are conspiring. That's why it's a theory not a fact.
As a corrollary to things that Davyd said I'd like to point to Traveller RPG.
Traveller is a great game beloved by many, but it's nowhere near the "billion in revenue in 2024" Hasbro IP that is Dungeons and Dragons. D&D has name recognition by people who don't even play board games, let alone TTRPGs. Not only would it be a massively wrong business decision for Hasbro to move away from a profitable division when their physical toy lines are failing, but it would be potentially a litigious decision from a shareholder POV.
It's being characterised as a conspiracy theory to be derogatory to those who hold that D&D isn't in a healthy position, but I've never seen anyone claim that there really is anything like an actual conspiracy. Instead, what I see a lot is that the claim that WotC/Hasbro has put profits over the health of the game, which will eventually cause it to die.
It's a valid concern. I've seen it happen - companies try to turn something from a labour of love that also brings in the money into a cash grab, the product/service/etc loses what made it popular, and it dies. It's also pretty undeniable that WotC has, at times at least, made that mistake. I know it's getting old now but it's also the most obvious and undeniable example, but look at Spelljammer. That had so many issues, most of which could have been easily avoided had they taken basic steps to ensure quality. Instead, they tried to cut corners, make a bit of extra cash by not having multiple sets of eyes on what was being published, etc. The kind of thing that chases short term profits at the cost of long term health of the game.
Now, the real question is whether these misteps are enough to kill the game, or whether it's able to suck it up and keep going. Personally, I don't think so. I think D&D has hit critical mass that so long as that there is some sense at WotC and they don't become numb to the complaints, then D&D will be fine. Spelljammer didn't kill it. OGL didn't kill it. So long as it's not every release that they try to pull a Spelljammer...D&D will survive and be pretty profitable.
Which is also why I wince every time people try to whitewash the criticisms. WotC needs to be responsive to the concerns and desires of the players. If players don't get their point across, they'll leave and play something else...which is exactly the kind of problem that undermines the health of the game.
That was a bit of a steam.of.consciousness that wasn't really directed at anyone...
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
A Conspiracy Theory is not what I said. I said what I meant there, a Conspiracy requires Conspirators. It's what the definition of a Conspiracy is. A group of people who in secret make a plan to do something.
However I will make one other comment on this thread, because yes I use hyperbole saying a million to one, it was a figure of speak from where I am referring to a big disparity between the big company and the smaller companies.
Paizo and D&D only real competitor in 2012 was making about $16 Million USD in 2012 (estimate based on declared revenues) they are making about $46 per year now. But this is about 2010~2014 D&D vs Paizo.
Well Hasbro is a publicly traded company, but as a parent company they are not required to give all the details of their subsidiaries only their own numbers. But Hasbro indicated earnings of $100 million in 2012 from the Dungeons and Dragons Brand. That is not clear if it was from 4th edition sales, or a mix of 4th ed and other things. But it gives a number to maths with.
The actual ration is approximately 16:1 give or take a bunch because it's all estimates to start with.
That said, the growth in Paizo is reflected in the Growth of D&D as a Brand. So odds are the pie looks similar today as it did in 2012. Although due to market share increasing, the 3rd party companies are now carving a nice chunk of the total.
Note I will not change my wording in the opening post, as it wasn't meant to be the actual number, as I was too lazy to look them up a couple of days ago as I was feeling sick due to an ear infection. I stand by my old style speech patterns and hyperbole when it's an obvious hyperbole. It will take me a million years to change the way I speak. ;p
That last is a legitimate criticism, though in practice it not infrequently boils down to "they're not doing what I, personally, think they should be doing".
Where it gets into conspiracy theories is when people are saying things like "5e24 is selling incredibly badly. All the public statements are lies, including the audited shareholder report", or "D&D is being turned into a candy crush style freemium digital game, and they're abandoning tabletop players" where they are constructing an alternate reality based on inadequate to nonexistent evidence, and asserting its truth. (And those are both things I have seen claimed here.)
Oh, sure. And that (setting up a narrative that everyone's lying) is really frustrating (and I don't know if you've noticed, but I fight back against that too), since it's essentially "I'm right because I say so, and any evidence to the contrary is merely the result of lying". However, the discussion is revolving around some kind of conspiracy to destroy D&D...which is the opposite of what you're describing (the claim that there's a conspiracy to pretend D&D is doing awesome even when it's not to keep it from imploding).
My wording is in part because I don't really consider "they're lying on reports" to be, by itself, conspiracy. Conspiracy would be a concerted effort across multiple groups to achieve an secret goal by subverting their ostensible purpose. Perhaps I'm setting the bar too high, but the claims I'm seeing don't really seem to raise to that level. It's just "they're not telling us the truth".
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Nope.
At this point D&D is like the WWE in their respective fields. Too big to really fail without some MASSIVE thing happening that will take it down.
The question is, if this massive thing happens would take down only D&D?
A conspirancy should be a group with a secret plan, and the closest one to this would be a big company what wanted to acquire Hasbro.
Today we are in the second golden age of D&D. It is more popular than ever, but Hasbro really doesn't want to sell more D&D books, but D&D videogames, and this is a different industry.