In another thread, a user made a reply to comments which show a reasonable uncertainty towards D&D's future, as we have lost just about everyone who made 5th Edition, and who lead the Development of D&D these last 12 years from the birth of D&D Next to the release of the 2024 books.
Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Jess Lanzillo, and Todd Kenreck
Just to name a few.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
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.
3: There is a real fear in the community based on what we have seen over the last couple of years. That fear is, a cheapening of the product. Which Hasbro really wants to do with AI.
4: The fandom is secure even if D&D fails to make any quality products in the future, thanks to the large assortment of 3rd party materials available these days. D&D as a brand is secure even if Hasbro uses AI to write everything in the future... which is probable. That Security comes from 3rd Party creators, and 50 years of source material.
5: Yes Crawford has shown dissatisfaction with the ruling corporate entity of Hasbro and has wanted to leave for a few years, he left to take up the same job at Darrington Press, good for him.
6: The others who left showed no signs of wanting to go, and yet here we are.
D&D is secure as a product for years to come, that is clear. There is doubt how many people will actually be creating anything as AI might be doing that work soon. Are we afraid for the quality, yes. I do not plan to spend anything more on D&D if I see evidence that AI is used to write the books.
But I do not ever plan to leave the hobby, as I enjoy what my players and myself can achieve at our table.
I really doubt they’re looking to use AI to write products for them anytime soon, if at all. AI can be trained to stitch together decent if typically generic pictures with enough prodding, but it simply doesn’t have the capability to comprehend and retain enough narrative threads to make a product worth selling, and it most certainly can’t imagine and design new content options like classes/subclasses, spells, monsters, etc. effectively if at all.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder and there have even been points where people believe Pathfinder outsold D&D, The CEO of Paizo even claimed as much during the 4E days if my memory serves me correctly. Now we don't have exact numbers however, so nobody can have any certainty on this but to say D&D at it's lowest point outsold Pathfinder, it's main competitor, might be false and so then to say it outsold it's competitors a million to 1... even if just an "over-exaggeration" it's definitely a false statement.
Personally having used both 5E and PF2E, I'll say 5E is the simpler system to get into and has far more interesting topics around character builds than PF2E does (personal opinion) but that doesn't make it untouchable, Pathfinder could easily surpass D&D in the future if WotC don't properly maintain the game releases or loses community supporting from further delving into AI.
I am old enough to know the cycle. there is always a 'Boom and Bust' thing going on, and 2014 5E was the boom, and we may be entering the bust. It usually isn't just quality of the system, a lot of it is Corpo meddling. TSR died a traitor's death because it went after creators, 3.0 was ok but needed work, 3.5 was a big hit that people didn't want to leave, 4E was an OK system that didn't sell as well because it was very much not what was wanted, and the liscenses were not 3rd party friendly, 5E14 came onto the scene and after a midling start exploded into popularity, then before 5ER24, WoTC burned their good will with the greed in the OGL 1.1 and the controlling language in 1.2 which was so hated they went Creative commons as a peace offering. We are gonna just have to ride out this bust.
Even if WoTC and Hasbro fold completely, the hobby will carry on, and the next steward of the brand, if any, will pick it up and the cycle will continue. It is too entrenched to dissappear into the wind, but lots and LOTS of damage can be done to it if Hasbro keeps up this cancerous behavior. IE pulling the OGL rewrite debacle, being controlling, over monetizing, stepping in it with PR nightmares, and constantly laying off the talent that made this game the powerhouse that it was.
Things will be alright for D&D.
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"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
With other TTRPGs gaining much more traction and coverage than they ever used to before, I believe it is true that D&D is someday stop having such a monopoly hold on the TTRPG space. Which is a good thing - variety is wonderful. But D&D is a good system and still has considerable legacy so nothing is going to "kill it" and it's not dying any time soon.
WotC's future might be dubious, depending on their choices, but D&D's future is very certain - it seems some people forget these are different things.
The biggest threat to the continuation of D&D is WotC themselves and their recent trend of disastrous decision making. However, even if WotC/Hasbro discontinued D&D altogether - D&D will continue to be around for a long time afterward. 2nd Edition stopped printing over 2 decades ago and people still play it. And the CC license of 5th means 3rd party creators can continue to making 5th edition D&D content even if WotC stop doing so. There's a lot of top quality 3rd party 5th edition content out there - and those continue to draw new people in to the hobby.
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It would certainly help all of the excess and overkill that seems to creep into discussions, that are very heavily speculative and opinion-based in the best of cases, if WotC/Hasboro would do a better job of communicating with the community. LaTiaJacquise notwithstanding, the often deafening silence around what is happening and why (with site changes/development, staff changes, the game itself - I mean, pick something) is extremely fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theorizing or hyperbole. WotC/Hasboro seem pretty committed to staying silent on a lot of this unfortunately.
D&D is not really a game anymore; it's a tradition. I don't think D&D is "dying", quite to the contrary, it's healthier than it's ever been, but D&D does not mean 5th edition exclusively. It's evolving into more of a "kind of game", rather than a specific game.
You come to someone's house these days and they say "We are playing D&D... That could mean you're going to be playing DC20, Tales of Valor, Pathfinder, Draw Steel, Shadowdark, Castles and Crusades, Daggerheart etc.. etc...
D&D is alive more than ever, so i don't think it's dying. But it will morph, like it always did when going through period of significant changes in R&D.
The funny thing is, today's game is so far yet so close to what it was in 1974. Characteristics, actions, spells and the like have evolve, but the fundamental core components of the game remains the same, you roleplay characters in collaborative storytelling experience; you still go adventure, kill creatures, collect treasure and level up.
Anything published exist forever. Hence why there's people still playing all editions of the game in the world.
If no other D&D edition was ever publsihed again, i'd still play D&D in some way, shape or form.
It would certainly help all of the excess and overkill that seems to creep into discussions, that are very heavily speculative and opinion-based in the best of cases, if WotC/Hasboro would do a better job of communicating with the community. LaTiaJacquise notwithstanding, the often deafening silence around what is happening and why (with site changes/development, staff changes, the game itself - I mean, pick something) is extremely fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theorizing or hyperbole. WotC/Hasboro seem pretty committed to staying silent on a lot of this unfortunately.
It depends how much of their audience they’re actually going to reach. There’s what? A couple dozen people who regularly talk things over here? As was pointed out at the time and since, the survey over the OGL got a fraction of the responses that the ‘24 UA ones did. I personally wasn’t watching for news about Perkins and such, and it’s had no impact on my interest in D&D, WotC, etc. I’ve only seen it briefly mentioned in one other online community I’m in, and it was just a passing mention.It’s entirely possible that most of the community is not particularly concerned with the internal movements of the company and most of the other things that get picked at here with arch questions about why we aren’t hearing more.
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder
It's fairly hard to get definitive statistics (the last numbers from roll20 were from 2021, for example), but at that time D&D was 15x larger than Pathfinder, and really nothing that has happened recently would have changed it dramatically.
I see all these staff changes as an opportunity for new Dungeons & Dragons game designers and developers to shine and bring fresh ideas to the game.
PS. A long list from both old and recent history: Dungeons & Dragons game designers - Wikipedia (and it doesn’t even include some of the designers and developers I saw in the new credit books)
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder and there have even been points where people believe Pathfinder outsold D&D, The CEO of Paizo even claimed as much during the 4E days if my memory serves me correctly. Now we don't have exact numbers however, so nobody can have any certainty on this but to say D&D at it's lowest point outsold Pathfinder, it's main competitor, might be false and so then to say it outsold it's competitors a million to 1... even if just an "over-exaggeration" it's definitely a false statement.
Personally having used both 5E and PF2E, I'll say 5E is the simpler system to get into and has far more interesting topics around character builds than PF2E does (personal opinion) but that doesn't make it untouchable, Pathfinder could easily surpass D&D in the future if WotC don't properly maintain the game releases or loses community supporting from further delving into AI.
In true the inside people were explicit that Pathfinder never outsold the 4e
And by all measures we have today D&D is far bigger then Pahtfinder 1 or 2, one exemple of this is almost all the Industry Reports of roll20. PS: Yes, I know that roll20 is not a measurement of the entire market and only represents a probably not entirely significant slice of it, but other data seems to corroborate his data much more than the opposite.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder and there have even been points where people believe Pathfinder outsold D&D, The CEO of Paizo even claimed as much during the 4E days if my memory serves me correctly. Now we don't have exact numbers however, so nobody can have any certainty on this but to say D&D at it's lowest point outsold Pathfinder, it's main competitor, might be false and so then to say it outsold it's competitors a million to 1... even if just an "over-exaggeration" it's definitely a false statement.
Personally having used both 5E and PF2E, I'll say 5E is the simpler system to get into and has far more interesting topics around character builds than PF2E does (personal opinion) but that doesn't make it untouchable, Pathfinder could easily surpass D&D in the future if WotC don't properly maintain the game releases or loses community supporting from further delving into AI.
In true the inside people were explicit that Pathfinder never outsold the 4e
And by all measures we have today D&D is far bigger then Pahtfinder 1 or 2, one exemple of this is almost all the Industry Reports of roll20. PS: Yes, I know that roll20 is not a measurement of the entire market and only represents a probably not entirely significant slice of it, but other data seems to corroborate his data much more than the opposite.
I am not making the explicit claim that Pathfinder did outsell D&D 4E, only that there were definitely claims by people (including Paizo CEO) that it did. So claims that D&D is some how untouchable in terms of numbers is the issue I was taking up. I do not believe D&D is untouchable as the claim of a million to 1 makes, if WotC continue to make bad decisions, I could see a switch over where Pathfinder does overtake D&D in the near future (next 5~10 years).
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder
It's fairly hard to get definitive statistics (the last numbers from roll20 were from 2021, for example), but at that time D&D was 15x larger than Pathfinder, and really nothing that has happened recently would have changed it dramatically.
That may be very much true, tho Roll20 is definitely a limited sample and 2021 is several years after the release of 5E in 2014, so it's not at all representative of how things were back in 2008-2014 period for 4E. Tho I certainly have doubts that Pathfinder ever outsold D&D, I think we should be wary of making states like 'a million to 1', it was probably closer to 10 to 1. and that is solely against pathfinder, not taking other systems additionally into consideration.
At my LGS, there are five tables for D&D on Tuesdays. Only one table is reserved for Pathfinder 2 and when I scoped it out, there was the GM (LGS staff) and one other player at that table. I wanted to join because I actually enjoy PF2, but I have other obligations that their game would have required me to give up.
Roll20 is a pretty good measure that can be used to make assumptions about the population as a whole because it is so large. Not everyone uses Roll20 but I doubt all the Pathfinder players are hiding on The Foundry and there are likely just as many pen and paper D&D players as Pathfinder, if not more.
That may be very much true, tho Roll20 is definitely a limited sample and 2021 is several years after the release of 5E in 2014, so it's not at all representative of how things were back in 2008-2014 period for 4E. Tho I certainly have doubts that Pathfinder ever outsold D&D, I think we should be wary of making states like 'a million to 1', it was probably closer to 10 to 1. and that is solely against pathfinder, not taking other systems additionally into consideration.
I would say that the dominance of D&D was most seriously challenged at the end of 2e, followed by late 4e, but I was disputing "not that much bigger than Pathfinder". Yes, a million to one is definitely excessive.
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder
It's fairly hard to get definitive statistics (the last numbers from roll20 were from 2021, for example), but at that time D&D was 15x larger than Pathfinder, and really nothing that has happened recently would have changed it dramatically.
Yeah. As described in SaintLothar's link above, D&D 4 might have been outsold by pathfinder in game stores at one point. That was a long time ago. D&D 5 has massively outsold 4, and there is no indication that Pathfinder has experienced even proportional levels of growth. (It's doing fine AFAIK, but it'd be obvious if it was pulling down those kinds of numbers.)
D&D is not really a game anymore; it's a tradition. I don't think D&D is "dying", quite to the contrary, it's healthier than it's ever been, but D&D does not mean 5th edition exclusively. It's evolving into more of a "kind of game", rather than a specific game.
You come to someone's house these days and they say "We are playing D&D... That could mean you're going to be playing DC20, Tales of Valor, Pathfinder, Draw Steel, Shadowdark, Castles and Crusades, Daggerheart etc.. etc...
So it's not a death, it's a shift.
You are, IIRC, not from an English-native country, so it's possible that this is a situation where the term has become generic there but not so in general.
And if it's not that, it's likely an OSR thing, which is a very particular RPG subculture that is not likely representative of the whole.
In the US, my experience is that people mean specifically D&D when they say D&D. I am, admittedly, talking about it with people who are quite aware of the world of RPGs that are not D&D.
But then, for a lot of people, D&D is the only RPG on their radar. They certainly mean D&D when they say "D&D". And that's why there's nothing resembling an imminent death of D&D. Even if the audience declines, as it likely will at some point, it's going to decline because people are not playing it anymore, not because they are playing something else.
We, who are aware of other RPGs, and who may even know the names of the people designing the game, are a highly atypical part of the audience. Our fears and concerns about the future of the game do not necessarily affect the wider audience's. The cultural zeitgeist moves on at some point, but there's no reason to think that's happening yet. (And even when it does, it's still possible to do quite well. For instance, marvel movies are no longer The Thing, but they make good money. In many ways, it's better for WotC to have audience churn than to have people stay with the hobby, because the core books are where the real money is.)
I think it's simultaneously true that PF never outsold 4e overall, and that ICv2's statistics (which examine one or a handful of specific channels) showed that PF overtook 4e in those channels, channels in which D&D had never been overtaken before (or since).
At my LGS, there are five tables for D&D on Tuesdays. Only one table is reserved for Pathfinder 2 and when I scoped it out, there was the GM (LGS staff) and one other player at that table. I wanted to join because I actually enjoy PF2, but I have other obligations that their game would have required me to give up.
Roll20 is a pretty good measure that can be used to make assumptions about the population as a whole because it is so large. Not everyone uses Roll20 but I doubt all the Pathfinder players are hiding on The Foundry and there are likely just as many pen and paper D&D players as Pathfinder, if not more.
The StartPlaying platform (for paid or seeking-to-be-paid GMs) also tracks the top games played on their platform. They're useful in that they aren't specific to one particular VTT or other medium - using a mix of Maps, roll20, Foundry, FG, Owlbear etc.
I think it's simultaneously true that PF never outsold 4e overall, and that ICv2's statistics (which examine one or a handful of specific channels) showed that PF overtook 4e in those channels, channels in which D&D had never been overtaken before (or since).
Well, some of those channels may not have existed in the late 90s. D&D came very close to dying before the WotC buyout.
I think it's simultaneously true that PF never outsold 4e overall, and that ICv2's statistics (which examine one or a handful of specific channels) showed that PF overtook 4e in those channels, channels in which D&D had never been overtaken before (or since).
Well, some of those channels may not have existed in the late 90s. D&D came very close to dying before the WotC buyout.
I don't doubt it - but also, what TSR and Gygax were doing back then is so far removed from what is happening with 5e today that I don't really see it as being illustrative of anything important to D&D's trajectory here and now.
In another thread, a user made a reply to comments which show a reasonable uncertainty towards D&D's future, as we have lost just about everyone who made 5th Edition, and who lead the Development of D&D these last 12 years from the birth of D&D Next to the release of the 2024 books.
Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Jess Lanzillo, and Todd Kenreck
Just to name a few.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
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.
3: There is a real fear in the community based on what we have seen over the last couple of years. That fear is, a cheapening of the product. Which Hasbro really wants to do with AI.
4: The fandom is secure even if D&D fails to make any quality products in the future, thanks to the large assortment of 3rd party materials available these days. D&D as a brand is secure even if Hasbro uses AI to write everything in the future... which is probable. That Security comes from 3rd Party creators, and 50 years of source material.
5: Yes Crawford has shown dissatisfaction with the ruling corporate entity of Hasbro and has wanted to leave for a few years, he left to take up the same job at Darrington Press, good for him.
6: The others who left showed no signs of wanting to go, and yet here we are.
D&D is secure as a product for years to come, that is clear. There is doubt how many people will actually be creating anything as AI might be doing that work soon. Are we afraid for the quality, yes. I do not plan to spend anything more on D&D if I see evidence that AI is used to write the books.
But I do not ever plan to leave the hobby, as I enjoy what my players and myself can achieve at our table.
I really doubt they’re looking to use AI to write products for them anytime soon, if at all. AI can be trained to stitch together decent if typically generic pictures with enough prodding, but it simply doesn’t have the capability to comprehend and retain enough narrative threads to make a product worth selling, and it most certainly can’t imagine and design new content options like classes/subclasses, spells, monsters, etc. effectively if at all.
Sorry, but while I do agree with most of what you said, this one line is blatantly false. D&D is not that much bigger than Pathfinder and there have even been points where people believe Pathfinder outsold D&D, The CEO of Paizo even claimed as much during the 4E days if my memory serves me correctly. Now we don't have exact numbers however, so nobody can have any certainty on this but to say D&D at it's lowest point outsold Pathfinder, it's main competitor, might be false and so then to say it outsold it's competitors a million to 1... even if just an "over-exaggeration" it's definitely a false statement.
Personally having used both 5E and PF2E, I'll say 5E is the simpler system to get into and has far more interesting topics around character builds than PF2E does (personal opinion) but that doesn't make it untouchable, Pathfinder could easily surpass D&D in the future if WotC don't properly maintain the game releases or loses community supporting from further delving into AI.
I am old enough to know the cycle. there is always a 'Boom and Bust' thing going on, and 2014 5E was the boom, and we may be entering the bust. It usually isn't just quality of the system, a lot of it is Corpo meddling. TSR died a traitor's death because it went after creators, 3.0 was ok but needed work, 3.5 was a big hit that people didn't want to leave, 4E was an OK system that didn't sell as well because it was very much not what was wanted, and the liscenses were not 3rd party friendly, 5E14 came onto the scene and after a midling start exploded into popularity, then before 5ER24, WoTC burned their good will with the greed in the OGL 1.1 and the controlling language in 1.2 which was so hated they went Creative commons as a peace offering. We are gonna just have to ride out this bust.
Even if WoTC and Hasbro fold completely, the hobby will carry on, and the next steward of the brand, if any, will pick it up and the cycle will continue. It is too entrenched to dissappear into the wind, but lots and LOTS of damage can be done to it if Hasbro keeps up this cancerous behavior. IE pulling the OGL rewrite debacle, being controlling, over monetizing, stepping in it with PR nightmares, and constantly laying off the talent that made this game the powerhouse that it was.
Things will be alright for D&D.
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The spark for change is yours to ignite."
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With other TTRPGs gaining much more traction and coverage than they ever used to before, I believe it is true that D&D is someday stop having such a monopoly hold on the TTRPG space. Which is a good thing - variety is wonderful. But D&D is a good system and still has considerable legacy so nothing is going to "kill it" and it's not dying any time soon.
WotC's future might be dubious, depending on their choices, but D&D's future is very certain - it seems some people forget these are different things.
The biggest threat to the continuation of D&D is WotC themselves and their recent trend of disastrous decision making. However, even if WotC/Hasbro discontinued D&D altogether - D&D will continue to be around for a long time afterward. 2nd Edition stopped printing over 2 decades ago and people still play it. And the CC license of 5th means 3rd party creators can continue to making 5th edition D&D content even if WotC stop doing so. There's a lot of top quality 3rd party 5th edition content out there - and those continue to draw new people in to the hobby.
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It would certainly help all of the excess and overkill that seems to creep into discussions, that are very heavily speculative and opinion-based in the best of cases, if WotC/Hasboro would do a better job of communicating with the community. LaTiaJacquise notwithstanding, the often deafening silence around what is happening and why (with site changes/development, staff changes, the game itself - I mean, pick something) is extremely fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theorizing or hyperbole. WotC/Hasboro seem pretty committed to staying silent on a lot of this unfortunately.
D&D is not really a game anymore; it's a tradition. I don't think D&D is "dying", quite to the contrary, it's healthier than it's ever been, but D&D does not mean 5th edition exclusively. It's evolving into more of a "kind of game", rather than a specific game.
You come to someone's house these days and they say "We are playing D&D... That could mean you're going to be playing DC20, Tales of Valor, Pathfinder, Draw Steel, Shadowdark, Castles and Crusades, Daggerheart etc.. etc...
So it's not a death, it's a shift.
D&D is alive more than ever, so i don't think it's dying. But it will morph, like it always did when going through period of significant changes in R&D.
The funny thing is, today's game is so far yet so close to what it was in 1974. Characteristics, actions, spells and the like have evolve, but the fundamental core components of the game remains the same, you roleplay characters in collaborative storytelling experience; you still go adventure, kill creatures, collect treasure and level up.
Anything published exist forever. Hence why there's people still playing all editions of the game in the world.
If no other D&D edition was ever publsihed again, i'd still play D&D in some way, shape or form.
D&D is immortal.
It depends how much of their audience they’re actually going to reach. There’s what? A couple dozen people who regularly talk things over here? As was pointed out at the time and since, the survey over the OGL got a fraction of the responses that the ‘24 UA ones did. I personally wasn’t watching for news about Perkins and such, and it’s had no impact on my interest in D&D, WotC, etc. I’ve only seen it briefly mentioned in one other online community I’m in, and it was just a passing mention.It’s entirely possible that most of the community is not particularly concerned with the internal movements of the company and most of the other things that get picked at here with arch questions about why we aren’t hearing more.
It's fairly hard to get definitive statistics (the last numbers from roll20 were from 2021, for example), but at that time D&D was 15x larger than Pathfinder, and really nothing that has happened recently would have changed it dramatically.
I see all these staff changes as an opportunity for new Dungeons & Dragons game designers and developers to shine and bring fresh ideas to the game.
PS. A long list from both old and recent history: Dungeons & Dragons game designers - Wikipedia (and it doesn’t even include some of the designers and developers I saw in the new credit books)
In true the inside people were explicit that Pathfinder never outsold the 4e
https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/07/08/pathfinder-never-outsold-4e-dd-icymi/#:~:text=Here are some reasons why 4E outsold,calculated as having more than 65k subscribers
And by all measures we have today D&D is far bigger then Pahtfinder 1 or 2, one exemple of this is almost all the Industry Reports of roll20.
PS: Yes, I know that roll20 is not a measurement of the entire market and only represents a probably not entirely significant slice of it, but other data seems to corroborate his data much more than the opposite.
I am not making the explicit claim that Pathfinder did outsell D&D 4E, only that there were definitely claims by people (including Paizo CEO) that it did. So claims that D&D is some how untouchable in terms of numbers is the issue I was taking up. I do not believe D&D is untouchable as the claim of a million to 1 makes, if WotC continue to make bad decisions, I could see a switch over where Pathfinder does overtake D&D in the near future (next 5~10 years).
That may be very much true, tho Roll20 is definitely a limited sample and 2021 is several years after the release of 5E in 2014, so it's not at all representative of how things were back in 2008-2014 period for 4E. Tho I certainly have doubts that Pathfinder ever outsold D&D, I think we should be wary of making states like 'a million to 1', it was probably closer to 10 to 1. and that is solely against pathfinder, not taking other systems additionally into consideration.
At my LGS, there are five tables for D&D on Tuesdays. Only one table is reserved for Pathfinder 2 and when I scoped it out, there was the GM (LGS staff) and one other player at that table. I wanted to join because I actually enjoy PF2, but I have other obligations that their game would have required me to give up.
Roll20 is a pretty good measure that can be used to make assumptions about the population as a whole because it is so large. Not everyone uses Roll20 but I doubt all the Pathfinder players are hiding on The Foundry and there are likely just as many pen and paper D&D players as Pathfinder, if not more.
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I would say that the dominance of D&D was most seriously challenged at the end of 2e, followed by late 4e, but I was disputing "not that much bigger than Pathfinder". Yes, a million to one is definitely excessive.
Yeah. As described in SaintLothar's link above, D&D 4 might have been outsold by pathfinder in game stores at one point. That was a long time ago. D&D 5 has massively outsold 4, and there is no indication that Pathfinder has experienced even proportional levels of growth. (It's doing fine AFAIK, but it'd be obvious if it was pulling down those kinds of numbers.)
You are, IIRC, not from an English-native country, so it's possible that this is a situation where the term has become generic there but not so in general.
And if it's not that, it's likely an OSR thing, which is a very particular RPG subculture that is not likely representative of the whole.
In the US, my experience is that people mean specifically D&D when they say D&D. I am, admittedly, talking about it with people who are quite aware of the world of RPGs that are not D&D.
But then, for a lot of people, D&D is the only RPG on their radar. They certainly mean D&D when they say "D&D". And that's why there's nothing resembling an imminent death of D&D. Even if the audience declines, as it likely will at some point, it's going to decline because people are not playing it anymore, not because they are playing something else.
We, who are aware of other RPGs, and who may even know the names of the people designing the game, are a highly atypical part of the audience. Our fears and concerns about the future of the game do not necessarily affect the wider audience's. The cultural zeitgeist moves on at some point, but there's no reason to think that's happening yet. (And even when it does, it's still possible to do quite well. For instance, marvel movies are no longer The Thing, but they make good money. In many ways, it's better for WotC to have audience churn than to have people stay with the hobby, because the core books are where the real money is.)
I think it's simultaneously true that PF never outsold 4e overall, and that ICv2's statistics (which examine one or a handful of specific channels) showed that PF overtook 4e in those channels, channels in which D&D had never been overtaken before (or since).
The StartPlaying platform (for paid or seeking-to-be-paid GMs) also tracks the top games played on their platform. They're useful in that they aren't specific to one particular VTT or other medium - using a mix of Maps, roll20, Foundry, FG, Owlbear etc.
Well, some of those channels may not have existed in the late 90s. D&D came very close to dying before the WotC buyout.
I don't doubt it - but also, what TSR and Gygax were doing back then is so far removed from what is happening with 5e today that I don't really see it as being illustrative of anything important to D&D's trajectory here and now.
Stats for systems played information is hard to come by but Foundry did post some during their 5th year celebrations:
Far from conclusive and again only from one source but still interesting data. Don't think D&D is dying anytime soon.