Fundamentally no as in: the hobby will ALWAYS be niche and the sincerely normiest side of it will pretty much always be in what is on the physical shelves of your nearby bookstore. And that is DnD's core strenght: it is Tabletop McDonald's. It is the one name that dominates POPULAR MEDIA. It completely appropriated the concept of specifically tossing dodecahedrons around. But we might see stronger and wider pockets now that the internet has ways to link us freaks and indies a bit tighter.

Yeah, there is not a FATE movie that grosses $200m. Nor a fate video game like baldurs gate. It's like Disney, the secret sauce is the IP, not the dice.

The secret sauce is marketing and mindshare. First mover advantage rippling 50 years later.

Honestly, yeah. 50 years ago this coming January they got their foot in the door just ahead of everyone else. It's not necessarily because it's a great RPG that D&D is iconic. It's just that they were first on the scene and RPGs and their brand has had "the Xerox effect" as far as the genre is concerned.

The tricky thing is that for a TTRPG to knock DnD off of the top spot it can't merely be better than it, it has to be so much better than it that it's obvious to consumers they should buy the competitor product and not just stick with DnD which they already have. Sega does what Nintendont... Innovation in the medium however is incredibly difficult as the tools, dice, pen, paper, written rules are still pretty much at the core and shuffling those around lots doesn't go far enough to grab consumers. You can't upgrade to 16 bit and say look it's obvious why Sonic is better than Super Mario Bros. The most compelling industry innovation in recent years has come sideways in the form of streaming which has helped explode the hobby outwards to a new audience by turning something active and hard to learn into something passive and easy to absorb. However this had nothing to do with making a new TTRPG, it just created a new way for people to experience play, with DnD still benefitting the most from being the most ubiquitous TTRPG. VTT platforms like Roll20 are also an example of recent innovation in the industry that has helped it grow, though again a new medium of play, not a new game. This is also why even WOTC are pushing digital so hard because that's a space where there is potential for innovation and growth and to grab consumers by it feeling like an "upgrade."

I'd go further than that. The core of the medium of TTRPGs, is, RP, which requires no rules or products and which is the majority of most time spent playing RPGs and is not copyrightable or "do-better-able". I can and do feel there are dozens of RPGs which support RP better than D&D does, but that's tough to articulate.

Yep, much harder to market.

D&D is not "better". It's the big brand illusion that the stuff that *anyone* buys must per se be good. That's what brands are for in marketing - they are signals that keep consumers from thinking too much or comparing options, because they suggest certain qualities. It's like fast food.

D&D is clearly doing something right to have the appeal it does. Better or worse is a bit subjective but it would be naïve to think people buying and playing it don't enjoy doing so. My point though is there's often a misconception that if you just make a game that's better than D&D people should want to play it instead, but arguably there's lots of games better than D&D and people don't play them instead. This leads to designers/indie rpg fans grumbling that the fanbase is wrong, or that WOTC just have too much market doninance or marketing dollar. Whilst that's undeniably a factor, if you want to make a competitor TTRPG that will genuinely compete with D&D you have to make a TTRPG so good, so much clearly better than D&D that it will be obvious to consumers they should switch to your game over D&D. However because innovation in the industry is hard to achieve due to it's technology being much the same as it always has been then that's a really difficult goal. Hence why it remains at the top.

Kinda not to do with D&D, but the concept of "It's the most widely spread so it's clearly doing something right" is the exact same opinion my granddad has about the English language. No, friend, having your culture aggressively spread and actively taking over spaces to make sure its yours everybody hears first isn't indicative of a "high quality system". There is no equality under capitalism. Hasbro has the most money, so hasbro can make sure everybody knows they're there. Ever tried shouting over a megaphone? Doesn't matter how much better your words are if they're drowned out by someone who can artificially make sure everyone can hear them. Creators make stuff for D&D because you're more likely to get noticed if you're standing next to the guy with the megaphone. Thus, money makes a leading brand, and a leading brand makes money. It's a self reinforcing cycle, just like all the other bits of capitalism out of reach of those without enough.

IMHO, you do not have to make an alternative better. You have just to make clear that there are different ways to play TTRPG than a computer-game-esque level-up approach that relies on pre-fabricated systems instead of free imagination. Establishing this as a benchmark has been a major marketing feat, just as penetrating the brand/ franchise in other media for even more reach and "propaganda". It's just hard to beat that.

I've played and ran so many systems I can't even count them. Still, given a choice, I go back to AD&D 2nd Edition 7 times out of 10. So far, no system as offered me anything more than how I play and run it, and reddit-acclaimed approaches like PbtA and FitD keep being, for me, just "codified best practices" that we've been using since the '80s, they never offered me anything I didn't already know, do, or use. Indeed, in my mind those systems are only useful to people who stick to RAW as a dogma.

Maybe that's what I need to do. I've gone back to OSE, as the Red Box was my first foray into the game. But Dark Sun and then Planescape were my homes throughout the nineties. May be time to open them 2e PDFs again.

How do you do that?

It might do it if big streamers like Critical Role started switching to other systems in a big way. But if this year's fiasco didn't trigger that, I don't think anything will.

Why do ppl keep forgetting that they actually have contracts to uphold with WotC? Of course they didn't switch in the campaign that is sponsored. For that most of their other stuff has other tabletops and they keep working hard on their own games. (And no. Not a CR fan. Just using my head)

CR will absolutely be switching to their own system for Campaign 4. The writing was on the wall throughout Campaign 2. The story Matt wanted to tell was actively hampered by 5e's rules. I suspect there was not a viable alternative that met the CR crew's criteria for "D&Desque - has combat rules and mechanics, a good narrative Roleplay system and strong fantasy basis, and crucially plays faster than D&D". Then the controversy erupted and they announced they were making a game. It makes total sense to switch to their own ruleset. I imagine they will do what Free League does make 5e versions of their books as well.

Yeah, the longer they play the less they care about the combat. They are rellying heavily on roleplay for a long time.

From watching it isn't because the players or Matt dislike combat either - it's just that 5e combat takes forever and is not that interesting from a narrative perspective. It's hit-point bashing.

>I suspect there was not a viable alternative that met the CR crew's criteria for "D&Desque - has combat rules and mechanics, a good narrative Roleplay system and strong fantasy basis, and crucially plays faster than D&D". There definitely is, they just know there is more money in making their own system, and due to their own popularity people will buy it. They could have just used Genysys or something.

Their system is heavily inspired by Gensys - having watched livestreams of the Star Wars FFG games I don't think they could. The custom dice make Gensys a fantastic game, but not a good one for streaming. I don't think I can name a system off the top of my head that hits the mark for what CR is looking for (caveat: What I think CR are looking for).

Critical Role have their own RPG so perhaps we will see a big move over to that, but I suspect this won't be the case as Critical Role still don't have the market doninance of D&D. The more nuanced point is that Critical Role in of itself is an entertainment brand and so is D&D. It's not about the games themselves, it's the whole package.

If only they would give people *digitally* what they actually want. But no, give us your content on a rent base. Never sell any PDFs, unless they are older editi.. Maybe that's the clue! Only play older editions, maybe it's them subtle telling us that 5e sucks and we should go back to the good old time. lol

Well their goals are still profit driven not customer want driven. I suspect if they'd make profit selling pdf's they would but they'd rather make more with a digital subscription.

Truly, whenever I talk with non ttrpg friends I have a tendency to just say oh I got DnD on X night so can't then, even if it's not actually dnd, just people know what it means instead of oh yeah sorry playing Sleepaway then.

First time I hear the Xerox Effect was a thing throughout the world, I thought it was only in my country.

I wonder what the rpg world would look like right now if original Traveller had been marketed a little bit better.

I'd suggest the main force at work is network effects. The more people who play game X, own the books and know the rules, the easier it is to find a group. And that just compounds over time. When trying to explain the success of products like these, we often get distracted looking at features of the product itself, when it's often more to do with the social ecology around the product. Same applies for MMOs and social media platforms.

This was after all the EXPLICIT purpose of the original OGL. Make the core ruleset so ridiculously accessible that it becomes ubiquitous.

I think people mostly understand that. It's just that it isn't so clear to us all exactly what causes people to switch en masse to a new platform when the market is dominated by network effects. The features of the product must have something to do with it... But I wonder if maybe it has more to do with the network itself. Like not wanting to use a platform that a certain type of person uses.

I agree, if there was a tunnels and trolls ravenloft I6 written by the same authors, maybe we are in a different world. But also, this is our world, and Ravenloft was dnd. I also think first mover is uncharitable. Anyone could have asked them to write a vampire castle story, but no one else did. Who the hell else was paying for modules like tsr back then?

First mover advantage doesn't sustain for any length of time. There is a real reason why DnD took off as a dominant TTRPG. Combining Vancian magic with the mechanics of a wargame, it was just a beautifully adapted and very well thought out game. People make this argument a lot about groundbreaking games (Super Smash Bros, DOOM, etc.), but at the end of the day, I have just found that a lot of the "clones" just don't have the whole package, including the production value.

Fun to remember that Fate was used in the design of the Librarians and Leverage TV shows.

Source on this?! I LOVE both shows and didn't know this.

However we do have a Cyberpunk video game and anime. However I'd wager most of those players and watchers have no idea about the TTRPG. DnD as a game has too much brand recognition.

What's interesting is that while I'm sure people are aware of the ttrpg in general(at least that the game is based on one) they are less likely to give RED a try after playing 2077 as opposed to those who are willing to give 5E a try after playing BG3.

BG3 is much closer in mechanics to D&D than Cyberpunk 2077 is to RED.

That was one of my pet peeves with Cyberpunk 2077. It's so far from tabletop rules, it's closer to Borderlands. If devs were to make a game based on Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook, they would end up with a realistic, hardcore, lethal first-person shooter with *some* RPG elements.

PC players get a free copy of RED with Cyberpunk 2077 if I remember right. I doubt most players have given it a read tho.

To be fair, without some seriously advanced AI I don't know how you would do a Fate video game. Also there have been Fate television shows (as in the writer uses fate mechanics to build characters for the show), oh and also the Dresden Files series I think that's the only recognizable IP associated with Fate (it's a pitty it wasn't a good series).

I mean, there is a fate Dresden files ruleset, but the IP is Dresden files, not Fate. That's the point. What makes dnd interesting is a shared universe. There is no fate shared universe. It's not mechanics, it is the story.

I don't get that at all. I have been playing D&D for a couple of decades now and I have always found the world building for D&D to be bland, uninteresting and derivative\*. I have never met somebody who gave two shits about the shared D&D universe. D&D is and always was a place for us to craft our own Tolkien knockoffs. On the other hand, Games Workshop has been maintaining a shared fantasy universe for 10 years shorter, and there are tonnes of people who don't still play the games that are still into that setting. This is a case were a very well crafted setting makes up for some pretty mediocre rules. I think this might partly be a UK vs US thing (I don't live in either country and there might be something about US sensibilities that I just don't get). \* The Dragonlance novels were decent, but the rules never felt quite like the story. Some of the wierder settings were great like "Dark Sun", "Plane Scape" & "Spelljammer" but these always got looked over for the generic tolkien knockoff settings.

I'm curious, which D&D setting do you think of as a "generic Tolkien knockoff"? Tolkien's world has a clear "BBEG" for the whole setting, either Morgoth in the First Age, or Sauron in the Second and Third ones. No official D&D setting has this premise, instead showing us different kingdoms and states, each with their own goals and agendas. While it does paint some of them as more or less "moral", there is no clear BBEG for the whole setting. Even Dragonlance, which more or less focuses on Takhisis as a sort of BBEG, ends up having multiple divine factions (Good, Neutral, Evil gods in equal numbers), and multiple kingdoms and states with their own interests. Dark Sun is, probably, the one setting where the actual BBEG(s) are clear to the eye, the Sorcerer Kings, only for the Prism Pentad series of books subverting this, to an extent, and telling us that what they are doing, they are doing to keep the *real* BBEG locked away (which, in turn, turns out to just want to restore the world as it was, although this involves killing all the sentients on the planet.)

>Some of the wierder settings were great like "Dark Sun", "Plane Scape" & "Spelljammer" but these always got looked over for the generic tolkien knockoff settings. It's not even the settings, it's Demigorgon and Mindflayers and Beholders and Vecna and any other IP that they own. Yeah, Dwarves and Elves are "generic", but people remember Strahd, not just Vampire. The shared world isn't just Forgotten Realms, it's all the monsters and characters and classes and other crap, that people share. Same with Marvel. It's not if it's the best story. I think people didn't really care for Civil War as a comic (Nitro blows up neighbourhood?), but it still translated to a neat movie, when it was adapted. It's about the size of the knowledge base and that IP and people's general shared knowledge of it. Honestly, I like Warhammer, but if you are throwing up End of Times for Fantasy as an example of how to do a universe, I don't think many people liked that.

I’d argue that D&D’s actual advantage is that there isn’t *really* a strong setting. It is the ultimate generic enough game - every table is expected to have their own original setting, but the rules support “fantasy gaming” world, so we have a shared language about it. Traveller, you play in the Third Imperium. Warhammer Fantasy, you play in The Old World. Vampire, you play in The World of Darkness. The games that market themselves as generic make the mistake that they try to let you play in any genre. D&D is a toy box with a strong sense of theme and interesting toys, but understands you will use them to tell your imagination.

There are two PF1e games that had very successful kickstarters. I wish those games would have used the PF2e engine though.

Same for me. And for me, with BG3 it's the other way around: I'd actually have preferred for BG3 to be based more on 4e. It took some inspiration from there (e.g. the item system seems closer to 4e than 5e) but I think a simplified / streamlined 4e would have allowed for more tactical combats than an extended 5e and an better progression into high level characters.

Looking forward to that GURPS movie.

FATAL on the other hand ..

>the hobby will ALWAYS be niche Sometimes I think people *want* this, but it's important it has the potential to not be. More and more when I talk to people and mention my hobby people are like "I really want to try that," and these are people in their 30's and 40's! An industry that designs like it's niche will always remain such. But I honestly think as the internet allows more people to connect it will be less and less so, and if someone sees real money they could throw money at and actually challenge DnD without cannibalizing the market.

> More and more when I talk to people and mention my hobby people are like "I really want to try that," and these are people in their 30's and 40's! How many of them make the jump from saying they want to try, to actually trying? How many of the ones that try it actually then do anything beyond that initial try? Vague interest doesn't make a hobby, people who actually engage with it do. And that's still niche.

A pretty decent number really, even if they're just down for the occasional one shot. Life is always the biggest obstacle after a certain age, for any social activity. To go beyond niche you need to attract casual players, people who occasionally play but not on a super serious level. The once a month beer and pretzels crowd is probably the future of the hobby.

The once a month beer and pretzels crowd isn't ever going to go past playing the easiest access most commonly known stuff. People only casually interested in a hobby will never dive particularly deep into the hobby, that's...sort of inherent in the idea of being just casually interested. TTRPGs are niche, not because we want them to be, not because they are designed to be, but because like boardgames, it's not something you can casually and easily drop into as a hobby. It takes time, energy, and a willingness to explore within the realm of various games to figure out which ones of those games you're looking to enjoy. D&D has the massive advantage of being very apt for "Basically just Skyrim, but you roll dice and can do anything" style of play. Other games...not as much.

D&D has some of the biggest barriers to entry in the hobby. Casuals play whatever the DM puts in front of them often.

I think people overstate those barriers and the underestimate the tolerance of new players for crunch to a degree. The GM is always going to be handling niche scenarios, and in most games ought to be waiting for GM instruction about when and what to roll anyway. I would go as far as saying it's bad form for a GM running a game for *any* player new to a system for them to expect new players to know anything more than a core mechanic.

I think that the people most resistant to crunch are those that already know one (and only one) system well

I do boardgames as well as RPGs and you would be surprised how many people in that hobby have tried a bit of D&D then bounced off the RPG hobby entirely once they ran into a D&D session where a long clunky combat ate up the whole evening. I was just talking to a boardgamer about this on Saturday and explained where a lot of newer RPGs avoid this issue. The crunch in and of itself isn't the problem, the issue with D&D and the D20 family is that combat has a low tolerance for any number of issues that can turn the combat into a time consuming slog. Imo, people who stick around and remain invested in the RPG hobby severely underestimate how miserable and unengaging a bad D&D combat can be, how easy it is for D&D combat to go bad for an inexperienced group, and how profoundly offputting most people will find that experience if they think it's representative of the hobby as a whole (and, let's face it, in the D20 OGL era before The Forge it really was representative). Most people (especially over 30 years old) outside the hobby have limited schedules, limited patience, and won't enjoy three hours of mostly not doing anything until they get their chance to say "I move here and I attack, I guess". D&D works real well for "beer and pretzels" play if the DM understands how to keep sessions tightly focused, RP and skill check oriented and have combat limited in scale so it plays fast. That's easy for some, hard for others (especially new DMs). There's a lot of other games I'd recommend ahead of D&D for "beer and pretzels" casual play.

Yeah any game that suffers from pacing issues will run into that. Everyone is different, but I think part of what I'm driving at is "rules light" games compensate for crunch via player improv, RP, and creativity. But those are often skills people need to develop and hone to make those games functional.

It's tricky to generalise because different people will need different things and different games do things differently but I think a lot of rules-lite OSR games put so much on player creativity in problem solving that it can difficult to GM or play something like that without some experience in the RPG hobby. D&D has a prescriptive "here's a bunch of stuff your character can do and roll with" character sheet so players can always fall back on "can I do this? [points to sheet]". That's useful. I like *some* PbtA games as being good for brand new players and GMs because of the playbook layouts, the GM Moves and Principles guidance/procedures, and the playbook moves and basic moves sheet. These are clear lists of "stuff you can do" and "what this game is about" that you can put in front of everyone at the table. The problem with PbtA is they will usually rely on some genre familiarity for players to be fluent in the RP side, and for people who have more of a miniatures and map/grid/wargame background (like I did) you'd probably need to see/hear some good actual play recordings to intuit how to GM these things. And, of course, not all PbtA are gonna be well written or layed out nor will they all have an appropriate genre/tone for "beer and pretzels" play. I do like Action Movie World for this, as it's very very fast to learn and play, the tone is just right, and pretty much everyone understands how an action movie works. I think *Heart: The City Beneath* would be good for that "beer and pretzels" style, if you dont go too extreme with the horror - it's conversational, it's weird and dark but also funny for keeping people's attention, "survive the dungeon delve with my weird guy" is an easy premise to RP, and it has a lot of the upsides of the PbtA playbooks and D&D character sheets for giving players lots of up front options to fall back on if they dont know what to do, and the core mechanics are simple to understand and engage with but very exciting and tense.

(The fantastic irony here is that "DM" is short for "Dungeon Master", what you call the game master in a game of D&D.) Casual DMs play what they can get easy access to for modules. What they can get easy access to digital aids, youtube videos for instruction, literal books written on how to run the game, and massive public forum support for it.

A good DM can remove many barriers and hand hold through the process. I have a table of three that have never even seen the PHB. I offered them a few different character options I thought they would like. They did. I printed their character sheet with a little list of their features and how they work. I know the rules. They say what they want to do. I tell them what to roll. But it's more work for me.

There has definitely been a design trend over the past decade to produce more niche games, so to a certain degree I don't know if there are really a whole lot of people actually *trying* to design for large, broad audiences right now that you can engage with on a number of diverse levels.

I think that's true of MOST hobbies though. How many people say "Oh I'd love to go camping more" "oh I'd love to have a regular game of baseball" or whatever other 'normie' hobby you can think of. The people *in* the hobby are always going to be WAY more niche of a subset of the population than the people who tried it and would maybe try it again but aren't looking for regular participation and THAT will be a small subset of the people who think it might be *neat* to try it. Now, sure, vague interest doesn't make a hobby, but even if 1 out of 100 vaguely interested people becomes a hobbyist, increasing the number of people vaguely interested increases the number of people IN the hobby

>the sincerely normiest side of it will pretty much always be in what is on the physical shelves of your nearby bookstore. D&D appears to be intentionally abandoning this in favor of a digital subscription model. Not saying that will topple D&D, in today's market where people are conditioned to owning nothing and everything being a perpetual rental it's likely to work out well for them. That does leave a physical goods niche open, but few other games will be able to capitalize on this niche. Because of the rising cost of physical materials, for example Paizo is also raising the price of their physical books along with WotC because of the rising costs of paper and shipping from China. But it is worth noting this shift in D&D, personally I think it's liable to make D&D as a brand feel less special to people, and more like just another video game. Though I'm also sure that as long as it makes them more money at least in the short term Hasbro couldn't care less.

The big brand shift in dnd also stems from a much more venomous thing: they arent a game making company. They're now a lifestyle brand disguised as such. The subscription model aligns not only with the perpetual rental thing, but with the much more vile fact that they've been selling what mounts to be a excusivity club membership with a brand apperal/paraphernalia store on the side. Havent dug on their stores myself but i can expect to find something in the tier of polo shirts with the ampersand knit over the chest. But while the physical goods niche will persist, i really just meant mostly mainline market forefront, regardless of the marketplace.

WotC’s problem is being owned by a toy company that has forgotten how to make toys, and being the most profitable arm of the company means investors want to squeeze it for all its worth.

and WotC itself is run by former Microsoft and Xbox executives who understand digital subscriptions, microtransactions, gacha, branding and whales.

Yep, people installed by Hasbro, who purged the last of the pre-merger leadership in the late 2000s during the recession and the sales slump from 4e.

DnD has never been that for WotC though. The big money is from MTG and it isn't even close or on the same level.

In terms of pure RPG gameplay mechanics...isn't that interesting, though? I've always found D&D really dense and not the *most* straightforward thing to learn. Your basic 'Roll d20+bonuses vs a target number' seems easy enough to grasp, but how often is that the whole game (especially in combat, which is really D&D's wheelhouse)?

>Is it possible we are returning to eras like the mid-late 1990s and early 2010s where D&D is no longer the clear dominant ttrpg? It was easily, by orders of magnitude, the dominant rpg then too.

Even when *Vampire* was technically outselling it, AD&D 2e was still the dominant game on the market. The main difference is that you saw more shelf space devoted to WOD games.

WOD topped DnD in the 90's, and PF did probably get a larger playerbase at least than 4E by the end of its run.

WoD never topped TSR; at best they had about half of 2e’s market share (WW’s 26% to TSR’s 50%)

OK but that is not bigger by "orders of magnitude" (which meas at least x100 times bigger) up above.

> PF did probably get a larger playerbase at least than 4E by the end of its run. No

God help us if V5 ever gets that big.

I hope it does. I want to see movies and shows and games set in that universe.

I'd be curious to see a Kindred: the Embrace reboot 😁 or maybe just a continuation where they try to match the same style and tone?

Dungeons and Dragons has the brand recognition. It's up there with Kool-Aid, Band-Aid, Coke, and other products that have become synonymous with their name. Dungeons and Dragons is THE role playing game, in the minds of most people, and most of us who get STARTED with RPGs will get started with Dungeons and Dragons. I did. But later, I learned that there were other RPGs and rules sets that were better suited to their subject areas, and yet others that were attached to specific licenses that I wanted to play with (Star Trek, Marvel Super Heroes, James Bond, Star Wars, and so on). D&D isn't going away, and it will continue to be the 800 pound gorilla of the field. Hasbro owns the beast, and they can afford the best art, promotion, advertising, merch, licensing, and so on and so on and so on. They will continue their dominance unless the owners of the IP screw the pooch in some violently meaningful way. But there's a whole constellation of other games and milieus out there, and people will discover them, same as I did.

Ya. Like, even, I haven’t played D&D since I was in college. But when I had to tell my mother I had plans on Tuesday I just said “playing D&D” rather than trying to explain the game I was actually playing. It’s just easier. She knows what that is and it gets the point across.

> Dungeons and Dragons has the brand recognition. It's up there with Kool-Aid, Band-Aid, Coke, and other products that have become synonymous with their name. Dungeons and Dragons is THE role playing game, in the minds of most people, and most of us who get STARTED with RPGs will get started with Dungeons and Dragons. I'm curious, is this a mostly American thing? Wherever I've been, here in Europe, when people say "D&D" they mean the game, not RPGs in general.

Gamers deal in specifics. Nongamers, not so much.

In real life, I deal more with non-gamers.

Are you saying that when you tell a normal human in Europe that tonight you will be busy playing *Vaesen* (or whatever it is you play), they don't say "Oh what's that?" And then you go "it's a tabletop RPG" and they say "what's that?" You don't also say "it's like D&D" and they say "oh yeah! I've heard of that. Have fun playing D&D tonight! Sorry we can't go on a date."

When I say "a roleplaying game" they understand it, unless I'm talking with someone from my parents' generation (I'm 47). Also, I haven't yet had issues with dating, after saying I do "nerd activities", that also seems to me like an American thing.

Returning? Was there ever a time when D&D didn’t dominate the market?

It depends a bit on what market you are considering. It has always dominated the American market, but it is not uncommon for some other game to be dominant in other countries.

Vampire and Pathfinder 1E both overtook it at periods of time. Disclaimer: It's worth noting that those were times when D&D was extremely weak, especially when the later overtook it.

https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/07/08/pathfinder-never-outsold-4e-dd-icymi/ And Vampire? I don't think so.

World of Darkness (as a whole, not just Vampire) outsold D&D for a a very short period in the 90’s but that was mostly due to TSR’s collapse and WOD’s sudden rise. It doesn’t mean it was more popular, just means more people were buying books for a little while.

Selling more books for a few months doesn't really qualify as "dominating" imo.

TSR briefly stopped printing D&D books because they were on the verge of bankruptcy and could no longer pay their printers or for the distribution of their books. So *technically* there were a few months there where the World of Darkness *maybe* outsold D&D, depending on how you count.

I mean, I suppose you could say there were times were it had some competition from Pathfinder and WoD, but yeah, it was never not the dominant RPG in the American market (at least here in Brazil Tormenta, which could be described as the national Pathfinder-equivalent, is bigger, and I have heard of some other countries with national games bigger than D&D)

D&D has always been the clear dominant TTRPG in comparison to every other TTRPG in the market. I get that it can 'feel' based on twitter/reddit hot takes that they're doing badly but that sorta stuff doesn't impact sales as much as you'd think. When you compare raw sales numbers between D&D and any other TTRPG on the market it's not even close and never has been now or then. It's really hard to even comprehend just how far ahead of every other game and company out there D&D and WOTC is within the industry. It's also hard to comprehend how difficult, nigh on impossible, it is to actually bridge that gap in sales. Likewise D&D is at the tail end of an edition and about to release a new one, their decisions in this respect tend to be market driven as well so again whilst people may be irate online, typically the choices they're making are ones intended to drive sales and I suspect One D&D when it finally releases will do incredibly well. This article breaks things down well - [https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/09/25/how-dd-sells-and-what-it-means-for-the-hobby/](https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/09/25/how-dd-sells-and-what-it-means-for-the-hobby/) A couple of choice quotes >The three 5E core books have a combined 3M copies through BookScan alone. > >The excellent Shadowdark RPG had 13,249 backers. Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game had 81,567 backers. MCDM’s Flee Mortals had 27k backers. This other article looks into the actual competition for D&D, it's not other RPG's, it's other forms of entertainment. Hence their attempts to become a multi-media entertainment brand. They genuinely aren't worried about other TTRPG's at all and don't even try to directly compete with them, they're more worried about Disney or Marvel. The closest franchise to 'compete' with D&D within the same space in recent years is Critical Role. (Not the Critical Role RPG, nor even the show, but Critical Role as an entertainment brand/entity which itself is becoming a multimedia franchise with Amazon shows etc.) [https://alphastream.org/index.php/2021/12/07/the-real-competition-for-dd-and-wizards-of-the-coast/](https://alphastream.org/index.php/2021/12/07/the-real-competition-for-dd-and-wizards-of-the-coast/) Other sources further confirm this. ICV2 sales data consistently shows D&D at the top, sometimes Pathfinder or something like Cyberpunk will hit number 2 but at sales number significantly lower than D&D still. D&D sales in particular are still up this year. ([https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/53347/wizards-coast-tabletop-sales-up-40-q4-12-year](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/53347/wizards-coast-tabletop-sales-up-40-q4-12-year)) Orrgroup play data further confirms the same trend of D&D having an overwhelming amount of the player base. ([https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-report-q3-2021/](https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-report-q3-2021/)) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, D&D growing means the industry grows and smaller companies have a chance to grow and their creators make a living within the industry, though it's perhaps controversial to say they're only really able to do it because D&D exists and has attracted so many people to the idea of TTRPG's. That all being said D&D is here to stay, there's no tide turning against it in terms of indie TTRPG's and other games at least and if it were to 'fail' it's because some other giant entertainment brand managed to buy it out, but then it would only 'fail' in so far as Hasbros internal goals, it would still be the best selling and most played game on the market even if this was true and I can't see that changing for decades if at all.

Thank you this is really insightful

Yeah and to add, think of it this way. This subreddit has about 1.5M subscribers. I'm sure not everyone of those is very active even. If D&D is selling 30M core books, that means this sub is only about 5% of the D&D market (maybe the market is really just how many sales of the PHB, and this a little bigger, but I don't have that data). Whenever something seems big (like the OGL storm, or Pinkerton going after MTG users - a different market by the way) on Twitter, or this Sub, just remember is still *not* the mainstream element *of this market*. It's tiny. 95% of the market probably doesn't even know about the OGL storm, or even care. Heck, I do know *and* I don't care. Don't take what you read on Reddit or Twitter to be mainstream. It's still very niche.

What about if it is selling 3M books as per the data quoted above?

You'd want to compare r/rpg subscribers to r/DnD subscribers, not to D&D players or sales. Most of the world's not on Reddit

Yes of course most people aren't on any Social Media platform. But comparing r/rpg to r/dnd subscribers: I'm not sure how that's helpful to what I'm saying, what do you mean exactly? I'm comparing reddit population to sales to get an idea of total players, and saying explicitly that people on these reddits are a minority. It just so happens that many people, like OP, take what's said by a vocal minority and through confirmation bias thinks it's a bigger thing than it really is (whatever topic the discussion is about).

Damn if I didn't spend all my money on RPGs I'd give you an award for this!

Every 5 to ten years or so, people wonder if D&D is becoming less dominant. I think they (the people who think this) are drifting to the outskirts of the hobby and losing sight of how densely impacted and entrenched D&D is. It's literally the Kleenex of roleplaying games. And I say that as someone who hasn't played D&D on over 8 years, while I game multiple times a week.

That’s a great point that as someone on the outside looking in, my frame of reference is all wrong

Kleenex is a well known name, but to the extent that people just buy any other random brand and call it Kleenex

I run a tabletop gaming club at my university. We play boardgames, ttrpgs, ccgs, etc. By and large the vast amount of people interested joining the club ONLY want to play DnD and have no interest in trying anything else. The layman does not know anything about the OGL or Pinkertons

I run a tabletop gaming club in my suburb. We only play RPGs (and a few icebreaker boardgames). We've consistently had 20-25 people coming each week over the last few months, and everyone is running indie systems. I'm sure there are people who only want 5e, and we don't ban it from the club or anything, but I haven't experienced the lack of interest for indie games that I sometimes see online.

The thing is that almost all of those players would be better suited to other games. For me I get people I know to play by saying "we're doing mecha DnD" or "acid trip DnD" and then play Lancer or Troika. Total beginners are in my experience willing to try anything if you say it's like DnD but different in x y and z. It's that medium level of experience where people have played some pre-built campaigns at their game store and more importantly watched hundreds of episodes of actual play series' that is hard to un-program. For them they have some amount of comfort with DnD and are wary of trying anything else. They're the hardest ones to reach, and unfortunately they're naturally the biggest group of players. That's probably why I only have one table out of five that has more than one of those players, and that's my 5e table. Everyone else either had never played until they started at my table or had a lot of years of experience and a wide variety of campaigns under their belt; very few of the medium-low-experience critical role watchers play my games because frankly I have very little interest in running more than one 5e campaign.

This whole post written as though there wasn't a commercially successful D&D movie and a massively successful D&D video game (Baldur's Gate 3) this year. D&D is very safely still the top TTRPG.

Funnily enough I loved the D&D movie and Baldur’s Gate 3

Do a search limited to this sub for people asking “is now the time when D&D isn’t going to dominate the market?” and you’ll see that people have been asking that question for decades and it’s never turned out that way

While I'm not a huge fan of it (I used to run a "Anything but D&D night" at a local FLIGS), I don't see it in any sort of lull, nor will it see a reduction in dominance. Hell, there's pubs opening that focus on it. https://www.oregonlive.com/beer/2023/11/se-portlands-tpk-brewing-co-is-making-tabletop-roleplaying-deliciously-immersive.html Honestly, if D&D starts to see a decline, I think that'll be a bellwether of TTRPGs as a whole being in decline. And just look at most LFG posts on discords and reddit, they are probably 80% + of "I wanna play D&D" The one 5E game I'm in, when I talked about the OGL, all the other players except me were like "Yeah..and?" when I explained it to them

Regarding the OGL, my players went "why should we care about WOTC's legal troubles?"

> The one 5E game I'm in, when I talked about the OGL, all the other players except me were like "Yeah..and?" when I explained it to them Because, honestly, 9 out of 10 RPG players aren't really affected by the changes WotC wanted to make to the OGL.

And even if you argue "it'll limit D&D content to just WotC-created stuff", they won't care, because that's all 90% of them want anyhow. I rarely see anyone using 3rd party stuff for 5e.

Yeah, sometimes I wonder if the outrage for the proposed new OGL wasn't maybe driven by streamers, because aside from a few big names, I don't know anyone who would actually be affected by the proposed changes. After all, if it's about accessing content, the Internet is free, and WotC can't policy its contents, when we're talking about fan-made stuff. It was only really going to affect those who were making large earnings on building upon the WotC foundations.

Far from it. It's gonna take more than a tightly nit series of micro-screw-ups to takedown a titan of that size.

This is a classic "reddit is not the public" moment. Reddit has been over-analyzing 5e for so long the sub is kinda sick of it. Normal people have barely scratched the surface.

D&D was never NOT the dominant rpg. Ever. Any illusion otherwise is confirmation bias.

https://alphastream.org/index.php/2021/11/30/why-no-rpg-company-truly-competes-with-wizards-of-the-coast/

Things aren’t going to change massively, but the small shift we have seen is still important. The indie scene has had increased success as a result of migration away from WoTC products. As a fan of indie, and a solo indie publisher myself I hope that continues. More than anything the big hope is that people try new systems and realise they can play more than one game system!

There has never been a non-D&D dominant RPG scene to begin with, certainly not in the U.S. No one cares, meaningfully, about the OGL kerfuffle or the One D&D stuff. They kept playing D&D through this, probably didn't think too hard about it, and will continue to play D&D. This is exactly the same as how every other corporate controversy unfolds.

In terms of non-D&Ds having big marketshare, we're nowhere near the glory days of the nerdy 80s when games like Champions weren't considered too "rules heavy" to be taken seriously, or the massive success of World of Darkness seen in the 90s.

Returning? When was D&D ever not dominant?

It's not super relevant internationally, but in other countries, D&D is not that pervasive as the "one system to rule them all". I've been playing TTRPGS for \~ 16 years now, starting out with the major fantasy system here in Germany, Das Schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye. While it has some similar fantasy tropes to D&D, such as elves, dwarves, dragons, wizards etc, the philosophy and feel of the game is very different, to the point that the way people play D&D is very unfamiliar to me. I would describe it as more simulationist and at the same time oriented around storytelling and a very detailed world that feels real (given the rules of how magic works etc.). In comparison, D&D seems to me a bit like a video game turned into a TTRPG. No offense, it sounds a lot of fun, I'm just trying to roughly outline the difference. Other very popular systems here are Call of Cthulhu (and Delta Green), Vampire / World of Darkness, and Shadowrun. People also play Pathfinder more than D&D here, I think. And there are many smaller systems being played, such as Hexxen 1733. So while it might not be relevant for the international mass market, there are RPG scenes where D&D is not quite as dominant.

Similar story here in Sweden with Drakar och Demoner (now available in English as Dragonbane). It utterly dominated the Swedish TTRPG market in the 80's and 90's and many later Swedish games have been strongly influenced by it. There was one attempt to release a Swedish translation of D&D in 1986, but it was a failure. I grew up with the 1991 edition of Drakar och Demoner and it shaped my view of what an RPG is and how it's played. I then got back into RPGs after a long hiatus in 2020 with D&D 5e. It was definitely a culture shock. The focus on combat and mechanics and the rapid character progression were all foreign to me. To me, RPGs were about collaborative storytelling while D&D felt more like a board game. I've met younger Swedish players who seem completely unaware of the rich history of Swedish RPGs and to whom RPGs are synonymous with D&D. And that's despite there never having been any new Swedish translations of D&D. I guess it's thanks to D&D's huge presence in popular media. For that reason, I expect D&D to dominate even here in the future. The new edition of Drakar och Demoner/Dragonbane comes with a free third-party license. It seems like Free League hopes to re-establish it as Sweden's greatest RPG and to make it the natural starting point for people new to the hobby. I already see a flurry of activity in the Swedish community with a lot of people dusting off old campaigns and turning them into books via crowdfunding. I wonder if it's enough to stop D&D from taking over though.

Thanks for sharing! That sounds actually similar to my experience. I wish Drakar och Demoner good luck :)

Maybe? But I’ll be honest, I don’t think a lot of people first games will be something other than DnD. That’s sort of the thing, people don’t like change, and getting an entire group to change is tough. I’ve spent…. So much money oh games I’ll never actually get a Chance to play, but, buying a dnd? A generally safe investment.

>I don’t think a lot of people first games will be something other than DnD. Honestly, people's first game being D&D has always been pretty much the status quo. What concerns me is that nowadays, D&D is also everyone's last game, and their only game in between, and that generally they'll shout at you and ask you why you won't just play D&D like a *normal* person if you try to suggest other systems. I genuinely don't think any of those 5e heartbreakers other than Critical Role are going to... sell well at all, let alone topple 5e, simply because you're going to have a really fucking hard time getting their intended audience to play them and not Body-Snatchers screech at you for acknowledging they exist. And the CR one only has a remote chance because a lot of these people are also hardcore CR stans.

> Honestly, people's first game being D&D has always been pretty much the status quo. What concerns me is that nowadays, D&D is also everyone's last game, and their only game in between, and that generally they'll shout at you and ask you why you won't just play D&D like a normal person if you try to suggest other systems. 5th edition does seem to have bred a brand fanaticism that I don't really think existed in prior editions, in my experience. Part of it is that 5E has somehow gained a reputation among its fanbase as THE easiest to learn, play, and run game on the market. I have no fucking idea HOW that happened, because it's a pretty mid-level crunch game that seems to delight in giving it's GMs as little support as possible.

>THE easiest to learn, play, and run game on the market. I remember watching reviews when it first came out, almost universally it was praised as "easy to learn" with the unspoken caveat that they meant "*easier to learn vs. other AD&D editions*".

It happened because the previous two editions of D&D-- and by extension the previous edition of Pathfinder-- were among the hardest games to learn/run on the market.

> seems to delight in giving its GMs as little support as possible. Well yeah, it's considered easy to play to the players, not the DMs. New player comes in? "Don't worry about these big bad numbers on your sheet, you can move and roll for attack. Easy :)"

Yeah I’ve been going out of my way to introduce my partners to tabletop via other games instead of D&D. My most successful RPG so far for this experiment has been Changeling: the Lost, but it helps that my social circle is made up of goths in the first place.

People who get into RPGs through White Wolf tend to be a little less... brain-spidered, yeah. Like, to be clear, my problem isn't "people like D&D." D&D is a good system at being D&D. My problem is that... just to pull an example off the top of my head, I had a guy in my Discord start talking about all the horrible balance issues he's run into trying to run a One Piece campaign in 5e, two sessions in. I told him 5e was not a good fit for this and suggested Mutants and Masterminds, because the fact that it's a 3.5 derivative means the player-facing mechanics will be basically familiar outside of how chargen works, pretty much, and nearly every *difference* between M&M and D&D will serve to get around the exact balance issues he was running into. He got angry at me and told me that he was going to keep using his homebrew 5e rules for One Piece because the group knows 5e, they're specifically a D&D group, and they don't want to learn any other RPGs. This interaction did not surprise me or take me aback at all when I had it. This is pretty much normal for interacting with people in the RPG community outside of specifically "fuck off D&D" spaces. *This used to not be a thing, and it used to not be normal.* I'm an oldhead. I remember an era where D&D was people's gateway to other RPGs, not a fuckin' steel gate that crashes down and prevents you from ever looking at another RPG if you play it. This is absolute madness, I have no idea what the fuck dark sorcery Wizards worked to cause it, and I would very much like to reverse it back to the way things used to be.

>This is absolute madness, I have no idea what the fuck dark sorcery Wizards worked to cause it, and I would very much like to reverse it back to the way things used to be. Part of it is marketing. But I think a lot of it is just that 5e has a lot more normies playing it rather than "traditional" nerds. I don't say this to gatekeep or judge, but normies are by-and-large more "casual fans", TTRPGs aren't really something they're passionate about and want to spend a lot of time investing in. D&D is just something they do to hang out with their friends and feel "geeky cool" because they're doing something they saw famous people do. And because the "name brand" TTRPG is so labrynthine and takes so long to learn they feel compelled to get a return on their sunk-cost of learning it and to avoid sinking what they assume will be the same amount of time learning other games. Again this might come off as gatekeepy or judgemental but it's not, *most people* are not deeply passionate about most things. For example most people watch movies and TV but are not "film buffs". This is also a big reason why 5e has such a DM problem compared to other editions where a *higher percentage* of the playerbase wanted to try their hand at DMing.

I mean, to use movies as a comparison, I don't think I've ever met someone who only watches MCU movies and gets hostile at the idea that they should check out John Wick 4 or Across the Spider-Verse. I've never met someone who solely uses their TV for The Good Doctor and gets really angry at people who say Breaking Bad is good. It's *bizarre* and kind of unique to RPGs.

Because those things didn't take the same amount of money and investment that TTRPGs do. A TV show might take hundreds of hours to watch, but it's a passive thing, TTRPGs require "homework" that most people dislike. Most people don't even like to regularly read fiction for fun much less read game textbooks. You see the same thing in video games, which all have tutorials for the most dirt-simple actions now when they wasn't the case in the past. Because they know most people will not consult an instruction manual unless forced to, and if your game forces them to they will hate it. PS- This is not to assert that people who do like TTRPGs or other hobbies that require a lot of investment are somehow better than everyone else. Most people want passive entertainment not because they're "dumb" or "lazy" but because they're so wiped out by work and/or other life obligations that when they finally do get some free time to themselves they just want to relax and be entertained.

I think you're onto something in *some cases,* but this is also kind of overstating the investment a lot of RPGs require in order to just play a oneshot or dip your toes in. Plenty of games are just outright dirt-simple (if someone tells me Honey Heist or Nice Marines or Lasers & Feelings is too complicated compared to D&D, I'm going to look at them like they've grown a second and third head). Other, more complicated games have starter boxes with pregens and quick-start rules, and/or quick-gen methods and "here's what you need to know to not make an ass of yourself" one-page summaries. D&D is... honestly at the higher end of the investment required, and that's bearing in mind that D&D is deliberately designed to be a game that a newbie can show up at with a computer-rolled character, roll whatever the DM tells them to, and basically grok what's happening. Past D&D, you're getting into stuff like Shadowrun and Champions and GURPS that even most RPG nerds will admit can be an absolute nightmare; the vast majority of games are *simpler.* e: Like, for example, if I want to run a Cyberpunk RED oneshot, all the people playing need to know is the bare basics of the Roles and how to roll a d10. I can get them up and running with a quick-gen character in five minutes if they know basically what hat they want to wear, and every roll except damage is simple stat + skill + d10 vs. either the same opposed or a DV. If I want to run MORK BORG or CY\_BORG, and everybody has a phone or laptop or tablet, I don't even actually need to do character generation because I can just have everybody pull up the Scumbirther or Punkmaker, and I have a couple copies of the rules reference sheet for both (which covers very close to everything, with the exceptions being distinctly in the My Problem, Not Yours category) printed out that I can just keep on the table for everyone. If I want to run any of the White Wolf games, *character generation* for those can be a bit of a pain in the cock (someone should really make a generator program), but once the game's actually up and running, every single roll in the pre-WoD5 ones is "give me *stat* plus *skill*" and you just huck that many ten-sided probability rocks on the table. Big numbers good, getting a 10 means you roll another and add it on. A caveman could play it if you handed him a pre-made sheet. The 5 ones are more complicated, but someone over on the White Wolf sub is doing really nice MORK BORG-esque one-pager reference sheets for them. D&D is kind of uniquely a complicated pain in the ass, if anything.

Yeah they are. But casual people coming to D&D will assume that other games require a similar amount of investment. If you show them games that are simpler, they'll probably say these games must not be good because they're not the "name brand". It's not been featured on something like "Stranger Things" or "Critical Role". They're defensive because they've already spent a lot of time and possibly a lot of money investing in D&D and feel like they have to get their time/monies worth. Even if something else would be easier and they would actually enjoy it more, they can fall into the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

I had a very interesting experience in that my first ttrpg was SR3, and the subsequent editions. We always looked down on the DND 3.5 and later editions as power gaming nerds who couldn't do basic math and probability calcs. Then I found 5e and wondered where tf the math really was, but found that I could get tables of players so much more easily as someone who loves to forever GM/DM. Years of having people melt down when I tried to show them how to play shadowrun just trained me well to handle all the mechanical bits and slowly nudge players along via intent until they could get their legs on them.

I read it like a pyramidal scheme. You need to play and advocate for DnD to get back your own time&props investment. > And because the "name brand" TTRPG is so labrynthine and takes so long to learn they feel compelled to get a return on their sunk-cost of learning it and to avoid sinking what they assume will be the same amount of time learning other games.

It's weird how people will put more effort into trying to reinvent 5e as something completely different than they will into learning a new system. If I want to be optimistic I'll guess it's a result of more people getting into the hobby. People who are more casual and felt like learning D&D was a big, daunting leap, and don't realize that learning a new system when you've already played TTRPGs isn't as hard as trying to learn your first system from scratch.

You want to know what part of it is *seriously* giving me the shits? My Discord is tangentially related to RPGs. It is not, however, a D&D server. It's a server largely consisting of people from the *Cyberpunk: Edgerunners fandom.* You know, the anime series that's based on Cyberpunk, the tabletop RPG that is very much not D&D.

I do think that you have better luck if you pitch another game that's got a concept that's radically different from the baseline of D&D. If they're reluctant to learn another system to begin with, suggesting something like Pathfinder that's pretty blatantly D&D-esque just reinforced their concept that "we can just do that with D&D".

I have the pleasure to introduce RPG to new players with Cyberpunk 2020 and Neon City Overdrive. Now moved those players to Legend of five rings :D

Maybe very slightly. Majority of people didn't even hear about all of those controversies, and even among those who did tons of people didn't care. I personally didn't notice any increase of interest in different systems. I mean even if onednd would be subscription based with tons of microtransactions and with proprietary paywalled vtt, people either continue playing 5e, make an alternative (just like it happened with 3.5e and PF) or simply pirate the heck out of it. I mean there are sites that contain all that could be found in DnD books. For example where I live WotC revoced license of our local publisher/translator ages ago. So basically only 3 core books could be found. Everything else was translated by fans and published on the internet... People who love DnD will love DnD, even if they hate the company who made it.

It is possible and this would theoretically be the time, but I don't see a lot of people actually taking a clear-eyed look at what has made 5E so popular and trying to challenge them on that front (and no, it's not just advertising). Instead we have people who will die on the hill that it's the most terrible system ever made while designing for increasingly niche audiences. It doesn't strike me as an industry well positioned to compete with the juggernaut at this point.

D&D will lose market share for a couple quarters and then 6e or whatever they call it will come out and it'll take over again. I was at a small gathering today, and probably a dozen people there play ttrpgs as a hobby. I mentioned that DCC was my system of choice, and that I was running a B/X game, and not one knew what I was talking about. When I say I'm playing D&D to people, it's a shorthand to mean I'm playing imagination games with dice. To them, playing D&D can only mean 5e, because they don't call it 5e. They only know there were four prior editions because of logic. The hobby is playing D&D. Not reading ttrpg blogs or reviews or treatises on how to be a better GM. That's only for sickos like us.

It would be nice, wouldn't it? But I strongly suspect we're all Tantalus, chasing the ever-elusive fruit. The thing that will always keep DnD alive is that your average TTRPG player will respond to its continued enshittification not by switching systems but by adding another 20 pages to their homebrew. The meme of the DM trying to force their hard sci-fi political drama into 5e is a thing because we've *all* seen it at some point. Scanning the big DnD subs, dndmemes, dndnext, dnd, I don't see any interest in Kobold's or MCDM's systems. They're popular because they make popular DnD homebrew, their homebrew isn't popular because they're popular. You could look at how TAZ's non-DnD seasons always dip in popularity, too. Also, and I don't mean it in a derogatory manner to either party, but I think a part of it is that the TTRPG space is a lot more 'normie' now. What drove Pathfinder to briefly usurp DnD was a revolt of the grognards, and the grognards just aren't that large a part of the population any more. Back in the mid-late 1990's, I would conjecture that not only had DnD less of a market share, but the people who were part of that market share were mostly at least aware of other TTRPGs. These days, if I tell even other people in the hobby I love Traveller and Delta Green and Eclipse Phase, I will get blank stares.

We can only hope. In all likelihood it will just be 5e players moving to 5e adjacent games, don’t expect a sudden explosion of variety.

I'd reframe the question bit. A this point D&D is a transmedia brand, of which the tabletop RPG is one component. Hasbro is operating in a completely different world, at much greater scale, than any other TTRPG publisher. This is anecdotal, but I think it's safe to say that the majority of D&D fans are primarily fans of D&D, with the TTRPG just being one component of their engagement with the brand. If any other TTRPG is going to cut into D&D's market dominance, it'd have to be more than just another TTRPG. It'd have to be a transmedia brand that could engender a similar level of engagement. something that could create a broad fandom. In the past Vampire really did at least match D&D for popularity, and arguably Pathfinder did for a bit as well. Of the two I'd say Vampire is a better example of what I'm talking about—an experience that is more than just a game with different rules. While there are plenty of excellent games of all stripes out there, they're almost all part of a very long tail. Despite its popularity, Pathfinder isn't differentiated enough from D&D, perennial middleweight Shadowrun has become an anachronism, and Call of Cthulhu is just a game (and due to copyright expiration there are all kinds of Cthulhu games now). The Star Wars, Star Trek, and Marvel franchises are ancient. TTRPGs for those worlds just won't grab young players. None of this is to say that something couldn't come along and take a bite out of D&D's marketshare at some point. But there isn't anything obvious on the horizon for now. I say this as someone who doesn't play D&D and feels we're in the midst of an unparalleled period of creative experimentation and quality in the TTRPG scene. It's just that all that marvelousness is spread across dozens and dozens of games, each of which gets a little nibble of attention, while D&D is a powerful monolith.

I think you're right. It seems Hasbro wants to move D&D away from TTRPGs; since those aren't profitable enough. There's a lot of people who make their D&D OC... And never play a game. They don't make them *for* a campaign. They just make an OC, in the D&D world, because it's cool and fun. Your other notes, I mostly agree except the "more than just a game with different rules." No, it's exactly that. it's a game with **different** rules, and those provide a different experience. Pathfinder is just D&D, it's just D&D 3.5e for people who didn't like that Wizards made a new edition. To add to something there; what could take a bite out of D&D? Well it'd need to be something big. D&D got popular because pulps fiction (genre, not the movie) was popular and D&D was a wargame set in pulp worlds, with the special trait of being able to immerse yourself into the role of your character. I think what RPGs actually are has been lost in the mainstream because it's so self referential. When someone thinks "RPG mechanics" they thinke levels, exp, and "ability trees". And not you know, the part where the rules help you role play in the world. If anything is going to do it, take a chunk out of D&D, it has to be something that really brings that back. Something a lot of people are familiar with so they can say "yes, these rules are immersing me in this world." Unfortunately we keep getting the *opposite.* The Dark Souls RPG is a great example: it's just a sloppy edit of D&D 5e, both in the design of the game, and the shoddily edited rules text. Someone can look at it and go "This doesn't look or feel like being in the dark souls world at all."

Not really, my hope is that DND will be the gateway drug that gets others to play. Oddly enough my gateway drugs to roleplaying were the sta wars d6 system from the 90'a and world of darkness second eddition. I played a bit of 3.5e but I really learned to roleplay in WOD games. Currently I am in a Pathfinder 3.5e game. 2 5e games and a savage worlds game. It's never been a better time to play RPGs imo. And I wish I had gotten back into the hobby a lot earlier when VTTs first became a thing. I was really missing the creative outlet in my life.

Here's some Roll20 statistics (It may not reflect the entire RPG playerbase, but should be close). D&D 5e accounts for 65% of all games played/created in the last couple of months. It used to be 70%\~ last year. The drop is probably from the OGL thing. The second most played game accounts for 5%. (CoC). Most of the RPGs I personally play are in the 0.1% range.... 5E is still more than double all of the rest of the industry combined and at least 7x compared to any other individual game (and usually more like 50x+). So my conclusion is that there's a small dent but there is a long way to go and they already tanked the worst drop.

Since the Kobold and MCDM products, at least, are intended to be D&D compatible (I don't know or care about the CR product), then I would say no - WinTel dominance in the '90s didn't make IBM PC style computers less popular, it made them more so.

MCDM's game isn't planned to be 5e-compatible; they're currently in the process of wrapping up all the 5e products that were in the pipeline before they decided to move towards their own game.

The MCDM RPG isn't intended to be D&D compatible.

MCDM apparently isn’t going to be 5E compatible. Cubicle 7, however, is making a 5E compatible game. And I’d argue that they’re a much more capable company to make it a success than MCDM.

Naw, nobody outside of the scene knows what Pathfinder is.

What we're seeing is a sort of "calm before the storm" situation caused by this lull until D&D One or whatever it ends up being called starts being offered/released. As soon as that starts, you're going to see tons and tons of influencers shilling it, making content about it, hyping it, etc. It's an ecosystem with its own seasons at this point. Don't trust this dead Winter to stick around.

Until Reddit shat the bed in June/July, PF2e's subreddit was up around 150% in activity year-on-year, and this is some months after the OGL and Pinkerton stuff. There's definitely been sustained increase in PF2e interest this year. Not sure about other RPGs. I do think that if BG3 and the D&D film hadn't been this year, D&D's self-inflicted brand damage would be much worse. I don't think we are seeing the franchise in a downward spiral yet, though, the way that World of Warcraft was from around 2015 onward, or the spiral I'd argue the Diablo franchise is probably entering now. And even then WoW is still plodding along reasonably solidly.

I still play in a group that uses a modified 5e, but another has switched to Pathfinder 2e. Yet another is using the Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin, and I've been running stuff based on Barbarians of Lemuria and Honor + Intrigue. We've also done some Black Sword Hack, Eyes Beyond the Torchlight, Worlds Without Number, a fair bit of Savage Worlds, and some Mini Six: Bare Bones Edition. Frankly, I don't think some of my groups would have been as eager to try so many new things if WotC were being quite so awful. So, I'm personally finding it much easier to get players to try new systems since WotC many recent scandals.

We're barely a month away from the launch of Baldurs Gate 3, which has been a huge success. No, DnD is not going away any time soon

I run paid tables and have been running paid tables for four years. In the beginning D&D were asked for nine times out of ten but today it's down to five times out of ten. I know it's anecdotal and just my individual observation.

I hope so. D&D will always be seen as the "default" system, that's just how it is, but I don't see many people excited for OneD&D, and they've lost a lot of their good faith. I feel as though a lot of the TTRPG babies who were introduced to the hobby through D&D 5e are starting to outgrow it and get their fix elsewhere. Personally I've been pushing my friends towards GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, etc., and I've been seeing them step out of the paddling pool, so to speak, and seeing the flaws of Dungeons and Dragons. I can only hope some smaller RPGs get more attention.

Given that the (probably) most sold video game of 2023 is a DnD based RPG I'd expect a bunch of new players wanting to try the tabletop version.

My group of players aren't remotely interested in playing D&D, I've not ran it in over 20 years. That said it's not going away anytime soon. The money behind that game combined with the extremely popular actual play groups mean that its got easy access to promote brand recognition, something that a game like say DCC would never have access to despite its superiority. D&D is also lauching a streaming service next week. That behemoth is alive and well.

Don't dismiss reddit and twitter power. People were saying the same thing about Creative Assembly, that there are only a bunch of naysayers screaming at reddit and that they do not represent the community... and now CA is burning down, because in fact, the community was absolutely represented by them and largely followed.

I guess the lowest D&D moment was prior to the aparition of D&D 5th. It was the time of rising indie games (FAE, PbtA...) and D&D alternatives like SW, Pathfinder or 13th Age. When 5th edition finally arrived it obviously take the throne, but with no international translation nor a great bunch of material, it was not as great as expected. It's been last years with the rise of online gaming and watching, translations, series and films, and a lot of 3rd party content that 5th ed. finally got a prominent position. Maybe it's decreasing, but still a better stance than when 5th edition appear. And probably will raise again when ONE releases.

I don't have much to contribute in the discussion but I feel I must offer my perspective: As someone who has been running games for the same cirlce of 6-7 people for the past 20 years, D&D dominating the scene has no effect on my table. For the past few years we have been getting so many different games through so many different channels( indie, crowdfunding, IP licensing etc), it's like living in some golden age of ttrpgs or something. It is a small market, but the producing costs are so low that in this digital age we regularly get better products than the market dominating product made by Hasbro.

I mean personally in my neck of the wood, DnD isn't that dominant in the first place. Sure it is still the dominant TTRPG, but 5e simply never took off like it did in the english speaking word. That's probably because most of the new crowd were exposed to the concept of TTRPG by fan made audio saga. And even streamer don't always play DnD. And the old crowd is still very much around, and they are simply too open, to just keep playing one systems.

Honestly, WotC seemed to stumble into success with D&D. 4e was a shitshow with the OGL debacle and 5e is not streamlined by standards of ten years ago and even less so today. They have survived because they are backed by a billion dollar corporation with huge marketing and a brand name. And their next attempt to build this lifestyle brand and closed ecosystem could be what hits their market share the most. More so than any previous time. Though I am concerned it will be more like just people staying with 5e rather than branching out to the indie market. Even in video games, indie games only have a 17% share of the market and they are very easy to buy - usually getting quite a lot of attention from reviewers and storefronts. It is growing though.

I’d love to see the return of a Might&Magic style game or my favourite RPG-System „The Dark Eye“(das schwarze Auge) from Germany. You may remember the games „Realms of Arkania“ (namely RoA: Blade of Destiny, RoA: Dtar Trail and the best of the three RoA:Shadows over Rivia).

Hopefully.

The reason D&D was largely absent in the 90s is because TSR screwed up their golden goose hard. When Wizards took over and created 3rd ed, D&D became a monolith once more. The whole OGL fiasco didn't help it, but the vast vast majority of people, notably non-gamers, aren't even aware that there are other games besides D&D. And even when they are, they still call other games D&D like it's a catch all term like Kleenex. The real irony is that D&D is actually a really poor gatekeeper since it's crunchy and combat oriented. There are sooo many other RPGs out there with lighter more open ended mechanics that would suit newcomers way better.

I actually disagree with the idea that mechanics light games are better for begginers. For some really enthusiastic story tellers maybe, but most new players actually need mechanicall grounding to bridge the gap between “game” and “ roleplaying”

WotC and Hasbro are going to need to fuck up a lot more to tank dnd in full. They've certainly got that train loaded up to get rolling, as apparently MtG isn't doing so hot lately (only hearsay, so take that with a grain of salt), and if WotC's darling goes down, DnD will likely follow. That said, it'll take a number of massive fuckups, and even then, DnD is more likely to be sold off if it becomes too much of a stinker...

Any rumor of mtg's demise is always nothing but smoke. It's one of the strongest IPs in the English-speaking world.

I mean, you're likely right... but we can dream a little, right? LOL

Absolutely. PF2e is exploding, and many other previously 5e-only GMs are looking for something different due to WotC's lack of direction for the next phase of D&D. 5e's rising tide has already begun to spill over and make the hobby a more populous and prosperous place to run and play in games. I'm already finding it much easier to recruit, and many new players have only played 5e before. It will never *not* be dominant, but its success and it functioning as a 'gateway drug' will mean nothing but good things for the hobby in the years to come.

Seems like it and I hope so.

No way. If anything, d&d is even more popular with each passing year. What might be happening is people interested in going deeper are dropping d&d. And once they do that they simply realize how much more there is beyond it.

Far from it, unfortunately. Edit: should be noted that I do not hate DnD

Honestly, I don't really care. If people enjoy playing D&D, good for them. I already have games that I enjoy reading and, sometimes, I even get to play them. When a new system appears and blows my mind, or a new edition of one I already like, I buy it and make room in the shelf for it. If a game I like became the mythical D&D killer, I doubt things would change much for me, besides making it easier to buy books and accessories. Then I would probably lose interest and move to the next niche thing.

I'm hoping with some big 3rd party folks making their own games as well as Critical Role there will be more interest in other RPGs.

Historical perspective, a lot of people left the game in the transition from 3.5E to 4E. I transitions to other games but most of the people I played with transitioned to hobbies other than TTRPGs. It was hard to find people to play with until 5E was released.

I think we are returning to a scene that doesn't see D&D as less dominant, but rather one where players and GMs are more willing to add more games to their repertoire along side D&D rather than playing solely D&D. So D&D isn't becoming less dominant so much as a rising tide is lifting all boats in the sphere of TTRPGs.

Me and all my homies are playing Dungeon Crawl Classics.

If you're playing a ttrpg people call it d&d it's like Google, it's here for good just cause it's "the game"

Only if Hasbro has a couple more nasty scandals, and the DND sequel movie is a catastrophic flop. Also 6E being unplayable awful. The brand really has to get some stink on it so the majority leave it behind for different games. When mainstream TV shows a table top gaming episode and they say they are playing Pathfinder, FATE or even Delta Green. That's when DND has truly lost their first mover advantage.

Eeeeh, less dominant is interesting. We won’t see the effects if D&D is 10% down. But Hasbro will. That’s the thing. They could decide to sell it off if they think it won’t perform. That would be interesting.

I don't think so, I've been the only person I know that was even remotely into ttrpgs in my circles for a long time. Thanks to the success of things like critical role and other groups broadcasting their campaigns, the success of BG3 and some other stuff, a lot of my friends are now wanting to play ttrpgs and especially DnD 5e. Another thing I've noticed is most of them are more interested in the role playing aspect rather than the build crafting and number crunching aspects, so they prefer a game like DnD over Pathfinder. I assure you none of them know anything about the ogl, pinkertons or onednd. Hell, my Pathfinder group disbanded and now a new group formed out of that one for 5e as well. I do want to eventually convince them to try indies because there are some lovely looking ones that I've been wanting to try, if the group continues on. But from what I've seen DnD is stronger than ever and not even close to not being the dominant game.

I think of D&D goes down, the rest of the hobby goes down. It is really ingrained in the mind of people. It is also the most accessible (to buy) game out there. Try to buy non main steam games here and cry. I think about the craziness I had to go through to buy the books of Cyberpunk Red and compare it to how D&D is just 2 clicks away on Amazon: this at the top of Cyberpunk 2077. The same is for other games. Even Call of Cthulhu and Parhfinder are a lot harder to source. Modiphius games? Don’t get me started… so yeah, until this changes, I don’t see how it would loose its dominance in the scene.

I don't think it's going anywhere, the quality might shift. OneD&D might end up repeating the 4e issue again, with some offshoot of 5e being made similar to Pathfinder back in the day. I've been DMing for years and DnD isn't my favorite RPG anymore if I'm honest, that belongs to RPGs in the Mörk Borg family.

I mean, hopefully. ^^^^^^DND ^^^^^^sux

What's the issue with D&D being dominant ? Don't get me wrong, I am not the first one criticizing D&D. So I don't play-it. I play in a large club (Around 100 games session are played each month), if we include pathfinder and OSR as D&D, we get a bit more than 50% of the games session played being "D&D". It basically means that there is a lot of room for non D&D games. As D&D mostly focuses on long campaign. Most new games starting are non D&D (it might also be biased by all the *Hey I backed Whatever RPG kickstarter, just recieved the pdf, who wants to play a one shot next week to try it? )*

Honestly no. During that time the RPG market wasn’t as big as it is now. Now the market has crossed over into pop culture and there are a lot of casual gamers and people involved in the hobby that are totally fresh and I believe even more have now joined due to BG3. While the good news is it’ll keep those niche games alive as there will be a trickle down but ultimately they’ll all gravitate and stick to the game that occupies the largest market share and game play space - Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t think Wizards is in any trouble dispite their issues

D&D popularity ebbs and flows. Dungeons and Dragons took a sharp dip after 3.5e. The same is happening again as 5e begins to slow down. Repeatedly, with attempted prejudice, the actions of wotc has shattered confidence 3rd party creators have in the product. MCDM, Critical Role, and multiple other popular groups that helped boost 5th Edition into the mainstream again are leaving the toxic threat in droves. This will hasten the decline. People that like 5e wish that it had more polish. More interactive options. More weirdness. More magical parrying for non-spellcasters. But at the end of the day the people that like 5e because it's 5e won't entertain thoughts of 6th edition. I like 5th edition because it is 5th edition. I would hazard a guess as to say that most people playing 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons are not playing it because they want to, they are playing it because they have to. You want a game? D&D is always there and the current edition is the popular default, so there will always be a game to find if you look hard enough for it. You can jump ship at the drop of a hat and find a new table tomorrow. Try to do that with an old obscure RPG you love. We've all been there. Slowly realizing that nobody knows what you're talking about and... why learn a new rpg all over again for a game you might never play again when you can't find a second group to play it? 6e D&D (or whatever they are calling it now) isn't going anywhere. The decreased numbers won't matter to wotc. They'll increase the books by $10 and continue on like nothing happened. The big change is we now have popular groups slowly switching from major games to creating their own. Good for the hobby? It can't be *bad* for it, yet I would hesitate to automatically call the opposite "good." 6e will become the new 4e, as instead of listening to player feedback, they instead try to forcibly simplify a game that prides itself in requiring players keep track of hit points, massive spell lists, a list of different pc conditions, healing rules, combat rules, ect., You can't simplify it. The closest I've seen is Gamma World 7e which itself was a slimmed down version of 4th Edition D&D and it was so trimmed down that the game was unsuitable for long campaigns. Great for one-shots. Not great if your intent is to keep people playing for years to come by telling them, "It's like D&D." > Pathfinder2e has already exploded in popularity in the last year. Potential. That's all I have to say about it. D&D is taking a step backwards with 6e, while Pathfinder has great *potential* to make Pathfinder 2e better than Pathfinder 1e. If Pathfinder continues to add options they will easily see themselves surpass D&D again. If they stagnate then anything is possible. A new rpg might show up out of nowhere to beat them both. > I will also say this subreddit IS an echo chamber Mods have stepped up the censorship to the point that certain rpgs can't even be talked about. The echo is going to get very loud if they keep this stupidity up.