D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[Swanosaurus]

It's dismissive to tell people that they would like something if they just tried it.

Yes, it is.
But telling some one: "Will you try this with me? I'm ready to do most of the work, and I think you might like it" is not the same. You can still say no. but expecting the other person to continue investing their time into something they are less interested in for your sake is a little much.

I mean, my kids would eat pasta with soy sauce every day, three times a day, if I let them. Leaving health issues aside, I also just don't want to cook the same thing every day, even if it's just pasta. It's no fun. And I don't want to always cook separately for them. So sometimes, they get pasta, and sometimes, they get what I want to eat. They can't expect that I'll cook pasta for them and everyone in the house all the time just because they know that this is what they like best. They're not the only ones with preferences.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How it became the dominant game isn't a minor issue. A lot of critics of D&D insist that it's only dominant because it happened to be first, but in reality it became dominant and continues to be dominant because it is a really good game that has many features that make it really fun for a very broad range of people.

Your statement here isn't any more automatically correct than theirs.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yes, it is.
But telling some one: "Will you try this with me? I'm ready to do most of the work, and I think you might like it" is not the same. You can still say no. but expecting the other person to continue investing their time into something they are less interested in for your sake is a little much.

I mean, my kids would eat pasta with soy sauce every day, three times a day, if I let them. Leaving health issues aside, I also just don't want to cook the same thing every day, even if it's just pasta. It's no fun. And I don't want to always cook separately for them. So sometimes, they get pasta, and sometimes, they get what I want to eat. They can't expect that I'll cook pasta for them and everyone in the house all the time just because they know that this is what they like best. They're not the only ones with preferences.

Well, I'm not sure it's particularly productive to analogize players to children, and the GM to a parent. ¯\(ツ)/¯

That said, you're not wrong. I truly believe that there is a lot to be gained by trying to expose people to new things, and the best way to do this is to sell them on it! When you share what you love about something, it can be contagious and amazing!

Unfortunately, we don't see a lot of that. Earlier, I alluded to a very unfortunate and infamous past comment, that stated that people that played D&D had, well, it rhymes with lane ramage.

And we see similar things here- people spend all their time talking about how horrible D&D is! Well, if you're trying to convince someone to play something else, you're usually not going to get very far by telling them that what they are doing sucks, and they are a terrible person for liking it.

Instead, try and sell them on everything that is awesome and excellent about the things they should try. You don't get very far by telling people that what they're doing sucks; but you can get places by showing how enthusiastic you are about something else.

 

[Swanosaurus]

I'm not saying there aren't other factors, of course there are. My original comment was to point out that the claim that people only or primarily like D&D because it's their first RPG they've played is false. If it wasn't a really good game they wouldn't enjoy it, and so it is wrong to say that if someone prefers D&D to CoC it's simply because they've been ruined by D&D.

I agree. But I would still say that "what you played first" is a factor - as has been pointed out, a lot of people like to stick with the familiar, and it is simply a lot more likely that you will start your gamer carreer with D&D than with any other game. So it's a factor. On the other hand, people wouldn't stick with D&D if they wouldn't like it.

To me it's just normal to play lots of RPGs ... when I grew up, we just got our hands on every RPG that we could find and tried it. We didn't see ourselves as "The Dark Eye" players, just as roleplayers. Still, "The Dark Eye" set some of out preferences, because it was our first, and sometimes, it seemd weird how other games would do stuff. Sometimes weird in a good way (like Pendragon, CoC), sometimes in a bad way (like AD&Ds spell slots, which just seemed absurdly complicated to us, since we were already used to Power Points), and sometimes we just didn't get a game at all (like Traveller).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's dismissive to tell people that they would like something if they just tried it.

On the other hand, its a big leap to assume everyone playing has tried other games enough to know. Neither is a useful way to approach this question.

 

[Minigiant]

Simply put, but accurate. There's a thing called the Network Effect, where the appeal of good or service increases with the number of people already using it. When you pick a social media service, you want the one with a lot of users because that's where the people you want to talk to are. When you pick an MMORPG, you're likely to go with the one that your friends are already playing.

It's the same with TTRPGs. The dominant game in the market will attract the most new players because it's easy to find groups for that game, and there are lively online discussion hubs for it, and there's a large supply of books to support it. If D&D was dethroned, another would rise to take its place in similarly dominant fashion. The market forces at work wouldn't have changed.

When I see people make these complaints, the heart of it always seems to be "I want more people to play the games that I want to play, and I don't want to play D&D." And the solution to that is to go out and recruit. Yes, it's harder to sell people on some small niche game system than it is for familiar reliable D&D. Killing D&D won't help with that. You may love your small alternative TTRPG, but the chance that it would rise to fill D&D's vacant spot at the top is tiny.

The worst part is that some people want to overtake D&D or whatever the market leader is and replace it with a competitior that they want to actively not appeal to the masses.

A niche top dog who doesn't care about the whole community is a quick path to stagnation and death of the hobby.

Someone has to be the top dog, my dawg.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Well, I'm not sure it's particularly productive to analogize players to children, and the GM to a parent. ¯\(ツ)/¯

[...]

And we see similar things here- people spend all their time talking about how horrible D&D is! Well, if you're trying to convince someone to play something else, you're usually not going to get very far by telling them that what they are doing sucks, and they are a terrible person for liking it.

Instead, try and sell them on everything that is awesome and excellent about the things they should try. You don't get very far by telling people that what they're doing sucks; but you can get places by showing how enthusiastic you are about something else.

Point taken on the analogy

I'm not sure that I see a lot of down-talking of D&D here in this thread. It's probably a matter of perspective. As I said, I don't hate D&D (and would absolutely play it, I just don't want to run it).

 

[DarkCrisis]

I've test driven Teslas and didn't care for them. I've done one shots with other games and they just didn't bring anything that made them more enticing than D&D. I know the general shape and performance of pickup trucks and know they're not for me without even a test drive. I knew before I tried it that I wouldn't care for Sushi (technically sashimi, which in the US for better or worse is pretty much synonymous 99% of the time) and was not surprised when I tried it and didn't like it. It doesn't matter that I've tried it multiple times because people keep insisting that I just haven't had good sushi. Sometimes just know what they want and don't need to spend significant effort to try other things to know they won't care for it.

It's dismissive to tell people that they would like something if they just tried it.

Not saying you will like it, im saying you wont know if you dont TRY.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not saying there aren't other factors, of course there are. My original comment was to point out that the claim that people only or primarily like D&D because it's their first RPG they've played is false. If it wasn't a really good game they wouldn't enjoy it, and so it is wrong to say that if someone prefers D&D to CoC it's simply because they've been ruined by D&D.

There's a massive excluded middle ground here.

D&D can very well be a competent game that suits people well enough they can enjoy playing it over an extended period, but that would not be as successful if it didn't have the early-entry benefit it has. It doesn't have to be all about that early benefit, but ignoring that ends up begging the question of whether if it had not been that early entry case it would be as successful today.

Basically, a certain amount of quality is a necessary component of its success, but it doesn't say its the only, or necessarily even the primary component of that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The worst part is that some people want to overtake D&D or whatever the market leader is and replace it with a competitior that they want to actively not appeal to the masses.

A niche top dog who doesn't care about the whole community is a quick path to stagnation and death of the hobby.

Someone has to be the top dog, my dawg.

Even if technically someone has to be the top dog, there is zero need for that someone to be orders of magnitude bigger than anyone else.