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

TheSword said:

I’ll revise that to ‘difficult to conceive of something accurately’

I was able to conceive of my Birthright campaign as an heroic political dynastic epic… reality can definitely get in the way.

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I agree, to an extent.

In my experience, I have been able to accurately conceive of the inclusion of Malört in my cocktails with a 100% success rate. I simply conceive that it will taste like someone poured hot garbage down my throat that had been marinating in the sewers of hell, and I find that the reality invariably matches my prediction.

Thomas Shey said:

That ignores my point. If you had five companies that, collectively, had half the reach D&D does, I fail to believe that would leave the industry dying. Because D&D itself didn't have that reach at some points in its history.

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My point is if D&D disappeared and no other RPG company promoted another RPG to the massive scale similar to D&D, would TTRPGs grow, shrink, or remain the same?

I fear the middle one.

DarkCrisis said:

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

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First, I can't try everything I might possibly enjoy. Second, I simply disagree. I know what I enjoy and what I want out of a game. All I need in many cases is a brief description.

I'm perfectly happy with D&D. If I wasn't (like towards the end of 4E) I'd consider my options. But the rules support the kind of game I enjoy, I and the people I play with are having fun. I have zero motivation to try other games if I even had the opportunity to do so.

You keep implying that if the sheeple would only wake up they'd realize that there are better games out there. Maybe there are better games for me, maybe not. Would the people I currently play with happen upon a game that all of us enjoy more than D&D? I kind of doubt it.

Minigiant said:

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.

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Well, that's just plain old hipster gatekeeping. Some people want the things they partake of to be limited to a small audience, because it lets them style themselves as different from the witless masses who just follow whatever's popular. These are the people who get upset when a band or author makes it big, because suddenly knowing about them doesn't make you part of the "insider elite". They want to be the ones hoarding the special knowledge and dispensing it to those they deem worth.

I'm all too familiar with this attitude, having seen it crop up in just about every field of geek interest I've spent time in. Also from observing my father, who had impossible standards for what was "real Science Fiction" and traded in bootleg concert tapes because he didn't feel like studio recordings captured the "real sound" of the musician.

Give me the big tent any day. Not because some marketing executive demanded the product be watered down to appeal to some imagined lowest common denominator, but because it's a high quality product with a wide appeal that brings together people of all backgrounds and interests. That diversity brings far more innovation and fresh creativity than trying to restrict it to a self-appointed elite.

Yes, D&D did have first mover advantage. And they capitalized on that. Pick any industry, there is always one top dog, in lot of cases, one who first managed to quire most of market share. I'm on car forums, and in most topics about BEVs, 90% of talk is about Tesla. Love or hate it, but Tesla is placeholder name for BEV. Same with the D&D, they are placeholder name in TTRPG space. Benchmark of sorts, golden standard.

If smaller games have trouble with audience capture, then it's up to them to ramp up their marketing.

TTRPGs are businesses first and foremost. So do what all other businesses do when they compete in a market dominated by one giant. Better product with better marketing for lower price if you go for mainstream audience. That or target niches that are not covered by that one big guy, grow your customer base, and slowly move more and more into territory of the big guy. To give another analogy, couple of years ago, Xiaomi was no name chinese brand of cheap phones with solid specs and that was their selling point. Skip to today, and we have Xiaomi phones with 1000 euro price tag and they rival Samsung S series in sales. They grew from 4% to 22% market share in 4 years.

Oofta said:

First, I can't try everything I might possibly enjoy. Second, I simply disagree. I know what I enjoy and what I want out of a game. All I need in many cases is a brief description.

I'm perfectly happy with D&D. If I wasn't (like towards the end of 4E) I'd consider my options. But the rules support the kind of game I enjoy, I and the people I play with are having fun. I have zero motivation to try other games if I even had the opportunity to do so.

You keep implying that if the sheeple would only wake up they'd realize that there are better games out there. Maybe there are better games for me, maybe not. Would the people I currently play with happen upon a game that all of us enjoy more than D&D? I kind of doubt it.

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I never said any of that. What I said was different games exist that are fun for different reasons and you/they won't know if you enjoy it or not until you try it. It's taking a couple hours to try a different game. Not skydiving or learning latin.

You seem to be taking this all very personal. Play/Don't play whatever you want. I'm glad you are so steadfast in NOT trying new and different things. Wish I could do that. I/We are always trying new games but we always come back to D&D.

What makes it harder is that in most cases it isn’t even whether we ourselves are up to trying something new. It’s whether we are able to to articulate that and convince up to half a dozen other people with variations in tastes and appeal to do the same.

There are definitely circumstances that can make it easier.

Unique IP - This is a lot easier to do when the alternative has some clear Unique Selling Points. I was able to convince one of my groups to play a campaign in WFRP 4e because they like the fee Warhammer Old World and they were familiar with it from novels and the wargame. Similarly I’m hoping to convince a group to try either Imperium Maledictum or the Alien RPG. Based on the strength of the IP I’m pretty confident.

Great Campaign - I convinced another group to embark on a 2 year + WFRP campaign because the Enemy Within is a great campaign. Just like Curse of Strahd was the tipping point to try 5e and Rise of the Runelords to try Pathfinder. These campaigns guided and informed our early engagements with the new ruleset.

DM Fiat - One of the advantages of being a long time DM playing with friends is that if I say I really want to do something trust me folks - I’m pretty likely to get a chance to do it for at least three or four sessions as a trial. When I started my Skull and Shackles game for a relatively new group that I played with on and off a few times - I just told them it was set in WFRP. Four sessions in and all is going well.

I’m sure there are other great hooks that can make it easier to persuade people to switch/try new systems.

On the flip side…

• Not having VTT capability
• Not having a published adventure to run
• Being an only slightly modified version of a system I already know.

Means that it becomes harder to convince people - to the point where I probably wouldn’t even try.

More than anything else - I think convincing a sceptical group of time-poor folks to switch requires a compelling vision of the campaign from the DM more than anything else. I’m not ashamed to say I expect to have at least part of that vision provided for me.

DarkCrisis said:

I never said any of that. What I said was different games exist that are fun for different reasons and you/they won't know if you enjoy it or not until you try it. It's taking a couple hours to try a different game. Not skydiving or learning latin.

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Which is what I disagree with. There's many things I don't have to try to know I wouldn't enjoy them. In addition, it's great if you have the opportunity to "try something for a couple of hours" but that simply isn't the reality for most people. If I wanted to try a different game, it would require significant time and effort.

DarkCrisis said:

You seem to be taking this all very personal. Play/Don't play whatever you want. I'm glad you are so steadfast in NOT trying new and different things. Wish I could do that. I/We are always trying new games but we always come back to D&D.

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Different strokes for different folks. Which is all I'm trying to say. You stating that other people should try other things falls flat because for many people there simply isn't a reason to do so.

I'm not taking it personally. I just disagree.

TheSword said:

People talk about money, but in truth money is rarely the reason people don’t try new RPGs. Often the DM/person-trying-to-persuade has already bought and paid for the rules. Or the rules are pretty darn cheap. I maintain that easy routes of access is the biggest issue.

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Money is not the only cost in picking up a new game. It takes time and effort - typically spent in the same free time you'd be using to play your current favorite game. So, it would be asking someone to put down something that they are pretty happy with, and spend time spinning up on something else, in the hopes that it'd be even better.

For a lot of folks, leisure time is at a premium. I can see why many don't spend that on a maybe, when they have a decent certainty already in hand.

Minigiant said:

Is there anything stopping TTRPGs from having 3-5 huuuuge corporations/companies?

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Well, the fact that TTRPGs themselves are not "huuuuge" money?

The fact that the gaming population, even if they had oodles of free cash, probably don't have oodles of free time to play, and so most of us don't have much call to buy multiple systems and their supplements.

Umbran said:

Money is not the only cost in picking up a new game. It takes time and effort - typically spent in the same free time you'd be using to play your current favorite game. So, it would be asking someone to put down something that they are pretty happy with, and spend time spinning up on something else, in the hopes that it'd be even better.

For a lot of folks, leisure time is at a premium. I can see why many don't spend that on a maybe, when they have a decent certainty already in hand.

Well, the fact that TTRPGs themselves are not "huuuuge" money?

The fact that the gaming population, even if they had oodles of free cash, probably don't have oodles of free time to play, and so most of us don't have much call to buy multiple systems and their supplements.

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Sure. Time is precious. If we assume that some folks will never switch and other folks will switch at the drop of a hat… the interesting bit is what could make folks in the middle be willing to change.

Games that want to be played need to work at making that process as easy as possible. If they did that then the Rising Tide that is 5e really does provide an amazing opportunity to grow your own product.