D&D 5E An 18-year old's take on 5E

[Trickster Spirit]

Well of course it isn't ALWAYS true but I'm guessing that it is USUALLY true, by simple logic. Let's say that the majority of players start sometime in the age 10-15 range. Some older (like yourself - presumably in your late teens?), some younger. Depending upon which games were extant at the time one started, one is likely to start with that game.

I was first exposed to D&D when I was 7 or 8, but didn't get really into it until a year or two later. This was the early 80s, when the main versions in publication were AD&D and the B/X boxes. I was gifted four hardcover AD&D books, so that was where I started. I didn't even know about OD&D until the internet era. Now maybe if I started in my early 20s, in the mid-90s, I might have started with 2E - but again, we tend to start with what's popular at the time.

I'm not arguing against you necessarily, but I'd question your initial assumption here - do the majority of new players start sometime in the age 10-15 range?

It's an interesting question to me - Mearls mentioned at one point Wizards had data saying the average D&D player was college aged, which implies the playerbase skews more towards kids / teens than older gamers, but they also explicitly designed the 5E experience table to have campaigns fit the college academic year. That implies to me that there actually are a lot of college age players, rather than just being the result of averaging groups above and below them.

So are most of those players picking up the game from a younger age and just finding groups in college, or do colleges serve as a propagation vehicle for generating new D&D players?

I.e., what percentage of middle-school / high-school players form new groups when they get to college, and do the 4-6 new college age players they each introduce to the game outnumber the amount of middle-school / high-school players picking up the game in the first place?

 

[Nellisir]

So are most of those players picking up the game from a younger age and just finding groups in college, or do colleges serve as a propagation vehicle for generating new D&D players?

College was definitely a propogation vehicle for me. I attended a small high school, and while I had a large collection of D&D material, I never played a game until college. During college, I ran or played in at least two campaigns pretty much every semester, 6-7 people per campaign, with maybe half of them overlapping. And there were other games/campaigns that I wasn't involved in.

Outside of college, it's been one campaign at a time, with long breaks in between, and very little overlap in players. I have to find new ones each time for various reasons. (they move, I move, lose touch, fall out, etc.)

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=6701829]Trickster Spirit[/MENTION], I have no idea. Maybe it is overly obvious to say this, but I imagine that there are 2-3 large cohorts: those that began in middle school, those in high school, and those in college. What percentage belongs in each, who knows, but I imagine the answer is "a lot" - meaning, each group is probably 20-40% of all players, with <10% starting before middle school or after college.

 

[Umbran]

True story. It's easy to forget how much the hobby has changed and grown since 3E was launched, and how much time has passed since then.

Consider this:
3e was published in 2000.
Facebook opened its doors in 2004.
Twitter came along in 2006.

Social media, as we now understand it, is post-3e. Now go and feel old somewhere

 

[Trickster Spirit]

[MENTION=6701829]Trickster Spirit[/MENTION], I have no idea. Maybe it is overly obvious to say this, but I imagine that there are 2-3 large cohorts: those that began in middle school, those in high school, and those in college. What percentage belongs in each, who knows, but I imagine the answer is "a lot" - meaning, each group is probably 20-40% of all players, with <10% starting before middle school or after college.

Yeah, that is overly obvious.

I would say pretty much the same, though. What I'd be more interested in though is seeing the differences in the pie-chart for each decade - i.e. what cohort did players who started between 1974-1984 belong to, vs. 1984-1994, 1994-2004, 2004-2014, etc.

I wonder if it's changed appreciably in that time - if nowadays, for example teenagers or college students are more likely to pick up that game than middle-schoolers. I have no idea, but it's interesting to speculate how that might change Wizards' business strategy. The forums skew towards hardcore fans more than casual players, but they also skew older - if the majority of new D&D players are even younger and have less disposable income than I, that could explain a lot.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well of course it isn't ALWAYS true but I'm guessing that it is USUALLY true, by simple logic. Let's say that the majority of players start sometime in the age 10-15 range. Some older (like yourself - presumably in your late teens?), some younger. Depending upon which games were extant at the time one started, one is likely to start with that game.

I didn't start playing until my early 20s. I think, really there's a bit of a 'biased sample' here, as folks who are into D&D and have kids or are around other adults who have kids are more likely to introduce them to their kids at a younger age. I think I knew one group of kids back when I was 12 who played but they tended to be regarded as the ultra-wierdo-nerds that even nerdy kids like me didn't want to hang out with.

 

[Mercurius]

I didn't start playing until my early 20s. I think, really there's a bit of a 'biased sample' here, as folks who are into D&D and have kids or are around other adults who have kids are more likely to introduce them to their kids at a younger age. I think I knew one group of kids back when I was 12 who played but they tended to be regarded as the ultra-wierdo-nerds that even nerdy kids like me didn't want to hang out with.

"Back in my day" (talking about sounding old), we pretty much taught ourselves to play. I think there were one or two older kids around who had played before, but I remember lugging around AD&D books in my backpack as early as 3rd or 4th grade, and not really understanding half of the rules, but absolutely loving it.

I didn't play much in junior high for various reasons, but started up again in high school - which is when 2E came out. In this "second wave" of gaming we began to follow the rules more closely, although still pretty much ignored things like encumbrance. But there were no more +12 Vorpal Double Spearswords of Absolute Power. After another hiatus in my late teens and early 20s, I played for a bit in my late-early 20s, with a similar more serious approach to the rules. Another hiatus, and next I was playing 3E, with an even more "by the book" approach. It is a bit of a tangent, but my point is that I had different phases of playing separated by multi-year hiatuses, so in a way I had a glimpse of "starting new" a few times - and each time was different, involved closer adherence to the rules, partially due to greater comprehension.

But of greater relevance, I'm wondering if it is a generational thing. I'm a "D&D Boomer" - meaning, of the second generation of D&D players that started in the boom years of the late-70s to mid-80s. There were tons of us, and I'm guessing a larger percentage of middle school-to-junior high demographic that I'm talking about than in later generations.

 

[Iosue]

But of greater relevance, I'm wondering if it is a generational thing. I'm a "D&D Boomer" - meaning, of the second generation of D&D players that started in the boom years of the late-70s to mid-80s. There were tons of us, and I'm guessing a larger percentage of middle school-to-junior high demographic that I'm talking about than in later generations.

I was going to suggest just this. I suspect those of us who came into the game in the 80s skew younger, due to both the fad factor and the fact that Basic Sets were easily available at most toy stores and toy sections of department stores. With 3e, while "starter sets" certainly existed, the primary entry port of the game was the Big Three, or at the least the PHB. Even with these available in most major bookstores, it's the kind of product aimed at someone with their own disposable income. On the whole, there were probably more 11 year olds asking their parents to buy the Basic box sets than there were asking their parents to buy a 3e PHB. Or consider Wil Wheaton, who got into the game because his aunt or someone bought him a Red Box for Christmas.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Consider this:
3e was published in 2000.
Facebook opened its doors in 2004.
Twitter came along in 2006.

Social media, as we now understand it, is post-3e. Now go and feel old somewhere

D&D players know that getting old is awesome. Your AC and THAC0 go down and your HP, MR, spells known, and damage all go up every age category.

 

[Fralex]

D&D players know that getting old is awesome. Your AC and THAC0 go down and your HP, MR, spells known, and damage all go up every age category.

Not to mention your hearing and eyesight!
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0218.html