Forked Thread: [Ryan Dancey's D&D Death Spiral] - D&D doomed to cult status?

[Nellisir]

I think DnD gotten much less mainstream over the years. I'm around the same age you are and my observation is that it was a lot more mainstream when I was a kid.

I think there's some ...interpretation... about what "mainstream" means. D&D, in my experience, has much more public acceptance than it did in the '80s. I doubt it's still a staple example of satanism (I saw that film in theology class). No one blinks if I buy a D&D book in Borders. The conventions of fantasy and fantasy games are unarguably much more familiar to the "mainstream" public now than they were in 1988. Whether or not the actual numbers of D&D players have grown or shrunk, D&D has become a small part of a much larger market. In the early '80s, D&D -was- fantasy gaming. There are simply too many options for that to be true any more.

If D&D is stigmatized, I suspect it's no longer by people who don't know what it is, but by people that, 20 years ago, would have played. And D&D is old. It's not hip, anymore than He-Man is hip. And frankly, it won't be hip again until and unless something hugely transformative comes along, like Peter Jackson and the LotR movies, or the live-action Transformers movie. Personally, I think it'll be "online D&D" like we can only dream about right now*, but whether D&D will actually be "the" brand that achieves that breakthrough...I don't know. We'll see, I guess. Check back in another 10 years or so.

 

[danbala]

That said, I do agree that D&D is going to be 'doomed' to 'cult status'. I placed the word 'doomed' in inverted commas, because I think D&D always was only a 'cult status' activity, so there is no change.

Its very hard for me to gauge where “cult status” ends and where true popularity begins. But its clear to me that D&D has recently permutated the culture in a way that it never has before.

For some reason there has been a rash of comedians (Steven Colbert, Patten Oswalt, Mike Meyers) that have felt compelled to self-indentify as current D&D players – not just something they did as a kid and grew out of.

(My favorite was Patten Oswalt:

​

Wired: You're nearly 40, and you've returned to playing Dungeons & Dragons. Please explain.

​

Oswalt: It's a benign way to have a midlife crisis that doesn't involve sports cars. My wife is probably hoping, "Maybe tonight he'll just go to a strip club..." Instead, I'm out rolling dice and saying things like, "I don't know if a Wall of Fog spell lasts that long!" )

I don’t know why this is happening now by it seems to coincide with other Hollywood types coming out of the geek closet. Recently, for example, Jon Faverau (director of Iron Man and Swingers) credited D&D with helping to hone his writing/directing skills. Of course we are all aware of Vin Deisel being a gaming evangelist, but having famous sports figures – such as Tim Duncan and Curt Shilling – is a bit of shock to me.

I can’t remember ANY time in the past were RPGing seemed to have so many public spokespeople. Is it cool? Nope. But its clearly part of a counter-culture. There is no question that from a public acceptance standpoint RPGs are in some kind of golden era.

 

[Reynard]

D&D went mainstream some time ago. And ye, as Kamikaze Midget says, it had to ditch the 300 page rulebooks to do it.

World of Warcraft *is* D&D. It has owlbears and gnolls, for cock's sake.

This assessment is absolutely correct, IMO. Moreover, MMOs are TTRPGs and WoW is D&D, and I imagine it will be that way for some time. There are a lot of good, fun, different MMOs out there, but none even come close to WoW in terms of popularity and (perhaps more importantly) cultural brand recognition.

TTRPGs are a thing of the past, at least from a mainstream cultural standpoint. The reason you see so many D&D references in popular culture is that a lot of "us" are of an age to be working in popular culture now, and a lot of "them" who consume popular culture remember us geeks pouring over D&D books in study hall. D&D will live on with us -- I'll probably be playing in the old folks home -- but its days are numbered as a significant industry (if it ever was one).

D&D would be better served by a small company than a big corporation, I think, one that can make a comfortable living off us and whatever poor kids (some of them ours) we drag into our olde timey hobby. But even then the fact is that we don't need them, and they know it. The reason there's no Basic Set ala Molvay and Cook is that somewhere down the line someone in a position to make a decision realized that a $10 "introductory game" that allowed us to play for months, or even years if we were imaginitaive and motivated to expand on the rules given, was a losing proposition. Once we've got the rules, we don't need anything else. Gaming is cheap and easy and for a lot of folks totally free, a great way to spend some time with friends while shelling out only enough cash to keep us in mountain dew and cheetos.

No one, no game, needs 1000 pages of rules. How many completely playable, functional games came out in the "early days" that were 32 or 64 or 96 pages long? How many more are coming out now, with the advent of PDF and POD publishing? Monstrous tomes with monstrous prices and built in continued expenditures like randomized minis and DDI are obvious, desperate grasping for dollars that don't need to be, shouldn't be spent.

I'd like to see the day where RPGs in general were produced by fans, for fans, freely, with money changing hands only as an act of goodwill or for receipt of an actual product. But wait -- we're there already. The retro clones are the most obvious example: free rules, free adventures, free community, free play; but if you'd like to support, or get yourself a hardcopy, here's how to do so.

THAT is the future of role-playing games and one can only hope that D&D frees itself from corporate shackles and can live on in that environment, rather than be killed and cut apart for its IP.

 

[Hussar]

I'd like to see the day where RPGs in general were produced by fans, for fans, freely, with money changing hands only as an act of goodwill or for receipt of an actual product. But wait -- we're there already. The retro clones are the most obvious example: free rules, free adventures, free community, free play; but if you'd like to support, or get yourself a hardcopy, here's how to do so.

THAT is the future of role-playing games and one can only hope that D&D frees itself from corporate shackles and can live on in that environment, rather than be killed and cut apart for its IP.

But, again, how does this jive with the estimated numbers of gamers? It's not that those numbers are suddenly disappearing. The numbers seem to be either steady or actually growing. I'm not talking only about D&D, but of TTRPG's in general. There is a pretty steady stream of younger gamers coming into the hobby and staying.

What there isn't anymore is one single path (a la fantasy novels) into the hobby. Lots of people are coming into it from a much, much larger variety of backgrounds - CRPG's, anime fans, MMO's, whatever and the game has to reflect that.

Back in 1980, if you came into D&D, you were pretty much a fantasy fan. And if you read fantasy back then, you likely read pretty much the same books as everyone else because there just wasn't that much to read. But now, there are just so many other avenues that might lead you to D&D or TTRPG's in general.

What you no longer have, if we ever really did, is this mono-culture of "gamer" that the many of us came from back then. To me, that's the biggest evidence that gaming is becoming a reasonably mainstream activity (if very small) that will remain stable for years.

 

[Mercurius]

Sharp post, Reynard, although while reading it I felt a sense of sadness, perhaps because what you say does ring with truth: namely, that "TTRPGs are a thing of the past." This isn't quite reflected in sales figures--yet--but it is represented by the fact that the age range of the bulk of gamers is getting older. I mean, most of us long-term players probably started somewhere in the age 10-13 range; I wonder how many 12-year olds are pouring over their first rule books with friends and starting a game...certainly some, but my guess is far fewer than their were 25 years ago, even 15 years ago.

I also fully agree with you that D&D would be better served if it was owned by a smaller company and I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case within the next 5-10 years. Of course for Wizards/Hasbro to release the brand name they'd need a pretty good offer, so it would take a pretty wealthy fan to shell out the cash. Maybe once Tim Duncan retires...

 

[munkeywrench]

As it stands currently, D&D will NEVER enjoy the wild success it once had. This is due to the following factors:

1) D&D is a game of pretend. Games of pretend are considered to be in the domain of adolescence in our modern culture. Upon adulthood, games of pretend are expected to be discarded. They are replaced with games grounded in reality such as baseball or chess; games that can be, and usually are, played with without any sense of make-believe. Even video games are beholden to this despite their recent success in becoming mainstream.

2) D&D's main consumer base, according to polls that have been conducted here at enworld as well as other D&D/PNP RPG sites, mostly hold ages ranging from late teens to early thirties. Combined with #1, this creates what I call the "neckbeard" stigma. For those not in the know, a "neckbeard" is a derogatory term for the gamer stereotype (overweight, lacking hygene, unshaven, smelly, anti-social, childish personality).

3) Neckbeard stigma is the social stigma attatched to being a young or mature adult that, as society sees it, still plays children's games; the young/mature adult is viewed as abnormally socially developed as thus is stigmatized. Neckbeard stigma has two effects:
A) hampering recruitment of new customers in the 18 to 30 age range.
B) holding on to customers who truly are immature in their social development.
C) "B" reinforces the negative "neckbeard" stereotype of the hobby, making it unpopular in the eyes of society. Parents go "I'm not letting my child get into "that" crowd." This hampers the recruitment of adolescent customers.
D) Neckbeard stigma becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of suck.



The only real way out of this that will bring D&D back to its mainstream glory-days, at least that I can see, will be to minimalize the old-guard fanbase and really push it hard towards the kiddos. I honestly think that's the direction WotC has been taking with 4E, but they need to do MORE. To really bring it back, hasbro needs to start swinging the money hammer. D&D needs to be back in toy stores next to Monopoly and Risk. Make it a household name synonymous with "fun for the whole family". Once that happens, you can make action figures, cartoons, McDonalds tie-ins, videogames, and all that good franchising crap.

 

[wedgeski]

No one, no game, needs 1000 pages of rules. How many completely playable, functional games came out in the "early days" that were 32 or 64 or 96 pages long? How many more are coming out now, with the advent of PDF and POD publishing? Monstrous tomes with monstrous prices and built in continued expenditures like randomized minis and DDI are obvious, desperate grasping for dollars that don't need to be, shouldn't be spent.

And yet people continue to buy mini's, and splat books, and subscribe to the DDI for Dungeon and Dragon and the Character Builder and all that stuff, not because the game is somehow incomplete without them, but because they *want* them.

You could play 4E forever with a PHB and DMG, easily. The expenditure is not "built-in", it's a choice. This cottage industry utopia illusion doesn't stand up in the face of millions and millions of dollars spent by lovers of table-top RPG's on products they think will enhance their game. The demand is there, whether you like it or not.

Edit: This post was snarkier than I intended, apologies, but I've left it intact.

 

[Hussar]

Sharp post, Reynard, although while reading it I felt a sense of sadness, perhaps because what you say does ring with truth: namely, that "TTRPGs are a thing of the past." This isn't quite reflected in sales figures--yet--but it is represented by the fact that the age range of the bulk of gamers is getting older. I mean, most of us long-term players probably started somewhere in the age 10-13 range; I wonder how many 12-year olds are pouring over their first rule books with friends and starting a game...certainly some, but my guess is far fewer than their were 25 years ago, even 15 years ago.

I also fully agree with you that D&D would be better served if it was owned by a smaller company and I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case within the next 5-10 years. Of course for Wizards/Hasbro to release the brand name they'd need a pretty good offer, so it would take a pretty wealthy fan to shell out the cash. Maybe once Tim Duncan retires...

Interestingly, I was listening to an interview with one of the higher ups at Mayfair Games (whose name currently escapes me and isn't in the show notes, so I'm sorry) and he had an interesting take on things. In the interview he talks about how current gamers, as has been mentioned in this thread, are getting into their thirties and forties in larger and larger numbers.

But, what's interesting is he talks about how gamers are now bringing their children into the hobby in larger and larger numbers. How the stigma of the game is being completely undone because it isn't some weirdo hanging out in his mother's basement playing D&D, it's Dad and Mom. He talks about how in the next 5-10 years, there could be a very large upswing in gamer population as the next generation of gamers comes into the hobby.

Another very interesting point here that should be made is that the podcast was being done from a Gamer Cruise. Now how's THAT for mainstream? A cruise organized specifically for gaming and gamers. And, apparently, they're doing quite well.

 

[Gentlegamer]

BUT, ask ten non-gamers if they've read it and I'm pretty sure that most haven't.

Ask ten non-gamers if they've read ANY book for leisure.

 

[Mallus]

How many completely playable, functional games came out in the "early days" that were 32 or 64 or 96 pages long?

But how many gamers in those "early days" stopped at those 32 (or 64) page booklets? I seem to recall my friend's dad, who introduced us to RPG's, having several whole shelves full of supplemental material for those slim, so-called complete games.

But wait -- we're there already. The retro clones are the most obvious example: free rules, free adventures, free community, free play; but if you'd like to support, or get yourself a hardcopy, here's how to do so.

Sites like this, too. The for-profit PnP RPG industry could vanish tomorrow in a flash of light (and cloud of Cheeto dust) and I'd be fine, new gaming material-wise, thanks to ENWorld.