Sly Flourish's 2016 D&D Dungeon Master Survey Results

Mike Shea, otherwise known as Sly Flourish, held a survey over recent months to look at how Dungeons & Dragons DMs prepare and run their games. The results have now been released, and they make for some interesting reading. For example, most people play weekly for about four hours (as expected) with about an hour to two-hours preparation time. Over half play at home, about 10% in public, and about 20% play online. Over half use their own settings, 38% play in the Realms, and 5% in other D&D settings. Two thirds run their own adventures, with one third running published adventures. Check out Mike's full report (it's long!) for all the data!

Some key points:

• 6,600 respondents.
• Most people play weekly for about four hours (as expected) with about an hour to two-hours preparation time.
• Over half play at home, about 10% in public, and about 20% play online.
• Over half use their own settings, 38% play in the Realms, and 5% in other D&D settings.
• Two thirds run their own adventures, with one third running published adventures.
• The Kobold Fight Club online encounter builder is the most used tool. Ahead of dice, apparently!

If you want to analysis the data yourself, you can do so here (CSV file).

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[MechaPilot]

I think the biggest differences that would likely arise from a survey of both Canadian and US D&D players would be that the Canadian ones are probably more polite around the table, and that there's a difference in snack preference.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The only difference that I can think of is boxed text. I've seen some commentators here say that, since they don't game in English, they cannot use the boxed text in published adventures as-is. Beyond that? I mean, the differences might be in venue - gaming at university societies in the UK versus game stores in the US - but I'm not sure that is a particularly meaningful difference with regards actually playing the game.

 

[Jhaelen]

Wow, excellent survey and analysis!

 

[Rya.Reisender]

If you look at one of the last pages of the PotA AP, you'll actually find some explanation on how to port PotA to any of the other settings, so there's that.

I simply don't see any reason why I'd want to do that. It's cool if all adventures are set in the same world.

Basically when doing the survey I didn't even knew about different settings, so I actually had to look up what setting LMoP and PotA were and then voted that.
I'm sure most of those playing official APs also voted Forgotten Realms out of the same reason.

I also want to note that all the additional info to the campaigns which can be used for homebrew is actually available for free on the official website, so I don't think that actually boosts sales. If you buy an AP you buy it because you want to read and/or play the story.