We're Finally Mainstream! Now What?

ICv2's recent announcement that hobby games have become "mainstream" heralds a new age for role-playing games. How did this happen and why should gamers care?

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[h=3]How Did We Get Here?[/h]Role-playing games have steadily been increasing in popularity and media attention. Several factors are likely at play, ranging from older players returning to the hobby (as evidenced by the Old School Renaissance ), to an increased media awareness of role-playing games (Stranger Things being one example), to a wave of nostalgia as 40-somethings now have enough buying power to introduce their kids to the hobby.

The rise of video and podcasting has also introduced gaming to a much larger population on the Internet. Conventions are more popular than ever before -- to the point that they have difficulty keeping up with the demand. Wizards of the Coast has released a new Open Game License and a distribution platform via DM's Guild. It helps that Dungeons & Dragons has also broadened its audience, with millennials (ages 25 to 34) the largest group, followed closely ages 35 to 44 and 18 to 24 — 30% of which are female.
[h=3]Six Million an Hour?[/h]According to WOTC, six million people are playing D&D at any given hour. UPDATE: I asked Nathan Stewart to clarify this number. This was his response:

There was more context given, wasn't supposed to mean every hour, but yes the aggregate was videogames/boardgames/TRPG (not novels)
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The "per hour" seems to be egregious, and is inclusive of D&D-branded video games and board games. Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, said :

For those in the know, for those who follow popular culture, the game has gained a kind of legendary status. It's almost like a badge of honor. People who used to play D&D in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are now reaping the benefits.
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The data backs up the RPG renaissance, as per ICv2:

The number of people playing hobby games, the number of people shopping at game stores, the number of stores, and exposure of hobby games at major retailers were all up in 2016, reflecting the now-mainstream nature of the hobby.
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Mike Mearls, senior manager of D&D research and design, confirmed ICv2's findings:

We're seeing a bigger audience than we've seen in a very long time—in decades. It's so easy to cast this idea that technology will be the death of D&D, but it's been really interesting to see how that has been absolutely incorrect.
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[h=3]Will the Bubble Burst?[/h]Rob Salkowitz at ICv2 predicts that mainstream geek culture will affect other industries, as they take notes on what works for geek fans and apply it to other forms of fandom like sports :

It’s been clear for a while that the fan convention template that we’ve known since the 1960s is fraying at the edges as geek culture becomes mainstream consumer culture. On one hand, this means outside players who smell the money are making their play for the fan audience, with increasingly mixed results. But on the other, it means that longtime convention organizers within the space are looking to push their shows into neighboring territory.
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Salkowitz calls this "peak geek" and it has consequences beyond geek circles:

The danger is that, even with a fresh infusion of smart nerds in strategic spots, mainstream media is still more liable than their niche counterparts to credit know-nothings on an equal basis with informed sources, misinterpret nuances, impose faulty narrative frameworks and just plain get stuff wrong when it comes to covering the business of pop culture--especially if they are taking their cues from some of the more excitable fever swamps of online fandom. The result is a much more treacherous environment for the big companies and big name creators unaccustomed to attention from these quarters.
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For tabletop games, the primary concern is that eight straight years of growth is unsustainable:

For 2017, there’s widespread concern that the number of releases is going to be greater than the market can support. "I think we're facing some challenges coming into the new year, just on the basis of the breadth of releases," one distributor told us.
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But for the moment, things have never looked better for gaming. As more and more media launches -- from videos to streaming to podcasts to television shows to movies -- geek culture will become so normalized that it may well lose some of its identity. Chris Perkins, principal D&D designer, summed up the current state of affairs:

Geek culture and nerd culture is now just culture.
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Whether or not that is a good or bad thing will be determined by us.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

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[SSJ4TimeBuster]

Nice!!

 

[SSJ4TimeBuster]

Need 2 more posts lol

 

[Celebrim]

D&D isn't football.

Obviously.

RPGs are football...

Obviously not.

...while D&D is a particular brand.

Of football? No, it's a particular brand of RPG. And your so far from understanding the analogy that I should probably give up now, but..

The NFL if you will. (Or FIFA.) The NFL could die but football would remain and other teams would rise up.

No, the NFL is not a brand of football. The NFL is an organization that plays football, and that organization has a brand. Other organizations may exist that play football. Notably, those organizations by playing football are playing by (nearly) identical rules and providing a nearly identical experience, so that if the NFL were to disappear football wouldn't disappear (though it might be saying something about the popularity of football and the viability of any football organization if the NFL were to disappear). The proper analogy here would be that if D&D is to RPGs as the NFL is to football, and D&D disappeared, RPGs wouldn't go away. But D&D would be dead.

Likewise FIFA does not play (what is commonly understood to mean) football (at least in the USA)! They are a different organization that plays a completely different game commonly called soccer or 'Association Football'. That game has very different rules and offers a very different experience than football. If (gridiron) football died, but (association) football survived we would not say that football (as it is commonly used in America) isn't dead!

Neverwinter isn't the equivalent of Fantasy Football. It's Madden NFL 17. Are people playing that not playing football?

No of course not!!! That's my point. 'Madden NFL 17' is certainly not football. Ask anyone that's actually played football! It may be a fun game, but it's nothing like the experience of actually playing football, whether its tackle football in the field behind the barn or playing in full pads on a formal team. Someone that plays 'Madden NFL 17' is most certainly not a 'football player'! That's so obvious I'm startled to have to explain it.

 

[Beleriphon]

No of course not!!! That's my point. 'Madden NFL 17' is certainly not football. Ask anyone that's actually played football! It may be a fun game, but it's nothing like the experience of actually playing football, whether its tackle football in the field behind the barn or playing in full pads on a formal team. Someone that plays 'Madden NFL 17' is most certainly not a 'football player'! That's so obvious I'm startled to have to explain it.

No, but they are participating in "football" in the same way one participates by watching the Superbowl. By defining your categories of playing D&D as only participate in the TTRPG version you're throwing up those fences that fall into the same category as people that say only by reading Spider-Man comics are you truly experiencing Spider-Man. If one isn't reading the comics, but instead enjoying the movies, the video games, and other assorted media that Spider-Man fan isn't a real fan and those specific other media formats aren't Spider-Man enough to count.

So is playing Neverwinter the MMORPG, or DDO, playing D&D? Yes it sure is, because those games are derived specifically from D&D source material. The players in those games might not be playing the table top version of D&D but they are still members of the D&D community of players even if they aren't playing any other person's preferred version of the game.

 

[Jester David]

Of football? No, it's a particular brand of RPG. And your so far from understanding the analogy that I should probably give up now, but..

There's no need for incivility.
If you can't conduct this discussion politely then, yes, you probably should give up.

No, the NFL is not a brand of football. The NFL is an organization that plays football, and that organization has a brand. Other organizations may exist that play football. Notably, those organizations by playing football are playing by (nearly) identical rules and providing a nearly identical experience, so that if the NFL were to disappear football wouldn't disappear.

Organization vs a brand… *shrug*. Technically true but largely irrelevant to the analogy and the point. D&D/the NFL can go away and RPGs/ gridiron football will remain.

The proper analogy here would be that if D&D is to RPGs as the NFL is to football, and D&D disappeared, RPGs wouldn't go away.

Yes. That is pretty much exactly what I said, phrased ever so slightly differently.

Likewise FIFA does not play (what is commonly understood to mean) football (at least in the USA)!

You didn't initially clarify US or World "football" so I included FIFA. As not everyone "here" is in the USA.
As a point of fact, the owner of the site is British, so arguably football for ENWorld would be of the "soccer" variety.

No of course not!!! That's my point. 'Madden NFL 17' is certainly not football. Ask anyone that's actually played football! It may be a fun game, but it's nothing like the experience of actually playing football, whether its tackle football in the field behind the barn or playing in full pads on a formal team. Someone that plays 'Madden NFL 17' is most certainly not a 'football player'! That's so obvious I'm startled to have to explain it.

Which is your opinion.
The game itself is close to identical. You have two teams of players divided between offensive and defensive factions trying to get an ovoid ball across the goal line. Scoring is the same and the basics of play are the same.
It's just the expression and implementation of the game that varies.

Just like it's still football if it's being done by a group of a dozen kids in a playground with a Nerf ball who aren't switching between offensive and defensive and are touching rather than tackling.

This distinction is even fuzzier for D&D.
So, the question is, when does Neverwinter cease to become D&D?

Is it just playing on the computer rather than at a table? That can't be it. Otherwise playing on a Virtual Tabletop would also not count as D&D.
Is it that the rules are resolved automatically? Then using a platform like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 with some automation also wouldn't be playing D&D, which seems silly/ arbitrary.

Given the above, what if we change from a VTT to multiple players running a scenario in Neverwinter Nights? That uses rules almost identical to the tabletop game. Is that D&D?
Now, what if the above adventure was created on the toolset by a DM who is also online? At that point, NWN is just a very automated VTT.
What if there's just one player then? You can play one-on-one games in meatspace just fine and that's D&D. So that's not a factor.
Now, imagine if that DM was efficient and pre-generated everything - anticipating the player's actions - and doesn't have to create anything or interact. The DM is just watching. Does it cease to be D&D just because the DM is more static?
If the above is "no", then why does the DM have to be there at all? Is the difference between D&D *really* just a breathing person told they're the DM? Does it still count if they're on their smartphone? Asleep? If we accept that the DM doesn't need to be there, then playing any downloaded module counts.
And the difference can't be that the DM created the adventure explicitly for the player, as that would mean running any pregenerated module isn't D&D.

If the line is "no DM" are you no longer playing the game if the DM runs off to the bathroom but everyone keeps roleplaying? What if the DM is checking the rules, zones out, or is distracted by Twitter? How about in a PvP situation where the DM isn't active?
I've had some situations where a PC died so I let that player run the monsters instead. Did we suddenly stop playing D&D when I, as the DM, was no longer engaging at the table?
All this is ignoring options for DM-less play, like the one in the DMG. It's very possible to play D&D without a Dungeon Master. You're literally playing using the rules in the book, so it *has* to be D&D.

I think we can safely conclude that the presence or absence or the DM doesn't matter. So, what about the group then? I've already mentioned one-on-one games, so why not just one player? It's been remarked that you can run the adventures in Dungeon Delve for 4e without a DM, and if you have enough time and brainpower a single player can run all the characters & monsters.
There can't be plot surprises or twists but you can run combats very easily. Which is still playing D&D.

At this point, we can make a case that you're "playing D&D" if you're using the same rules as a tabletop version of the game, either physically or digitally, either alone or with a group.
Does it cease to be D&D if the rules change? That can't be the case as 3rd Edition is radically different from 1st Edition and both are still D&D. Even clarifying that it's adherence to the rules of the tabletop game means that Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights are D&D while a game on the tabletop that employs numerous house rules is not.

I suppose we could get very technical and say the absence of a tabletop, virtual or otherwise, is the dividing factor between D&D and non-D&D.
But… what about people who don't use a tabletop for their tabletop RPGs? People who play theater of the mind? I spent the first decade of my D&D play hanging around couches while gaming and only owned minis for the battle game.
Also, if the distinction is "tabletop" wouldn't that mean the board game is also D&D. What's the difference? Is it roleplaying, because literally nothing stops you speaking in character while running through a game of Wrath of Ashadalon. And many MMOs have roleplaying servers, and it's pretty easy to RP in one. And, of course, not every group actually roleplays in the TTRPG...

Logically, how is playing the MMO Neverwinter not also playing a flavour D&D?

 

[Celebrim]

No, but they are participating in "football" in the same way one participates by watching the Superbowl.

When I watch the Superbowl, I am not participating in football. I gain no experience in football by watching the Superbowl, and at most will develop only a cursory knowledge of the game which will be difficult or impossible to capitalize on. No NFL team is going to hire you to play football, based on the fact you've watched the game play. Seriously, have you ever played football? I assure you that watching a game is not the same as participating in one.

By defining your categories of playing D&D as only participate in the TTRPG version you're throwing up those fences...

Throwing up fences?? Look, this isn't about people's feelings on the subject. I don't care how excluded anyone feels when they are told that having watched a game of football by no means equates to having played a game of football. Your feelings of exclusion in that regard because you can't deal with obvious factual reality are your problem.

...that fall into the same category as people that say only by reading Spider-Man comics are you truly experiencing Spider-Man.

Not even remotely a similar situation, so let's just dispense with the analogies which are getting further and further from the point. We're quickly getting into a situation in comics where the comics themselves may in fact die, although Spider-Man as a piece of valuable intellectual property would not in fact die. The comics themselves are increasingly irrelevant, and the near complete collapse of the comic book market over the last few decades did not in fact effect Marvel's (as it turned out quite correct) evaluation that their intellectual property made the company worth at least a billion dollars. But, comic books and movies are completely different media, and it's quite possible now to have a fan of Spider-Man who has never read a Spidey comic and as such, as no idea about how different the character is in the comic book medium and how very difficult it is to translate the character into a live action medium while staying true to the character. It would be quite correct for a fan of comic books to say to someone who only knows the character from movies and has never read a comic book to say, "We are both fans of Spider-Man, but only I am a fan of comic books."

But this situation is not at all analogous to the situation with D&D, and more to the point has nothing to do with the short analogy I offered that touched off this firestorm. It's quite clear that people will still continue to watch movies even if comic books don't exist. It's not at all clear that people would be interested in fantasy football if football ceased to exist. As such, we can think of at least one form of entertainment - fantasy football - which is a subsidiary form of entertainment that depends on another completely different form of entertainment. Fantasy football is not football, and it attracts two subtly different fan bases. Some people enjoy participating in fantasy football that would never participate in football. But, unless some people participate in football, there cannot be wide interest in fantasy football.

This situation I would argue is far closer to the situation between D&D and its subsidiary non-tabletop RPG products. The playing of the tabletop RPG product is what drives interest in the non-tabletop RPG products. At present, there is no sign that there would be huge interest in Neverwinter Nights or Forgottten Realms novesl other Intellectual Property, if it wasn't for the fact that the table-top game at least exists and is played. Quite the contrary, it's pretty obvious that D&D is not culturally significant intellectual property at this time outside of its existence as a tabletop game, as it's impact is much less than World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Witcher III, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and so on and so forth. The fantasy world will happily carry on just fine in all other mediums like movies, video games, and novels without Dungeons and Dragons, but the Dungeons and Dragons branded products probably can't carry on without the fan base of real players and the mystique that surrounds them.

If one isn't reading the comics, but instead enjoying the movies, the video games, and other assorted media that Spider-Man fan isn't a real fan and those specific other media formats aren't Spider-Man enough to count.

That's not what I said.

So is playing Neverwinter the MMORPG, or DDO, playing D&D? Yes it sure is, because those games are derived specifically from D&D source material. The players in those games might not be playing the table top version of D&D but they are still members of the D&D community of players even if they aren't playing any other person's preferred version of the game.

That's not true. Playing something derived from something else even if it might give you limited familiarity with some aspects of that thing, is simply not the same as playing the thing itself. A person who watches an X-Man movie can truthfully say, "I watch movies." or "I love the X-Men", but they cannot truthfully say, "I read comic books."

 

[redrick]

There's no need for incivility.
If you can't conduct this discussion politely then, yes, you probably should give up.


Organization vs a brand… *shrug*. Technically true but largely irrelevant to the analogy and the point. D&D/the NFL can go away and RPGs/ gridiron football will remain.


Yes. That is pretty much exactly what I said, phrased ever so slightly differently.


You didn't initially clarify US or World "football" so I included FIFA. As not everyone "here" is in the USA.
As a point of fact, the owner of the site is British, so arguably football for ENWorld would be of the "soccer" variety.


Which is your opinion.
The game itself is close to identical. You have two teams of players divided between offensive and defensive factions trying to get an ovoid ball across the goal line. Scoring is the same and the basics of play are the same.
It's just the expression and implementation of the game that varies.

Just like it's still football if it's being done by a group of a dozen kids in a playground with a Nerf ball who aren't switching between offensive and defensive and are touching rather than tackling.

This distinction is even fuzzier for D&D.
So, the question is, when does Neverwinter cease to become D&D?

Is it just playing on the computer rather than at a table? That can't be it. Otherwise playing on a Virtual Tabletop would also not count as D&D.
Is it that the rules are resolved automatically? Then using a platform like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 with some automation also wouldn't be playing D&D, which seems silly/ arbitrary.

Given the above, what if we change from a VTT to multiple players running a scenario in Neverwinter Nights? That uses rules almost identical to the tabletop game. Is that D&D?
Now, what if the above adventure was created on the toolset by a DM who is also online? At that point, NWN is just a very automated VTT.
What if there's just one player then? You can play one-on-one games in meatspace just fine and that's D&D. So that's not a factor.
Now, imagine if that DM was efficient and pre-generated everything - anticipating the player's actions - and doesn't have to create anything or interact. The DM is just watching. Does it cease to be D&D just because the DM is more static?
If the above is "no", then why does the DM have to be there at all? Is the difference between D&D *really* just a breathing person told they're the DM? Does it still count if they're on their smartphone? Asleep? If we accept that the DM doesn't need to be there, then playing any downloaded module counts.
And the difference can't be that the DM created the adventure explicitly for the player, as that would mean running any pregenerated module isn't D&D.

If the line is "no DM" are you no longer playing the game if the DM runs off to the bathroom but everyone keeps roleplaying? What if the DM is checking the rules, zones out, or is distracted by Twitter? How about in a PvP situation where the DM isn't active?
I've had some situations where a PC died so I let that player run the monsters instead. Did we suddenly stop playing D&D when I, as the DM, was no longer engaging at the table?
All this is ignoring options for DM-less play, like the one in the DMG. It's very possible to play D&D without a Dungeon Master. You're literally playing using the rules in the book, so it *has* to be D&D.

I think we can safely conclude that the presence or absence or the DM doesn't matter. So, what about the group then? I've already mentioned one-on-one games, so why not just one player? It's been remarked that you can run the adventures in Dungeon Delve for 4e without a DM, and if you have enough time and brainpower a single player can run all the characters & monsters.
There can't be plot surprises or twists but you can run combats very easily. Which is still playing D&D.

At this point, we can make a case that you're "playing D&D" if you're using the same rules as a tabletop version of the game, either physically or digitally, either alone or with a group.
Does it cease to be D&D if the rules change? That can't be the case as 3rd Edition is radically different from 1st Edition and both are still D&D. Even clarifying that it's adherence to the rules of the tabletop game means that Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights are D&D while a game on the tabletop that employs numerous house rules is not.

I suppose we could get very technical and say the absence of a tabletop, virtual or otherwise, is the dividing factor between D&D and non-D&D.
But… what about people who don't use a tabletop for their tabletop RPGs? People who play theater of the mind? I spent the first decade of my D&D play hanging around couches while gaming and only owned minis for the battle game.
Also, if the distinction is "tabletop" wouldn't that mean the board game is also D&D. What's the difference? Is it roleplaying, because literally nothing stops you speaking in character while running through a game of Wrath of Ashadalon. And many MMOs have roleplaying servers, and it's pretty easy to RP in one. And, of course, not every group actually roleplays in the TTRPG...

Logically, how is playing the MMO Neverwinter not also playing a flavour D&D?

This feels a lot like trying to define something that is fairly intuitive out of existence. If the working definition of tabletop RPG can't handle the distinction between Roll20 and NWN, I'd say that's a problem with the working definition.

D&D the brand clearly includes more than D&D the tabletop game. (And, yes, I consider Roll20 to be part of the tabletop game, because Virtual Tabletops provide a digital substitute for wood and particle board.) Trying to argue how inclusively we should think in terms of what "playing D&D" means doesn't require us to philosophically deconstruct the concept of the tabletop game.

 

[Henry]

Someone that plays 'Madden NFL 17' is most certainly not a 'football player'! That's so obvious I'm startled to have to explain it.

On the plus side, if you got 'em in the field you wouldn't have to explain the rules.

 

[Hussar]

"We are both fans of Spider-Man, but only I am a fan of comic books."

/snip

A person who watches an X-Man movie can truthfully say, "I watch movies." or "I love the X-Men", but they cannot truthfully say, "I read comic books."

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ally-Mainstream!-Now-What/page6#ixzz4e5A8SEEX

But, the question in my mind, and I think what others are trying to get at, is, is there a difference? Is a movie X-Men fan somehow less important than a comic book fan? To the point where some here are discounting the numbers that WotC is putting out because they include Neverwinter Nights players?

I believe that's "fences" that Jester David is talking about. Someone who plays the D&D board games isn't really a D&D player is, to me, a pretty toxic point of view. It's no different than the disdain we used to see about D&D Minis players. Or any other version of geek tribalism.

Why is it bad to say, "There are six million people enjoying D&D branded media at any given time"? That's a bit more of a mouthful a suppose. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue. But, discounting the numbers simply because someone enjoys D&D differently than you or I do doesn't seem to be a terribly productive line of reasoning.

 

[Shasarak]

But, the question in my mind, and I think what others are trying to get at, is, is there a difference? Is a movie X-Men fan somehow less important than a comic book fan? To the point where some here are discounting the numbers that WotC is putting out because they include Neverwinter Nights players?

Of course there is a difference between print and film, how is that even a question?

It seems like just the people who either dont know or dont care what the differences are that are fine with lumping everything together. I can assure you that when the guys turn up for our DnD game tonight they will not be expecting to either be playing Neverwinter Nights or watching the DnD movie.