D&D General Gamer Stats From White Dwarf in the 80s

jedijon · Jul 8, 2019

How can we get more cool and normal people in this hobby—of any gender?

I’ll play with dudes or chicks, but not self-absorbed jerks or obsessive wackos. Even the grinding axes in here, don’t know that we’d like being at each others houses. Hunh. And we think we’re all here for the same thing??

Zardnaar · Jul 8, 2019

jedijon said:
How can we get more cool and normal people in this hobby—of any gender?

I’ll play with dudes or chicks, but not self-absorbed jerks or obsessive wackos. Even the grinding axes in here, don’t know that we’d like being at each others houses. Hunh. And we think we’re all here for the same thing??

You can't it's always gonna skew heavily towards males no matter what they do.

D&D would need to go mainstream, it's still a niche hobby. Wargamings not such a thing but games like magic, grand strategy, chess are still around and D&D appeals to them a bit and it's heavily male.

We don't really have a PlayStation moment which took games out of the bedroom into the living room.

Maybe 6E or more likely 7E. It's also heavily based on European mythology and history. It's never going to be popular in Asia, Africa.

You can change the presentation of course, 5E had already done that. A break out game or movie could help but modern D&D doesn't lend itself well to game adaptions AD&D was better), and it's tough as to make an original movie that performs well now. Movie and game development is also Uber expensive now.

It would need to be one bigger than magic and be worth billions realistically.

If they change things to much they lose their existing fans a'la 4E.

Another option would be sex and violence done well, Game of Thrones for example not WWF Attitude era.

Men and women also have different preferences. I turned my wife into a gamer, she never had consoles growing up and I didn't have a PC.

We have very different tastes in games though with very little crossover. I like political/strategic type games she likes Zelda and Crash Team Racing, I like Fallout 4, Stellaris and Crusader Kings II.

My 10 year old niece asked me to teach her though, my sister must have blabbed uncle Zard plays.

Lylandra · Jul 8, 2019

jedijon said:
How can we get more cool and normal people in this hobby—of any gender?

I’ll play with dudes or chicks, but not self-absorbed jerks or obsessive wackos. Even the grinding axes in here, don’t know that we’d like being at each others houses. Hunh. And we think we’re all here for the same thing??

nope, we're definitely not. And some dudes are pretty defensive (to the point of being verbally aggressive) when you dare suggest to play their favorite system a bit differently.

I was literally being told in another thread that I played D&D wrong and should be looking for another system when I said that having only 1-2 combat encounters (or sometimes none) per ingame day was normal for my group so that maybe trying to reach 4-5 enc/day wasn't the holy grail everyone should aim for. So yeah...

Lylandra · Jul 8, 2019

cbwjm said:
ENworld has a little over 340,000 members which is pretty significant.

Of course, not all of them will be active and many (most?) may not have filled out the "about me" section of their profile (I haven't), so even if a report could be run off, it might not be the most accurate.

And women tend to have a higher chance of not filling out the gender box as many have had bad experiences being a "girl on the internet". Even if the EN forums are a relatively safe and welcoming space.

(I've received some creepy PNs back in the days of the official WotC forum and I know that not every woman shrugs that off so easily.)

Maxperson · Jul 8, 2019

Lylandra said:
nope, we're definitely not. And some dudes are pretty defensive (to the point of being verbally aggressive) when you dare suggest to play their favorite system a bit differently.

I was literally being told in another thread that I played D&D wrong and should be looking for another system when I said that having only 1-2 combat encounters (or sometimes none) per ingame day was normal for my group so that maybe trying to reach 4-5 enc/day wasn't the holy grail everyone should aim for. So yeah...

Nope. You're definitely not playing it wrong. Speaking as a guy who runs for a group of guys(not that a woman wouldn't be welcome), I run it the same way.

Zardnaar · Jul 8, 2019

Lylandra said:
nope, we're definitely not. And some dudes are pretty defensive (to the point of being verbally aggressive) when you dare suggest to play their favorite system a bit differently.

I was literally being told in another thread that I played D&D wrong and should be looking for another system when I said that having only 1-2 combat encounters (or sometimes none) per ingame day was normal for my group so that maybe trying to reach 4-5 enc/day wasn't the holy grail everyone should aim for. So yeah...

5E has been designed for 6 to 8 encounters. 3E was 4, can't remember 4Es one but it was more than 1 or 2.

Older D&D has no expected number of encounters.

Personally I find those rules absurd but yeah you are playing those editions RAW wrong. 5E doesnt work as well for hexcrawls for example as the old B/X.

Another poster asked about getting more women into gamestores which is often Adventurers League. Our one dumped AL and attendence went up. 1 or 2 encounters in 5E makes the game very easy even if you go 4 or 5 multiplesviver a deadly xp encounter.

Personally I like varying it. Might have 6 to 8, 3 or 4 is more likely but 0-2 are possible.

JonnyP71 · Jul 8, 2019

Zardnaar said:
Another poster asked about getting more women into gamestores which is often Adventurers League. Our one dumped AL and attendence went up. 1 or 2 encounters in 5E makes the game very easy even if you go 4 or 5 multiplesviver a deadly xp encounter.

By mentioning AL you may have hit the nail on the head, certainly with regards to one problematic aspect. In my (albeit limited) experience of AL games, the focus is much more mechanical than most home games I've played in, there's certainly a higher proportion or combat and skill resolution elements to AL games than RP and social interaction. And with AL being presented as a key means of finding new players and introducing new gamers to the system, maybe it is having the effect of solidifying it as more of a male-orientated hobby?

Just a thought, I could be way off - I've only played AL at cons, and those tables were 100% male players.

Perversely though, my wife loves boardgames, is a fan of fantasy, and watches a lot of fantasy/sci-fi films and TV shows and reads voraciously.... she point blank refuses to play RPGs though, as she is uncomfortable with the RP side of it. The only way I could get her to play D&D would be to drop all RP and most story elements, and play it solely as a tactical/puzzle-based boardgame. Naught so weird as folk!

Sacrosanct · Jul 8, 2019

Zardnaar said:
5E has been designed for 6 to 8 encounters. 3E was 4, can't remember 4Es one but it was more than 1 or 2.

Older D&D has no expected number of encounters.

Personally I find those rules absurd but yeah you are playing those editions RAW wrong. 5E doesnt work as well for hexcrawls for example as the old B/X.

Another poster asked about getting more women into gamestores which is often Adventurers League. Our one dumped AL and attendence went up. 1 or 2 encounters in 5E makes the game very easy even if you go 4 or 5 multiplesviver a deadly xp encounter.

Personally I like varying it. Might have 6 to 8, 3 or 4 is more likely but 0-2 are possible.

Just because it’s designed for 6-8 encounters doesn’t mean only 1-2 is RAW wrong. Those are guidelines. The game is also designed for all three pillars equally. Doesn’t mean players who play mostly combat are doing it wrong. If they are having fun, then they are doing it right

Sacrosanct · Jul 8, 2019

This kinda reminds me of a couple years ago when people lauded how 48% of video gamers were women, like it was a huge leap forward in being progressive. Only to find out almost all of those women were playing games like candy crush and FarmVille, not video games like we think of. IIRC, in 2017 only 23% of WoW players were women.

Lylandra · Jul 8, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
This kinda reminds me of a couple years ago when people lauded how 48% of video gamers were women, like it was a huge leap forward in being progressive. Only to find out almost all of those women were playing games like candy crush and FarmVille, not video games like we think of. IIRC, in 2017 only 23% of WoW players were women.

umm... but technically Candy Crush *is* a video game? Just like, you know... Tetris? MMORPGs are a different genre than puzzle games though. Still puzzle games are often first steps to get into the bigger world of gaming