Dungeons & Dragons has 15 Million Players in NA Alone; Storyline Is "The Da Vinci Code meets Gangs o

Wow, 60 posts and only one or two about the storyline, with the rest arguing numbers?

I do not have much to say about the plot because I am not a fan of either movie/book series.

And yes, I can tell D&D is very popular right now because the Hipster Trolls are out to try and tear it down. lol

Yaarel said:

I am most happy about the, 40% of D&D players are women!

Every gaming group I have been part of has at least one woman, usually more.

The women that I have played with tend to detail and enrich the personal lives of all of our characters.

My gaming experience is better because of women.

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Based upon nothing more than my personal observations, I find it EXTREMELY difficult to believe that 40% women statistic. I do agree that it is marginally better than the old days, but not by that much. I would find 20-25% to be much more believable. It would be nice if WotC market research accurately reflected reality, because a healthy gender ratio does enhance the game significantly, but i just don't buy it.

Wulffolk said:

Based upon nothing more than my personal observations, I find it EXTREMELY difficult to believe that 40% women statistic. I do agree that it is marginally better than the old days, but not by that much. I would find 20-25% to be much more believable. It would be nice if WotC market research accurately reflected reality, because a healthy gender ratio does enhance the game significantly, but i just don't buy it.

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You can be sceptical, but I don’t believe large companies concerned about their reputation, go to press unless they are confident they won’t be challenged. Better to stay silent or low ball than get called out and generate bad press. Hasbro aren’t scrappy insurgents they are a massive multinational company.

Two groups that I play in have a female player - that sets us at 25%. They certainly wasn’t the case 30 years ago when I started.

I think you’re underestimating how many people play as a family - in which case the split may be 50/50 or higher and will raise the average. I have every reason to think that once one of the couples in our group’s daughter is old enough, she will play too - we game in their living room.

Certainly the perception of D&D being something that sweaty goths play in the library is an outdated one.

And based on my observations, the 40% mark is accurate or maybe even a little low.

Hey, guess what? Neither your personal observations nor mine mean a damn thing in this case, because individual anecdotes are not data, and outliers are a thing. A common thing, even.

I swear to Boccob, it's like people have never even heard of statistics.

Mouseferatu said:

And based on my observations, the 40% mark is accurate or maybe even a little low.

Hey, guess what? Neither your personal observations nor mine mean a damn thing in this case, because individual anecdotes are not data, and outliers are a thing. A common thing, even.

I swear to Boccob, it's like people have never even heard of statistics.

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Nonsense! Looking at my gaming group, I can tell you with absolute certainty that 0% of D&D players are American!

Enevhar Aldarion said:

Wow, 60 posts and only one or two about the storyline, with the rest arguing numbers?

I do not have much to say about the plot because I am not a fan of either movie/book series.

And yes, I can tell D&D is very popular right now because the Hipster Trolls are out to try and tear it down. lol

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We're talking about that over here instead. Makes it easy to keep the topics apart.

Mouseferatu said:

And based on my observations, the 40% mark is accurate or maybe even a little low.

Hey, guess what? Neither your personal observations nor mine mean a damn thing in this case, because individual anecdotes are not data, and outliers are a thing. A common thing, even.

I swear to Boccob, it's like people have never even heard of statistics.

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Not that my anecdote carries more statistical weight than either of yours, but due to the area where I live the vast majority of players I have encountered in the last three years have been female. In AL games at the local comic shop, the ratio is often 5-1 female to male.

A good chunk of them are Americans, though. Sorry, Morrus.

Rygar said:

That's not true.

1. We don't know how many players there are. Neither do they. Nor do we know how many people have ever played D&D, nor do they.

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You know that there are these things called "polls" and "surveys", right? You call up a certain number of people, ask them some questions, use some of the answers to those questions to check how well they sync up to the population at large, and then extrapolate the results of the other questions to get proper answers. It's not a perfect science, but it's pretty damn good.

2. There's nowhere near more content than ever. WOTC produces almost no content now. 3rd edition had how many books? How many issues of Dungeon and Dragon existed? How many 3rd party 3.x products existed? 5th edition, at its current pace, will need decades just to catch up to 3rd edition.

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Here's the thing: that content still exists. Most of it is up on DM's Guild. And it's all D&D content - some of it might require some massaging to mesh with 5e, but generally not that much.

3. In 1980, or even 1990, how many book stores existed? How many exist now? How many magazine stores existed? How many exist now? Not even touching how many hobby shops existed then compared to now.

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And these days there might be fewer hobby shops, but many of those that do exist run Adventurer's League stuff and such which brings in more players. Many of those then go on to play outside the shop with their own friends as well.

Marketing D&D?? They haven't marketed it at all. They're really not even producing D&D. Most of the product for it is made by someone else, and what little product they have released is largely just content from the 1980's with a new coat of paint. Heck, they're so hellbent on not producing D&D they turned down a few proposals for video games.

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The last major traditional product (e.g. not spell cards or such) that wasn't produced in-house was Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Since then we've had Curse of Strahd, Storm King's Thunder, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Tales from the Yawning Portal, Tomb of Annihilation, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and soon Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

And not marketing? What do you think Dice, Camera, Action is? Adventurer's League? The videos about D&D stuff that D&D Beyond puts up with snippets of designer (or other) interviews? The ARG they're doing leading up to the Stream of Many Eyes?

Now, there are certainly things I wish the D&D team was doing because they would cater more to my tastes, but the stuff they're doing is definitely working out well for them.

Zardnaar said:

Once again they don't provide any context, 44% growth over the previous year looks great but.

1. Previous year is 2 years after release, one would assume sales were plateauing.
2. We don't know what the previous year sales were.
3. There have been deep Amazon discounts, PHB was lower and it shot up high again.

Its still basically PR spin, translation D&D is doing great is all you can really state assuming they are not outright lying, which they do not seem to be doing.

Its a weekly thing here and the usual suspects all pop out to pat themselves on the back lol.

I mean are some peoples lives that great that a weekly thread on how great 5E is doing is the highlight of their week or something? I don't recall threads like this when 3.0 was on top and doing well. Does Morrus need to contact WotC to get some poms poms with Mearls face on it for the weekly cheer leading squad to lead chants about it.

Eventually 5E will die or 6E will come out or the sun goes supernova etc etc etc.

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Dude. Come on.

As far as survey's go, well, there is the Dragon+ survey in the front of every digital issue. I have no idea how often it's downloaded or whatnot, but, they ask your name and age right up front, so, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out demographics from there.