So what exactly is the root cause of the D&D rules' staying power?

redrick said:

The D&D brand is synonymous with role-playing for newcomers. It's not, "I want to try a table-top RPG," it's, "I want to try D&D."

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That's exactly it. It's about branding. There's nothing unique about D&D; but it does its job well and is more well known as a term than "tabletop roleplaying game" is. Hell, I know people who say they're playing D&D when they're playing something else entirely.

D&D has staying power independent of the rules. The rules have been changed and modified all the time -- huge changes from THAC0 to BAB; random rolling to point buy; XP for gold vs just monsters vs per session.

D&D is successful because it allows a group to run in pretty much any fantasy world without the rules getting in the way. Even more so, it allows you to mix elements. You can play a party with a Chinese-style martial artist, a Native American plains Indian, A french troubadour, An Arthurian plate-mail knight and a gothic magician and absolutely no-one will see a problem with that. You will happily jump from fighting a Greek water-spirit to a Norse angel to a Christian demon. You will travel from 17th century London to 12th century Edo to Pirates of the Carribean overnight, and no-one will bat an eyelid. You cast vaguely medieval spells, use psionic mid-powers or use Chinese traditional medicine. No worries.

That for me is why it lasts so well. It can encompass a very wide variety of fantasy elements with very little friction. And, most importantly, it has been evolved over the years to best support exactly those elements people like to play. Look at the classes that were added over time -- no sense of reason, plan or need to fill a conceptual whole. They were brought in because people want to play them. Ditto for the races. They recently added dragon-people to the list of races, not because people looked at the realms and said "it is logical to expect dragon-kin in some form". It was because players said "I want to play a dragon-person"

D&D is and will remain #1 because:

• More people want to play fantasy than any other genre
• D&D supports the vast majority of play styles people want in fantasy
• D&D allows you to mix play styles, allowing more diverse groups than other systems

I love GUMSHOE and will run it all the time, but it's never going to be as popular because it requires a certain style of play. It's not that D&D is better -- in fact its success may be *because* it is not as "good" as other systems. Good systems are often opinionated, or model something really, really well (as GUMSHOE does investigation), but D&D, with a weak framework for investigative adventures, allows the player who just wants to kill things with an optimized barbarian/fighter/exotic weapon master to play week in, week out with someone whose idea of a good game session is working out which of the three sisters is a better long-term match for the chieftain's second son. That's why D&D based Living campaigns are highly successful, and non-D&D based ones aren't.

D&D allows diverse players to have fun together. More so than any other system.

GrahamWills said:

I love GUMSHOE and will run it all the time, but it's never going to be as popular because it requires a certain style of play. It's not that D&D is better -- in fact its success may be *because* it is not as "good" as other systems. Good systems are often opinionated, or model something really, really well (as GUMSHOE does investigation), but D&D, with a weak framework for investigative adventures, allows the player who just wants to kill things with an optimized barbarian/fighter/exotic weapon master to play week in, week out with someone whose idea of a good game session is working out which of the three sisters is a better long-term match for the chieftain's second son.

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You whole post is good, but that's the best part of it. "Good" here does deserve the quotation marks.

The big problem with the Indy games is that they very much have in the heads of the designers exactly what the game is supposed to do, how it is to be approached, how you are to think about it, and what they want it to achieve. They are games designed in the wake of the revelation that how you thought about the game was important. (Although, the Forge people didn't think about it in exactly that way, they called it "system matters" which I feel is misleading.) And there are several problems with that approach compared to the more organic sprawling designs of classic RPGS. One of them you describe really eloquently when you describe the game as "opinionated". Modern games frequently tell you the game that they want you to play, like it or leave it. Hopefully, they at least do a good job of delivering on that game (which, in fairness I think GUMSHOE completely does). But if you want something else from the game, suck it up. That demands a ton from a group of players. Typically when I run a game I have a mix of players at the table who are power gamers, tacticians, problem solvers, thespians, casual, and so forth with their own agendas and aesthetics of play. They stick it out only if the game offers them a bone from time to time with respect to how they like to play - a shining moment of awesome. Thing is, the shining moment of awesome for a thespian is totally different than for a power gamer.

Older more organic systems end up 'sharing play' better than the very tight modern systems.

D&D allows diverse players to have fun together. More so than any other system.

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That's been my experience as well.

innerdude said:

I would probably agree that on the whole, D&D generally does deliver what it promises with one massive caveat---you have to restrict your view of the game to levels 1 through 9. Once you get to level 10+, all bets are off.

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That's actually a pretty miniscule caveat, given that WorC data shows that the overwhelming majority of tables reboot by this point for real life reasons. Also, less of an issue in 5E, but 10+ play is still not normal.

I think it is just simply the fact that nothing has even 5% of the name recognition that DnD has. Even people who know nothing about game, know no gamers, and would never play a RPG will tell you DnD is that game nerds play.

Morrus said:

That's exactly it. It's about branding. There's nothing unique about D&D; but it does its job well and is more well known as a term than "tabletop roleplaying game" is. Hell, I know people who say they're playing D&D when they're playing something else entirely.

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Yep. When your product’s name becomes the vernacular for the entire market, you’ve really achieved something. It also marks a dangerous point in a manufacturer’s business planning- you now have to be careful that the vernacular use doesn’t cost you your branding ID. See Bayer Aspirin. “Aspirin” used to be Bayer’s brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, but vernacular use cost them trademarks in many countries, and the rest is history.

Morrus said:

Hell, I know people who say they're playing D&D when they're playing something else entirely.

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Guilty as charged. When talking to people who don't play roleplaying games, I will sometimes just say, "I'm playing D&D tonight." It's easier than saying, "I'm playing Trail of Cthulhu tonight."

IME, I personally feel the same way, rules-wise. There's just so much...well, anyway.(Rant about the deficiencies of the D&D rules averted) I'd much rather be playing or running almost any other system, especially story or narrative-centric ones.

But!..I need other people to play or run a game. Simply put: Network Externalities. I can actually easily fill a D&D game with players. I can't do that easily with Fate or Gumshoe or whatever. I envy those who live in places that they can. Being the first makes D&D the Biggest, which means it doesn't really matter if its the best.

Sure, sometimes I can get my kids or my gaming group to play Fate. But even my daughter's friends play D&D instead of Fate, because its so ubiquitous.

So what, then, do we make of the short historical period when D&D wasn't the undisputed king of the RPG market---the mid/late 90s White Wolf incursion?

Was it actually the case? Were more people actually entering the hobby through Vampire: The Masquerade than through 1e/2e? I'll admit, I was completely out of the RPG scene around this time, other than playing Baldur's Gate for PC, so I'm asking for outside perspective.

From what I've read of the system and of commentary around it, in some ways Vampire seems to play against D&D's core strengths---

Genre: D&D = generic fantasy (though constrained within its own tropes) vs. Vampire = highly specific, modern gothic/horror

Adaptability: D&D highly driftable (though effectiveness varies) vs. Vampire = I can't think of a system where a game company tried to drift Storyteller. In fact, didn't White Wolf wave the white flag at one point and adapt World of Darkness to OGL?

Branding: D&D was still D&D vs. Vampire had the entire Anne Rice cultural zeitgeist backing it up.

Usability: D&D largely fulfills its internal promise for at least levels 1-9 vs. Vampire---if The Forge proponents are to be believed, Vampire was at odds from the very beginning with itself in terms of what the system promised vs. what it delivered. (I can't comment on this, because I've never once played a Storyteller-based game and probably never will.)

So what was going on? Was it really just an odd confluence of cultural incidences that came together at just the right moment and White Wolf capitalized on it?

innerdude said:

So what, then, do we make of the short historical period when D&D wasn't the undisputed king of the RPG market---the mid/late 90s White Wolf incursion?

Was it actually the case? Were more people actually entering the hobby through Vampire: The Masquerade than through 1e/2e? I'll admit, I was completely out of the RPG scene around this time, other than playing Baldur's Gate for PC, so I'm asking for outside perspective.

From what I've read of the system and of commentary around it, in some ways Vampire seems to play against D&D's core strengths---

Genre: D&D = generic fantasy (though constrained within its own tropes) vs. Vampire = highly specific, modern gothic/horror

Adaptability: D&D highly driftable (though effectiveness varies) vs. Vampire = I can't think of a system where a game company tried to drift Storyteller. In fact, didn't White Wolf wave the white flag at one point and adapt World of Darkness to OGL?

Branding: D&D was still D&D vs. Vampire had the entire Anne Rice cultural zeitgeist backing it up.

Usability: D&D largely fulfills its internal promise for at least levels 1-9 vs. Vampire---if The Forge proponents are to be believed, Vampire was at odds from the very beginning with itself in terms of what the system promised vs. what it delivered. (I can't comment on this, because I've never once played a Storyteller-based game and probably never will.)

So what was going on? Was it really just an odd confluence of cultural incidences that came together at just the right moment and White Wolf capitalized on it?

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D&D has had at least three periods where a potential strong competitor emerged.

The first was Runequest 2e in the late '70s early '80s. It primarily relied on a classless skill system, detailed combat, and offered multiple magic systems in a reasonably tight and flavorful world of Glorantha. Then Avalon Hill bought it without the world, added yet another magic system, stripped out a lot of flavour and 3e didn't go far.

The second was the World of Darkness games from White Wolf in the late '80s (VtM, WWtA, WtO, CtD, MtA, and others I didn't collect). It offered a strong focus on telling coherent stories filled with drama and melodrama, rules be damned: even the sample adventures and published modules threw out the rules when they would "get in the way". It had crossover with LARPing and offered a gateway for cooler kids (like goths) because vampires are always edgy and cool. Power level between the games were quite different making a diverse group of protagonists somewhat difficult. The basic rules were poor enough that a lot of groups I knew who started with a VtM or WWtA games either threw in the towel entirely or tried to used alternative game systems to support the presented world. White Wolf kept advancing their overarching meta-plot to the point where it culminated in a world-breaking event and the New World of Darkness was formed. This led to the second worst edition war I've seen on the Internet.

The third was Pathfinder, a self-inflicted wound composed of a whole bunch of unforced errors we needn't get into.