D&D 5E The Mainstreaming of D&D

[Oofta]

For me D&D is and always has been pretty much a question of what happens around the game table. The jokes we crack, the bad voices, the groans and cheers when the DM rolls a 20 or one of the players does.

That, for me, hasn't changed. I may disagree with some of the ... shall we say ... sanitizing of the game from time to time. But I've also seen growth. I remember playing a public game a few years back and one of the mods included the mention that one of the people we could talk to was a lesbian couple. It was just a blink-and-you-miss-it thing but we had a guy who was upset because it was supposed to be a family friendly game.

So I think it's generally a good thing if we (using that broadly) have grown and are generally more accepting. The feel of the game has, and will continue, to change. But it's a big tent. I hope to find my own particular corner of that tent and continue to explore new adventures for years to come. Likely that will happen with whatever version of D&D is current, because I haven't told all of the stories I can think of, or played all the PCs I'd like to play yet. I don't think I ever will.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Can you elaborate on the shape you see it taking?

My suggestion: people notice when it appears to be more corporate and calculated. Products for D&D are carefully marketed and targeted for sales and effect, which is all fine in principle but tends to work against experimentalism and innovation. This is especially obvious to gamers who are also familiar with computer gaming, which is deeply in thrall to corporate marketing design strategies aimed at maximizing monetization of the product.

You can, of course, find lots of experimental works and interesting and unusual new stuff in the indie RPG crowd, though, so the issue (as I see it) is mainly with WotC products and the key support network which surrounds D&D 5E as a brand. For me personally I am not bothered by this, but I do understand what the OP is having issues with.....I just do my own thing, and stick to what I like (and honestly I think WotC's strategy is producing some great stuff, so ymmv). The fact that D&D 5E is so popular just means its easier than ever to get a game together, as I see it.

 

[overgeeked]

I think maybe it’s nostalgia for the shared vocabulary of early D&D coming from a wargaming background and withdrawing from the lower-bar mainstream “cute” vibe that’s coming in.

It’s the difference between doing something with a clear identity that happens to end up being popular and intentionally racing to the bottom to chase popularity.

 

[BookTenTiger]

At the same time WotC also released a book with this kind of art:

And if you're not just focused on 5e, there's a whole OSR movement that's better supported now than ever before.

I acknowledge that you feel D&D is becoming more "safe" than how you like it, but I would argue that TTRPGs are actually moving in every direction, including cutesy, grim, story focused, dungeon crawly, old school, etc etc etc.

 

[Aldarc]

Try Cypher System. We play 5E and 3E and 1E modules as well as homebrew, and it is much more satisfying than DnD for me and my 1980s grognard group. Fixed everything I had houseruled. It is SO not vanilla.

That said, I do remember in the 80s during the Panic a sense of coolness for being in that outside nerd/freak group lol

While I (mostly) like the Cypher System and some of its design choices, it still mostly follows D&D beats. As you say, you are using it to run 1e, 3e, and 5e modules, and one of the initial criticisms of Numenera was that it was just D&D reskinned with post-apocalyptic science fantasy. If one wanted a fresher perspective than D&D for the different sorts of games out there, I'm not sure if I would wholly recommend the Cypher System.

 

[Gnarlo]

Matters of different perspective and experience of course, as I don’t see a huge mainstreaming in the general populace… among the nerd population, sure. At the hospital I work at, there are a little over 40 workers on my unit, ranging in ages from 21 to 60s; I’ve found 3 (counting myself) who have played the game and about another half dozen who have heard of it, oddly enough all but one of the 9 in the 40 and up age group. Those 9 are also the group that watches Trek, and the Mandelorian, and plays board games, etc. NONE of them watch any online gamers and only 1 had heard of Critical Role…

When I was last on the forums here 14 or 15 years ago or so? Worked on the same unit and there was one other player on my floor and about 2 or 3 others we could talk general nerd stuff with. So there’s been some growth, but all us RPGers (non computer) and board gamers and miniatures folks and 3D printers and etc forget what a niche we are and what a bubble we live in sometimes in the forums and discords we hang out in.

My come to Jesus moment about the hobby would have been about that 14 or 15 years ago when I was asking the manager of the local Barnes and Nobles why they didn’t have more gaming stuff or carry copies of Dungeon magazine (they would get about a half dozen copies of Dragon each month). He pointed to the shelf with the 3 different quilting magazines and told me how much those outsold the gaming ones. In a major college town. So anecdotal, of course, and YMMV, but worth keeping in mind.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm in a weird place where the vibe of the game (more story oriented, more inclusive) has caught up to my old college group while it feels like the mechanics (more ToTM, more rules lite, less math) have left me behind.

 

[Parmandur]

Matters of different perspective and experience of course, as I don’t see a huge mainstreaming in the general populace… among the nerd population, sure. At the hospital I work at, there are a little over 40 workers on my unit, ranging in ages from 21 to 60s; I’ve found 3 (counting myself) who have played the game and about another half dozen who have heard of it, oddly enough all but one of the 9 in the 40 and up age group. Those 9 are also the group that watches Trek, and the Mandelorian, and plays board games, etc. NONE of them watch any online gamers and only 1 had heard of Critical Role…

When I was last on the forums here 14 or 15 years ago or so? Worked on the same unit and there was one other player on my floor and about 2 or 3 others we could talk general nerd stuff with. So there’s been some growth, but all us RPGers (non computer) and board gamers and miniatures folks and 3D printers and etc forget what a niche we are and what a bubble we live in sometimes in the forums and discords we hang out in.

My come to Jesus moment about the hobby would have been about that 14 or 15 years ago when I was asking the manager of the local Barnes and Nobles why they didn’t have more gaming stuff or carry copies of Dungeon magazine (they would get about a half dozen copies of Dragon each month). He pointed to the shelf with the 3 different quilting magazines and told me how much those outsold the gaming ones. In a major college town. So anecdotal, of course, and YMMV, but worth keeping in mind.

The mainstreaming is more of a late Millenial/Zoomer phenomenon: the number of teenagers and twenty-somethings playing now is astronomical, apparently.

 

[Burnside]

Counterpoints:

- It's STILL nerdy

- The 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoon Dungeons & Dragons, when not viewed through the eyes of 80s kid nostalgia, is actually way, WAY more mainstream, watered down, child-proofed (obviously), sanitized, and lame than Critical Role (the most popular modern, mainstream D&D show).

- There will always be the edgy, weird, DIY, indie frontier to D&D, just like there is still that element of Star Wars, Marvel, and all the other nerd culture stuff that is now mainstream culture.

- In the end, Dungeon Master-ing is still a shockingly creative and rather labor-intensive thing to do. I am stunned at how many very good DMs I encounter, considering the talent and dedication it takes to do it well. But the fact that being a DM is so demanding, and the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is a very intimately-scaled game that requires a huge buy-in of time and effort, ultimately is going to hard cap how many people really stick with it.

What has really changed in the past 6 years is that watching other people play D&D is now a going concern. D&D was never previously a thing to be performed for an audience before. But people will watch high-end professionals play lots of games of every kind, so this development isn't really that surprising. So D&D now has a subset of "passive" fans that may not actually play the game themselves, but enjoy observing it - and may purchase merch or create fan art that appeals to their fandom in that way. Those fans may be enjoying D&D in a way that seems hard for hard-core players to understand.

 

[BookTenTiger]

My come to Jesus moment about the hobby would have been about that 14 or 15 years ago when I was asking the manager of the local Barnes and Nobles why they didn’t have more gaming stuff or carry copies of Dungeon magazine (they would get about a half dozen copies of Dragon each month). He pointed to the shelf with the 3 different quilting magazines and told me how much those outsold the gaming ones. In a major college town. So anecdotal, of course, and YMMV, but worth keeping in mind.

Quilting has gotten way too mainstream!