WotC WotC reported 50% growth over 2020!

[Henadic Theologian]

Imperfect communication on my part - Applying the general ideas to RPG design vs adopting the specific CRPGs implementations...




I agree that many of these players would be better served with a system like: Age of Sigmar: Soulbound.

But D&D is the market leader, and for the majority if RPG groups; close enough is good enough.

In my opinion:

Other than being the least complex WotC edition of D&D, which has worked in WotC's favor; there is nothing inherent in the actual design of 5e that is responsible for the massive upswing in the popularity of D&D.

It is a pop culture phenomenon that WotC marketing has been savvy enough to ride the wave of to unbelievable sales numbers.





A classic failure to protect players from themselves.

The overwhelming majority of players are Normies to whom D&D is a past time; not a hobby.

Normies don't work for their entertainment. That's why Normies rarely have hobbies; hobbies require work from participants while pastimes do not.

Normies generally don't buy RPG stuff. GM's are the hobbyists that buy the product.

Tabletop RPGs require work, which is foisted off by Normies to the Game Master; he is generally the sole hobbyist in a group and thus it is he that puts in the work to make and keep the game going. While the Normies who make up the bulk of the players do nothing more than show up, play the game, and then leave to do something else until next time.

I am lucky in that most in my Sunday group are also hobbyists. We have three people that have GM'd different systems at various times.

Yet even when we ran a short campaign of 5e, how many actually bought the books out of 5 people? Just me.

IMHO - giving disproportionate weight to the desires of players that are not the majority demographic that actually buys the product, and not giving equal weight to GM concerns/desires who do make up the majority demo that actually buys the books is a long term mistake that will come back to bite them.

I think that the blistering success of 5e is sending the designers a false market signal that a lot of these new players will become long term hobbyists.

Hence the gradual shift in 5e marketing from attracting back all the old guard that left D&D in the 4e era with a less complex edition, to now explicitly catering to the new player base gained in the past few years to the near exclusion of other concerns.

And that is not to say that anything really bad will happen to D&D, or that it will no longer be the market leader when the boom ends. Just that the downturn after the boom will be bigger than they estimate, and they may have to make more of a design course correction than they anticipate.

The current momentum will keep things going for a while though.




Exactly.

Voting with your feet is the path to happy gaming.




As a past time, not a hobby. There is a big difference between the two.

WotC didn't have to be savvy, it was all luck, it literally fell right into their lap.

 

[darjr]

WotC didn't have to be savvy, it was all luck, it literally fell right into their lap.

I totally disagree with this, I mean look at the work with the public play test, also why didn't it work with 4e?

 

[Scribe]

I totally disagree with this, I mean look at the work with the public play test, also why didn't it work with 4e?

I again wish there was an analysis somewhere that was as unbiased as possible to say why.

There has to be a reason(s) Pathfinder was a success, where 4e was not, when one was a direct response essentially to the other.

 

[darjr]

I again wish there was an analysis somewhere that was as unbiased as possible to say why.

There has to be a reason(s) Pathfinder was a success, where 4e was not, when one was a direct response essentially to the other.

That’s the question with the million dollar answer.

 

[Scribe]

That’s the question with the million dollar answer.

I'd say its much more than a million, in Wizards eyes.

I know I could speculate as to what those reasons are, but thats not exactly unbiased is it.

 

[Jaeger]

The concern is a shared multiverse, IMO.

ehhh... D&D has been on the "multiverse" bandwagon for its own settings or a while now. I am not invested enough to really care if they bring the MtG settings into the fold.

Besides that this is a blatant "moving the goal posts" from "Does not play the games" to "it's only his pastime" violation. I don't get the difference? Especially when it comes to D&D. But never mind that.

From this article "From little kid to president of the company, Wizards of the Coast leader stays in the ever-evolving game"

"It’s a privilege to work on something that was so foundational to you and the person you developed into,” Cocks said. “When I started playing ‘D&D,’ I really didn’t know how to tell stories. It inspired me to read. It inspired me to start writing and designing. Being able to go work at a company that [makes] not only a product you really enjoy, but something that had such a profound impact on your life … I think that’s pretty cool. It’s a story that’s not just unique to me. I think it’s common across a large percentage of our employees."

I've played football occasionally - as a past time - something fun I did once in a while. That doesn't mean that I play football as a regular thing.

From further down in the article you cited:

"He played with pen and paper through eighth grade, switched over to digital games and played those “D&D” games through college."
He took a break when he couldn’t afford computer games anymore, eventually picking it up again a couple of years after college.
He made a career switch in 1999 when his girlfriend (now wife) bought him a copy of the role-playing game “Baldur’s Gate” and it served as his inspiration for deciding he’d had enough of consumer packaged goods with Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. He wanted to get into the video game industry.

If you got a quote that says he currently plays in so much as even a bi-weekly game of D&D - not the video game "D&D" he switched to after the 8th grade...
I will absolutely come back and post "Darjr was right, I was wrong." And eat crow.
I've eaten Crow before - I'll get over it.

But until then: Chris Cocks the current CEO of WotC doesn't play D&D.

WotC didn't have to be savvy, it was all luck, it literally fell right into their lap.

Sometimes its better to be lucky than good, but...

Mearls drove the direction of 5e to a less complex game, and I believe that he even had to pushback against his own dev team to simplify it as much as he did.

He wanted to make 5e more normie friendly: That was a savvy move.

During 3e and even 4e WotC spent a ton of cash on brand recognition, and advertising for the game. In spite of 4e's overall fate, it did keep "D&D" visible in certain areas of normieville. So 5e reaped the benefit of all that past spending on brand identity when the wave hit...

WotC had nothing to do with the current wave, but they did keep the D&D boat in the water, and kept it from sinking to be there to ride it.

I totally disagree with this, I mean look at the work with the public play test, also why didn't it work with 4e?

WotC did a lot of own-goals in the lead up to 4e's release. And a lot of the design direction and presentation of 4e was a distinct shift in tone from how the game was previously portrayed.

They were told during playtest that many were less than enthused. They chose to ignore those signals and the big kerfluffel that was the 4e era ensued.

 

[Older Beholder]

The overwhelming majority of players are Normies to whom D&D is a past time; not a hobby.

Normies don't work for their entertainment. That's why Normies rarely have hobbies; hobbies require work from participants while pastimes do not.

Normies generally don't buy RPG stuff. GM's are the hobbyists that buy the product.

Tabletop RPGs require work, which is foisted off by Normies to the Game Master; he is generally the sole hobbyist in a group and thus it is he that puts in the work to make and keep the game going. While the Normies who make up the bulk of the players do nothing more than show up, play the game, and then leave to do something else until next time.

Maybe not calling people 'Normies' might facilitate more casual players becoming hobbyists?
Just a thought.

 

[Jaeger]

Maybe not calling people 'Normies' might facilitate more casual players becoming hobbyists?
Just a thought.

You got me.

I am just a random poster on an Internet forum with no blog, YouTube, or twitch channel platform.

Yet I have have just single handedly, in two posts on an elf game forum, literally kept tens of thousands of casual players from forever becoming lifelong D&D hobbyists by using the word ‘Normie’ instead of ‘people’...

Behold my power, and despair!

-Insert supervillain cackling laugh here-

 

[DollarD]

Some of this seems very... dismissive... of how people play D&D or how they choose to spend their time with the game.

Yeah, Chris Cocks got his appreciation from D&D from computer games. So did I. We never had D&D around here, so I got my first taste of it via Neverwinter Nights, which included the 3rd edition rules with the game. That's where I learned how D&D works, and how play can happen. I showed by brother, and he got hooked as well. So when he got to university, and there was a small club there, he got into playing at tabletop. When he got back from university, he introduced me to tabletop playing, and I got us a group together.

It seems rather unfortunate to dismiss the impact computer games has had on D&D, since without it, my current group would not have existed.

In terms of cross-pollination from MtG, well... Of my group's six players, three are avid MtG players. They play both. I'm not sure, but if I were able to guess, the fact that D&D was co-incidentally also a product of WotC gave them confort to try something technically out of their wheelhouse. And probably gave them the confidence that they COULD play as well, given that I'm assuming their are similarities in the skills required to play both games.

I'm seeing that as a net positive, especially for my group.

Of the six players, two would not be playing without computer games and three would not be playing if not for MtG. The remaining player came from Warhammer 40K/Fantasy.

Now, are we 'Normies' or not? Is this a past-time or a hobby for us? I mean, only my brother bought the hardcover books. Two of the players have DnD Beyond purchases. But we play six-hour sessions twice a month, for almost four years now. One of the players used his 3D printer to print miniatures for us, and everyone paints their own minis.

We do it semi-regularly, then. I'm playing (other rather DMing) D&D more than I'm playing computer games. During COVID-19, our Roll20 sessions were the most we socialised outside of our families, but we still played.

D&D may not be our life. We might not be 'hardcore' players. But we are players nonetheless, and we enjoy our games. I suspect a lot of people engage in the same way with D&D.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we all got on this boat for different reasons, but we all got to the same place. I don't think there one true way to steer the D&D ship, but please don't dismiss the voices of those who got on the ship in a different way from what you prefer.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

fail to understand the fundamental differences between the two fanbases,

I think that can be summarised as MTG is basically competitive, whilst D&D is basically cooperative.

Whilst some people like both styles of gameplay, many prefer one over the other, some very strongly.

You see it in the MMO market. For some "no PvP = no sale", for others "yes PvP = no sale".