D&D General RPG Theory and D&D...and that WotC Survey

[Ovinomancer]

WOTC isn't catering to older folks?

Then what about the return of SpellJammer? DragonLance? Natural language? The emphasis on DM empowerment?

Wait. When those were originally released they were only meant to be cool for older gamers? Dang. Well, guess I'm glad I'm the right age for them now; it would suck being younger and knowing that those products are only for the older gamers.

 

[Aldarc]

But what about your human right to be the subject of market research by commercial firms?!?!

My rights? No, what WotC fails to appreciate are their rights to my unsolicited opinions.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Woah. This thread took a swerve I was not expecting.

That said, if we are thinking about people being old, and how we don't like "dead-hand control" (or, in this case ... about people not paying attention to the actual ages of the people playing games), I think it's helpful to remember something and tie it into the original post:

That survey was from 1999.
GNS (or, at a minimum, dividing game typologies into three different kinds) is from 1997.
Ron Edwards started his discussions in 1999, and the place that this was discussed (the Forge) died out in 2005.

For those keeping track, 2005 was seventeen years ago. I run games with high school kids that weren't even born when that place died.

I think it could go further in ways that would require more research. Specifically, rpg "theory," like the hobby itself, is white, male, and western-dominated. What does a theory of games look like for female, queer, POC, and non-Western players? How are the aims, interests, and styles of play affect by these real-world dynamics? (fwiw, personally, I'm not sure that "social contract" adequately covers these dynamics (either in gaming or political theory...))

Weirdly, there has been a LOT of great theory since 2005 that has concentrated on issues of gender, sexuality, race, and intersectionality in TTRPGs! Some, for example, discuss how the crunch/fluff divide plays into queer representation.

There is a lot of interesting work out there- and, increasingly, people are taking the subjects seriously in academic settings, as opposed to simply arguing over it in hobbyist forums (which regurgitate the same subjects, endlessly on loop). If you are interested, I recommend digging into it!

 

[Parmandur]

Oh of course. Heck, we have direct evidence that some campaigns lasted years and years. Totally true. But, yeah, as a normative among the broader audience?

Although, I will walk back something I said earlier. Peak 80's D&D absolutely could have been selling best among college age students. Of course, let's not forget that college age is 18-21, so, actually pretty much dead on the same as what D&D has always pegged itself at. Actually, that's a bit younger than what most evidence points to in 3e days. After all, Paizo/Dragon did a couple of reader surveys and found their readership was always around the 20-24 year old range. A band that never changed.

In Dragon 62, in 1981, their reader survey pegged readership at 95% male and 16 1/2 years old. And, on average, had only been gaming for a couple of years. Not really surprising if they were only 16 or 17 years old.

Again, I really have to ask, where is ANY evidence that D&D players were older? Other than maybe in the early 70's I suppose. Certainly after 1980, is there any evidence that D&D players weren't high school or college age on average?

Every piece of evidence I've ever seen - from the scene in ET (and the obvious link to the scenes in Stranger Things) to the cartoon to the advertisements from TSR on the TV, to comic book ads. Nothing even remotely suggests that the target audience for D&D wasn't teens or early 20's.

Yup, pretty much has always been a mainly teens and twenty something scene.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yup, pretty much has always been a mainly teens and twenty something scene.

It's interesting (albeit sad) because, IME, most of us started playing when we were really young.

But somehow, a lot of us have forgotten that. You can never recapture that feeling you had when you were that age, but you can do your best to make sure others get to experience it.

 

[Willie the Duck]

That survey was from 1999.
GNS (or, at a minimum, dividing game typologies into three different kinds) is from 1997.
Ron Edwards started his discussions in 1999, and the place that this was discussed (the Forge) died out in 2005.
For those keeping track, 2005 was seventeen years ago. I run games with high school kids that weren't even born when that place died.

I think that's important to remember. Even though formal analysis of TTRPGs have never completely caught on*, where they exist they undoubtedly have (or certainly should) moved on from the old models and old fights**.

*And this, I think, is a big issue that such theory runs into. Vaguely 90-99.999% (I certainly don't have hard numbers for this) of gamers do not care about our theories, our models, our fights, or our favorite games. Most people play D&D and don't play it with a specific mind to the GNS model, six cultures of play, or any other thing (the models might reflect how people play, but then as mentioned above one hopes they evolve as the player base changes). Those that play not-modern-D&D may or may not do so because 5e doesn't reflect a certain model or typed playstyle, or they might just be expanding their horizons.

**Highlighting (for me at least) that forums like these really are diverging more and more from being representative of the total player base.

Overall, I think being aware of what your players want from the game is important, and I think game developers are listening to that advice. WotC is putting out surveys and addressing things like long/short rest usage, non-combat adventure options, and similar. Whether they are learning things that fit into GNS or any other models, I don't know. OSR people have been adapting with their player types as well (Worlds Without Number would never have been made when 'as close to the original as possible, except for _____' was the order of the day). PotA and Fate and such have taken the mantle of the Forge lessons and taken their own slice of the industry. All in all, it is a great time to be a gamer and the experimentation out there is amazing.

Isn't that WotC catering to those hip new Generation X folks?

I'm still young! It's that imposter in the mirror who has gotten old!

 

[Mannahnin]

Although, I will walk back something I said earlier. Peak 80's D&D absolutely could have been selling best among college age students. Of course, let's not forget that college age is 18-21, so, actually pretty much dead on the same as what D&D has always pegged itself at. Actually, that's a bit younger than what most evidence points to in 3e days. After all, Paizo/Dragon did a couple of reader surveys and found their readership was always around the 20-24 year old range. A band that never changed.

In Dragon 62, in 1981, their reader survey pegged readership at 95% male and 16 1/2 years old. And, on average, had only been gaming for a couple of years. Not really surprising if they were only 16 or 17 years old.

Again, I really have to ask, where is ANY evidence that D&D players were older? Other than maybe in the early 70's I suppose. Certainly after 1980, is there any evidence that D&D players weren't high school or college age on average?

Every piece of evidence I've ever seen - from the scene in ET (and the obvious link to the scenes in Stranger Things) to the cartoon to the advertisements from TSR on the TV, to comic book ads. Nothing even remotely suggests that the target audience for D&D wasn't teens or early 20's.

My recollection from Playing at the World, Game Wizards, and elsewhere is that the original 70s crowd had a good age range, from adult wargamers and sci-fi fans to college and high school kids, but that the college crowd was the bulk of the market.

Then after the James Dallas Egbert III incident and similar publicity pushed D&D more into mainstream awareness, the average age dropped. TSR was marketing a lot toward kids in High School and Junior High, albeit while still trying to retain adult gamers. Speaking anecdotally, I was 10 when I got my first Basic set, in '85.

 

[Mannahnin]

WOTC isn't catering to older folks?

Then what about the return of SpellJammer? DragonLance? Natural language? The emphasis on DM empowerment?

Definitely there's a hardcore segment of the market that just stuck with the game and aged along with it.

And most of us tend to play primarily with people around our own age. So there are certainly many middle aged and older groups out there.

But as for how much of the market they/we really make up? I suspect that WotC does indeed have good internal marketing numbers on that, and designs accordingly. The design foci on natural language and DM empowerment definitely do seem like they're at least partially meant to appeal to the grognards.

Spelljammer and Dragonlance I suspect are some combination of nostalgia marketing to us older folks, and just exploiting their own IP vaults and trying to get some more value there. I imagine we'd have seen them sooner but maybe they took a while to find the approaches to take with them which they think will sell with the younger crowd.

 

[Parmandur]

Definitely there's a hardcore segment of the market that just stuck with the game and aged along with it.

And most of us tend to play primarily with people around our own age. So there are certainly many middle aged and older groups out there.

But as for how much of the market they/we really make up? I suspect that WotC does indeed have good internal marketing numbers on that, and designs accordingly. The design foci on natural language and DM empowerment definitely do seem like they're at least partially meant to appeal to the grognards.

Spelljammer and Dragonlance I suspect are some combination of nostalgia marketing to us older folks, and just exploiting their own IP vaults and trying to get some more value there. I imagine we'd have seen them sooner but maybe they took a while to find the approaches to take with them which they think will sell with the younger crowd.

Indeed they do, and they have shard this data a couple times recently, for 2019 and 2020 respectively:

 

[Mannahnin]

From the looks of those pie charts it would seem that the number of folks over 45 who respond to surveys are small enough in number that they just don't bother including us in the data visualization.

On the flip side, it also seems indicative that players 35-45 make up enough of the market currently that they DO bother counting those folks, unlike in the 1999 survey (and same for the 8-12 range).