I organize D&D at two large Seattle conventions, PAX and ECCC. As I've shared on my blog, the number of people interested in D&D is enormous. And a lot of them this past August had heard of '24 and were super excited about it. We had a pre-release copy of the PH and people were texting their friends pictures, wanted to hold it, etc. Out of many many hundreds of people I spoke to, exactly one person was negative on '24. Similarly, at ECCC earlier in the year, exactly two people were negative on D&D overall. (We helped them find one of the areas running other RPGs. I love all kinds of RPGs.)
This is one of the many things I love about TTRPGs and tabletop in general - there's no easy, one stop reference to figure out how the community has reacted to something. I popping into Alphastream's comment with because it dovetails nicely with my process for figuring out what's going on in the market.
My approach for research the tabletop market comes from my first hand experiences with the fall of D&D 4e and the rise of 5e. It was interesting to see where the two diverged, and where they converged, in terms of the community. A model emerged that helps me guide my work in games.
Tabletop games are community driven. They require players to engage socially, leading to the rise of a social ecosystem around them. Like any ecosystem, the system around TTRPGs has some elements that are very sensitive to change, and others that are indifferent to it. Within that range, some areas default to negativity and others filter for positive fans.
Cons are a pretty good example of positive indicators. People go to cons to engage with stuff they like. You'd have to be psychotic to drop money on a hotel, travel, food, and a convention pass to go hate on something. 4e D&D hit rock bottom when people at Gen Con were negative about it, but I think that was driven by Paizo's strong presence there. D&D always had a good presence at PAX, so it doesn't surprise me to see enthusiasm.
That doesn't mean that these indicators are useless. It just means that we need to look at things in context. Alphastream's experience at PAX, and seeing things at Gen Con last year, indicates to me that we're not seeing a dramatic shift in D&D's fortunes in either direction.
As a counter example, think of Twitter. Are people on Twitter or Reddit being negative about D&D? Yes. Has that always been the case? Pretty much, yes. There's no dramatic change in tone in either place, which lies up with what I see at conventions.
Digging a little deeper requires you to look for areas where you can track change. Here's one I just updated my research on this morning - DMs Guild publishing activity. Publishing is a good indicator of overall energy. It's a bottom of the funnel activity.
Think of the top of the funnel as where casual players sit. There are lots of them. Some journey down the funnel as they become more engaged, with smaller and more engaged audiences at each tier. IME, the most engaged TTRPG enthusiasts publish their own material. Doing so takes time, money, and lots of energy, so to me its a good gauge for the enthusiasm and engagement in the hobby. Plus, we can track new releases to see how many people are active at this tier.
I went through and looked at how many new products were added to the Guild from January 1 to January 27 in 2025, 2024, and 2023. Here's what I found:
2025: 273 new products
2024: 314 new products
2023: 348 new products
Aha! The number is trending down. D&D is dying. Case closed, let's take a break for margaritas!
Nope, not so fast. It's an indicator, but we have to, once again, put in context.
(But, a margarita sounds good now. I'm not sure what other parents are going through, but the flu is nasty this year. Half my daughter's class and her teacher are out sick with it. Anyway...)
I'd expect this number to bounce up in 2025. There's a new version of the game out and a new setting added to the Guild. Historically, we've seen a rush of new fan content when a game releases a new version, but we're not seeing it here. However, we only see part of the picture.
In this case, I'll next look at DrivethruRPG.com and see what the numbers look like on new products. Are there fewer titles overall in publishing? Does the Guild show a distinct trend, or is there a larger trend at work?
These questions help you get a clearer picture. In general, my experience with this research is that it goes much better if you approach it like this:
Your job is to find the next question, not find the final answer. There is no final answer, because the market and the community are in a constant state of change. Data is always out of date, and no line continues on the same trend forever.
I'm going to dig up the DTRPG numbers right now and will post an update on that in a bit. I'm very curious to see what we'll learn.
