D&D: big as it ever was? (Forked Thread: So...How are Sales of 4E Product?)

CharlesRyan said:

Would you rather be a gamer in 1983 or now?

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1983! Better game, better music, better hair.

justanobody said:

Sales will not change everyone's mind to just love something that sales well, nor get them to subscribe to the idea that it is selling well.

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Good sales don't provide an incentive to change minds. They just mean that there are enough people interested in the product that they buy it.

And it also means that the role-playing audience in general and the D&D audience in general has a certain size. (A short reminder - this thread isn't about success or failure of 4E, but the "size of D&D"). If there are tons of 3E players that never convert to 4e and there are still tons of 4E players, this means that D&D is big. If there are tons of 3E players that stop playing and never convert and 4E doesn't sell, we can conclude D&D isn't big, and probably shrinking.

Unfortunately we don't know much about the real size of D&D before 3E. But my arguments for its size:
1) D&D doesn't need much explaining. It doesn't have its own series anymore, but there are still lots of references to it. It's not uncommon of Genre shows to refer to D&D, either.

2) The market for games and gaming itself seems to be very strong thanks to video games and MMORPGs. Once you're in the gaming culture, it is easy to get into role-playing.

3) D&D probably has never been easier to acquire. You're just a google search away from finding out what it is and even ask questions about it, and can get it online without ever leaving your home. Of course this applies to a ton of products, but I dare say that products that won't find a buyer are still hard to find online...

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

If there are tons of 3E players that never convert to 4e and there are still tons of 4E players, this means that D&D is big.

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That's a fair point. I was considering merely the size of the 'officially supported' edition, but if we consider the matter regardless of edition that can change the picture fundamentally.

CharlesRyan said:

D&D is definitely in the mainstream public consciousness in a way it never was in the 80s.

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This is definitely true, but it doesn't necessarily indicate people actually playing the game, just that they know what it is -- largely, I would argue, because it was such a big fad among kids in the 80s (the kids of the 80s being the adults of today). There are a lot of D&D references in popular culture (it even came up in the just-concluded presidential campaign!), but most of those are either in the past tense or are using D&D as a label for something else -- LARPs, CRPGs, and MMORPGs. I suspect a lot of people (including a lot of people who played it in the 80s) would be surprised to know that D&D still exists as a paper & pencil game played sitting around a table with polyhedral dice and Mountain Dew 2-liters.

CharlesRyan said:

We don't live in the distant shadow of D&D's greatness. That greatness is now.

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It feels more like 1861 to me. I'm watching a great nation (the D&D community) tear itself apart.

Aaron2 said:

1983! Better game, better music, better hair.

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I'll give you the music.

Roman said:

Your assertion is mostly based on 3.X sales and data in the early to mid 2000s. Many people get animated by this discussion, because they want to tease out the differences between 3.X edition and 4E in terms of sales and popularity. We don't really know whether your 3.X postulate, although likely correct for its time, still applies now. An edition change is after all an era of flux.

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To be clear, my assertions are based on 2005 data. Not trying to be pedantic; just want to paint the right picture.

Anybody who's looking at this thread to fuel their side of the edition war is barking up the wrong tree. This isn't about editions, it's about the role of D&D in our popular culture and the community of people who enjoy and relate to the activity and the brand. Ultimately, a good or bad edition change can alter that, but despite a bit of acrimony on this forum, there hasn't been a sea change in D&D's fortunes.

Here in the UK, the data I can track on D&D (sales, RPGA activity, store participation in events, and so on) is solidly up over the past couple years. So I'm comfortable holding to my premise. Will D&D's star continue rising forever, or will we see some massive slump similar to the 90s? Who knows. But if the latter, I think we'll all be able to tell. A reversal of that magnitude constitutes more than a little edition bickering among the hardest of the hardcore.

So I think what I saw in 2005 is still true--if anything, D&D is up from there.

Just touching on the comment that D&D has 'permeated' culture to a more significant degree...

Yesterdays LondonPaper:

This discussion is interesting, albeit a little too heated.

My own experiences of roleplaying chime with what a few others have said.

I first played RPGs in the early 80s to about 1989. I have never seen as many people playing roleplaying games as then. There were the game books in book stores, rulebooks in normal shops etc. At my school I ran a club where we had 30-40 players, most of whom had heard about Roleplaying before they came to us. Yet I also remember that almost none of these players had any books; I know because we had a collection of books belonging to the club, that people could borrow.


I left RPGs until about 1999 and when I came back to it, I found that players are now a totally different breed. Most have many rulebooks and they are heavily invested in the settings and games and many of them also DM.

In the 1980s, it was almost like there were two classes of people; players and DMs. If you had the rulebooks, you tended to DM because there were so many players who did not. You also tended to have a different mindset in terms of investment. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is mostly the DMs from that era who are still roleplaying now.

So I can believe BOTH the points of view expressed here; i.e. that D&D was MORE popular in the 1980s amongst people and had a much higher penetration but that this was a fad and never translated into hard sales.

I can also believe that, in terms of sales, this is the golden era of gaming because young people have SO much more money than I ever had when I was their age. Indeed I have so much more money than my parents have. Just as an example, how many of you have two PHBs for 4E?

So I would just like to conclude by saying Popularity does not equal sales, especially when you factor in the sea-change that has taken place in the world since the 1980, in terms of disposable income etc.

Delta said:

That's ridiculous. The statement from Gygax in the 80's is "some old number made by a man who did not necessarily have enough information", but vague PR cheerleading thrown out decades later is the gold-standard "an employee of WotC has gone on record"?

Come to think of it, we also have multiple polls at both the ENWorld and WOTC site that show the majority of players joining the game in the early 80's, but you'll probably discount that, too, in favor of your, well... nothing.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/171146-when-did-you-start-playing-d-d.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/244553-evolution-fighter.html

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I would point out that in the Evolution of the Fighter article, the vast majority of gamers started with Basic D&D. Almost 50% starting with either the '81 or '83 starter sets. That actually runs counter to your point since you are discussing 1e PHB's, which aren't included on the list.

And the EN World poll you link to actually only talks about when people started. Not with what edition. You are ignoring Basic D&D there as well.

In other words, your links don't say what you think they say.

Look it comes down to the fact that we're all spit balling numbers here. TSR did not keep clear records. We don't know how many people were playing back then. We have an estimate from Gygax, but, let's face it, that's a pretty suspect number. Considering how much more on the ball WOTC is in respects to keeping records and things like actual market research, I'm going to think that WOTC's numbers are likely a bit closer to the mark.