D&D 5E Alphastream - Why No RPG Company Truly Competes with Wizards of the Coast

[Staffan]

Also not quite true. During 2nd edition Vampire came really close. And according to some may have indeed outsold D&D for a short time.

Note I dint believe it did, I don’t have any good evidence it did.

I can't be hedgehogged into digging up a source, but I'm pretty sure Palladium/Rifts outsold D&D for a short period of time in the 90s. That period was, of course, the half a year or so where TSR wasn't releasing any new product because of "a problem at the printer"*.

* The problem being that the printer wanted to get paid and TSR didn't have any money.

Sorry, maybe my level of English isn't right but I can't understand totally this phrase:

"Spain sold D&D branded bologna in the ‘80s, as part of the craze over the D&D cartoon"

Isn't Bologna an Italian city. And I remember to have bought some numbers of a comic adaptin episodes of the cartoon.

Bologna is also a type of sausage similar to mortadella. When referring to the sausage, it's usually pronounced "baloney".

 

[darjr]

I can't be hedgehogged into digging up a source, but I'm pretty sure Palladium/Rifts outsold D&D for a short period of time in the 90s. That period was, of course, the half a year or so where TSR wasn't releasing any new product because of "a problem at the printer"*.

* The problem being that the printer wanted to get paid and TSR didn't have any money.

yup, Ben Riggs covers this a bit. I’m sure many other RPGs did too. The vampire era was during a time when tsr still had product for sale.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Looks like there are some interesting things in the comments

Ive never heard of Torementa. Weird

 

[Bolares]

Ive never heard of Torementa. Weird

Tormenta is a Brazillian RPG with 20+ years of history and a recent successfull crowdfunding campaign for their new edition. Hardly anyone outside of Brazil nows about it.

 

[Alphastream]

Ya that pissed me off haha

My apologies to both of you (and anyone else impacted by the ending)! I wanted to lay down the more obvious reasons first, and then get to the bigger angle. It's useful feedback, and I'll take it into account for next time!

 

[darjr]

@Alphastream thanks for stopping by. How long did it take you to get all that together for the article?

And for what it’s worth I like a cliffhanger.

 

[Alphastream]

That's my point. I'm surprised to hear that in this day and age. D&D's wild success is so widely known and so frequently touted that it seems incredible that anybody could think otherwise.

We have a thread about it every week at least just here at ENW, let alone the rest of the TTRPG online community. Mainstream articles come out every couple of months where a WotC exec states that this year was the best year ever, year after year. People talk about the Amazon rankings constantly. The Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 stats every quarter for the last 7 years have D&D with 10 times the players of the next highest game. The message that D&D is doing fantastically well is broadcast loudly and continually.

I find it hard to conceive of anybody who could genuinely think otherwise. I mean, I guess you get fringe deniers of everything, because internet, but are they worth commenting on?

It's come up a fair bit in the past couple of years. Usually its from fans, who want to believe a particular RPG will become dominant. I also think, however, that we can see it in some small and medium companies who act like they are competing with D&D. This can lead them astray, focusing on the wrong strategy. In general, companies will suffer by competing with WotC, and probably shouldn't be competing at all (unless they have trouble getting shelf space at the FLGS). Instead, they should be laser-focused on acquiring fans and building community, and on being profitable via careful accounting. Competing (especially with WotC) is a distraction.

 

[Alphastream]

@Alphastream thanks for stopping by. How long did it take you to get all that together for the article?

And for what it’s worth I like a cliffhanger.

Thanks! I've always kept numbers. I collect them almost like I collect minis! I have a file full of data from across the years and when I read or hear something interesting, I make a note. I make sure to track things I think may be in confidence and I only share that if another source can provide it publicly. The data in the article is just a tiny part of what I've collected over the years.

 

[Alphastream]

Tormenta is a Brazillian RPG with 20+ years of history and a recent successfull crowdfunding campaign for their new edition. Hardly anyone outside of Brazil nows about it.

There have been a number of super-interesting international developments. CoC being number one in Japan. Italy crashing the Roll20 servers playing RPGs (mainly D&D) during covid. And Tormenta being so big in Brazil it shows up on overall Roll20 charts.

These are really good indicators that RPG companies should be working on their international strategy. From sales to hiring. I've been fortunate to visit hobby shops in various countries (Belgium, Japan, Italy, Germany, etc.) and there is enormous growth potential for companies of all sizes. If I worked at an RPG company, it would be my number one task to grow the business internationally. There are some major challenges due to the relative economies (a pdf priced for the US is generally prohibitive in much of the global South). And how you get big in a country can be surprising (Japan's CoC grew through written accounts of livestreams!), but there is enormous potential.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I think about the bandwagon effect, and the Matthew effect, the inertia favoring the most popular brand. For example in a little city where most of players choose GW then the new players will not choose other titles by other companies because it is harder to find people playing that game. And D&D is very focused into the crunch, when in the internet age the metaplot is too easy to be spoilered, and you can find free "fluff"(lore/background) with the fandom wikis of videogames, movies, teleseries and comics. Here if a player wants to buy crunch, then they will would rather the system used by the most.

It is curious the case of Tormenta, a franchise by a 3PP with very good health after decades to be from a not English-speaker country. And the origin is an article in the Brazilian Dragon Magazine. I don't see it to be translated into other languages. Maybe WotC could offer some partnership deal like Exandria/Critical Rol.

Other factor is D&D to be ideologically neuter.

I wonder about a Japanese, or Korean, version of action-play game-show with virtual avatars.