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

[Bolares]

Counterpoint: one person watching and becoming enamored by Critical Role and setting up behind the DM screen with five of their friends means you turn one CR watcher into six players.

Also, Critical Role started in 2015, and became a phenomenon really fast. In 2015, D&D wasn't anywhere near as big as it is now (and neither was Critical Role). But it's pretty clear that Critical Role played a big part in the first stage of the rocket that D&D turned into. Should they shut it down now I don't think it would matter much, but CR definitely helped D&D go big.

I’m not saying CR is not a part of it. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t make sense to say CR is the major reason for it

 

[darjr]

Wrong thread

 

[darjr]

Its a historical accident in that they were able to take advantage of D&D fans who had liked 3e, but not 4e, and that was a significant sized group. That's unlikely to occur again, and certainly wasn't when PF2e came out.

I agree but would like to add that it helped enormously that they had the mailing list to Dragon and Dungeon magazines and that a huge portion of those folks agreed to convert over to Pathfinder subscriptions. And I think that was because they trusted Paizo and the quality of thier work.

 

[Morrus]

I agree but would like to add that it helped enormously that they had the mailing list to Dragon and Dungeon magazines and that a huge portion of those folks agreed to convert over to Pathfinder subscriptions. And I think that was because they trusted Paizo and the quality of thier work.

Yeah. That was crucial.

 

[JEB]

CoC is great. There is no shot it becomes a competitor to 5e.

To be fair, CoC is more popular in Japan than D&D, so it can happen. But I can't see CoC managing that in the west, especially not at this point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree but would like to add that it helped enormously that they had the mailing list to Dragon and Dungeon magazines and that a huge portion of those folks agreed to convert over to Pathfinder subscriptions. And I think that was because they trusted Paizo and the quality of thier work.

Absolutely. It was a perfect storm that would be impossible to duplicate on command.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So BRP, I did have it backwards. It was built to support the setting first and after retooled as a generic system. But it is one of the oldest. And I think, reading the history, what they were really going for, imho, was a sort of generic system anyway.

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In a way, certainly. Though I never thought the basic (no pun intended) version worked very well with the addition of guns. You really want to think through guns when designing a game to use them, but that's a different, somewhat long, and off topic discussion.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

It would be enlightening to compare D&D market growth in English-speaking country, where apparently CR is well-known and has been for years, with non-English speaking countries where it is virtually unheard off, to try and assess the role of CR.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In the words of Ryan Dancey (who used to be one of the bosses of D&D in the early 00s): network externalities. Basically, D&D is big to the point where for many people it's synonymous with RPGs, so if you're looking for players you're likely to find some. That turns into a big positive feedback loop. If you're looking for GURPS players, you're going to have to look far and wide – in my experience, it's uncommon for a group to start off with a non-D&D game. It's more likely that an established group will go "Eh, this RPG thing is fun but I'm getting a bit tired of D&D. What else is out there?". And of course, it's quite likely that those groups will wander off in different directions. Some will try Call of Cthulhu for a real change of pace. Some want a game that's sort of the same but crunchier and go for Pathfinder. Others like the sci-fi/space thing and try out Star Wars or Starfinder. So basically, the small portion of the gaming market that isn't D&D gets split up dozens or hundreds of different ways.

All of this. Once D&D became the early phenomenon it was, its dominance was its to lose. All it had to do was keep at least a basic degree of competence (and not touch the basic reward loop it uses, which works for enough people practically every computer RPG ever works on it, even ones where its more inappropriate in the fiction) and no no game was ever likely to really displace it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other point is the homemade elements. But World of Darkness I don't remember players publishing their own ideas for other games, for example new creatures.

The open licence of the d20 System helped a lot. It was very useful to can use a system known by the most than starting from zero. Rebember I have mentioned the wandwagon effect in a previous post.

I love the background of Eclipse Phase RPG, a revolution within the sci-fi genre, but it is not very easy to be learnt and understand. At least I still feel confused with the stats. The crunch part is the wet dream of the munchkins, but the menace of the exurgent (alien virus, something like a fusion of Terminator/Skynet and Resident Evil) is enough to cause fear even among the "transhumans" (and robots).

For a lot of time only D&D was known in the most of no-English countries. It was the first to arrive in those markets and here the players get used to that system.

In the past I thought the videogames would kill the TTRPG in the same sense of "Video killed the radio stars" but now I see players are searching in the TTRPGs something they can't find in the videogames.

D&D is a brand by Hasbro, with Mattel one of the bigest megacorportation in the toy market. A big fish what can spend a lot of money to promote their franchise. The rest of titles by other publishers have got lesser number of opportunities to become a multimedia franchise.