D&D 5E Are we at, or close, to peak D&D? Again?

[Oofta]

We shouldn't forget the potential of the international market. D&D is known thanks the videogames, but it is not as famous as other Hasbro's franchises, for example Transformers. Critical Role has helped very much, but that in the English-speaker market. (OMG! I don't want to imagine a game-live show with Latin Spanish-Speakers!!).

Of course WotC may make mistakes, but everybody share that risk.

Could D&D become "old-fashioned"? It is possible if there is a saturation, but WotC can avoid this with new settings enough original.

I think it would be awesome to have new campaign books written by and for different nationalities and then translated back to English. Imagine a MM written for southeast Asia, incorporating some of the weird monsters D&D has always had but including cosmology and monsters from their heritage? What would we have instead of demons and devils? What kind of awesome takes on ghosts and vampires could they have?

Hard to say if it would sell though, there is a possibility of backlash no matter how carefully done.

 

[Parmandur]

Here is a way to look at it.

In 1982, no one at the age I am at right now was playing D&D. I have vastly more disposable income right now than I did in 1982. I cleared snow covered driveways in the late 70's at 2 dollars a driveway if that tells you anything. So the spread across the age range has definitely expanded and that is pretty true whatever the edition. The younger crowd joins up and the older crowd continues. We haven't yet reached the point where the early players are dying of old age. That will of course stabilize the in and the out.

Now having said that, I believe in the USA and adjusting for population, that the new group in the early 80's and probably in some areas even the late 70's, was larger and the game more widely known across people in that age group. I'd venture to say that you'd have a hard time getting fifty people out of my four hundred graduating class that hadn't heard of the game. I'm guess a 100 at least played it. And I lived in a rural area that was behind the times on most anything.

So that brand new group of middle/high school kids was bigger then than it ever has been. What we have now though is we have a lot larger age range of people who play the game. And those other age ranges have more money. And even that younger age range probably is given more money than we got as kids from our parents. I mean I'm a grandpa so that band has expanded.

Yeah, that may have been your experience in one rural environment, buy that does not match with other known accounts of the same time period. The plural of anecdote is not data, but neither is it the singular.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The singular of data is datum.

 

[Emerikol]

Yeah, that may have been your experience in one rural environment, buy that does not match with other known accounts of the same time period. The plural of anecdote is not data, but neither is it the singular.

Anecdotes are anecdotes and so are yours. I do remember it being pretty big in the popular culture at the time as well. I'm alive today and I was alive then and it definitely seems different to me. I'm not sure what test we could run to figure out the truth of the matter. I'd wager a small amount like 100.00 that I am right but not a fortune.

 

[Parmandur]

Anecdotes are anecdotes and so are yours. I do remember it being pretty big in the popular culture at the time as well. I'm alive today and I was alive then and it definitely seems different to me. I'm not sure what test we could run to figure out the truth of the matter. I'd wager a small amount like 100.00 that I am right but not a fortune.

I will admit, I wasn't alive at the time...but hearing from others who were paints a different picture of D&D in the overall popular culture in that time period.

Now, in the 20's, my viewpoint is that of a parent seeing all of the children's D&D material in places such as the public library or Target, or local game stores running multiple kids-only groups due to demand, and the statistics which WotC has shared.

 

[Emerikol]

Yeah, that may have been your experience in one rural environment, buy that does not match with other known accounts of the same time period. The plural of anecdote is not data, but neither is it the singular.

That and talking to other people in other places who lived through the same time as me. I'm surprised your experience is different. I wonder where you lived during that time. D&D was a cultural phenomena at that time and it hasn't really been since.

 

[darjr]

My youngest son started a game club at his high school, they had three DMs ready to go. They had to turn away a dozen or more and each table was ten people. Nearly the same population size high school as when I was there and the “clicks” of people ran the gamut.

 

[Parmandur]

That and talking to other people in other places who lived through the same time as me. I'm surprised your experience is different. I wonder where you lived during that time. D&D was a cultural phenomena at that time and it hasn't really been since.

As previously stated, I wasn't alive (born in '85, started D&D around the messy transition to 3.5, though my groups were half-Reformed, at best). However, I do listen to others.

D&D was a phenomenon at the time, but it is more of a mainstream phenomenon now, with D&D streams drawing millions of viewers, and D&D in schools all over.

 

[Emerikol]

As previously stated, I wasn't alive (born in '85, started D&D around the messy transition to 3.5, though my groups were half-Reformed, at best). However, I do listen to others.

D&D was a phenomenon at the time, but it is more of a mainstream phenomenon now, with D&D streams drawing millions of viewers, and D&D in schools all over.

I think on this one we will just have to agree to disagree.