Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
So, how do YOU feel about provocative titles?
Forget it, Jake. It's Zagygtown.
ahem
Noodling around after a recent needed break, I was again marveling at the resurgence and success of D&D. As has been discussed ad nauseum, success has a thousand fathers, and there are many reasons that D&D is now enjoying levels of success, both as a product and in the zeitgeist, that arguably surpass the early 80s.* There are a number of reasons for this- an edition that has been popular and is reasonably easy to pick and play, a number of older players returning to the fold for nostalgic reasons (and many of them bringing younger players with them), the success of youtube/streaming/podcasts for D&D, responsible shepherding of the product, the prevalence of internet tools that make the game easier- especially playing remotely or finding groups, and the general success of "nerd culture" in the mainstream.
And yet- perhaps this is as good as it gets? Wait, what???!!!???!! I know what you're thinking- typical doomcasting! Grognard hatin' on the popularity! To channel Hairspray, YOU CAN'T STOP THE BEAT!
But here's the thing about enjoying success. For the most part ... it ends. Success is similar to cruising down the highway doing 90 passing all of the traffic and feeling all happy inside and then you accidently shift from fifth to first instead of to fourth and watch your engine leap out out of your hood.**
As such, I think it's helpful to remember both that D&D has previously had this unprecedented success, and that it "ended." It doesn't mean that D&D (or RPGs) go away; we are still playing them. Simply that certain hobbies will have boom/bust cycles, and that these occur for a reason. I expect that this will also be thoroughly uncontroversial.
1. A nuke for a nuke will make the whole world bow down to me. -Gandhi, probably.
The prior golden age of D&D was the late 70s to the early 80s, and while you could date it different ways, it definitely included the time period from 1977 (publication of Monster Manual) through the end of 1983 (publication of the last classic modules, Monster Manual II. Mentzer's Expert Set). As D&D continued to grow in popularity in the early 80s, it was "popular" in a way that is difficult to fathom at a later time. Back before the Amazon, or even before the internet***, D&D could be found everywhere. Not just in local hobbyist stores (which carried D&D in addition to the usual stalwarts like Avalon Hill), but in the malls (Kaybee Toys, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks), in department stores (Sears et al.), everywhere. Even scholastic book sales at schools had D&D books! And given the mass-market constraints at the time (try finding a bagel outside of New York, or remember that sushi was some weird thing in California), the omnipresence of D&D in the early 80s helped it spread far and wide.
Which was reflected in the popular culture as well. For a period of time, you had a Saturday morning cartoon (when that was a huge thing) that ran from '83-'85. You had movies (like E.T.) portraying D&D as a common thing ... of course the "cool" older siblings are excluding the younger kid from playing it ... and did not need explanation.
Of course, the popularity also caused a backlash (the Satanic Panic ... ugh) and the over-expansion of D&D caused retrenchment (the Lorraine Williams era). Saying the golden age was a "fad" isn't accurate- it built a lasting empire, albeit one that has had ebbs and flows. But it was, in a sense, a fad in the way that it captured a moment in time and exploded in popularity only to recede again.
2. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme. Like orange. - $ki Mask "The Slump God", indubitably.
Now we are in a new era of unprecedented popularity for the D&D brand. This, overall, is a good.... GREAT thing. Every person who gets exposed now is a potential player not just now, but years from now; and not just D&D, but all RPGs. But I wonder whether this is a burst of popularity (similar to the early 80s) that will plateau and dip, or if there is truly a new paradigm shift that means that D&D has become a mass-culture item destined for continued rocket-fueled growth? To examine this, I'd throw out the following three possible scenarios, and then examine which I think is most likely.
A. Resentments are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my saber. - Charlie Sheen, actually.
Scenario A is that things have changed. Maybe it's the prevalence of on-line systems to find games, or to have "virtual" games, or twitch, or how nerd culture is taking over the world. You can put in your favored theory here. But regardless of why you think things have changed, they have. D&D specifically, and RPGs in general, will continue to become more and more popular. The younger kids that are playing will continue to play, and keep bringing in new generations of players. It will be nearly unheard of for any town to not have a sizeable population of D&D players.
B. I am a serious actor. I just like to collect houses. Big, big, big houses. -Robert Downey Jr., breathlessly.
Scenario B is the Marvel/DC scenario. Now, if you're familiar with this thing called "comics," you might be aware that Marvel and DC (owned, respectively, by the House of Mouse and the Warner Brothers .. and their sister Dot) make massive buck on Superheroes. Movies. Television shows. Animated stuff. Licensing. The brands are YUGE! It's practically a license to print money and/or write checks for Zack Snyder's ego to try and cash.
But what about the comics? You know, the things that started it all? Well, the pandemic didn't help. But the comics themselves are still struggling along. They aren't the focus of the brand. They are more akin to the vestigial tail. Both DC and Marvel make for more from entertainment (film, TV, games, other multimedia) and licensing (anything you can stamp a Wolverine or a Batman on) than they do from the comics.
Which is the likely Hasbro-approved scenario for D&D. Get that Chris Pine movie going. Get the TV series out there. More twitch streaming. More games. Start licensing so people can show their D&D affiliation. Watch the money roll in. Maybe put out some rulebooks too- I guess people might want to play?
C. All things end badly; otherwise, they wouldn't end. -Billie Bob Thornton's Divorce Attorney, knowingly.
Scenario C is the 80s scenario, repeated. In effect, the brand itself has no real multimedia staying power (in terms of blockbuster movies or multiple TV shows). Sure, maybe it generates some book series and some merch here and there, or a few games, but it's not a huge player. And the game itself continues to be played and supported, and continues in the popular consciousness, but retreats from its current popular culture peak. It's cyclical- like any number of things (especially hobbies) that attract intense interest, and then retreat back into comfortable niches.
So what do I think? Personally, I'm torn between B and C. I think that B is the best-case scenario. And there is nothing wrong with that! It would be awesome to have D&D merch and computer games and movies and TV shows; the more, the better. But it's also possible that these don't take off, and we end up with C. Which, again, is not a terrible thing. D&D isn't going to die off. But D&D- the playing of D&D, is a massive time commitment. It requires a group of people. It requires a large investment of time. As fun as it is, there are very few hobbies that are similar that maintain "mass appeal" for long periods of time. If you look back through history, you will see all types of similar pastimes (such as bridge, which was HUGE, or bowling leagues) eventually move to the smaller subset of people after being in the zeitgeist for a period of time. Simply because people move on to other things- we only have a limited amount of time.
Now I'm throwing it out for general comments and/or rubbishing. On a scale of 1 to 10, how wrong am I?
*I would say that the current popularity does surpass it, maybe, but it's very hard to measure ... given both that the difficulty in determining some numbers and the difficulty in translating "pop culture" zeitgeist between eras- how do you measure the number of youtube and twitch streamers compared to the number of schools that had sudden D&D clubs in the 80s? It would be like comparing a wacky wall walker to grumpy cat, or the Rubik's cube to fidget spinners. Or something like that.
**First, apologies to the great writer of .... Dr. Who. Yeah, you didn't expect that, did you? Second, "shifting" is this thing that people used to do in "gas" cars with manual transmissions.
***Yeah yeah yeah, DARPA and universities. Look, if you had a 300 baud modem in the 80s and knew of a BBS, you were likely an CS engineer of some type. "Shall we play a game?" was, for all purposes for almost all people watching it, science fiction.
Forget it, Jake. It's Zagygtown.
ahem
Noodling around after a recent needed break, I was again marveling at the resurgence and success of D&D. As has been discussed ad nauseum, success has a thousand fathers, and there are many reasons that D&D is now enjoying levels of success, both as a product and in the zeitgeist, that arguably surpass the early 80s.* There are a number of reasons for this- an edition that has been popular and is reasonably easy to pick and play, a number of older players returning to the fold for nostalgic reasons (and many of them bringing younger players with them), the success of youtube/streaming/podcasts for D&D, responsible shepherding of the product, the prevalence of internet tools that make the game easier- especially playing remotely or finding groups, and the general success of "nerd culture" in the mainstream.
And yet- perhaps this is as good as it gets? Wait, what???!!!???!! I know what you're thinking- typical doomcasting! Grognard hatin' on the popularity! To channel Hairspray, YOU CAN'T STOP THE BEAT!
But here's the thing about enjoying success. For the most part ... it ends. Success is similar to cruising down the highway doing 90 passing all of the traffic and feeling all happy inside and then you accidently shift from fifth to first instead of to fourth and watch your engine leap out out of your hood.**
As such, I think it's helpful to remember both that D&D has previously had this unprecedented success, and that it "ended." It doesn't mean that D&D (or RPGs) go away; we are still playing them. Simply that certain hobbies will have boom/bust cycles, and that these occur for a reason. I expect that this will also be thoroughly uncontroversial.
1. A nuke for a nuke will make the whole world bow down to me. -Gandhi, probably.
The prior golden age of D&D was the late 70s to the early 80s, and while you could date it different ways, it definitely included the time period from 1977 (publication of Monster Manual) through the end of 1983 (publication of the last classic modules, Monster Manual II. Mentzer's Expert Set). As D&D continued to grow in popularity in the early 80s, it was "popular" in a way that is difficult to fathom at a later time. Back before the Amazon, or even before the internet***, D&D could be found everywhere. Not just in local hobbyist stores (which carried D&D in addition to the usual stalwarts like Avalon Hill), but in the malls (Kaybee Toys, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks), in department stores (Sears et al.), everywhere. Even scholastic book sales at schools had D&D books! And given the mass-market constraints at the time (try finding a bagel outside of New York, or remember that sushi was some weird thing in California), the omnipresence of D&D in the early 80s helped it spread far and wide.
Which was reflected in the popular culture as well. For a period of time, you had a Saturday morning cartoon (when that was a huge thing) that ran from '83-'85. You had movies (like E.T.) portraying D&D as a common thing ... of course the "cool" older siblings are excluding the younger kid from playing it ... and did not need explanation.
Of course, the popularity also caused a backlash (the Satanic Panic ... ugh) and the over-expansion of D&D caused retrenchment (the Lorraine Williams era). Saying the golden age was a "fad" isn't accurate- it built a lasting empire, albeit one that has had ebbs and flows. But it was, in a sense, a fad in the way that it captured a moment in time and exploded in popularity only to recede again.
2. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme. Like orange. - $ki Mask "The Slump God", indubitably.
Now we are in a new era of unprecedented popularity for the D&D brand. This, overall, is a good.... GREAT thing. Every person who gets exposed now is a potential player not just now, but years from now; and not just D&D, but all RPGs. But I wonder whether this is a burst of popularity (similar to the early 80s) that will plateau and dip, or if there is truly a new paradigm shift that means that D&D has become a mass-culture item destined for continued rocket-fueled growth? To examine this, I'd throw out the following three possible scenarios, and then examine which I think is most likely.
A. Resentments are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my saber. - Charlie Sheen, actually.
Scenario A is that things have changed. Maybe it's the prevalence of on-line systems to find games, or to have "virtual" games, or twitch, or how nerd culture is taking over the world. You can put in your favored theory here. But regardless of why you think things have changed, they have. D&D specifically, and RPGs in general, will continue to become more and more popular. The younger kids that are playing will continue to play, and keep bringing in new generations of players. It will be nearly unheard of for any town to not have a sizeable population of D&D players.
B. I am a serious actor. I just like to collect houses. Big, big, big houses. -Robert Downey Jr., breathlessly.
Scenario B is the Marvel/DC scenario. Now, if you're familiar with this thing called "comics," you might be aware that Marvel and DC (owned, respectively, by the House of Mouse and the Warner Brothers .. and their sister Dot) make massive buck on Superheroes. Movies. Television shows. Animated stuff. Licensing. The brands are YUGE! It's practically a license to print money and/or write checks for Zack Snyder's ego to try and cash.
But what about the comics? You know, the things that started it all? Well, the pandemic didn't help. But the comics themselves are still struggling along. They aren't the focus of the brand. They are more akin to the vestigial tail. Both DC and Marvel make for more from entertainment (film, TV, games, other multimedia) and licensing (anything you can stamp a Wolverine or a Batman on) than they do from the comics.
Which is the likely Hasbro-approved scenario for D&D. Get that Chris Pine movie going. Get the TV series out there. More twitch streaming. More games. Start licensing so people can show their D&D affiliation. Watch the money roll in. Maybe put out some rulebooks too- I guess people might want to play?
C. All things end badly; otherwise, they wouldn't end. -Billie Bob Thornton's Divorce Attorney, knowingly.
Scenario C is the 80s scenario, repeated. In effect, the brand itself has no real multimedia staying power (in terms of blockbuster movies or multiple TV shows). Sure, maybe it generates some book series and some merch here and there, or a few games, but it's not a huge player. And the game itself continues to be played and supported, and continues in the popular consciousness, but retreats from its current popular culture peak. It's cyclical- like any number of things (especially hobbies) that attract intense interest, and then retreat back into comfortable niches.
So what do I think? Personally, I'm torn between B and C. I think that B is the best-case scenario. And there is nothing wrong with that! It would be awesome to have D&D merch and computer games and movies and TV shows; the more, the better. But it's also possible that these don't take off, and we end up with C. Which, again, is not a terrible thing. D&D isn't going to die off. But D&D- the playing of D&D, is a massive time commitment. It requires a group of people. It requires a large investment of time. As fun as it is, there are very few hobbies that are similar that maintain "mass appeal" for long periods of time. If you look back through history, you will see all types of similar pastimes (such as bridge, which was HUGE, or bowling leagues) eventually move to the smaller subset of people after being in the zeitgeist for a period of time. Simply because people move on to other things- we only have a limited amount of time.
Now I'm throwing it out for general comments and/or rubbishing. On a scale of 1 to 10, how wrong am I?
*I would say that the current popularity does surpass it, maybe, but it's very hard to measure ... given both that the difficulty in determining some numbers and the difficulty in translating "pop culture" zeitgeist between eras- how do you measure the number of youtube and twitch streamers compared to the number of schools that had sudden D&D clubs in the 80s? It would be like comparing a wacky wall walker to grumpy cat, or the Rubik's cube to fidget spinners. Or something like that.
**First, apologies to the great writer of .... Dr. Who. Yeah, you didn't expect that, did you? Second, "shifting" is this thing that people used to do in "gas" cars with manual transmissions.
***Yeah yeah yeah, DARPA and universities. Look, if you had a 300 baud modem in the 80s and knew of a BBS, you were likely an CS engineer of some type. "Shall we play a game?" was, for all purposes for almost all people watching it, science fiction.
