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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 300403" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, you shouldn't.  As I noted before, a designer without market data is just as vulnerable to being misled by anecdotal evidence as anyone else.  If you don't do the market research, all you have is sales data and anecdotal evidence.  Sales data tells you what was bought, but not if it's actually used, and how it is used.  And the anecdotal evidence isn't worth much.Plus, the fact that they write stuff that isn't good for dungeon crawl is not actually evidence that dungeon crawl is out of favor in the majority.  Not all gaming books are written with the intent of selling to a majority of gamers.  Aiming to sell to a minority niche is still a good way to make a buck.Think - WOTC has always been the one selling the most product.  They're selling to the majority, and had not only the same anecdotal evidence, but did some market research.  And they produced a game with heavy dungeon-crawl possibities.  Yes, the game can be seen as far more role-play friendly than earlier editions, but it certainly is not specifically designed for deep immersion role-play.  The DMG still has 10% of it's bulk dedicated to dungeoneering.  If the situation were as you claim, WOTC knew full well that this section would be unneccessary, and that they could increase sales by putting something else there. They didn't.  Actually, it is all anecdotal.  You're basing off of individual stories and inferences - that's exactly what anecdotal evidence is.WotC market research in 1999 suggested that there were some 2.8 million people playing tabletop RPGs, 1.65 million of them played D&D at least once a month.  RPG.net boasts some 3100 users.  Even if every account were a unique user, and single person on RPG.net said exactly the same thing, they wouldn't comprise a very statistically relevant sample.  Even if you add every single person on EN World, you'd be less than one third of one percent of the total gaming population.  Add to that the fact that yours isn't a random sample.  Message-board users do not comprise a random selection of gamers.  They represent a specific subset of internet-heavy, loudmouthed, opinionated, cranky gamer <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />.  If you're basing off of one message board, you're also then selecting for people who's personal style happens to match that board. If you base off your personal gaming friends, you're basing off of a group which has already been selected to have opinions and tastes similar to your own.No matter how you cut it - the statements of a few folks you know, and a few folks on a message board, are a drop in the bucket and not statistically valid, either in number or in randomness of sample.  They simply don't speak to what the majority does.  I'm sorry, but your opinion doesn't have a solid foundation.  You are still welcome to have it, but don't expect others to accept it as a valid argument.</blockquote>

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