D&D 5E Could D&D Die Again?

[CleverNickName]

At some point down the road, D&D will lose its charm, and be tossed into the corner, forgotten. I'm thinking it will be in decline around 2025, but we've got plenty of time to see.

D&D will only "die" when the publishers stop bringing new players into the hobby. Only then.
Once that happens, @Stormonu 's prophecy will come to pass.

 

[Hex08]

Maybe if some private equity firm buys Hasbro and saddles it with billions of dollars in debt forcing it into bankruptcy (Toys R Us). Even then they would only kill it for a little while and eventually they would sell everything off to squeeze out the last little bits of profit. Then the future of the game would depend on the new owners.

 

[the Jester]

I'm not including 4E as a time D&D almost died.

Basically in the 70's they ran out of money and the Blumes put money in essentially Gary lost control of D&D at that point. That's the 1st time.

The other time was 85 when the Blumes sold to Lorraine and her money bailed D&D out leading to Gary's eviction.

So basically without other people's money D&D would have died.

None of those stopped me and my group from playing D&D.

I can't see D&D dying until there are no more, or at least very few, people playing it.

 

[Clint_L]

D&D's cultural footprint is WAY too big for it to die any time soon - folks referring to it as a "fad" apparently do not understand what the word "fad" means. Fads do not last for half a century.

So D&D will be around for the foreseeable future. It's popularity will go up and down, though WotC are aiming to make it less cyclical than it has been. Right now, it is coming down from a surge in popularity. That was inevitable, as a huge chunk of the new player base get older and get busier, or want to try new things, etc. But just as tons of middle-aged folks who played it as kids have been heavily influenced by it or even come back to the game, that will happen again when the current crop are older. Only it will happen on steroids, because there are a lot more of them than there were of us.

It is probably in for a bit of a correction and decline after several years of crazy growth, and there will be no shortage of folks overreacting and declaring the death of D&D. But millions will just keep on playing it.

 

[Steel_Wind]

There will be peaks and valleys in its popularity. That has been so in the past and will be in the future, too.

But look, it's been around 48 years. We are coming up on FIFTY YEARS of D&D in 2024.

It's not going away. The game will change over time, but 50 years from now?

There will still be D&D.

 

[Shiroiken]

Ennh.. I think for D&D to truly die, one of three things would need to happen:

1. The TTRPG hobby needs to die,
2. They do something with the IP to make it radioactive (likely would have to be deeply and irredemably offensive), or
3. The economics of game publishing change such that it is so unprofitable as to be actively harmful to produce at any level of demand.

Pretty much. D&D will probably be the last TTRPG standing, unless they do something so ridiculously bad it's unimaginable. Same with MtG and collectable card games, because they're the OG and 800 lb behemoth of the industry. D&D could lose the latter, but likely they'll recover it before collapsing.

 

[Art Waring]

Though I have been talking bout the mtg stuff a bit, mtg & d&d are separate divisions of wotc, and the d&d side of things has been managed well for the interim, at least from a general perspective (no oversaturation of product, and generally good standing with most of the community as well as 3pp publishers).

I have no idea about one dnd, but nobody does until its release.

That said, D&D has changed hands before and its survived TSR's multiple mishandlings, as well as several previous failed film attempts (the third one was funny though, right?).

It has an OGL ensuring its technical survival, at least in mechanical form. The d&d brand could one day lose popularity or go out of business, but the OGL will survive beyond the original games brand legacy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Eventually, historians will insist the d4 was a fertility ritual device.

 

[CleverNickName]

Eventually, historians will insist the d4 was a fertility ritual device.

"Religious significance."

 

[TerraDave]

PHB, #53 in all Amazon books right now...

The fact that D&D "almost died" so many times, yet is now bigger than ever, might answer the question.

And its hard to kill a game that reaches a critical mass of popularity. (Unless its a licensed property, thats a whole other story). I am sure that some version of, say, Squad Leader, is being sold and played right now.

Can D&D fall, oh yeah, it could fall very very far. We may be witnessing the creation of a whole new generation of grognards (neogrognards, fiveognards, fognards, 5gnards...). Thats not the same is it dying, or even having another late 2e or 4e experience.

Probably just a 6e experience.