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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4539692" data-attributes="member: 32536">Honestly, I am very skeptical of the whole "D&D was at its height in the 80s" theory. I have seen some anecdotal claims about it, but there seems to be no real proof at all that 1E sales were ever any good... Since even WotC couldn't make the comparison (see the thread this one spawned from), it seems proof for that claim doesn't exist.One thing I definitely have to dispute is the idea that D&D was more popular and well-known back then just because it had a Saturday-morning cartoon. One thing that argument completely ignores is the fact that Saturday morning cartoons simply don't exist anymore the way they did even a decade ago, let alone in the 80s. The cartoon market isn't even comparable, and even if the 80s D&D fad occurred today with all the strength that it is claimed to have had, D&D almost certainly would not have a cartoon.Also, the D&D movie, regardless of claims of quality or lack thereof, does count for the purposes of being a visible sign of D&D brand recognition in the modern market.Anyways, I think that I need to make a quick comparison to something I have a few anecdotes for...When I was a kid in elementary school, there were two major "game fads". One was Pogs (I had no idea why those were popular even then, and less of an idea now), and the other was Magic the Gathering. I have no idea if the former even exists anymore, so I will focus on the latter, which should pretty obviously be a reasonable comparison to D&D (being made by the same people now, after all).In the earliest days of Magic, there were a lot of people who were interested in it and talked about it at my school. Actually, my older brother was the person who really introduced me to it and actually owned cards for the game. I never owned any myself, though I liked playing with his a bit (I recall banding rules and Ornithopters, if any serious Magic fans want to know the timing). Of course, that fad didn't last long, and a lot of people moved on from the game and never looked back. At present, the only "game" my older brother is even interested in is duck hunting. I never even bought a single card back then. It was only in college, when I first encountered the new Ravnica block of cards, that I actually started paying any interest in the game again and bought Magic cards for the first time.So, does the Magic market seem better off now, or was it better off back then, when it was in the midst of the fad? It certainly doesn't seem to be doing bad now, I can safely say that... It seems to be a very healthy game with a lot of fans that easily supports a fairly large number of tournaments, events, professional players, etc. It may not be a highly visible fad anymore, but it is a well-established game that has a lot of players, possibly far more serious players (as in repeat customers) than it had in the fad days.I think D&D may be in a similar situation, really. It is not as visible as it once was (since the visibility was brought on by its novelty), but it is probably healthier and larger.</blockquote>

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