Hussar
Legend
I'd agree with that.
D&D is an Adult Game?
- Thread starter Hussar
- Start date
I'd agree with that.
Hussar
Legend
Just to be absolutely crystal clear and hopefully forestall any more misunderstanding, if your definition of "adult" is 18+, then I totally agree that D&D has been marketed to adults. I think, by that definition, it has always been marketed to younger crowds as well, but, certainly adults.
The reason I was asking in the first place, is because I considered an "adult" demographic to be older than 18+. When people talk about an "adult" demographic, I automatically put it in the 25+ category with 15-25 being young adult. And I even screwed up the YA fiction thing (which is usually defined as 13-17 - I knew this and STILL screwed it up. sigh. Damn brain) and further clouded the issue.
So, to completely rephrase the thread.
When has D&D been marketed to a 30+ aged crowd?
The reason I was asking in the first place, is because I considered an "adult" demographic to be older than 18+. When people talk about an "adult" demographic, I automatically put it in the 25+ category with 15-25 being young adult. And I even screwed up the YA fiction thing (which is usually defined as 13-17 - I knew this and STILL screwed it up. sigh. Damn brain) and further clouded the issue.
So, to completely rephrase the thread.
When has D&D been marketed to a 30+ aged crowd?
pawsplay
Hero
Like, what, ads in Cigar Afficiando or something? I'm going to go with, "never." All marketing I'm aware of for D&D (and not spin-offs aimed at existing D&D players) include a demographic that is 25 or younger.
Snoweel
First Post
Per quick Googling: In 1974, Gary Gygax was 36 and Dave Arneson was 27; M.A.R. Barker (Tekumel) was 44, Dave Hargrave (Arduin) 28, Greg Stafford (Glorantha) 26; C&S co-authors Wilf Backhaus and Ed Simbalist were 28 and 31 repectively; Ken St Andre (T&T) was 27, Marc Miller (Traveller) 27, Jim Ward (MA, GW) 23. Rob Kuntz (Greyhawk co-DM) was 19.
I have seen the suggestion that Ed Greenwood was but 15 in that year, which would make him only 7 when (in 1966) he allegedly began writing stories set in the Forgotten Realms, and 19 when by his account he "really embraced [D&D] and started playing in 1978."
Considering that all these early 'pros' started out as hobbyists, that the business was still largely on that semi-'amateur' level (with producers being also consumers), I think this is probably not a terribly unrepresentative sample of the demographic that was getting turned on to D&D in the first few years after publication.
The average age in that set (including 19 for Greenwood) is about 28.
D&D was advertised initially in venues catering to the historical-wargame hobby, especially the branch employing miniature figurines and model terrain in place of cardboard counters and paper maps. (TSR originally stood for Tactical Studies Rules, and The Dragon's predecessor was The Strategic Review, companion to Little Wars.)
That has always, I think, skewed a bit older than much with which D&D has since become strongly associated.
I don't think there was very much of an advertising and distribution effort beyond that fairly obscure hobby/industry until 1977. The scene until then seems to have grown mainly by word of mouth, and that usually traced back by some route to Midwestern wargamers -- so the vectors were notably less diverse than later.
In the 1980s, a wide variety of retailers carried Advanced books and Basic sets, modules and magazines and often miniatures. Especially after the Dallas Egbert case (summer of '79), there was a lot of free publicity (albeit often scare-mongering) in the mainstream media. RPGs, especially D&D, started to turn up in features such as the Games 100. Programs for personal computers, including cartridges for consoles, brought D&D-derived concepts to a wide audience even when they did not refer to the game by name (which articles in computing magazines sometimes did).
Basically, I think it was the 'breakout' from the original hobby market via word of mouth (and 'pirate' copies, as demand exceeded legal supply) that made it feasible for TSR to mount a wider marketing program. The older-skewing bases were simply too small, too quickly saturated, whereas association with enthusiasms more common among kids -- toys, comic books, video games, cartoons, even fantasy-themed board games such as TSR's own Dungeon! -- "snowballed" to attract a larger and larger market.
I have seen the suggestion that Ed Greenwood was but 15 in that year, which would make him only 7 when (in 1966) he allegedly began writing stories set in the Forgotten Realms, and 19 when by his account he "really embraced [D&D] and started playing in 1978."
Considering that all these early 'pros' started out as hobbyists, that the business was still largely on that semi-'amateur' level (with producers being also consumers), I think this is probably not a terribly unrepresentative sample of the demographic that was getting turned on to D&D in the first few years after publication.
The average age in that set (including 19 for Greenwood) is about 28.
D&D was advertised initially in venues catering to the historical-wargame hobby, especially the branch employing miniature figurines and model terrain in place of cardboard counters and paper maps. (TSR originally stood for Tactical Studies Rules, and The Dragon's predecessor was The Strategic Review, companion to Little Wars.)
That has always, I think, skewed a bit older than much with which D&D has since become strongly associated.
I don't think there was very much of an advertising and distribution effort beyond that fairly obscure hobby/industry until 1977. The scene until then seems to have grown mainly by word of mouth, and that usually traced back by some route to Midwestern wargamers -- so the vectors were notably less diverse than later.
In the 1980s, a wide variety of retailers carried Advanced books and Basic sets, modules and magazines and often miniatures. Especially after the Dallas Egbert case (summer of '79), there was a lot of free publicity (albeit often scare-mongering) in the mainstream media. RPGs, especially D&D, started to turn up in features such as the Games 100. Programs for personal computers, including cartridges for consoles, brought D&D-derived concepts to a wide audience even when they did not refer to the game by name (which articles in computing magazines sometimes did).
Basically, I think it was the 'breakout' from the original hobby market via word of mouth (and 'pirate' copies, as demand exceeded legal supply) that made it feasible for TSR to mount a wider marketing program. The older-skewing bases were simply too small, too quickly saturated, whereas association with enthusiasms more common among kids -- toys, comic books, video games, cartoons, even fantasy-themed board games such as TSR's own Dungeon! -- "snowballed" to attract a larger and larger market.
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Hussar
Legend
Ok, so, we pretty much agree then.
So, when people tell me that various editions of D&D are being marketed to younger crowds, how much younger are we talking about then?
I mean, if the marketing is already targeting the "about 20ish" demographic, or younger, when how much younger is the game that's being discussed (in this case both 2e and 4e) being aimed at? I mean, there's not a whole lot of room there.
pawsplay
Hero
I think there are two "younger crowds." People who are 17-22 are not yet college graduates or established in a vocation and hence have less income and less life experiences but more free time. This is the traditional entry level player demographic.
Then there is the 12-17 crowd. These are unabashedly kids. They do not really have a lot of money. Instead, you are competing for their allowance, or trying to get them to ask their parents to buy something for them. They cannot necessarily be assumed to have good critical thinking skills or a high level of emotional maturity, even the very intelligent ones. They have never experienced a world without omnipresent Internet, or in which Japanese anime was considered an exotic interest for an American teenager.
I'm not sure I'd call a 17 year old a "kid" in many respects....
Well, be careful there - there's a reasonable argument that the video game industry is largely supported by these folks - the price of a videogame is comparable to the price of an RPG book - and that's a billion-dollar industry, right?
Kids don't have a lot of money, but all of what they do have is typically "disposable".
pawsplay
Hero
A 17-year-old can't open a checking account. The young kids with disposable income demographic is huge in dollar terms, but the lack of a source of work income is very significant. It takes a lot to convince a young teenager to save their allowance to buy larger items, so there are upper limits on the prices. And even children of affluent parents don't necessarily have affluent allowances at their disposal to spend at will.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
A 17 year old sure can have a checking account. I had one younger than that. You just need a parent to set it up with you, depending on the bank's rules.
I do think you're drastically underestimating the disposable income of teens, though. It's not just allowance. Most kids worked part time when I was in high school via summer jobs, supermarkets, local malls, and fast food. They don't make as much as adult gamers in most cases, but they make enough to get some stuff, go to local cons, etc.
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