D&D 5E D&D Statistics by State (March 2023)

[CleverNickName]

I'm curious what the metric for interest was here. If it's something related to internet activity, I'd imagine "peak interest" for a lot of things happened in March 2020.

According to the article, it's a measure of the number of times people used Google to search for "Dungeons & Dragons."

More searches = more interest.

 

[bedir than]

According to the article, it's a measure of the number of times people used Google to search for "Dungeons & Dragons."

More searches = more interest.

Then it is dramatically out of date.
Peak D&D was April 2023 and it was more than double March 2020

 

[J.Quondam]

I'm curious what the metric for interest was here. If it's something related to internet activity, I'd imagine "peak interest" for a lot of things happened in March 2020.

Looks like you're right: peak interest in "boredom" also happened in March 2020...

... which is nicely paradoxical in its own way.

.

 

[CleverNickName]

Then it is dramatically out of date.
Peak D&D was April 2023 and it was more than double March 2020

I mean, that article was written in March 2023 (which I posted in the title.) I couldn't find a more recent one. Still, I wouldn't say that five whole months qualifies as "dramatically" out of date.

What's interesting is that if you expand the Google Trends all the way from 2004 to Present, you get two peaks very close to each other: 100 occurs in April 2023, and the next-highest peak (96) is in July 2022. Third-highest is in August 2020 (69, nice), and April 2020 is the fourth-highest.

When you look at it across only the last 12 months, though, it's more or less stable except for that spike in April:

I noticed that there was a "+Compare" button at the top. It made me wonder how much of that spike was due to the Open Gaming License debacle earlier this year, and/or the release of the "Honor Among Thieves" movie. They definitely had an effect:

 

[bedir than]

I mean, that article was written in March 2023 (which I posted in the title.) I couldn't find a more recent one. Still, I wouldn't say that five whole months qualifies as "dramatically" out of date.

What's interesting is that if you expand the Google Trends all the way from 2004 to Present, you get two peaks very close to each other: 100 occurs in April 2023, and the next-highest peak (96) is in July 2022. Third-highest is in August 2020 (69, nice), and April 2020 is the fourth-highest.


View attachment 293722

When you look at it across only the last 12 months, though, it's more or less stable except for that spike in April:
View attachment 293723

I noticed that there was a "+Compare" button at the top. It made me wonder how much of that spike was due to the Open Gaming License debacle earlier this year, and/or the release of the "Honor Among Thieves" movie. They definitely had an effect:
View attachment 293725
View attachment 293726

It's not the "month" that's dramatic.
It's the scale of difference between March 2020 and April 2023 that's dramatic.

 

[Parmandur]

July 2022

If you zoom in on a daily level, that's the Honor Among Thieves trailer release.

 

[Oofta]

This is all interesting, but also kind of confusing. Different ways of measuring the data produce different results. (We have a word for that in engineering.)

• According to D&D Beyond, which measures the sheer number of characters created on their own platform, Fighter is the most popular class. So among people who use D&D Beyond, the Fighter is clearly the king.
• The new Baldur's Gate 3 video game shows the Bard to be the most popular character class. So at least among players of that one video game, Bard is supreme.
• That Zippa article, which counts the number of states where a particular class is the favorite Google search, Monk is the most popular class (since it's the favorite in 19 states.) And Wizard, the favorite punching bag of ENWorld, supposedly responsible for making the martial classes "useless" and "obsolete," is the favorite in only a single state (Utah). Bards haven't won any.

I'd wager that:
(# of people who use Google) >> (# of people who use D&D Beyond) > (# of people currently playing Baldur's Gate 3)

There's a lot of situations where you want your primary PC to be good at persuasion in BG3 so charisma based character makes sense. But as far as I know, paladin is the most popular.

 

[Mistwell]

It should be noted that it's not the top ten states that play D&D the most, it's the top ten states that google D&D the most.

Satanic Panic. That's parents in Utah and Idaho looking up D&D to see if their kids can play it safely.

 

[Scribe]

There's a lot of situations where you want your primary PC to be good at persuasion in BG3 so charisma based character makes sense. But as far as I know, paladin is the most popular.

Yeah, its one of the things I'm not a huge fan of, I wish the rest of the party interacted more with various checks more seamlessly. I've made a LOT of charisma based checks as a paladin over the course of my play through.

 

[Mort]

I found the problem



So what they determined was what class people Googled, and people don't Google classes they understand well nearly as much as other ones. I can see that just looking at my own Google results, for example. "Searched for" does not equal "Popularity" it equals searched for.

I'd also like to see exactly what qualifiers they had to ensure people were search on the actual D&D classes, not on, y'know, monks in general.

Yeah, this struck me as hilarious.

I mean "why are monks so terrible..."

And "is there any way to make monks not suck???"

Are the google searches I would expect to see for monks.

Somehow, I don't think that was controlled for.