D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[TheSword]

Because you are moving the goal posts. I didn't argue about starter sets. I said actual plays and 3rd party support were things that came about because D&D was popular, not what caused it.

I can’t speak much to 3rd party support - I think that’s overrated - but In the early days I’m sure there were things that D&D did that accelerated new player acquisition. Live streaming being one of them. Which was happening in the very very early days of 5e before it became the success story it is now.

I think I’ve been pretty clear about what I believe publishers of systems could do to encourage conversion from D&D or brand new players. I haven’t moved any goal posts.

 

[TheSword]

I find this argument unconvincing. Given the number of games we have available right now, there would almost inevitably have to be an example of what you are proposing, and there certainly isn't.

The brand power based on it being nor just first but the definition of "rpg" is much more powerful than you are proposing.

Sure there are examples. WFRP has a massive player base. Through clever marketing and appealing to a different style to D&D. Pathfinder similarly.

Both successfully market their products in the way I described.

 

[Minigiant]

And it can't just be any old genre. It has to support serial storytelling with an ensemble party of protagonists, it has to have character attributes that can be gamified into stats and a method of character advancement and power progression, and unless you're branching off into an entirely narrative focused game it has to present challenges that can primarily be overcome through combat.

All that is why things like superheroes and spies and westerns have all struggled in TTRPG form. They're weak in one or another of those pillars, and you need all the legs there for the chair to stand.

To be fair, the other genres aren't weak in these things. You just need designers wiling to design that way.

I mean Dick Grayson has a character progression and a team ups. Westerns has progressions of being part of a band to leading your own.

There's genre room if the designer wishes to get in this way. It's just harder to get in on the business side.

 

[FrogReaver]

Again how will you know you wont like it unless you try it?

Hmmmm. How will you know you wont really really really like giving me 1,000 dollars if you haven’t tried it?

That awful logic didn’t work on me when I was 5 and still ain’t goina work on me now.

 

[FrogReaver]

it's great if you have the opportunity to "try something for a couple of hours" but that simply isn't the reality for most people. If I wanted to try a different game, it would require significant time and effort.

It usually takes me like 4+ hours to 15+ hours just to make my first character in a new system.

I’m big on reading all the options, considering how they combine then spending an hour trying to come up with a name along with other trivial details.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Hmmmm. How will you know you wont really really really like giving me 1,000 dollars if you haven’t tried it?

That awful logic didn’t work on me when I was 5 and still ain’t goina work on me now.

I actually would if I had a spare grand and could afford it. I’m a giving person though.

But anyways give someone a large amount of cash isn’t rally equivalent to playing a new game for a couple of hours.

Had you taken it one step further you could have said “I don’t need to jump off a building…”.

 

[FrogReaver]

But anyways give someone a large amount of cash isn’t rally equivalent to playing a new game for a couple of hours.

It’s not the same, but the principle is the same. My time is valuable too.

Had you taken it one step further you could have said “I don’t need to jump off a building…”.

Yes, but that would seem really distasteful.

 

[GrimCo]

There is something about capturing cultural zeitgeist also.

Back in the day (late 90's to mid 2000s), White Wolfs VtM was decently popular and there was barley any overlap between D&D players and VtM players. D&D players were mostly fantasy geeks and it was mostly guys. VtM crowd appealed to goths, emos, metalheads (mostly people into black/death metal), and there was fair amount of girls playing. Emo was popular then and whole inner beast, inner struggle, woe is me plus gothpunk aesthetic appealed to that crowd. While D&D was always more about heroic combat, VtM was about inner struggles and role play heavy combat light. I mean, there was tv show ( failed, but still it aired on Fox) based on VtM.

D&D partially rides this vintage vibe, with shows like Stranger Things. It capitalizes on nostalgia. Retro is IN is part of cultural zeitgeist.

 

[Autumnal]

There was actually a lot of overlap between D&D and the World of Darkness, from the developers in down. There were people who talked a lot about the two as these separate realms. Fewer people actually gamed that way, though. In practice, a lot of gamers played both or had played one and then played the other with no particular bitterness or ill-will toward either.

The WoD was much better at drawing in non-gamers than most RPGs, but then that’s a low hurdle to cross. White Wolf used its unexpected exposure opportunities pretty well, but again, low hurdle.

Marketing sometimes said otherwise. I added that to my list of why good marketing is so hard and how BS misrepresentation can make grievances in the minds of the public worse. I am confident of my generalizations here based on opportunities to observe after-hours scenes and talk with a lot of different kinds of people about their experiences in my semi-official net rep days.

 

[GrimCo]

TBH, i'm going mostly on personal experience. There was some cross pollination, but those two games tended to attract fairly different types of people. I played both, loved both, but tbh, VtM was more my jam and goth girls playing it were just sweet extra.

Drawing in new people, especially non gamers, is not a low hurdle. It's probably the biggest one games have. How to appeal to people who are not into TTRPGs and get them to play and do it sufficient numbers to create sustaining customer base.