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

[Oofta]

5E's success is not really attributable to its design. there are other, far more powerful factors that caused D&D's popularity to blossom and since inertia has effectively taken over. there is no evidence that a true new edition would hurt the game or its popularity, either.

Gotcha. You don't care for 5E design so the design has nothing to do with it's success. Okely Dokely. I'll have to tell all the people I've played 5E with that we don't really enjoy playing the game.

 

[GrimCo]

D&D was on 60 Minutes under TSR and don’t forget the Satanic Panic and Saturday morning cartoons and Mazes and Monsters. It ignited the RPG industry in the UK with Games Workshop and White Dwarf. It was big news, even back then.

Those were all USA things, mostly in the 80s. I was more aiming how well known D&D was even in geek circles outside USA/Canada and maybe UK. Like continental Europe, Latin America, developed Asian countries etc. Cause today, with globalization and instant communication channels via internet, D&D as a brand is recognizable around the world.

WotC era of D&D coincides with proliferation of internet.

All in all, love it or hate it, but they played their cards right and D&D became industry leader. Like someone said, it's Coca- Cola of TTRPGs. Love or hate it, but mass market appeal and recognition is there.

 

[Alzrius]

Interesting question.

To be specific, I think that there are two ways of viewing this.

First, there is the dominance of WoTC 5e D&D. That's one topic.

Then, there is the dominance of "D&D" construed more broadly.

D&D, IMO, is not just WoTC 5e D&D. It's also all the prior editions of D&D. It's all the OSR games and retroclones that try to recreate the "D&D" experience. It's all the OGL versions of D&D that try to re-create D&D, but make it either more simple or more complex (see, e.g., Level Up). It's Pathfinder and arguably PF2 which use the common tropes and accepted play of D&D. Heck, it might also include games that have completely different a priori playing styles but still seek to mimic essential aspect of D&D (see, e.g, Dungeon World). Viewed through that lens, D&D is not just dominant. It's ... well, really really dominant.

Therefore, you are presented with a more interesting issue. Looked at one way, this is simply that a specific edition of a specific game from a specific company is dominant.

Looked at another way, this is a question of why there is an essential gestalt that is prevalent within the TTRPG community that is dominant.

To me, the second issue is actually more interesting. Because it raises questions that are more fundamental- about the prevalence of fantasy in TTRPGs. About the presence (and appeal) of a certain style of play. And, of course, about the presence and acceptance of "D&Disms" within the broader hobby.

I seem to recall that this very topic was mentioned in Jon Peterson's The Elusive Shift as having been an issue in the early days of the TTRPG hobby, where D&D had such (perceived) plasticity that it was effectively treated as a synonym for TTRPGs as a whole, even after competitor games appeared on the market.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Gotcha. You don't care for 5E design so the design has nothing to do with it's success. Okely Dokely. I'll have to tell all the people I've played 5E with that we don't really enjoy playing the game.

For the record: I can't find Reynard suggesting anything like this at all. They just claimed that the system design is not the reason for D&D's current success. They may be right or wrong, but either way, it doesn't mean "D&D5 is badly designed", and it certainly doesn't mean "if you think you're having fun playing that game, you're wrong." It could just as well mean "D&D5 is a really well-designed RPG, but I think it's success is due to other factors", which would make a lot of sense to me, because a) D&D5 seems to be well-designed, and b) there's a lot of well-designed RPGs that aren't remotely as succesful as D&D5; so if it is all about design, how can that be? There MUST be other factors that are a lot more important. If there was a linear relation between the good design of an RPG and it's success, D&D would have to be, what, 1000 or 10000 times better designed then the next contender?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Does D&D 5E have to be the biggest RPG there is? No. Or as big as it is in comparison to all the other RPGs? Also no.

But it IS both of those things. So so what?

At this point in the conversation I think a more interesting side question might be "Would (general) you be more okay with D&D 5E being the biggest RPG and market leader if it wasn't owned by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast?" Because I suspect a good number of people don't like 5E being as big as it is due strictly to a "corporation" having its foot on top of the hobby (with all the positive and negatives that come with that.) But if an independent company say like FASA was the publisher of 5E and the game was as big as it currently is, with as many employees as it has, and as much cultural cache as it has... would as many people be bent out of shape over it's size? I'm sure some still would of course... because some of those folks still wouldn't be able to find players to play whatever esoteric RPG they want to get on the table... but I do think a lot of people are just so "corporation averse" that they reflexively will say 5E's dominance is bad just for who owns it. So it's not the idea in and of itself that is the problem, but merely who it is in this current configuration.

I think you are right in there are a number of people that do not like "Big Corporations" but I think that WoTC owning Magic and D&D would be in "Big Corporation" territory any way. Once a company get big enough with a big enough fanbase then doing something to upset a vocal subset of the original fans is inevitable. There is no pleasing all of the people all of the time.

 

[Wolfpack48]

5E's success is not really attributable to its design. there are other, far more powerful factors that caused D&D's popularity to blossom and since inertia has effectively taken over. there is no evidence that a true new edition would hurt the game or its popularity, either.

I don't know about that. 4e was widely perceived (fairly or not) as bringing Word of Warcraft to D&D, and there was a reaction against it (fair or not) that computer games and tactical combat was not really what the game was all about. 5e was a return to roots of sorts, with some nods to 3e that was fully embraced, along with the wave of the internet (Critical Role, YouTube, Wil Wheaton, Stranger Things), and Hasbro's global reach. All these together were instrumental to 5e's success.

 

[FrogReaver]

@Reynard
Do you think D&D 5e is well designed?

 

[Reynard]

Gotcha. You don't care for 5E design so the design has nothing to do with it's success. Okely Dokely. I'll have to tell all the people I've played 5E with that we don't really enjoy playing the game.

You could do that, but that would be on you since I did not say a single thing about liking 5E or whether 5E was fun. You're erecting a strawman.

If you want to claim that the media attention, streaming, and the pandemic did not have a major impact on 5E's popularity, you are welcome to do that.

 

[TwoSix]

For the record: I can't find Reynard suggesting anything like this at all. They just claimed that the system design is not the reason for D&D's current success. They may be right or wrong, but either way, it doesn't mean "D&D5 is badly designed", and it certainly doesn't mean "if you think you're having fun playing that game, you're wrong." It could just as well mean "D&D5 is a really well-designed RPG, but I think it's success is due to other factors", which would make a lot of sense to me, because a) D&D5 seems to be well-designed, and b) there's a lot of well-designed RPGs that aren't remotely as succesful as D&D5; so if it is all about design, how can that be? There MUST be other factors that are a lot more important. If there was a linear relation between the good design of an RPG and it's success, D&D would have to be, what, 1000 or 10000 times better designed then the next contender?

Agreed.

Popularity can't be used to prove that the design is actively excellent, unless one is making the argument that the only valid critical criterion is popularity. And I don't think most people agree with that.

But, one can argue that the popularity indicates that the design certainly isn't actively bad, and must at least hit the floor of "pretty good". Otherwise, you're arguing that mass popularity is completely insensitive to design quality, which I don't think most people agree with either.

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard
Do you think D&D 5e is well designed?

It's core is very well designed. Some of its components are a little wobbly, and its CR/XP/Encounter system is bonkers. It is missing some components of D&D that I prefer to have, but that doesn't make the design bad, just incomplete.

Why do epople think i said 5E was not well designed, or even not good? I did not say that.