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

[Older Beholder]

Lessee:

1. Keep the game simple and accessible.
2. Support FLGS play.
3. Appeal as broadly as possible.
4. Keep their publications as generic as possible to allow individual tables to customize the game as they see fit.
5. Keep the number of publications down to make each publication an event in and of itself.

Did I miss anything? All one has to do is read the Dragon publications they used to make (I do miss those) and actually read what they say/watch their videos. It's not like they're hiding anything. They've been crystal clear and upfront from the get go.

I'd probably add 'Rulings not rules' as a main design philosophy, an idea that feeds into putting the game in the hands of the DM's and Players to make it their own.

I feel D&D is always trying to keep up with how people are playing it, rather than the other way round.

 

[Distracted DM]

I like D&D's popularity, if not its dominance, because it brings folks into the TTRPG hobby. They may or may not try other games, and they may or may not like them.
I don't like DnDBeyond's dominance with D&D though- and this is a big factor in D&D's dominance. It's far from the sole factor, but it's a big help

I'm fortunate that the vast majority of my players have largely detached themselves from DnDB since I made the switch to A5E, but I know some of them itch to go back to the ease of its character creator+manager. It's so good that it's a crutch, many of my newer players didn't know how the game+characters mechanical foundation worked until they had to make their characters without it!

And then the frequent attitude of "I'm interested in this content, is it on DnDB? Oh no? That sucks, I would've liked to try it."
I get it, but man it's ... it's rough.

 

[GrimCo]

1. Kids have a ton more time.
2. Ttrpgs compete with video games for time.
3. Alot of the newer rpg players are more casual which means they aren’t going to want invest the time to try a bunch of different systems.

I think there were a couple factors that contributed to this in the early days:

1. D&D, while still the big dog, was not quite as huge. That meant more people were likely to hit RPGing through other games in the first place.

2. The vast majority of early RPGers were SF fans (as in, active fans) or wargamers. And such people were more likely to be interested in things beyond the experience D&D offered early on and actively look around.

Real game changer was advent of flat rate broadband internet. With that came streaming, void, social media, profileration of online multyplayer games.

TTRPGs are part of entertainment industry. They compete with all other forms of entertainment for same primary resource - consumers free time.

Back in pre internet and web 1.0 days, there were lot less options to kill free time. If you wanted to see movie, you could go to cinema, rent it, or wait till it came on tv. Tv shows had set air slots and you either watched it or recorded it. Now, you have dozens of VoD platforms, you can binge whole seasons of tv shows with couple of clicks on tv remote. Same with music. What you had is what you listened and then alternative was radio. There were very few games worth spending dozens of hours, and spending 1000+ hours on single game was almost unheard of. Now, if you play online game for 2-3 hours a day, in a year you have close to 1000 hours clocked on that game.

With limited other choices, playing multiple games was not that uncommon. Now, we have abundance of other options for leasure time and for lot's of people, TTRPGs are just one of them.

Also, there was less casual players. It was more of a niche hobby. People who played were more invested into TTRPGs as a whole. Let's call them "hardcore" gamers. People like that are more interested to explore other things inside hobby.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I think there were a couple factors that contributed to this in the early days:

1. D&D, while still the big dog, was not quite as huge. That meant more people were likely to hit RPGing through other games in the first place.

2. The vast majority of early RPGers were SF fans (as in, active fans) or wargamers. And such people were more likely to be interested in things beyond the experience D&D offered early on and actively look around.

I think most tabletop players are still SF fans (you almost have to be to like orcs and elves, lol), though there be more niches today with all the different TV shows, movies and books -- I'm guessing there may have been more book readers back in the day. Wargamers are probably much fewer, though there are probably a lot of general boardgamers in there -- boardgames still very popular among our crew. I think what we've seen is more siloing (and not just in TTRPGs, but in society in general), with perhaps fewer people willing to get out of their comfort zone. That said, our ad in the game store got good response -- it may just be a willingness to extend the explanation and expectation of the game and talking more about the campaign theme than the system itself -- perhaps that helped break through the hesitance. I was upfront about RuneQuest Glorantha being the backdrop and gave quite a bit of flavor about where we'd be adventuring (Pavis and the Big Rubble).

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you enjoy playing 5E, you've probably read / watched enough material and videos about 5E to be able to determine what the designers were trying to do with their design of 5E. If you don't like 5E... you probably have avoided said material and thus never learned what their design principles were.

Sure there might be those one or two who really don't like the game but still have kept their finger on the pulse of it for the past decade (either to be ready if/when the game ever was to change into more of a style they preferred, or just because they get a kick out of making themselves miserable all the time)... but most people who don't like or play a game don't follow the game along. Because there's no point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think most tabletop players are still SF fans

When I said "active" fans, that was deliberate: I'm talking about people who actively participated in fandom, i.e. went to conventions, participated in clubs, and possibly were in APAs. That's a higher level of commitment well beyond the wide spread of modern SF fans who read/watch and maybe post on a couple Discords.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you enjoy playing 5E, you've probably read / watched enough material and videos about 5E to be able to determine what the designers were trying to do with their design of 5E. If you don't like 5E... you probably have avoided said material and thus never learned what their design principles were.

Sure there might be those one or two who really don't like the game but still have kept their finger on the pulse of it for the past decade (either to be ready if/when the game ever was to change into more of a style they preferred, or just because they get a kick out of making themselves miserable all the time)... but most people who don't like or play a game don't follow the game along. Because there's no point.

Though I'll point out if you follow general discussions of game designs and trends you're still going to get some of D&D5e's in that mix. Its like the way a lot of people absorb information about shows and books they haven't read, just because they're involved in fandom in general. Its not like the whole "empowering GMs" thing isn't brought up frequently, for example.

 

[Wolfpack48]

When I said "active" fans, that was deliberate: I'm talking about people who actively participated in fandom, i.e. went to conventions, participated in clubs, and possibly were in APAs. That's a higher level of commitment well beyond the wide spread of modern SF fans who read/watch and maybe post on a couple Discords.

I'd be curious to know about the distribution there -- number of TTRPGers that are casual SF fans vs those who go to cons and particulate in the SF community.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Though I'll point out if you follow general discussions of game designs and trends you're still going to get some of D&D5e's in that mix. Its like the way a lot of people absorb information about shows and books they haven't read, just because they're involved in fandom in general. Its not like the whole "empowering GMs" thing isn't brought up frequently, for example.

True, a lot of general info can and will get absorbed by osmosis, no doubt. But there will also be times when someone will inquire about some more specific thing (under the presumption that because they never acquired it through the osmosis that it doesn't actually exist), only to be told that indeed said thing has been talked about before, if you happened to know where to look.

It's an issue all of us face... we all think we have the full story when we comment on things here, when in truth there's always someone more informed and we haven't delved as deep as we believed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd be curious to know about the distribution there -- number of TTRPGers that are casual SF fans vs those who go to cons and particulate in the SF community.

Just to make it clear, I'm talking about D&D players in the 70's mostly; early on, the only people not in those two categories to be at all likely to even be aware of D&D, were people who were in close contact with people in those groups. The modern period is a very different beast.