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

[GrimCo]

How many people have to play a game before it moves out of your "obscure" category?

At least 1-5 out of 100 casual gamers. But that's just my opinion. Or to give sports analogy. Football is big here. If you are able bodied male, you played it at least couple of times and know basics of the game. Handball is also decently popular and everybody played it at least couple of times in elementary school during PE. Indoor football and mini handball are generally played 5v5, so if you wanna play, you need to gather 9 other people. At work, with around 150 guys total, i can assemble group for weekly indoor football game in about 10 minutes, hell i can (and did) assemble 8 teams of 5 for mini tournament in less than an hour. On the other hand, i barley scraped together enough people for one mini handball game. Basketball would be somewhere in the middle. So, in TTRPGs, D&D is like a football. You can decently easy find players to form a group. CoC or PF would be something like a basketball. Mythender is handball.

To be clear, i do not impose value judgment on games based on popularity. But for group games, popularity among players is big factor.

 

[Hussar]

I think the only value to that question is "would D&D be more experimental" if it weren't owned by a publicly traded company. That seems to be one of the major concerns anyway. I would say, though, that while the publisher of the game might be more willing to experiment, it would not be in aggregate any more "experimental" than it is now with a strong 3rd party support industry. You can find any sort of subsystem or hack of 5E you can imagine, made with high production values and (probably) some design expertise. That WotC isn't publishing that stuff is not particularly relevant, unless you are one of those people that thinks a book needs the official company logo to be worthwhile.

They tried experimental and got thoroughly spanked by the fandom who has very clearly spoken that they do not want DnD to be experimental.

This has nothing to do at all with who owns DnD.

 

[Remathilis]

They tried experimental and got thoroughly spanked by the fandom who has very clearly spoken that they do not want DnD to be experimental.

This has nothing to do at all with who owns DnD.

UA is littered with Experimental ideas which didn't Spark Joy in 70% of the fans. Psionics, prestige classes, mass combat, swappable subclasses, etc. the One D&D playtest had 5 UAs full of alternate ideas for classes that all got abandoned in favor of "like 2014, but better".

I'm with you on this, WotC is collectively conservative because its fan base is, regardless of what individuals say they want in experimentation.

 

[Reynard]

They tried experimental and got thoroughly spanked by the fandom who has very clearly spoken that they do not want DnD to be experimental.

This has nothing to do at all with who owns DnD.

Literal nonsense.

Even if the most condened elements of the fandom who respond to polls count, the existence of a broad and diverse 3rd party ecosystem proves that there is an appetite for 5E beyond the WotC borders.

 

[FrogReaver]

Literal nonsense.

Even if the most condened elements of the fandom who respond to polls count, the existence of a broad and diverse 3rd party ecosystem proves that there is an appetite for 5E beyond the WotC borders.

It’s unclear to me how this serves as a counterpoint to what @Hussar said.

 

[Shardstone]

UA is littered with Experimental ideas which didn't Spark Joy in 70% of the fans. Psionics, prestige classes, mass combat, swappable subclasses, etc. the One D&D playtest had 5 UAs full of alternate ideas for classes that all got abandoned in favor of "like 2014, but better".

I'm with you on this, WotC is collectively conservative because its fan base is, regardless of what individuals say they want in experimentation.

I hate it.

 

[MerricB]

Literal nonsense.

Even if the most condened elements of the fandom who respond to polls count, the existence of a broad and diverse 3rd party ecosystem proves that there is an appetite for 5E beyond the WotC borders.

Broad, diverse and poorly selling.

(Poorly selling by Wizards D&D standards).

 

[Minigiant]

They tried experimental and got thoroughly spanked by the fandom who has very clearly spoken that they do not want DnD to be experimental.

This has nothing to do at all with who owns DnD.

Nah.

They tried experimental and got thoroughly spanked by the fandom who has very clearly spoken that they do not their old books to be invalidated.

The D&D fandom isn't anti Expertimentation. The D&D fandom is cheap and wants all their purchased books to be evergreen.

The D&DD fandom will agree that the Twilight Cleric is OP but not want the WOTC to print a new book with a balanced Twilight Cleric because they don't want to buy another book.

 

[MNblockhead]

Literal nonsense.

Even if the most condened elements of the fandom who respond to polls count, the existence of a broad and diverse 3rd party ecosystem proves that there is an appetite for 5E beyond the WotC borders.

But at the numbers necessary to sell the volumes Hasbro/WotC needs?

 

[MNblockhead]

Nah.

They tried experimental and got thoroughly spanked by the fandom who has very clearly spoken that they do not their old books to be invalidated.

The D&D fandom isn't anti Expertimentation. The D&D fandom is cheap and wants all their purchased books to be evergreen.

The D&DD fandom will agree that the Twilight Cleric is OP but not want the WOTC to print a new book with a balanced Twilight Cleric because they don't want to buy another book.

I would say that a D&D Beyond subscription model should address that...but the same people who don't want to buy new books may not be any more happy about paying a subscription for buying classes, monsters, etc. piecemeal--I can see the gnashing of teeth over "microtransactions" as I type this.