Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanessar" data-source="post: 9891892" data-attributes="member: 7056654">You need to watch the interview. All of this (and most of the questions being raised in this thread) are completely answered there. He is VERY clear.The biggest takeaway I have from all of this: There is no one who can count tables. Convention tables are not equivalent to real world tables. Of the eight people I've had play at my table, zero have ever played at a convention. Sales numbers likewise are heavily skewed by collectors, not people playing the games.I have not participated in a convention since 1991.I have run over 230 games since that time. My shortest campaign was 1.5 years.I've talked to or traded notes in-person with around 25 different DMs. Most had run 5E games, most were not running one at the time I talked to them. But their tables had run 20-40+ games per year or more, with four to eight people (some are even larger). These DMs also had not been to a convention in 20+ years ("Always been meaning to go, but...")I have never been surveyed or quizzed or ended up as a statistic on some chart or large-scale survey for RPGs. The other 25 DMs likewise have flown under the radar. Anecdotally, I have come to consider that a VERY LARGE portion of this hobby is not reflected in any metrics. They have not been asked what they play.They have never attended a convention, answered a survey. They have between 4-10 players per table, accounting for another LARGE chunk of people in the TTRPG hobby. These numbers are completely hidden. Their system of choice is completely unknown, and can be fueled for years by the purchase of one or two books by one person (the DM).So I find all the musings and sales numbers to be funny, because most of the people I've talked to who purchase are collectors, not the DMs like the people above. They may run games, they may run games online, but they do not have a constant group, do not run games weekly/monthly, and are still the very small but money-heavy librarians of the hobby - not the consumers and users of the material in the sense that it was made for.I know it's unhelpful to say "we cannot really know", but I have seen nothing IRL that changes my mind, even being present for a number of DragonCons (not as participant) and seeing the staggering numbers there - still a drop in the bucket and not representative of these "quiet but numerous" tables I encounter every few weeks at FLGS.</blockquote>

Verification