Do 4 million people really play D&D on a regular basis?

[NewJeffCT]

This is the result of some market research initiated by WotC. Charles Ryan, D&D's brand manager, has given this number recently on EN World in this post .

I remember the post - he also felt the 4 million number was high. Still in a country with almost 300 million people, 4 million is not a huge number when compared to how many watch NFL football for 18-20 Sundays a year or participate in other big hobbies. And, does the 4 million also include foreign players in Europe, Asia and elsewhere?

Edited to add - I'm not a regular player anymore due to work & family, but I do buy books regularly in hopes of getting back into regular gaming.

 

[Lucias]

What bothers me about this figure (which WOTC has been throwing around since before 3E came out) is that Dragon's paid sales are currently only 65,000 a month. That's one Dragon magazine per 60 "regular" players. If there are an average of 4 "regular" players per group, that means only 1 in 15 groups buys a Dragon mag (ignoring all the groups that have more than one person buying Dragon).

This doesn't match my own experience at all. The only time I was in an rpg group that didn't buy Dragon was when we switched to Champions in the 80's/early 90's. But we weren't playing D&D, so it didn't matter.

1 in 15 seems about right to me. Most of my group had subscriptions through the early days of 3E. All of us eventually cancelled because Dragon just wan't offering us anything useful. Same goes with most of the folks I play LG with. A few of us got a few issues when Paizo took over and, more recently, when the big 'change' happened and still came to the conclusion that it doesn't offer us anything worth the price.

Dungeon, however, just keeps getting better and better.

 

[seankreynolds]

IIRC the numbers in the pre-3E study were 1.5 million playing D&D at least once a month. Perhaps WotC has updated the study since the release of 3E.

And yes, that means that there are a lot of people playing that aren't buying. Since the release of 3E a lot of them became buyers again, at least for a while, but most of them are still just players, not buyers.

 

[Captain Tagon]

What bothers me about this figure (which WOTC has been throwing around since before 3E came out) is that Dragon's paid sales are currently only 65,000 a month. That's one Dragon magazine per 60 "regular" players. If there are an average of 4 "regular" players per group, that means only 1 in 15 groups buys a Dragon mag (ignoring all the groups that have more than one person buying Dragon).

That does match my experience pretty well. I know about twenty people who play DnD/D20 games and not a single one of us has ever purchased a Dragon magazine. Heck, I've only glanced through one issue one time.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Note, I'm not saying every group playing regularly should have at least one Dragon buyer - I'm saying I don't understand how over 90% don't.

In the 20+ years I've been playing, I've only known one other person besides me that had a Dragon subscription (he's since left RPGs all together), and even I won't be renewing my subscription. Everyone else I've played with hasn't had a subscription, and few even picked it up from the FLGS.

Simply put, I have everything I need to play with the three core books. Sure, I own one or two extra books, but I find that Dragon just wasn't giving what I needed for the price and effort of figuring out where to store said magazines. It's a good magazine, just not something I want anymore.

 

[Insight]

1 in 15 seems about right to me. Most of my group had subscriptions through the early days of 3E. All of us eventually cancelled because Dragon just wan't offering us anything useful. Same goes with most of the folks I play LG with. A few of us got a few issues when Paizo took over and, more recently, when the big 'change' happened and still came to the conclusion that it doesn't offer us anything worth the price.

Dungeon, however, just keeps getting better and better.

In our group, of six players plus GM, I don't believe anyone has a subscription to Dragon, and few buy it or Dungeon on a regular basis. We also have very few who purchase various d20 products that come out. For the most part, the majority of our players have what they need and don't buy d20 products impulsively.

One possible factor is that we don't allow just anything into the game. So someone who buys every little thing WOTC puts out is going to be disappointed when the latest crunch isn't allowed into the game.

In my 20+ years of gaming, I don't recall playing with anyone who had a Dragon or Dungeon subscription, or bought either on a fairly regular basis. Therefore, at least in my experience, buying Dungeon or Dragon is certainly not indicative of gaming interest or regularity.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

What bothers me about this figure (which WOTC has been throwing around since before 3E came out) is that Dragon's paid sales are currently only 65,000 a month. That's one Dragon magazine per 60 "regular" players. If there are an average of 4 "regular" players per group, that means only 1 in 15 groups buys a Dragon mag (ignoring all the groups that have more than one person buying Dragon).

Sounds right. I've been involved in 4 groups with about 15 players or so, and so far, have only encountered 1 dragon subscriber, and he quickly unsubscribed after the crunch he tried to bring over from the magazine got banned from the games.

On the other hand, we have 3 folks who subscribe to Dungeon magazine (and I regularly run adventures from it).

 

[Turjan]

I remember the post - he also felt the 4 million number was high. Still in a country with almost 300 million people, 4 million is not a huge number when compared to how many watch NFL football for 18-20 Sundays a year or participate in other big hobbies. And, does the 4 million also include foreign players in Europe, Asia and elsewhere?

The number is given for the US only.

 

[MacMathan]

I have to agree with those numbers. Across the 9 of us who regularly play I believe there is only 1 Dragon sub. However there are a few Dungeon subs, so maybe we are unusual.

 

[Henry]

In the two largely disparate groups of people I've played D&D with (around 30 people total), only TWO people have to my knowledge ever bought Dragon Magazine regularly - that would be me, and one other player/DM who I don't game with anymore.

As for the 4 million figure, thinking back on Charles Ryan's statement, didn't he actually say that there were 4 million regular tabeltop gamers, and of those only about 60 to 80% played D&D? I thought it wasn't 4 million, it was a percentage of that. Same with the 1999 figure, as Sean mentioned. 2 million tabeltoppers, and a percentage play D&D.