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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shardstone" data-source="post: 8552051" data-attributes="member: 6807784">I think the deeper issue is twofold. In addition to the overwhelming amount of momentum that D&D has built up in American culture, other tabletop roleplaying rulesets only make margial to mild differences in the meta play loop. That play loop being, sit down, talk with friends, solve challenges, pretend your in a story, use some rules that are stimulating. This is the core heart of the TTRPG, and without a very strong marketing campaign equal to what WotC has done, if not bigger in the ultimate long run, you cannot convince the market that YOUR way of running TTRPG is better then the "default" way already at hand.You're competing not just with D&D, but with the entire entertainment industry. You're competing with movies, books, manga, clubbing, drinking, and all other social events. You're trying to convince people to stop doing what they're doing, sit around a table, fumble through my rulebook, and figure out how to make a fun experience out of it. Often times with little to no video support, online guides, or large community to help you get the party started.And furthermore, there aren't enough customers, active players, and overall fans in the TTRPG market outside of 5E to give any one game the momentum needed to challenge this literal billion dollar corporation. TTRPGs are niche not because of their subject material, but because the format of play and the books and the game rules themselves usually make it just too much of a bother to learn the game well enough to have a fun experience that matches the D&D experience or exceeds it.Of course, people still do this. So it isn't impossible. But what are publishers like C7 to do? There just aren't enough Dr. Who TTRPG fans for them to stay dedicated to just that system. From my perspective, also as a small publisher of TTRPG materials, anything I do that isn't 5E feels like a drop in the pond. I get no monetary reward from it for the most part, very little fan interaction. However, my 5E materials literally get me that stuff at a magnitude higher. How can we expect publishers to stay "true" in such a hostile, impenetrable market? Why should C7 continue focusing only on the first Dr. Who game when they could actually get their work in front of more people, and thus get the money needed to make more work, by dipping into the 5E well? But this reality is a very frustrating one. There's no agency here for the customer, the gamer, or the publisher, and at the end of the day, it feels like we are all at the mercy of Wizards of the Coast and D&D. And customers hate that. I hate that. But its the reality of the industry, and I only foresee it getting worse from here unless players around as big as Hasbro try getting behind other games too.</blockquote>

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