Does D&D Next need to be a success for D&D to be a success?

[Ahnehnois]

Fantasy is more mainstream now, D&D is not

I have to concur. It's amazing the number of intelligent, creative people I know who watch Game of Thrones and read Lovecraft and have no idea what D&D is.

It's such a missed opportunity.

 

[Wicht]

So, I find there is way more fantasy around now than in the 1980s.

Perhaps I should rephrase then my assertion. There was more dungeons and dragons style sword and sorcery movies being made in the 80's than today. Most of the movies you cite have very little to do with Dungeons and Dragons by way of inspiration or feel. I mean, really, Harry Potter as D&Desque? Lemony Snicket? I can't really see it, sorry.

 

[Wicht]

Fantasy is more mainstream now, D&D is not

I think that's probably close to true.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Perhaps I should rephrase then my assertion. There was more dungeons and dragons style sword and sorcery movies being made in the 80's than today. Most of the movies you cite have very little to do with Dungeons and Dragons by way of inspiration or feel. I mean, really, Harry Potter as D&Desque? Lemony Snicket? I can't really see it, sorry.

So, you cited half a dozen sword & sorcery films from the 80s, some very obscure (Ator?) and two children's cartoons, yet that is given more weight than 3 Lord of the Rings movies, plus the Hobbit, 3 D&D movies, a new Conan movie, the 3 CS Lewis movies, Eragon, In the Name of the King, Pathfinder, the 13th Warrior, Beowulf and others? All of them are D&D-esque in nature. Not to mention a slew of fantasy on TV, led by A Game of Thrones that was non-existent in the 80s. Yes, some of it is not D&D esque, but plenty is.

And, if you're going to site Ator, then I'd also list SyFy channel movies like Fire & Ice, Age of Dragons, Dragon Storm, Dragon Fighter, Cyclops, Attack of the Gryphon, Wyvern, Goblin, Manticore, George & the Dragon, Minotaur and probably a dozen others, as the SyFy channel movies probably have larger audiences than Ator and are all D&D like in nature.

Additionally, as a popular culture touchstone, D&D was almost non-existent back in the 1980s, other than the occasional article on somebody accusing D&D being Satanic. Now, as I said, it's regularly referenced on popular TV shows, and not just Big Bang Theory. I'd also argue that mentions on BBT, Community, Colbert, etc don't marginalize the game at all. It has to have some level of popularity to be used in sitcoms and on nightly talk shows or else nobody would get the references. It was marginal in the 70s, 80s and 90s because it was never mentioned in popular culture. If D&D was that popular in culture in the 1980s, it would have been made a passing reference on Letterman or Carson or in a popular sitcom at the time.

 

[TwoSix]

Perhaps I should rephrase then my assertion. There was more dungeons and dragons style sword and sorcery movies being made in the 80's than today. Most of the movies you cite have very little to do with Dungeons and Dragons by way of inspiration or feel. I mean, really, Harry Potter as D&Desque? Lemony Snicket? I can't really see it, sorry.

Honestly, that's why I feel D&D needs to update its cultural tropes. I'm 35, and most of the fiction that inspired the original D&D is from before my time. And Hogwarts seems like an awful lot like a D&D dungeon to me.

 

[am181d]

Additionally, as a popular culture touchstone, D&D was almost non-existent back in the 1980s, other than the occasional article on somebody accusing D&D being Satanic.

Millions of people played D&D in the 1980s. It had a fad/boom. The reason you get references in pop culture today is because guys who played it in the 80s are now in charge. The reason that it's a valuable commodity today is largely for nostalgia. Between LotR showing fantasy movies can be blockbusters and Transformers showing 80s nostalgia can be blockbusters, it's pretty clear what Hasbro's end game is -- and it's an end game entirely indifferent to whether there's a tabletop game called Dungeons and Dragons.

 

[Wicht]

So, you cited half a dozen sword & sorcery films from the 80s, some very obscure (Ator?) and two children's cartoons, yet that is given more weight than 3 Lord of the Rings movies, plus the Hobbit, 3 D&D movies, a new Conan movie, the 3 CS Lewis movies, Eragon, In the Name of the King, Pathfinder, the 13th Warrior, Beowulf and others? All of them are D&D-esque in nature. Not to mention a slew of fantasy on TV, led by A Game of Thrones that was non-existent in the 80s. Yes, some of it is not D&D esque, but plenty is.

I love the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. But the source material predates D&D. Not to mention that there was a Hobbit and Lord of the Rings made earlier, so those are a wash. The D&D movies I will grant you as being post 80s. But that is balanced by the D&D cartoon of which there were many more and they were better. There was one new Conan compared to 2 Conans in the 80's... The Narnia movies are hardly D&Desque but I can cite the Narnia PBS series from days of yore. Eragon, okay. Also The Name of the King and 13th Warrior, sure (13th warrior I grant is a very good D&D film, albeit based on a 1976 novel). Pathfinder is a remake of a movie from 1987, so a wash. Beowulf... (which one?) Now some of these (Narnia) are stretching, but most of them are pretty well counter balanced by the many sword and sorcery films of the 80s which were much truer to the tropes and genre of the game.

I will concede the made for tv (sci-fi channel) point. But I still don't see that many actual sword and sorceries getting churned out today.

 

[TwoSix]

I will concede the made for tv (sci-fi channel) point. But I still don't see that many actual sword and sorceries getting churned out today.

But isn't sword and sorcery a pretty small part of the D&D experience? Most of the actual D&D brand fiction is epic LotR-style fantasy, not S&S.

 

[Wicht]

Honestly, that's why I feel D&D needs to update its cultural tropes. I'm 35, and most of the fiction that inspired the original D&D is from before my time. And Hogwarts seems like an awful lot like a D&D dungeon to me.

Hogwarts? Can't see it but to each their own.

However, I will say that if WotC tried to change the tropes of D&D to favor Harry Potter over Conan, et. al. they would lose almost all chance of getting me back as a customer (and I like Harry Potter well enough).

 

[Wicht]

But isn't sword and sorcery a pretty small part of the D&D experience? Most of the actual D&D brand fiction is epic LotR-style fantasy, not S&S.

Eh, I tend to prefer Sword and Sorcery myself, or the grittier sort of stories as actual game inspiration, though I grant that the actual literature put out by the brand manager is high fantasy.