D&D 5E Dungeons & Dragons Boom!

[SovietDM]

What % of the 5e player base plays online?

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's 50%.

 

[SovietDM]

Huh? Where did you pull that opinion out of? Sure, D&D was mentioned in Stranger Things, and those of us into D&D already talked a lot about it. But it's not the first or last time such mentions have been made. Do you have any data to support such a claim? Or even any opinions from anyone in the know to support such a claim?

I do recognize that there has been a lot more references to D&D throughout the years, and I don't have anything to prove my opinion, but I feel like Stranger Things reference has been most effective. This is not only because D&D has had it's best sale the year after Stranger Things season 1 came out, but also because Stranger Things not only made a reference or an entire episode referencing D&D, but D&D was an essential part of Stranger Things.
[/QUOTE= "LordEntrails, post: 7794438, member: 6804070"]
This has ALWAYS been the case.
[/QUOTE]
I'm aware of that. If you continue to read, I continue by saying:

This makes sense...

 

[Zardnaar]

Critical Role probably had more to do with things than Stranger Things.

5E really the first social media edition. It wasn't really mature when 4E landed which had a negative reaction in any event.

It helps when your fans aren't burying your product.

 

[LordEntrails]

I do recognize that there has been a lot more references to D&D throughout the years, and I don't have anything to prove my opinion, but I feel like Stranger Things reference has been most effective. This is not only because D&D has had it's best sale the year after Stranger Things season 1 came out, but also because Stranger Things not only made a reference or an entire episode referencing D&D, but D&D was an essential part of Stranger Things.

ST is just one factor. As others have mentioned, streaming, and it's tens (hundreds?) of thousands of followers of actual D&D play probably has had a much larger impact.

It's really not a valid conclusion to say something like ' during time period X, event A happened and event B happened therefore because A & B are related, then B happened because A happened.' I really don't think we have to go farther on that topic do we?

In short, there are hundreds if not thousands of significant factors for the growth of D&D, and no reason I've yet seen or heard of to suggest that ST is one of the more significant factors.

 

[ad_hoc]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's 50%.

That would mean that over 10 million people play online.

I was thinking less than 5% maybe even 2% but I don't actually have any numbers.

I do recognize that there has been a lot more references to D&D throughout the years, and I don't have anything to prove my opinion, but I feel like Stranger Things reference has been most effective. This is not only because D&D has had it's best sale the year after Stranger Things season 1 came out, but also because Stranger Things not only made a reference or an entire episode referencing D&D, but D&D was an essential part of Stranger Things.

Every year is D&D's best sales year.

Correlation is not causation.

 

[ad_hoc]

Here's a 'sample' of the player base on roll20 from their June 2018 quarterly report.

They use the term 'sample' so I'm unsure how to read this. What we can do is look at Pathfinder. We know that the total number of Pathfinder players in the world is minuscule compared to D&D both from icv2 earnings reports as well as Amazon sales rankings.

Yet on roll20 Pathfinder players are almost 40% as numerous as 5e players.

What we can conclude from this report is that roll20 is not where 5e players are playing while Pathfinder players are more likely to be playing online.

76000 is less than .4% of 5e players. Even if we increase that 10 fold to 760000 we haven't even hit 4% while if we increase Pathfinder 10 fold then 270000 has to be a huge chunk of their player base right? So I think it is entirely possible that this 'sample' is close to their actual player counts.

Does anyone have Pathfinder player numbers?

 

[Zardnaar]

Your numbers are wrong btw, the 20 million players was all editions over the years.

Pathfinder might be more popular online IRL but that won't be reflected in sales due to it being a mature edition.

 

[ad_hoc]

Your numbers are wrong btw, the 20 million players was all editions over the years.

Pathfinder might be more popular online IRL but that won't be reflected in sales due to it being a mature edition.

The number over the years was 40 million.

12-18 months ago the number of 5e players given was 15 million.

So saying 20+ million seems about right.

Pathfinder never sold well comparatively speaking. It doesn't matter how old something is if its total sales are still tiny.

 

[Morrus]

Pathfinder never sold well comparatively speaking. It doesn't matter how old something is if its total sales are still tiny.

Pathfinder sold fantastically. ‘Comparatively speaking’ is not relevant information. Just because Avengers Endgame exists doesn’t mean that Jurassic Park didn’t do well. The fact that Everest exists doesn’t mean the Empire State Building isn’t tall. Outliers are not the standard.

 

[ccs]

The fact that a DM is needed at all is the single greatest weakness of D&D.

And also its greatest strength.

Look, if you want DMless D&D?
Go play a board game. Specifically Descent or Wrath of Ashardilon (or the others in that series - Elemental Evil, Drizzt, Ravenloft, I forget their exact names, but they're basically all the same). Tomb could also work.