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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Roman" data-source="post: 4749192" data-attributes="member: 1845">I am no fan of 4E at all (quite the opposite, actually), but I don't think D&D is in a death spiral. I suspect that 4E is selling well and is a commercial success. Whereas Ruan Dancey's interpretation of PHB II being sold out is a valid one and might be true (it is plausible) - a far simpler explanation would be that it has sold out, wait for it,.... because it was popular! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> You know, Occam's razor and all. Still, I would like to thank him for commenting on the topic - his analysis is at least interesting. I also disagree with him that D&D (or RPGs in general) cannot survive in the face of competition from electronic media. There is some competition and overlap there, but they also serve different purposes! I think few people would argue that football will die out because of competition from computer football games... - OK, so CRPGs and RPGs might have more in common and might compete a bit more directly, but they are also somewhat complementary and mutually enhance the interest of gamers in say the fantasy genre... Basically, I just don't see D&D as dying. That said, I do agree that D&D is going to be 'doomed' to 'cult status'. I placed the word 'doomed' in inverted commas, because I think D&D always was only a 'cult status' activity, so there is no change. Besides, for me as a consumer, the game being 'doomed' to 'cult status' might actually be a blessing - depending on how much transformation away from what I like the game would have to undergo to appeal to a broader audience, I might not like the game anymore, so let it remain 'doomed' to 'cult status' thank you very much! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> Of course, it would be nice if the D&D 'cult' continued to grow and I am optimistic it will grow - after all, the U.S. population is growing, so even if the proportion of gamers does not increase, there will be more D&D players. Furthermore D&D has a much lower penetration in non-U.S. markets, so the potential for worldwide growth is enormous even if it will always remain a niche activity.</blockquote>

Verification