D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

[Emerikol]

If well we have sales figures for 2E confirmed now and they were in line with ones floated earlier.

If those 3E ones are accurate it outsold 3E.

The only claim Paizo actually made was PF outsold 4E at a certain point in time not lifetime sales.

Anythy beyond that is internet scuttlebutt. The claim is in Paizo retrospective that's was on their website.

I wonder if you wandered into 100 high schools across the country during breakfast how many would have games of D&D going on at that moment? I suspect in the early to mid 80's it would have been 100 out of 100. I think if you just count "games played" as a metric that 1e D&D is still king. There are a lot more ways to make money these days and the company has figured out better how to reach their market.

 

[gamerprinter]

I played D&D from 1977 with 1e, up until 1990 with 2e, then our regular Dungeon Master was killed in an auto accident, and the group opted not to play at all for about 10 years. In the mean time 3.0 began, but we didn't start playing D&D again until well into 3.5, so we missed 3.0 altogether. Of course 3.5 died, and I went to Pathfinder, while they mostly stayed in 3.5 until the group broke up. We seemed to transition from 2e to 3.5 well enough, but nothing much after that. I went my own way, found a new group of mostly play-testers for content I create.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I wonder if you wandered into 100 high schools across the country during breakfast how many would have games of D&D going on at that moment? I suspect in the early to mid 80's it would have been 100 out of 100. I think if you just count "games played" as a metric that 1e D&D is still king. There are a lot more ways to make money these days and the company has figured out better how to reach their market.

Wait.

Your high school served breakfast?

 

[Zardnaar]

Wait.

Your high school served breakfast?

Wait your place had a high school!!

 

[Emerikol]

Wait.

Your high school served breakfast?

Yep. Though I'm sure with buses arriving at different times the fact that food was present was likely not a requirement for a game to be going.

I attended high school from fall of 82 until spring of 86.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Hotter take: D&D has not recovered from the 1e to 2e transition where they cut the XP for GP rule and decided to make the whole thing encounter driven and about stories.

Even hotter take: D&D has not recovered from the oD&D to AD&D transition where Gygax added useless cruft to the game in order to cut Arneson out of the royalties.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”​

 

[Zardnaar]

Hotter take: D&D has not recovered from the 1e to 2e transition where they cut the XP for GP rule and decided to make the whole thing encounter driven and about stories.

Even hotter take: D&D has not recovered from the oD&D to AD&D transition where Gygax added useless cruft to the game in order to cut Arneson out of the royalties.

Alternative reality a D&D going down OD&D to B/X and evolving from there be interesting.