If the D&D brand became too hot to handle,what would be the next 80 pound gorilla?

[VashVet]

What are "cool things"? Sports?

Love Island: The TTRPG.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

What are "cool things"? Sports?

Jazz

In any age there are two types of cool. what the trend setters do, and what the marketing people claim is cool.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Jazz

In any age there are two types of cool. what the trend setters do, and what the marketing people claim is cool.

(Emphasis mine.)

And bad research their part is how you get Ken dolls with sex toy accessories being sold to kids.

 

[Umbran]

Better than one corporation to rule them all IMO.

I cannot argue with your preferences. If you'd rather the overall number of players withering to a shadow of it's current self... you do you.

I, personally, am okay with one company making a modest fortune, if it supports the variety of other creative work we now see. The rest of the market does not looked, "ruled" by D&D. It seems more enabled by D&D.

 

[Duke_]

('what's 5e stand for?' 'absolutely nothing')

5!
E!
Good God y'all
What does it stand for?
Absolutely nuthin'!
Say it again!

Anyway... wasn't there a brief time when Pathfinder was outselling D&D 4E, or at least coming close? I'd say Pathfinder, but then a new edition of D&D would probably come out. It might even be completely unrecognizable, but there's too much name recognition there for "D&D" to die.

 

[Umbran]

Anyway... wasn't there a brief time when Pathfinder was outselling D&D 4E, or at least coming close?

The companies involved have not chosen to release their sales numbers, so we do not know. Some folks have formed opinions one way or the other based on partial data.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

5!
E!
Good God y'all
What does it stand for?
Absolutely nuthin'!
Say it again!

Anyway... wasn't there a brief time when Pathfinder was outselling D&D 4E, or at least coming close? I'd say Pathfinder, but then a new edition of D&D would probably come out. It might even be completely unrecognizable, but there's too much name recognition there for "D&D" to die.

As I recall, over the decades a couple of RPGs have outsold D&D…for a short period of time. It’s just how markets function; how consumers react.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

(Emphasis mine.)

And bad research their part is how you get Ken dolls with sex toy accessories being sold to kids.

What! Really! But Ken famously does not have any..... you know.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The OP is difficult to answer. For many people, D&D is synonymous with role playing game, and the industry, such as it is, is a fairly small space that continues to be utterly dominated by Gygax and Arneson's creation even after fifty years. If D&D were to fail, the entire RPG ecosystem would be radically altered with some companies going out of business or slowing production. Unlike giants like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, or Sears, there just doesn't seem to be any real competition for D&D. But I'll try to engage with the premise of the OP because I think it's interesting.

In 1991, I don't think anyone predicted Vampire: The Masqurade would become the juggernaut it turned out to be. It brought people to gaming who wouldn't have been caught (un)dead playing D&D. Other than D&D, it's the only TTRPG I can think of that gained national, mainstream attention (though its name was never ubiquitous like D&D is). What I'm getting at is it's hard to predict what the next big thing might be. Like D&D before it, Vampire unexpectedly tapped into something bigger than expected and I'm sure another game will come along and do that again.

I don't know what, if anything, would become the next 800 pound gorilla. If I did know, I'd be busy writing it right now. Whatever it might be, will likely catch me complely off guard.

This is probably how it would go. Mark Rein-Hagen's first game Ars Magica did well enough, but no one saw Vampire: The Masquerade coming. Sure, edgier RPGs were starting to creep into the landscape, some of which were quite successful, but none of them hit as big as Vampire did.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What! Really! But Ken famously does not have any..... you know.

“Earring Magic Ken” infamously wore a large ring on a neck chain, as was popular in one segment of the gay community for a while.

He became one of the fastest selling Ken dolls in the product line’s history.