I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
The thing to remember is that, at it's core, D&D is sitting in a room for four hours with some friends pretending to be elves and knights and fighting dragons.
That is, essentially, not very cool, in a pop-culture sense. It's not stylish, it doesn't look good, it has no flash-bang appeal, the subject matter is esoteric at best, no one is having sex, you don't get to see the violence, and it relies on clever use of words and mathematics.
YAWN.
But, D&D will always have a hook into the "intelligent person", and more and more it seems that such a person is as accepted as any other fan out there.
Sports fans are mocked mercilessly for rituals, facepaint, over-jocularity.
Fans of high fashion are mocked for vapidity, absurdity, and a general lack of morals.
D&D is just another fandom, no more or less accepted than any other pursuit out there. Or, at least, it's growing into that, as fantasy becomes more and more a staple part of general pop culture and less pigeonholed. Now, you mention dragons and wizards, people have two or three different reference points for it.
I don't think 4e will particularly capitalize on the fantasy zeitgeist. I don't think WotC is ready for it -- they can't leverage known brands (HP, LotR, WoW) into something that's more than just a game, they can't create their own brands with the game alone (novels and movies and videogames based on the game might do that, but these all have a reputation for not being very high-quality accross the board). They can probably make a damn good game, but they're kind of incapable of coming out of that shell.
The best that D&D can do is tell it's stories in other media, and WotC is sorely unprepared to do so in a way that consistently and admirably demonstrates quality in that media. The best they've done is genre fiction with RA Salvatore's books, but that, in and of itself, is no greater accomplishment than Nora Roberts, and not quite as much as Dan Brown or even Douglas Adams.
D&D, as a game, will never be a pop culture sensation. It's requirements of sitting in a room for four hours straight with four friends just make it generally impractical when people have other stuff they could be doing with their day.
Oddly enough, I think that's why D&D gains the most popularity in middle school and high school, and why that's it's strongest audience. I also think that's part of what will keep it in the pop culture ghetto: the nerds will play it instead of other extracirriculars, and while the guy who goes out for football or the girl who learns to play the guitar are participating in a great cultural moment, the D&D player isn't.
So until America becomes a nation who can sit down in a room for four hours once a week and pretend to be elves and knights, it won't ever not be lame. It might be LESS lame, but really, it's a niche appeal.
That is, essentially, not very cool, in a pop-culture sense. It's not stylish, it doesn't look good, it has no flash-bang appeal, the subject matter is esoteric at best, no one is having sex, you don't get to see the violence, and it relies on clever use of words and mathematics.
YAWN.
But, D&D will always have a hook into the "intelligent person", and more and more it seems that such a person is as accepted as any other fan out there.
Sports fans are mocked mercilessly for rituals, facepaint, over-jocularity.
Fans of high fashion are mocked for vapidity, absurdity, and a general lack of morals.
D&D is just another fandom, no more or less accepted than any other pursuit out there. Or, at least, it's growing into that, as fantasy becomes more and more a staple part of general pop culture and less pigeonholed. Now, you mention dragons and wizards, people have two or three different reference points for it.
I don't think 4e will particularly capitalize on the fantasy zeitgeist. I don't think WotC is ready for it -- they can't leverage known brands (HP, LotR, WoW) into something that's more than just a game, they can't create their own brands with the game alone (novels and movies and videogames based on the game might do that, but these all have a reputation for not being very high-quality accross the board). They can probably make a damn good game, but they're kind of incapable of coming out of that shell.
The best that D&D can do is tell it's stories in other media, and WotC is sorely unprepared to do so in a way that consistently and admirably demonstrates quality in that media. The best they've done is genre fiction with RA Salvatore's books, but that, in and of itself, is no greater accomplishment than Nora Roberts, and not quite as much as Dan Brown or even Douglas Adams.
D&D, as a game, will never be a pop culture sensation. It's requirements of sitting in a room for four hours straight with four friends just make it generally impractical when people have other stuff they could be doing with their day.
Oddly enough, I think that's why D&D gains the most popularity in middle school and high school, and why that's it's strongest audience. I also think that's part of what will keep it in the pop culture ghetto: the nerds will play it instead of other extracirriculars, and while the guy who goes out for football or the girl who learns to play the guitar are participating in a great cultural moment, the D&D player isn't.
So until America becomes a nation who can sit down in a room for four hours once a week and pretend to be elves and knights, it won't ever not be lame. It might be LESS lame, but really, it's a niche appeal.
