D&D 5E Let's help discover who shares this hobby with us! (anonymous poll)

[redrick]

Yeah, sorry, the options are way too reductive for a meaningful demographic survey. Women are lumped into one group, but men are broken into "white" and "non-white"? It feels like a pyramid of other-ness. I'm curious to learn about the demographic breakdown of my community, but I just don't see this as helping.

I will say, as an aside, D&D (and other RPGs) are like sports in that they can be a great barrier breaker along racial, social and gender lines. Apart from D&D, my social group is defined almost entirely by people I have worked with or people I went to college with, which makes for a very limited subset of the population. With D&D, on the other hand, I've played with security guards, scientists, airport employees, restaurant workers, computer programmers, actors, writers, nurses, orderlies, students and god knows who else. While those groups still skew white and heavily male, I do think the hobby is getting better in that regard.

So here's to hobbies that break down barriers.

 

[redrick]

Unless you meant hermaphrodite, you can't make a poll with enough options to account for all the made up genders nowdays.

I know folks with genital ambiguity and they prefer "intersex" to hermaphrodite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

So no matter who you are, you're sharing the hobby with Whitey? That's... not very diverse at all.

 

[LapBandit]

Regardless of your opinion of the hobby, it's dominated by caucasian men, that can't be denied.

 

[Sunseeker]

Shocker, "white male" dominates the results (assuming honesty was applied in self-selection) at over 75% of respondents! With a mere 7% non-white and 11% female. Only 1/10 people are female and in a group of 10, you'd only have a marginal chance of even seeing a non-white face.

People understand that there are different sorts of folks who understand gaming. But those folks and their different strokes are still overwhelmingly white and male.

 

[Gradine]

As has been pointed out also, but this forum isn't likely to be representative of the hobby as a whole. I think what it might be a clue into, however, are the demographics of the people shaping the conversation around both the game and the hobby, from the people who produce games to the people involved in sales (such as FLGS ownership/staff/clientele), to the folks who tend to be stewards of communities organized around the hobby (from forums such as this to convention management). I've noticed that forums tend to be weighted pretty heavily more towards DMs and people with many years (if not decades) of experience with D&D, which lends itself to be dominated by a very specific demographic.

It is pretty clear that the people who play D&D (and other RPGs) are growing increasingly more diverse, which is excellent. And we're starting to see that reflected, a little bit, in the places where conversations about the hobby are happening. Each discrete space for hobby to build a community is going to have different challenges and takes different steps (and at different paces) to adjust to this change in demographics, however.

 

[redrick]

Shocker, "white male" dominates the results (assuming honesty was applied in self-selection) at over 75% of respondents! With a mere 7% non-white and 11% female. Only 1/10 people are female and in a group of 10, you'd only have a marginal chance of even seeing a non-white face.

People understand that there are different sorts of folks who understand gaming. But those folks and their different strokes are still overwhelmingly white and male.

I don't disagree with your hypothesis. I disagree that this particular poll is a good way of collecting good numbers to back that hypothesis up.

That said, I feel very strongly that we need to do everything we can to diversify the representation in all levels of the hobby. As players, as DMs, as designers.

In my own experience, my D&D games are more racially diverse than my work environment, but less gender diverse than my work environment. (Which is saying something, because there has been a lot of talk recently about just how male-dominated my industry is.)

 

[BoldItalic]

As has been pointed out also, but this forum isn't likely to be representative of the hobby as a whole. I think what it might be a clue into, however, are the demographics of the people shaping the conversation around both the game and the hobby, from the people who produce games to the people involved in sales (such as FLGS ownership/staff/clientele), to the folks who tend to be stewards of communities organized around the hobby (from forums such as this to convention management). I've noticed that forums tend to be weighted pretty heavily more towards DMs and people with many years (if not decades) of experience with D&D, which lends itself to be dominated by a very specific demographic.

It is pretty clear that the people who play D&D (and other RPGs) are growing increasingly more diverse, which is excellent. And we're starting to see that reflected, a little bit, in the places where conversations about the hobby are happening. Each discrete space for hobby to build a community is going to have different challenges and takes different steps (and at different paces) to adjust to this change in demographics, however.

There is an obvious answer. All D&D players must be required to make an annual saving throw against Polymorph. On a failure, they must roll up a new race and gender. Over time, this will even up the statistics to everyone's satisfaction.

BTW, I'm voting 'Other' because I'm an incorporeal entity.

 

[JonnyP71]

My 3 groups, with some playing in multiple groups:

12 white males
2 non-white males
3 females

Ages 21-46

 

[gyor]

This poll is a bad idea, let's not reduce people to categories and simply respect them as individuals.