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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rogueattorney" data-source="post: 1811675" data-attributes="member: 17551">This is a hard question because so much is different now.1.  Computer games are a lot more sophisticated and draw from more of the same crowd than the Atari 2600-type games of the early 80's.2.  The game was marketed to and played by a bit younger crowd in the 80's than now.3.  As part of the marketing to the younger set, the game had a bit more presence in the mainstream (relatively speaking) with the D&D cartoon, kid's toys, advertising in comic books and on T.V., product placement in toystores, etc.4.  Younger kids now tend to play CCG's or Clix/Mageknight rather than rpg's.5.  There is nowhere near the kind of competition from "serious" board/war games (as in Avalon Hill, SPI, etc.) now as there was in the early 80's.  The mass-market board game business ("Sorry", "Clue", etc.) has almost dried up.6.  The Internet changes everything from the way the game is played to how it is marketed and how the fans of the game interact.7.  My (and I imagine most of our) perspective is completely skewed because I was a middle-schooler then and a 30-something now.  What was popular to a middle-schooler won't necessarily be known to a 30-something and vice versa.Further it's really hard to compare where D&D stands with relation to other rpg's now as compared to the early 80's.  In some ways it's the same, D&D is clearly the king of the block, which wasn't necessarily true in 1996 or so.  The OGL has also managed to replicate to some degree the free-wheeling early 80's where many companies (Judges Guild, Flying Buffalo, Mayfair, etc.) were but weren't <wink, wink> making products for D&D.  In other ways it's different.  The d20 system, for one, has somewhat subsumed D&D into part of a larger whole, and makes it harder to determine what is and isn't D&D.  But basically, I have no idea if non-D&D rpg's have a bigger or lesser share of the market now than in the 80's.I'd love to see some hard number, because, honestly, I haven't the foggiest clue.R.A.</blockquote>

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