D&D General Some Interesting Stats About D&D Players!

The full cover spread for Phandelver and Below, by Antonio José Manzanedo​

GeekWire has reported on the recent D&D press event (which I've covered elsewhere). Along with all the upcoming product information we've all been devouring over the last day or two, there were some interesting tidbits regarding D&D player demographics.

• 60% of D&D players are male, 39% are female, and 1% identify otherwise
• 60% are “hybrid” players, who switch between playing the game physically or online
• 58% play D&D on a weekly basis
• 48% identify as millennials, 19% from Generation X and 33% from Generation Z
• The majority of current D&D players started with 5th Edition

 

[mamba]

To be fair, I have the heads of the diamond, paper towel and tuna industries mounted on my wall.

Do you? I haven’t noticed

 

[Charlaquin]

To be fair, I have the heads of the diamond, paper towel and tuna industries mounted on my wall.

Can we do golf next?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I would definitely want to know more about the methodology of this survey before I put much stock in it, especially since WotC, who no doubt conducted or commissioned it, is presumably only interested in getting at information about their customers or potential customers, not all the people off engaging in "D&D as folk tradition" who presumably skew substantially older, and who may not be substantial WotC customers but are most certainly D&D players. Even ignoring the extremes, I'm guessing their ability to get accurate data and their interest in doing so both wane the further one gets from being a regular WotC customer.

Which is all just to say that in WotC's mind, "D&D player" and "WotC D&D customer" are often more perfectly synonymous than the community at large would consider those concepts.

 

[MGibster]

That makes you someone trained in MLA, the way God intended, not a Boomer.

If you had said APA, I would have challenged you to a duel.

We can't be friends anymore.

I'm also a fan of the capitalization of proper nouns, I strive to remember the difference between to and too, and I will be dead in the cold, cold ground before I give up the Oxford comma.

 

[MGibster]

I think too much is made of these somewhat arbitrary generation groupings. I'm 50. Never felt that any D&D product was trying to exclude or alienate me. Nor do I feel that the game is any different playing with other people my age, or with people in their mid 20s.

I'm getting pretty close to your age, which reminds me, I need to get my eyes checked because bifocals are in my future I think, and I can't honestly say I've not been under the impression that WotC has deliberately been trying to alienate anyone. But in some ways, they've been moving in recent years in a direction I don't particularly care for. I'd much rather attributes be linked to species and I'd rather they put out some decent setting material, but at the same time I accept that I'm not a part of WotC's core audience.

 

[MGibster]

To be fair, I have the heads of the diamond, paper towel and tuna industries mounted on my wall.

I've actually talked about this during new employee orientation for the interns at my company back when it was all the rage to blame millennials for this. To sum it up, "I keep hearing you guys are killing industries. Paper towels, TGIF & Appleby's, and diamonds. But here's the thing, they're not entitled to your business. It's their responsibility to adapt and provide you with a product or experience that you're willing to pay for. And the same is true of us. We've been in business for many decades now, but we're not entitled to anyone's business. We have to earn that."

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

I would definitely want to know more about the methodology of this survey before I put much stock in it, especially since WotC, who no doubt conducted or commissioned it, is presumably only interested in getting at information about their customers or potential customers, not all the people off engaging in "D&D as folk tradition" who presumably skew substantially older, and who may not be substantial WotC customers but are most certainly D&D players. Even ignoring the extremes, I'm guessing their ability to get accurate data and their interest in doing so both wane the further one gets from being a regular WotC customer.

Which is all just to say that in WotC's mind, "D&D player" and "WotC D&D customer" are often more perfectly synonymous than the community at large would consider those concepts.

Most definitely this. To Wizards of the Coast as an entity, "D&D" basically means what most everyone else refers to as "5th Edition". They've never actually even officially referred to it as "5th Edition" or "5E". To them, it's just "D&D". And of course they're only going to care about their customers: people who only play the earlier editions have no relevance to them and their plans, for better or worse.

In a way, that's pretty much the view shared by the public at large. Most people playing 5th Edition right now never played anything before it. This was their entry into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. All that older stuff is basically just ancient history to them, for all intents and purposes. Same deal with the media at large. We've been seeing all these articles about D&D over the past several years, and it's all due to the sudden popularity of the game during the life of this edition. Sure, some of those articles will talk about the history of the game and how perception has evolved through the decades, but against for all intents and purposes "D&D" equates to "the current edition of the game that everyone and their grandmother is playing."

 

[mamba]

for all intents and purposes "D&D" equates to "the current edition of the game that everyone and their grandmother is playing."

that seems to be pretty accurate too

That is from 2020, I am pretty sure this has not gotten better for the ‘other’ editions

2020 Survey Result Update #1 - Demographic of TTRPG Players

Hello! Welcome to our first research result update blog! We have gathered a total of 1006 responses to the survey. In this newsletter, you will find basic demographics of survey participants, three...

www.dndresearch.com

 

[Hussar]

Let’s be honest though. It’s always been this. It was DnD and then everyone else. Outside of a couple of outliers over the years.

So of course that’s the way things are viewed.

 

[GreyLord]

That doesn’t seem right. Over 50 million people play D&D, and this survey says 19% of D&D players identify as Gen X. You have more than 9 and a half million Gen Z people in your household??

That is actually a very suspect number in itself. IF (and that's a big IF) there were even 25 million players, and we each had gotten a ticket to the D&D movie at $10 a piece (I know, that's actually on the low end today, let's say they all went to matinee's), the D&D movie would have busted $250 million easily, and that's not even including any other individual that saw it due to advertising, going with friends, or just interested in it.

As it is, probably less than 50% of the audience were D&D players, and with the totals, and the low estimate ($10 a ticket) that means there would be less than 10 million active D&D players more than likely if we look at the BEST picture ratio.

The survey's ARE Public Relations and hype. That's what they are there for overall.

That doesn't mean they are WRONG...they actually are pretty accurate...from a certain point of view.

That said, let's say that 25 million of those played prior to 3e and were part of the original crowd of players.

In 2020 Millenials overtook Boomers as the largest population group in the United States. Of the Gen-X and Boomer population we also know that by 2000 there were less than 1 million active D&D players (or that's the numbers were have heard and assumed were still playing AD&D prior to 3e's release).

If we look at that overall and double it, even if there are 10 million active D&D players today (I know, I know, it doesn't match up to the hyped up numbers, but once again, that's from a certain point of view. 25 Mil AD&D + 5 mil 3e + 4 mil 4e + 16 mil 5e ever played =....) that would give around a 20% number of Boomers and Gen-X playing which is still pretty high comparatively to the survey, but it doesn't take much to have those numbers drop (remember, less than a million in 2000, doesn't take much to have those numbers drop). At a million players, that gives us around 10%.

Extrapolating, it's not hard to say these numbers, even if hype and somewhat flawed in how they were gotten, actually could be a pretty good representation of the percentages of who is playing.


IMO.