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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8634027" data-attributes="member: 59082">Yeah, I hear you - and think this is a relevant thread that plays a major part: the fact that "childish things" are no longer considered only the purview of children (and not even necessarily "childish," at least in a pejorative way).An anecdote that sheds a slightly different light: I played in a pretty consistent group from 2008-15 (4E, then converting to Next, then 5E). Everyone in the group was Gen X, and most hadn't played D&D since 2E era - high school or college; I think only one other player had played since then, and it was a variety of games.My point being, this was a group of Gen Xers who mostly hadn't played since the early 90s, and then found themselves playing...4E? I suppose that is unusual, but it is one anecdote, so I imagine that there are a wide variety of configurations. The point I wanted to highlight is that even thought these other folks had left playing when they were 20ish, they all found their way back in their mid-30s to 40s.So I think there's really several demographics at play:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Long-term/regular players - like most people reading this. These are the folks that are "serious" or "diehard," who might take hiatuses but are always involved in some way or another. These are mostly folks who kept playing after the usual "exist ramp" after college ended and "real life" began.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Long-term/occasional players - these are folks like those I mentioned. They might have played in the usual middle school to college range, then stopped as they focused on "adulting" and never had the intention of playing again, but then found themselves taking the opportunity when it arose sometime later in life, and might do so again, given the opportunity.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">New/active players - These are folks new to the game, who started and haven't stopped (yet). The vast majority of these folks are in the middle school-to-college age range (or approximately 10ish to 25ish). It is still TBD which of the other three groups they end up in. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Former/retired players - These are folks who played at some point, and never played again. Like most of those I mentioned if I hadn't started up that group. Conceivable there are many of these folks, especially when you consider the 80s boom, and then all the folks who played since.</li> </ol>My guess is that there are maybe one to several million folks in the first group, a few million more in the second, tens of millions in the third group (assuming that WotC's 50 million only includes groups 1-3), and also tens of millions in the fourth group, And to [USER=6780330]@Parmandur[/USER] , I suppose any contraction D&D experiences will come when the new/active players--as a group--leave the "high activity range" of age 10-25ish, (or middle school through college). So that might be a trickle for a few years, and then grow more steadily in five or so years from now, but also be offset by growth along the way, and presumably WotC's goal is to keep folks coming in and turn as many of group 3 into 1-2 and not 4 as possible.All just speculative, of course.I was actually back for that! I remember that team well - Puckett, Hrbek, Gaetti, Blyleven, etc. I was gone summer of '85 to spring of '87. 1987 was the year I got seriously into baseball, even though I was a fan from around 1980ish. But I was (and am) an Angels fan, so missing '86 isn't such a bad thing.</blockquote>

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