D&D 5E The Mainstreaming of D&D

[ShinHakkaider]

I was also a kid with a subscription to Daredevil at the time, so the parody was right in my face.

But this exactly. The original comic was also bloody and more raw than the comics code would allow Marvel to be. When it turned into a cartoon with color-coded bandanas for the characters to help the audience tell them apart, the shark had officially been jumped for 12 year old me.

SAME. I was reading Daredevil and caught the parody/homage elements when I finally got my hands on a 6th printing of TMNT #1. Started really reading it with issue #6 and enjoyed it but quickly fell out of love with it with the cartoon. Haven't really been a fan again to this day.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I actually worry about a couple of the conventions I attend that seem to be getting grayer and fatter every year along with me, without a lot of new blood coming in.

As much as I love to pointlessly rail against D&D and its market dominance, it's an absolutely great thing that it's increasingly mainstream and pulling more people into the hobby. A bigger total pie means bigger slices for everyone (even if D&D still eats with its hands and only leaves like 10 percent for the rest of us to fight over). But I haven't thought about what this influx of new gamers is doing for cons, if anything. I could have it backwards, but I feel like cons have traditionally been really important for indie publishers, and if it's just grognards attending, that could be bad news for the segment of the industry I care about.

Unless remote gaming has permanently upended things, and cons--at least in-person ones--are just fading into irrelevance? I think it'll take a couple more years to figure that out.

 

[Reynard]

As much as I love to pointlessly rail against D&D and its market dominance, it's an absolutely great thing that it's increasingly mainstream and pulling more people into the hobby. A bigger total pie means bigger slices for everyone (even if D&D still eats with its hands and only leaves like 10 percent for the rest of us to fight over). But I haven't thought about what this influx of new gamers is doing for cons, if anything. I could have it backwards, but I feel like cons have traditionally been really important for indie publishers, and if it's just grognards attending, that could be bad news for the segment of the industry I care about.

Unless remote gaming has permanently upended things, and cons--at least in-person ones--are just fading into irrelevance? I think it'll take a couple more years to figure that out.

I should note that I don't spend a lot of time at Adventurers League tables or the like, so it may be that younger gamers are there, just not where I am (in the bigger "general roleplaying" room/hall/whatever).

 

[Ixal]

Welcome to the hard truth.
As long as something is niche, it is made for a specific target group. But once it gets mainstream it is made for the lowest common denominator to please as many people as possible at least a bit, resulting in a watered down product.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I agree completely.

DnD is pop music. It's vanilla.

Maybe it's time to dig deeper into the scene and play other stuff.

DnD is only pop music if you only interact with it at the surface level.

Much like pop music, actually. It only fits the stereotype if you only interact with it casually.

 

[billd91]

I actually worry about a couple of the conventions I attend that seem to be getting grayer and fatter every year along with me, without a lot of new blood coming in.

I gave up on one of those conventions in my neck of the woods. It was far too depressing.

 

[D1Tremere]

Why? I am only talking about my preferences and my feelings about certain aesthetics. We don't have to like the same things. I can prefer blood and mud and you can prefer whatever it is you prefer and we can still both like D&D.

I think the reason it may come off that way to some is that you point out a very specific set of aesthetic options that exist in a large pool of choices, many of which are very blood and mud still. For example, if you compare the art, flavor, and options between Strathaven, Icewind Dale, Ravenloft, and Acquisitions Inc., you get a huge swath of different flavors to choose from.

 

[Nebulous]

I just get the sense 5e really doesn't want characters to ever die, and tries to thwart that possibility as much as possible. Which seems to please a vast majority of newer players.

 

[Parmandur]

DnD is only pop music if you only interact with it at the surface level.

Much like pop music, actually. It only fits the stereotype if you only interact with it casually.

Also, Vanilla is a delicious and highly desired flavor.

 

[Malmuria]

Interesting, as I think something of this dynamic was a part of the game from the 80s: Tracking Down the Elusive Shift: A Review

I Was a Teenage Munchkin​

Much ink was spilled about a younger generation of players coming into the hobby without the benefit of the OD&D free-form approach. These players would learn D&D from the Basic and Advanced versions and, the thinking went at the time, would see the rules as inviolate. The focus of who dictated the rules would shift from the DM at the table to whatever TSR published. The original gamers from OD&D who valued their improvisation were coined "grognards" and the young upstarts who were focused on using the rules to “become a superperson” were termed "munchkins."

I was introduced to Basic D&D at seven-years-old (my mom DMed my first game) and, when I later introduced it to my neighbors, had no idea that there was an "Original" version much less an "Advanced" version. My own gaming group split once we discovered there were more advanced rules to play with, which we eventually embraced. It wasn't until high school that I finally gamed with an older player from college, who was so horrified by how chaotic our game was that he quit on the spot.

In short, I was one of the munchkins that grognards complained about in fanzines. Peterson sums this generational conflict up nicely:

Many of the earliest adopters of D&D had begun playing as teenagers and were by the end of the decade college graduates. We inevitably lash out most harshly at the failings in others that we know we have exhibited ourselves. With sufficient exposure to the game and with the maturity of age, the early adopters of role-playing games fervently renounced the desire for power that many readily confessed had motivated them when they first began playing.