[Theory] Why D&D is Popular

[Turjan]

D&D's a better system for Tolkien-style fantasy than MERP?

That's not quite what I wanted to say. I know quite a lot of Middle Earth fans who have been playing campaigns there for a very long time. They tried MERP, but didn't like the system at all. They told me that it's a very bad match for the LotR atmosphere. They bought a lot of MERP material because of the maps, but they used some modified variant of AD&D(2E) to play it. With D&D 3.x, they are even happier. This boils down to that none of the systems is a good match, but (A)D&D seemed to be easier to adapt to fit the atmosphere of Middle Earth than MERP, although the latter was putatively designed for the task.

 

[Turjan]

Leiber is a niche author known to a very limited circle of people: fantasy readers and writers. He coined the term swords & sorcery.

I know who Fritz Leiber is and what he wrote. But in order to assess the reasons for D&D's success, it's necessary to see the influence of factors on the attraction of people from outside the niche, i.e., does a certain aspect appeal to people with only cursory knowledge of fantasy. For the country where I come from I can assure you that this is not the case for Fritz Leiber, because he's virtually unknown to the general public, unlike Tolkien or Howard.

 

[fanboy2000]

Yeah, I have to chime in with the "because D&D was there first" crowd.

If it was because D&D is fun, then how come I am still playing D&D, even though there are many systems I would personally consider much more "fun"? Well, I'm playing D&D because I can reliably find a group of players to game with, no matter where I move to!

Two things:
1. You must find something fun in playing D&D. If you hated it, why would you play it all? If you answer "because other people do," I'm going to ask why don't you do something other than roleplay with your friends.

2. Someone in your group must find playing D&D fun. I have trouble believing that everyone in your group is have a horrible time playing D&D and thinking to themselves "I'm only playing this because everyone else wants to." If that were the case, the group wouldn't be playing D&D at all.

Network externalities are hugely important in roleplaying, because for every game you need to find at least 3-4 other people who are familiar with and/or willing to play within the same system. That means the difficulty in getting a game together scales inversely to the 3rd or 4th power of the number of people playing specific system. Given how much of a niche market roleplaying still is, there really isn't much room left for another major player in the field.

Maybe. But someone has to find D&D fun, and I'm betting there are more people who play D&D because its fun for them rather than some other reason.

Self-awareness is never perfect; otherwise we wouldn't have such a hopping trade in psychology and psychiatry,

This is a non sequitur, how well the psychology and psychiatry industry does says nothing about how self-aware an individual is.

I'm just saying that I see no reason not to apply normal academic practices to looking at how D&D was formed.

There is a reason: if the person doing the looking disagrees with normal academic practice.

 

[Turjan]

Two things:
1. You must find something fun in playing D&D. If you hated it, why would you play it all? If you answer "because other people do," I'm going to ask why don't you do something other than roleplay with your friends.

2. Someone in your group must find playing D&D fun. I have trouble believing that everyone in your group is have a horrible time playing D&D and thinking to themselves "I'm only playing this because everyone else wants to." If that were the case, the group wouldn't be playing D&D at all.

I think it might be useful to split the original question in two parts:

1. What makes people try out D&D?

2. What makes people stay with D&D?

Obviously, both questions must find a positive answer for D&D to defend its top position in the RPG market. Being the first RPG helped with a headstart, but there must be redeeming qualities to the game to keep people playing. Both aspects are important. A bad game would lose its advantage from the headstart pretty soon. An at least decent game would most probably keep this advantage, and I think that describes D&D pretty well. This means that even people who only slightly enjoy D&D, but like playing RPGs in general, will stay with D&D because of the described synergistic effects, even if they prefer a different RPG that their friends don't want to play.

In order to surplant D&D as top RPG in the standard fantasy niche, a game has to be much better than D&D in this particular niche; slightly better is not sufficient. Currently, I don't see any game that is that much better in the standard fantasy niche than D&D. Most competitors have one or two aspects that make me think that they are no threat to D&D's position. That's also true for WFRP2, even with a company like GW in the background.

 

[wingsandsword]

I don't think the purchase of ICE's Middle Earth setting material can be viewed as an indication of the viability of their system. I purchased the setting material with no intention of running MERP in it; I purchased it for leisure reading because I love Tolkien. Many of my friends did the same. That's why the ICE line ran out the moment they ran out of settings -- the text about the settings was the only thing motivating anyone to buy a MERP product. There wasn't a viable market for anything else because such a tiny portion of the people purchasing the setting materials were actually playing the game.

I think there is some truth there. Among all my gaming friends and acquaintances, I knew of several who bought MERP books and materials, none of them ran MERP games, they always ran D&D, even if they ran a campaign in Middle Earth, it was with house-ruled D&D. One said he tried to run MERP as a game once, but he found the system dense, impenetrable, and clumsier than D&D, so that campaign didn't last beyond one session.

When I first got into gaming, upon hearing there was a game made around Lord of the Rings, I immediately asked my fellow gamers about it, and was quickly disabused of any idea of ever playing it. I was warned, by more than one group I knew, that it might have interesting source material, but the rules were dense and confounding, and it seemed more like an overcomplicated D&D clone with Middle Earth superimposed than a game actually made to support the Middle Earth setting.

So, from my own admittedly anecdotal evidence, I know that people played D&D because it was the rules they knew, were used to, and could find other gamers for, and that other systems on the market for Fantasy RPG's were largely percieved as highly niche products for people burned out or upset with D&D. If you play fantasy, it's D&D, other systems were for other genres (admittedly, I knew one girl from a group who only played GURPS, no matter the setting or genre, it was GURPS, but we had trouble gaming with her because she steadfastly refused to learn any other system, and they used all the GURPS rules, like having to know calculus to determine the statistics for a vehicle (calculating it's full surface area), so other gamers joining their group had a daunting learning curve, which kept them isolated from the rest of gamers.

 

[fusangite]

This is a non sequitur, how well the psychology and psychiatry industry does says nothing about how self-aware an individual is.

I don't think it's a non-sequitur to remind you that we live in a culture that has already come to terms with the view and generally accepted the idea that self-awareness is imperfect and incomplete.

There is a reason: if the person doing the looking disagrees with normal academic practice.

Well, I'm sorry that you don't personally like the way literature is studied in universities today. I'll make a note of your discomfort as I continue to analyze texts based on normal academic practice.

I'm curious, though: how do you] explain the early conflicts between D&D and the Tolkien estate?

 

[Umbran]

Network externalities are hugely important in roleplaying, because for every game you need to find at least 3-4 other people who are familiar with and/or willing to play within the same system.

Ah, but part of a point is being missed, here. When one says, "Because D&D is fun", that does not clearly state why it is fun. Specifically, it doesn't say that the only source of fun is within the game rules.

Part of what makes the game fun are the network externalities. And those exist because of market dominance. And that exists in large part because it was first.

However, as others have noted, purely internal fun must still be aprt of the picture. If the game stank, the network of externalities would collapse. The game has to be reasonably fun on it's own merits in order to support the network. It doesn't have to be the most fun thing in existance, but it does have to be fun.

 

[Blustar]

I think the impact of Tolkien on D&D cannot be underestimated. Popularity, substance, sales!!! From what I have gleaned from many late night message-board perusings, including Col. Plahdoh's, is that LOTR wasn't his favorite "fantasy" but it was all the craze and rage at the time. So, understandably, he altered his Vancian, Howard, Moorcock, influenced game and added JRRT flavor post-haste to jump on the proverbial bandwagon. A stroke of genius I might add.

As for me, if it wasn't for the Tolkien flavor being so predominant, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to find and then shell out the money to play the game. (I'm notorious for trying to hang on to my hard earned cash, unless its RPG's of course!!!) When I saw Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits (er, halflings), Ranger, etc...I was in; hook, line, and sinker!!! Thanks Gary!!! It was very sneaky of him but now I thank him for it because I was intoduced to the best game ever and it also turned me on to some authors I probably never woild have read. Vance, Leiber, Howard, etc. from the suggested reading in back of the 1ed DMG. I'm still hardcore Tolkien to the bone but I'm not as elitist in my "fantasy" musings and see the merit in many other "genre" authors. ( I love Poul Anderson by the way!)

As to why EGG doesn't give JRRT more credit is beyond me. Artistic envy??? Hell, I'm envious every time I read LOTR's and realize I wont be able to describe the earth in such evocative and emotional ways. Almost like the earth was alive and breathing. But I love him for it all the more because of his genius (Tolkien). The fans love of Tolkien, fueled their thirst and hunger for "fantasy", myth, adventure, etc. and D&D provided an outlet. (Intentionally or not) The rest is history.

As for MERP, I agree that it was a nice attempt but I always wished they would do a D&D version cause MERP was so deadly of a system. If I didn't fudge like a madman, someone's guts would be on the floor almost every combat!!! I loved the maps, didn't care for the non-canonical writings, and am still pissed they didn't make a D20 version of it! Aggghhh! Damn decipher! Yes I have that game too but it leaves a lot to be desired.


So there aren't any misconceptions, I don't think JRRT was the main reason or only reason D&D became so popular in its infancy but it was an important one. More so to the general public than to the "wargamers" of that time. I think it achieved unprecedented penetration to non-gamers because of this. As to why it's still popular today, well its a great game! People just need to give it a chance, D&D will take care of the rest.

I would rank the different versions in this order: AD&D 1ed, 3.5, 2ed, ClassicD&D. Hackmaster would be close to 1ed, but I don't think it really counts. I never played OD&D.

regards,

Alex

 

[WizarDru]

The knee jerk Rolemaster bashing by people on this forum - who just don't understand the system at all - amazes me.

I understood the system well enough to know that reducing an epic weapon of legend and one of the most popular fantasy series of all time to a simple statistic didn't feel very much like the source material. I have nothing against rolemaster (orby extension MERP)...I had friends who migrated to it in the same way that I migrated to GURPS. We both left AD&D after it failed to meet our needs. However, I don't think I ever met anyone who thought that MERP was a system that was well-designed for recreating ME. Instead, they did what was suggested above: they purchased the supplements for love of Tolkien and the research that went into the fluff.

I have many, many GURPS settings/worldbooks. I've used a good chunk of them, but many more are sold to people who aren't GURPS players...they just like the source material. MERP was the same way. I own Bree and the Barrowlands, myself, and I've NEVER played MERP. It just fed my desire to see more Lord of the Rings material. I own Space Law (and flipped through Arms Law)...but all I can recall is a lot of tables and not much more. That's not getting a hate on or having a knee-jerk reaction: I just didn't like it. I'm hardly D&D's biggest booster, either. I stayed away from D&D for all of the 2nd edition, dropping out just before it came out (and had mostly switch to GURPS well before that).

In other words, my knowledge of MERP was based on the one supplement I bought; and the rules felt very much like an alternate AD&D to me, which didn't evoke Tolkien's world or prose to me. It felt like all of the fantastic elements were reduced to numerical game statistics and very cold numbers at that. I don't think that's a kneejerk reaction, it's an informed preference and an opinion.

 

[The_Gneech]

I understood the system well enough to know that reducing an epic weapon of legend and one of the most popular fantasy series of all time to a simple statistic didn't feel very much like the source material.

Well, as magic weapons go, Sting wasn't that exciting ... Bilbo called it "just a dagger, but might as well be a sword for someone my size" IIRC; it was made by elves and glowed blue in the presence of orcs. I'd say "+2 shortsword" was about right, statwise.

'tis a nice little sword, to be sure ... but it's no Glamdring.

-The Gneech