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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7713528" data-attributes="member: 4937">Then, by definition, it won't be our hobby - it won't be the "us" in the article's title - that is becoming more mainstream, it will be something else.  When someone on EnWorld says, "We're finally mainsteam!", the implication I hear is "Table-top RPG's are finally mainstream!"  If that isn't the case, we just aren't more mainstream.Who is "we" in that sentence? Batman isn't a hobby.  I mean seriously, why do I even have to write sentences like that?  Throwing quotes around it doesn't make it more logical to think of Batman as a hobby.  Batman is character, a bit of intellectual property, who shows up in different media.  People might be a fan of the Batman.  They might have collecting Batman paraphernalia as a hobby, because collecting stuff is a popular hobby, but there are no people who have Batman as a hobby.  The guy that collects Batman stuff as a hobby, but plays no RPGs, probably has more in common with someone that collects My Little Pony or Stamps than they necessarily do with someone that plays as DC Supers RPG every Friday night.I doubt it.  Because D&D is first and foremost a game, and Batman is first and foremost a character.   That in itself will make it difficult to say those two sentences ever in the same way.   People can, and some probably do, say, "I like Drizzt Do'urden.", in the same way that people say, "I like Batman.", but claiming to like D&D in that same way is going to be difficult no matter how many D&D branded ancillary products they are and how much more important economically they become than the tabletop game.  Though frankly, I think that the chance of that ever happening except by a wave of nostalgia and fascination with tabletop gaming is practically nil.If that's what it means to become mainstream, I dare say you'll find most people on this site won't be excited by the prospect.  The hobby becoming mainstream doesn't mean D&D succeeds in finally breaking out into successful properties other than those aimed at hardcore gamers.  The hobby becoming successful means that for whatever reason, more people start enjoying table top role-playing games, so that not only does demand for D&D related products grow, but more people are playing N.E.W. or Mutants & Masterminds or Deadlands or whatever.And so far there is no sign that is ever going to happen.  At the height of tabletop gaming's visibility in the 80's, D&D was a Saturday morning cartoon with its own line of action figures.  Sans the occult scare, it might have become as big of IP as Transformers or GI Joe.   However, instead of D&D taking over the market for fantasy gaming, what we saw is World of Warcraft adapted D&D concepts and became mainstream enough to not only get it's own superbowl commercial, but for other fortune 500 brands to be willing to associate themselves with the brand.   At the height of Vampire: the Mascarade's popularity, TV producers were willing to give it it's own prime time show and people were making V:tM video games.   It didn't work.   But V:tM inspired fan fiction under the name 'Twilight' became massively popular - without making almost anyone want to play a vampire RPG.  Heck, 'Forever Knight', which was also practically V:tM fan fiction, was probably more popular and mainstream than V:tM.   Similarly, the Expanse is a popular series of novels and TV Show, without in the slightest making the GURPS: Transhuman Space game that inspired the writers of the books any more popular.  There isn't hardly a fantasy or science fiction series out there any more that isn't inspired by D&D in some fashion, because hardly anyone becomes a writer without playing D&D, but it doesn't make D&D more popular.If, and this is big if, someone were to dump as much money into the Dragonlance IP, as they've dumped into Game of Thrones, and produce a long format Chronicles of the Dragonlance, and if it were mysteriously to sell as well in the popular marketplace as Game of Thrones with its T&A, graphic violence, and other lizard brain titillation, we've no reason to think that would make the hobby more mainstream.</blockquote>

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