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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6110986" data-attributes="member: 6680772">It's just math.  Let's hypothesize that a D&D edition grows in two demographics: 10-15 year olds, and 20-25 year olds.  Let's say that every year an edition is out, it grows by 1 person of each year in those groups.  So, from 1980 to 1989 (Basic Set heyday) we get 103 players, and from 2000-2009 (3e heyday) we get 103 players.  Same exact number for each group.  Only, the average age of the Basic Set group is 45 years old, while the average of the 3e group is 15 years old.  We might surmise that the age of the average ENWorlder is somewhere in the 30s, maybe mid-30s if it's in any way representative of the median age of the major English speaking countries (35-40 in U.S. and Australia, 40+ in U.K. and Canada), and that it is more or less a normal, bell-shaped distribution.  The Basic Set group would line up with a good chunk of the bell curve, while the 3e group would take up a chunk closer to the opposite tail.  Essentially, the 10-15 year olds who got into D&D in the latter half of BD&D's heyday are in their mid- to late-30s, and well represented, while those who got into D&D in the latter half of 3e's life time are still in their teens, and not such a big presence.Now, that's a rather clean abstraction -- reality is a good deal messier and includes the influences of AD&D and changes in the market. (80s hysteria and mass-market fad vs. largely intra-hobby bubble.  Also, in the model above, the number of players born in 1975-1979 are low because they don't get the same boost from when they are in their early 20s.  In reality, there were probably more 10-15 year olds getting BD&D in 1985-1989 than there were in 1980-1984.)  Not to mention larger population trends!  There were fewer 10-15 and 20-25 year olds in the 2000s than in the 1980s.  But the median age of the site has a significant influence on such poll results.</blockquote>

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