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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chainsaw Mage" data-source="post: 1370260" data-attributes="member: 16679">I've been wondering about this for a long time.  Why is D&D and its fantasy genre such a dominant force in the RPG marketplace? If you think about it it's rather odd that D&D gamers (such as myself) are usually fanatics for horror films, science-fiction novels, and super-hero comics...but when time comes to play an RPG, we seldom seem to embrace these genres. Instead, we switch to D&D and high fantasy.  Of course, I know that *some* of us play horror and sci-fi and superhero RPGs, but we are a tiny minority.  Just a glance at the "Talking the Talk" and "Playing the Game" boards shows a huge flood of D&D games, and a trickle of other genres...a Modern here, a Cthulhu there...One reason I *don't* accept is the commonly suggested "D&D is so dominant because it was the first role-playing game."  That may have been true in the 80's, but by now there have been SOOOO many other RPGs (including many by TSR itself and later WotC) representing the other genres (Traveller, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Top Secret, Shadowrun, Vampire, etc. etc.) that it's hard to believe D&D's popularity continues to be due simply to its head-start.  There has to be something about the game itself and the fantasy genre it portrays.Again, it's not even D&D itself that I'm asking about so much as the fantasy genre in general (which is, of course, dominated by D&D  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ).  Perhaps Marshall McLuhan was right when he said, "The medium is the message"; perhaps some genres simply work better in the medium that is the role-playing game.  Perhaps fantasy is simply a better genre for RPGs.  Perhaps a fantasy RPG "works" better than a modern or a superhero or a horror or a sci-fi RPG.In closing, let me add that I love D&D and have played it since 1980 (when I was a wee lad of 9).  But I also love d20 Modern and Call of Cthulhu and I am depressed (quite frankly) at how few people seem to play those games.  D20 Future is coming out in August, but should I even bother? Maybe I should just sell off my non-D&D stuff and just focus on D&D for good.  Perhaps the medium is the message; and the message just happens to be fantasy.Discuss.</blockquote>

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