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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tom Cashel" data-source="post: 1559779" data-attributes="member: 321">Actually, the thread title maintains (rather alarmingly) that "RPGs" are failing. All of them! (This is news to me, seeing as my Cthulhu game is going strong.)But reference is made to only one RPG, D&D (and always with a snarky Registered Trademark symbol attached to it). Seems to me that someone has conflated D&D with the entire hobby.Judging from the fact that my little brother and his friends recently started playing D&D, that's four new converts. (More than enough to make up for Alan not being able to find a game.)"To make D&D more popular, it should be less like D&D and more like [something] that will appeal to a wider range of people." Well, what is that exactly? No matter what it is, it remains a logical fallacy. It's as if you're saying, "Not enough people like mayonnaise! The mayonnaise industry is failing! We need to make mayonnaise tastier to more people!"It's likely, however, that the majority of those people aren't at all interested in ersatz mayonnaise. They just like MUSTARD, all right? But if mayonnaise doesn't taste like mayonnaise any more, you've lost all those original mayonnaise eaters too.Some people enjoy mayonnaise, some enjoy mustard.Some people enjoy D&D (and other RPGs, with all of the behaviors, habits, and requirements attached to them), while others would rather read a book or watch a movie. Will making D&D more like a book attract them? Unlikely.Want to help the hobby? Run demo games. Introduce more people to the hobby. Get proactive in your community, y'know? Then you'd have the satisfaction of saving a "failing" hobby, and you'd also have a game to play.Anyway, my point is: exposing more possible participants to RPGs is a better way to increase their popularity than by altering the product (In this case, D&D) to somehow make it appeal to everyone.Now I grok you...the hobby should simultaneously become more exclusive and more inclusive. In other words, it should suck and blow at the same time.</blockquote>

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