Will D&D ever be able to regain a base of "casual" players?

[Hussar]

As far as casual CCG players go, I'll raise my hand. My friend in uni inherited a stack of Magic cards from a friend of his. I have no idea how many cards he had other than - a while freaking bunch. The five or six of us that regularly played D&D together would while away a free hour or two from time to time, using that stack of cards to build a deck from.

We were all casual players. None of us bought cards, are decks were in all likelyhood a joke from any serious player standpoint (IIRC, and this was a few years ago, we generally had decks that drew from all five colors). So, it is, at least in my personal experience, entirely possible to be a casual CCG player.

Actually, thinking about it, I've got another example as well. I was a serious Battletech CCG player for some time. Bought lots of cards, spent a fair bit of time crafting decks, all the good stuff. Yet, I played with friends with those cards for years - they never bought cards, just built decks from my collection.

I think there most certainly are casual CCG players.

 

[Ariosto]

I think there most certainly are casual CCG players.

I was, briefly, a casual player of Magic. It became less entertaining when everyone I met was a "serious" player in the sense of refusing to follow the rule to ante up a random card because his whole deck was cherry-picked, not merely from buying multiple decks but from buying specific cards at considerable "collector's item" expense. I could play against a stacked deck with a chance of improving my own if I won -- but with even that possibility removed, I lost interest.

I can't from experience speak much to D&D in the '90s. I have seen some of the later 2e supplements, and depending on what was normative the game might well have approached the 3e/4e level of dependence on players' "system mastery". Still, there was nothing preventing it from being as far from that as the 2e campaign in which I am currently a player. "Splat bloat" could change the game significantly.

I do have, as I mentioned earlier, first-hand experience of how helpful the assistance of more dedicated players can be. What I have seen of the RPGA in action impressed me most favorably in that regard!

 

[Ariosto]

Having watched people use D&D Insider, I think that it may offer much of value to the casual player (and more with some improvements). The price on a subscription basis might be more attractive, though, to people who play more frequently and especially to DMs of regular campaigns.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Many hardcore D&D players I knew of back in the day, today are no longer hardcore players due to other commitments such as work, kids, mortgage, etc ... Some of them simply lost all interest in rpgs for the most part. A few of these friends sold to me (or gave to me) all their old AD&D stuff for a pittance.

In my case, I went from being a hardcore D&D player in the 1980's to a complete non-player for over a decade, and back to being a hardcore player after 3.5E was released. (I completely missed 2E AD&D and 3E D&D entirely).

Much the same way.
Started playing with 2 of my friends in the early 80's. I would call it a casual start cause between us we had a PHB/DMG/MM.
I ended up buying the old Red Box set the next month with the ECMI following each month when I got my allowance. I played 'Advanced' with those 2 friends every weekend, we were at each other's house constantly for the weekend (this happens a lot when distance between houses is measured in miles by road or as the crow flies), play outside all day long and stay up into the wee hours playing 'Advanced' DnD.
I taught some other friends the BECMI, leveling up was restricted each month cause I hadn't bought the next set yet. We played during lunch at school or maybe at another's house when we could.
I progressively got more 'hardcore' as I got older and hit highschool. Sandwiched in RPG's with Football/Lacrosse schedules.
I joined my first Hardcore group during my Senior year, buying everything I could playing when I could as they did.
Than joined the Marine Corps and went cold turkey for months at a time. Playing a pickup game here and there, always having a seat when I returned home with the old group.
Than cold for years, my wife actually is responsible for me getting back into it. Her and her gf went to go see a movie and saw another couple where the girl was reading a FR Novel. She knew I read them and she liked the Icewind Dale trilogy and struck up a conversation with them. A new group and an introduction to 3.0 was born with 3.5 right around the corner. Even after moving states I immediately found another group to play with. I bought up most of the 3.5 line but have yet to buy any 4.0 products. Having moved again, I haven't played in coming on a year now.
Who knows if I will play again, I don't have a real desire for 4.0 though I plan on eventually picking up the PHB/DMG/MM just to have on the shelf if nothing else.
And yes I've been to several Con's.
So I've run the full gambit of Casual to Serious to Hardcore and back again for all of them.
As was said, I think time and money are a major consideration anymore.
The introductory buy-in for 4E is what $100 (PHB/DMG/MM) if you get it at a book store? Yes I know you only need a PHB, but really a noob to the game that is picking it up on a whim is going to balk at the $100 sticker.
Time, I honestly don't have a lot of time on weekends anymore. Most of my gaming in the past few years has been weekday evening gaming.

 

[Gentlegamer]

re: Magic the Gathering

I briefly toyed with being a casual player, but the two players who introduced the game to me already each had a suitcase full of cards. I quickly realized that the cards arms race was too rich for my blood. I can count the number of Magic games I've played on one hand.

 

[LFK]

In discussions like these "causal" gets used as an approximate synonym for 'wider, more numerous mainstream audience' cf. the 'causal video/computer game market'. It means mass-market as opposed to niche market.


I don't think anyone was suggesting that WoW and Pokemon didn't have committed --or even obsessed and addicted-- players. What they did suggest was both of those game franchises have large user bases that, because of the sheer size, must contain a sizable number of less committed, more causal players, much like D&D had in the early 1980s.

In this train of thought, then, is the real question "will D&D ever again have the market share of tabletop gaming it once had?" or "will D&D ever again have a player base with the same perceptive makeup of other currently popular games?"

Maybe "If Pokemon is the D&D of '00, will D&D ever be the Pokemon of <insert timeframe here>?"

 

[Clavis]

I'd like to say "Thank You" to everyone who voted and participated in the discussion so far. There's been some really interesting points brought up.

While the majority of people voted that either the "casual players" never left, or are coming back, about 40% (as of this writing) seem to believe that they are gone for good. It would be interesting to see if those figures correlate in any way to people's preferences in editions, or their geographical locations.

 

[Mallus]

Maybe "If Pokemon is the D&D of '00, will D&D ever be the Pokemon of <insert timeframe here>?"

D&D already was... circa the early 1980s. Cultural phenomena rarely get a second act in the US...

... not that that's a neccessarily a bad thing. Right now D&D has a major company supporting the latest edition and a small but apparently flourishing set of cottage industries/fan labors-of-love devoted to creating products that emulate earlier versions of the game.

Plus, a lot more people are role-players now, albeit through things like Pokemon and WoW.

I think there's a tendency to treat a big, mass-market, 'casual' audience as something of a Holy Grail. It shouldn't be. This is the era of fragmented niche markets all across the media landscape.