In all my life, there has never truly been a rival to D&D, at least not a long-lasting one – and this is in spite of the fact the game has frequently been mismanaged by its current custodians. You'd think that, after nearly five decades, someone would have come up with a RPG to challenge D&D in terms of sales or pop cultural influence, but I don't see much evidence that this is so (feel free to correct me in the comments). I wonder why that is. What is it about Dungeons & Dragons that keeps it on top of the heap?
1) Critical mass of players. If you want to play with other people, you have to go where the players are, and name recognition and inertia have kept them on D&D. I think Facebook survives but (for instance) Google+ does not for similar reasons.
ReplyDelete2) For people who want to play an RPG with friends but don't care about the subtle effects that rules have on play (which anyway are dwarfed by the differences between playing with persons A, B, and C versus X, Y, and Z), "Dungeons and Dragons" is the name they've heard, and if they like it they have no reason to investigate further, unless they're vampire fanatics or something and want to play a vampire game.
3) Nostalgia.
Delete3A) A nostalgia based on having been around long enough for multiple generations of players to experience it for different editions of the game. Nostalgia snowballs over time as long as there's a reasonable degree of "brand continuity" as the years go by.
DeleteWell, for one, it wasn't tops in 4e, pathfinder was.
ReplyDeleteI think it might also have briefly lost the title during the heyday of Vampire, but it reclaimed it.
DeleteThat said, what was Pathfinder but D&D under a different title?
If Vampire by itself didn't briefly eclipse D&D, the World of Darkness family of games certainly did by the time Mage had come out. White Wolf was seriously big juju in the industry for most of the 1990s, but they faded fast post-2000 - at least in part due to the enormous success of d20/D&D 3.0.
DeleteVery briefly Pathfinder was on top towards the end of the 4e era, it was not that it was stably on top.
DeletePF was just D&D repackaged. Vampire came fairly close in its heyday, but the only game I've seen which ever beats D&D in popularity is Call of Cthulhu, which used to top the charts of favourite game back in the 80s/ 90s (at least in the UK).
DeleteAs to why? Name recognition, pure and simple. Tell someone outside of the hobby that you play RPGs and they'll amost certainly say "what, like D&D?"
If we're discussing sales rather than critical acclaim and popularity polls, Call of Cthulhu has never come close to D&D. Sadly. Vampire by itself probably didn't outsell D&D at any point, but by 1993 or 1994 the World of Darkness games as a whole definitely did, although not by enormous margins.
DeleteWorth remembering that TSR was not in great shape on a corporate level by the mid-90s. Not only had White Wolf dented their market share some (although many of their players were entirely new to TTRPGs and some did move on to D&D) 1993 saw the start of the CCG boom than dominated the decade. Magic the Gathering and (to a lesser degree) its legion of imitators punched the rest of the gaming industry in the face, and WotC established itself as a major player in industry in record time. The biggest companies felt the CCG pinch hardest, including TSR, GW, and White Wolf, but some old warhorse companies simply disappeared under the pressure. GDW didn't survive the 90s, Avalon Hill was sold to Hasbro in 1998, and FASA was so battered that their owners moved on to become WizKids and start the CMG craze. And while all of that was happening TSR had internal issues and some disastrous deals with the book trade going on. By 1998 it was getting hard to stock the core rulebooks because TSR couldn't afford to keep them in print continuously.
The one stretch where D&D was truly (if briefly) dethroned was also the nadir of TSR's long history. Say what you will about WotC but I shudder to think where D&D would be today without their buyout of TSR and the subsequent success of d20/3.0.
ok, any argument that pathfinder is D&D reskinned is akin to saying sure, Toyota outsells the GM, but it is still a car, right?
Deletethat isn't how we measure things
>that isn't how we measure things
Delete@Rick What "we", Kemosabe?
The only reason anybody gave two $#!%s about Pathfinder was because it was still 3rd edition D&D.
@John Higgins PF was 3.75, if anything. Just as 13th Age is 4.5 by any reasonable standard - and King of Dungeons (which uses a slimmed-down version of the 13A SRD) is arguably a "Basic D&D" version of 4th edition if you can imagine that. Pretty damn good too, does some really neat stuff with Adventuring Guilds as a core feature of the campaign. Deserves more attention than it gets.
Delete@Rick Not sure why anyone would want to die on that hill. It seems obviously valid to measure games according to how they play rather than how they are branded. Never mind that 2E Pathfinder was designed to be compatible with 3E D&D -- there is far less distance between either edition of Pathfinder and ANY edition of D&D than there is between D&D and the WOD games.
DeleteI think your own analogy illustrates the point rather well. For many people, the difference between driving an SUV and a compact car is far more meaningful than the difference between driving a Toyota RAV4 and a Honda CR-V.
But also, it has the killer app, the Dungeoncrawl.
ReplyDeleteand, never forget the absolute incompetence combined with general undercapitization of their competitors. see: Chaosium
Note runequest is more interested in world building then being king. I love them for it.
Delete@James Solow And yet it also has what's arguably a more intuitive, coherent, and easier to teach game engine than D&D. :)
DeleteRick sure isn't wrong about it being undercapitalized, though.
Similar reason as to why World of Warcraft was/is still top dog for MMOs, I imagine. It was one of the first, it did what it did well, it's become a household name based almost solely on it's seniority, and even though better games have come along people have been playing WoW for so long that it's what they're used to, what their friends are used to, you don't need to convince your friends to try a new MMO that they aren't even sure they like yet, you can just all get in Teamspeak and do WoW raids over the weekend.
ReplyDeleteEven if your current gaming group all like the newer, better, albeit smaller game, who do you have to talk about it with outside of your group? If you go to a MMO convention or something, more people will be familiar with WoW and be able to bond with you over it than, say, Wildstar back in 2011. If you lose your current gaming group (all playing the new game) you will have a much easier time finding a new one that plays the popular game than the newer game.
If a new MMO does come along and gains incredible success, it more than likely won't convert all gaming groups that were playing WoW in the past. But all of those groups are familiar with WoW so if they get bored of the new game, feel nostalgia, want to do something the new game can't provide, WoW is and has been always there.
Except World of Warcraft wasn't first. Everquest was the 100 lb gorilla when it arrived. But WoW got it very right so became top dog.
DeleteOne of the first, if you define it very broadly. Ultima Online came out 7 years earlier (aka almost 2 console generations). It's like Traveller or Gamma World ruling the RPG world.
DeleteHonestly it boggles my mind. It isn't logical. Science Fiction is a more accessible genre, Superheroes are more popular - other than The Lord of The Ring films, name a Fantasy TV series, film, comic, or anything with the reach of Star Wars, Star Trek, Batman, Spider-Man, or any other major franchise - and yet this not really Medieval Fantasy thing owns the hobby above and beyond all others.
ReplyDeleteI am as impressed as I am saddened. It is the American Football of RPGs.
Conan, The Hobbit, King Arthur, Robin Hood, 300.
DeleteAnd what is Star Wars really, but fantasy dressed up as scifi. :)
Game of Thrones
DeleteGame of Thrones and Harry Potter.
DeleteIt's what the kids like
The American Football of RPG's would only be of interest to one country & ignored by 90% of the world...
DeleteIt's the soccer or cricket (2.5 billion) of RPG's...
It’s the Microsoft Windows of RPGs. It’s not the best, but it’s ubiquitous
Delete"Science Fiction is a more accessible genre"
DeleteI wouldn't have thought so; can you expand on your thinking?
I am going to point to a unique strength of D&D as one more major contributor to its popularity and longevity - its versatility!
ReplyDeleteOne can do so many different worlds, so many different takes on fantasy all the while using D&D. From the first and by design D&D has been the "everyman" tool for playing in a fantastic world of make-believe based on nearly any inspiration you personally can think of. It's adaptable, and it's malleable.
There is more to D&D's "fantasy" than the "generic" systems, but it isn't bound to a particular setting, sub-genre or style of play. As such, it is an easy starting point and a tempting option to return to when thinking about any new adventure.
The reason I play D&D-esque games these days is that the people around me play only these. I'd play Mage, Vampire, Pendragon, Nephilim, Traveller, Undergound, Wraith, Castle Falkenstein and a zillion other games I can't find players for.
ReplyDeleteBoy, do I know where you're coming from. I can't even get people to try newer stuff like Lancer, Maharlika, Blades In the Dark, Gubat Banwa, etc, much less oldies like Nightlife or Villains & Vigilantes or Shatterzone. It's hell having eclectic tastes, ain't it? :)
DeleteThe moral imagination from our western cultural heritage. The hero who fight the dragon and bring back the treasure. This is powerfull.
ReplyDeleteJames, thank you for picturing the objectively best edition of the best role playing game. Still the champ!
ReplyDeleteWell, D&D has changed over time, but somehow managed to stay the same.
ReplyDeleteSo it is a very multi-faceted brand that has something to say to very different people.
From OSR gamers, to 5e newbies, to 4e tacticians.
The current edition, whatever one thinks of it, dropped at the right time to have its impact amplified by new media, and be taken up by lots of new gamers, and make D&D more popular than ever.
As to why no other game managed to beat it my theory is that:
A) D&D more or less always seems to hit the sweet spot between low and high crunch, and is easy enough to customize.
B) Has lots of support.
C) Casual gamers do not like the idea of having to learn new games.
D) No other game has been in primt for quite the same amount of time continuously
E) Games tied to very popular IPs, like LOTR or Conan, tend to have very short lifespans and their fanbase is fractured among different systems with little or no commonn ground. Also popular IPs have very defined identity that may not appeal to everyone, while D&D's generic but utterly malleabile fantasy can have a wider appeal.
Regarding point E there - all licenses are ultimately finite in duration. Prevents real long-term continuity of creative vision from developing, which in turn fragments the fan base when someone new takes over the license. It's rare to see a single licensor (much less a single creative team) retain control for much more than a decade, even with relatively long runs like teh Star Wars RPGs have enjoyed (12 years under WEG, 10 under WotC, and going on 10 for FFG).
DeleteD&D is and always has been synonymous with role-playing games. If I tell an uninitiated person that I play role-playing games, they stare at me blankly. Once I add, "You know, like Dungeons & Dragons," understanding dawns. No matter what game you are talking about, D&D is always there and always implied.
ReplyDeleteMost tabletop RPG's are divertive of D&D. Until there's a real innovation in play, players will keep going back to the original.
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the reasons White Wolf's "Storyteller" engine did so well on launch (and for a good decade thereafter) - it was a fairly radical departure from D&D both mechanically and in tone. Quite a lot of today's "story-focused" games can trace their roots to WW's work in the same way others are derived from norms established by D&D.
DeletePlastic Bandage = Band Aid
ReplyDeleteFacial Tissue = Kleenex
Reciprocating Saw = SawsAll
Circular Saw = SkillSaw
Slow Cooker = Crock Pot
Lip Balm = Chapstick
Slip Joint Plier = Channel Lock
Roleplaying Game = Dungeons & Dragons
I could go on and on, obviously. The point is that for casual players, D&D = RPG. Unless you have group of hard core players who like to try new systems (I'll be right over) you're going to have to play D&D to access the largest player pool. D&D is the lingua franca of the RPG world. Almost every RPG player has some experience with it.
D&D did many things correctly, right out of the gate. The highly accessible and resonant "kitchen sink fantasy" genre, the quirky use of pulp and sci-fi, the simple combat mechanics (AC and hit points in particular), the "Skinner Box" levels of addictive adventuring and looting, the system of advancement by big chunky experience levels … the whole mess is a lightning-in-a-bottle formula for keeping players coming back to the original wellspring year after year, decade after decade. And the games that people always claim are "better" — RuneQuest for its more realistic combat or skill-based advancement, for example — they discard the simplicity of the original formula at their peril.
ReplyDeleteOthers have said it in different ways, but it comes down to two words: "brand recognition."
ReplyDeleteThe fact is most of the times players are introduced to RPGs by someone who plays D&D. Then you know how RPGs work; you have your PC and you see him/her growing just like a kid. The level thing is addictive, and in old editions in order to reach the top (anyone did it honestly?), you had to play ages. RPGs are not like standard games, you know a world and walk it with a PC you'd like could live forever, as member of a party. When you are back to that world,it is just like be back to something you know, and you feel comfortable. That is why D&D is usually the beginning and the end of a gamer.
ReplyDelete