If you ever encounter a singular explanation for the ongoing success of D&D, it's worth treating with skepticism. If you name a thing that D&D does well, you can usually find several games that do it better. Size & recognition matter, of course, but the brand's been through rough times. - ThreadSky

rdonoghue.bsky.social • 100 days ago

If you ever encounter a singular explanation for the ongoing success of D&D, it's worth treating with skepticism. If you name a thing that D&D does well, you can usually find several games that do it better. Size & recognition matter, of course, but the brand's been through rough times.

Comments

studiotembo.com•99 days ago

D&D is the Kleenex of TTRPGs. Most people, when you say RPG, think of video games or D&D.

That may not be as true in the TTRPG space, but even there it is the first game I think most people ever tried.

It's been around the longest, and it's been the top of the industry for most of that time.

eisenfuchs.bsky.social•99 days ago

A lot is momentum and capitalizing on being the market leader. And making everyone believe that learning games is as hard as learning D&D

Also hey Rob!

lunarslayer.bsky.social•100 days ago

Dnd has tieflings

chattydm.bsky.social•98 days ago

"First commercial RPG with a marketing campaign"

(Said in jest... mostly)

waiwode.bsky.social•98 days ago

You don’t see Traveller ads that are this cool!

flintlock.bsky.social•100 days ago

I think one of its biggest strengths (and one that hasn't been reproduced apart from maybe by Warhammer 40k) is that now D&D is its own fantasy genre and reinforces its own tropes.

brandesstoddard.bsky.social•100 days ago

I'm pretty sure the same is true of Vampire at this point.

gregstolze.bsky.social•98 days ago

We should just do a Kleenex thing and call all games D&D.

"Wanna come over for D&D? It's APOCALYPSE WORLD!"

"Oh yeah, the D&D game was REIGN, it was really fun!"

"We're playing a DELTA GREEN game of D&D, bro, it's intense!"

"Did you play that D&D game THIRSTY SWORD LESBIANS?"

truetimetraveler.bsky.social•98 days ago

People already do that. When I tell people I play RPGs, I say I play D&D, which is more of a last resort choice gaming-wise. Gaming is really about the people you play with.

slavetothehat.bsky.social•98 days ago

Cough d20 cough.

markwallace.bsky.social•98 days ago

I do exactly this. How can they possibly expect us to say "TTRPG"? That's so many letters!

slavetothehat.bsky.social•98 days ago

I think the main thing d&d consistently does better than most other RPGs is getting people into RPGs.

And that’s like a super power.

tomlommel.com•98 days ago

The hook is extremely straightforward and compelling. I want to go in that cave and beat the bad monster and get a magic stick! The appeal is very broad.

trueblackmoor.bsky.social•100 days ago

As clogged up with weird rules as they are, I came back to my old books.

I've tried more complex and realistic systems, and I've tried other settings.

Home Brewed OD&D is still fast and fun.

Make your own world from scratch.

I paid 10 bucks for the LLB's in 1977.

Still really fun to play.

tysonnw.bsky.social•100 days ago

As much as we agonize over writing rulebooks for RPGs, they are, at their heart, an oral tradition more than it is a literary tradition. It is vanishingly rare that someone picks up an RPG rulebook and decides to gather a group, convince them to buy and read their own copies, and then play a game.

tysonnw.bsky.social•100 days ago

It is passed down from person to person. Most people who play the game don't read the rulebook. At most they know what their character can do, some of the possibilities their character can grow towards, and what systems the GM taught them to use those abilities.

tysonnw.bsky.social•100 days ago

The idiosyncrasies of that game become the baseline rules for that person since they don't know better. And when they go out into the larger gaming world and encounter other tables' idiosyncrasies they can adapt to those new rules, or retreat into the rules they already know.

tysonnw.bsky.social•100 days ago

This I feel is were some of the vitriol in gaming discourse comes from. You are not attacking their understanding of the rules, you are attacking their oral tradition. You can see this in the fanzines of the 70's and the enworld posts today.

tysonnw.bsky.social•100 days ago

As designers we need to be conscious of the fact that the GM is not just the rules arbiter, but also the vector that imparts the knowledge of how the game works to players. Where the games leave openings the GMs will fill it with whatever works in the moment and that becomes the rule for that group.

tysonnw.bsky.social•100 days ago

And when they run the game their idiosyncrasies become as important, often time even more so, than the rules on the page.

jason.revolutionarygames.co•100 days ago

My singular explanation for the ongoing success of D&D is that it doesn’t make sense. Matt Colville’s video yesterday about John Peterson’s “The Elusive Turn” really highlighted how that not-making-sense created a vibrant community of people trying to make it work.

jason.revolutionarygames.co•100 days ago

Then, being a very mid libertarian white guy, Gary Gygax felt like this community’s success was somehow picking his pocket. AD&D was his attempt to fill all the holes so he could put an end to this whole “other people being involved” nonsense. Which put TSR on its downward trajectory…

jason.revolutionarygames.co•100 days ago

3E introduced the OGL and benefited from the vibrant community it created, then 4E took away the OGL because Hasbro wanted to own everything and make all the money. 5E benefited from the return of the OGL, and now Hasbro wants to own it all again with their VTT.

jason.revolutionarygames.co•100 days ago

So we’re now at least three iterations deep into this cycle: D&D flourishes from the vibrant community who steps in to “fix” it (because it doesn’t make any sense), then the company feels like the community is “robbing” them by making some money, so they try to close it up & strangle the community.

jason.revolutionarygames.co•100 days ago

At that point, D&D is dying, so they have nothing left to lose by opening it back up, which begins the next cycle.

bazhko.bsky.social•100 days ago

Speaking specifically of 5e, what keeps my son coming back to it again and again when I'd rather play other games is that it has enough options to keep him busy for hours brainstorming different characters but is simple enough that he could wrap his head around it even as a little kid.

bazhko.bsky.social•100 days ago

Often where D&D shines the most is "lonely fun," how you can tinker with it for hours by yourself between sessions, often in ways that are harder to do with games that are (at least in my opinion) more fun at the actual table. This lonely fun really helps D&D crawl into people's heads.

bazhko.bsky.social•100 days ago

And yes D&D doesn't make sense. However, it's specific ways of not making sense have been so culturally influential that people who have never played D&D can often get used to them easily, just like how nobody is going to complain that cartoon characters' eyes are too big.

maqusan.bsky.social•98 days ago

Echoing Rob’s earlier point about everything DnD does well being done better by others, GURPS is way better at solo noodling if my countless hours spent on the living room floor making characters as a tweenager are anything to go by.

lizardky.bsky.social•98 days ago

It got there firstest with the mostest players.

jalkan.bsky.social•100 days ago

I think their success is largely tied to how well the narratives are incorporated into the psyche of their fans. You could have many other systems with the same settings dnd uses and likely have more fun, BUT it loses the flavor of what we have been conditioned to associate them with.

sirvalerius.bsky.social•100 days ago

I've seen a lot of people talking recently about how little detail there is in 5e books (especially compared to 3.5) as a negative. But imo that's just playing into D&D's greatest strength- its flexibility. Its far from the best at any one element, but you can take any setting and D&D will work

mojolecrowe.bsky.social•100 days ago

This.

I don't think it's entirely WotC being lazy, I deadass think it's just partly them acknowledging that players are gonna make up their own stuff anyways so why bother beyond the basics?

Let me iterate: that isn't to say WotC *shouldn't* be criticized. Just something to think on.

sirvalerius.bsky.social•100 days ago

Nah absolutely. They're changing D&D from being "let's play in Faerun" to "here's the tools, play where you want". Especially when there already *is* so much existing content for the official settings.

As for WotC being criticized, I play Magic...I have more than enough to say to them about that 😂

mojolecrowe.bsky.social•100 days ago

Do folk buy books so the heavy lifting is done? Yes, but you can implement whatever from past editions if you wish. I wish they had a better conversion guide for old stuff (like CoC does) but it isn't the end of the world.

I don't even play MTG and I'm still baffled by the whole Pinkerton thing LOL

flyingfox369.bsky.social•100 days ago

Part of the problem-Here in Australia AFL football is in the news everyday, no off season, every work place folks talk about it, DnD is the same online, you just want folks to talk about ANY other game

vulpinoid.bsky.social•100 days ago

Absolutely...and here in NSW it's Rugby League season or Cricket season...or to use a more local example, here in Tamworth it's country music non-stop... occasionally I need some metal.

rdonoghue.bsky.social•100 days ago

Which is not to say that it's not worth thinking about reasons D&D succeeds (and doesn't). That's tremendously fruitful territory. It's just important to call out that it's never just one thing.

Which is doubly important, since a lot of D&D's strengths are its weaknesses.

dmcraft.bsky.social•100 days ago

It's definitely more than any one thing. For me (us, because friends) it's a combination of huge libraries of spells and monsters as well as it's the game we all commonly enjoy. It also hits our sweet spot for just the right level of character customization. Lots of great games out there, though.

rdonoghue.bsky.social•100 days ago

As an example: D&D does not make sense,

This is not an attack. It is not, considering the context, even a criticism. It's just the way it's made. Any attempt to produce any kind of coherent explanation for how the fiction of D&D works as a whole is pretty much doomed.

rdonoghue.bsky.social•100 days ago

This can be tremendously frustrating to players, but it's great for the game.

For some players, attempting to make it make sense is very nearly a hobby in its own right. For everyone else, it means EVERY DAMN THING YOU CAN THINK OF fits in there.

rdonoghue.bsky.social•100 days ago

Stuff that is so weird that it would make Exalted laugh and Toon cry can be dropped seamlessly into D&D because there is nothing to provide resistance. Nothing makes sense in the first place, so there is absolutely no harm in bringing in whatever suits your fancy.

timgray101.bsky.social•99 days ago

Yep. D&D is a superhero game with fantasy trappings in that sense. Everything, and the kitchen sink wants to eat you.

vedroid.bsky.social•98 days ago

I like the term "toybox aesthetics" (think one of He-Man's showrunners used it to describe the style of the cartoon) for that kind of game where you can pull out a dinosaur, a knight and a robot to play and they are all consistent.

rdonoghue.bsky.social•100 days ago

Stop and consider the question of "how magic works", and how most games try to tackle that in a coherent, flavorful, interesting way.

D&D literally does not bother. You have rules around spells, but there's no underlying logic of magic. It's just whatever.

rdonoghue.bsky.social•100 days ago

No, "The Weave" is not a coherent explanation. If anything, it's an illustration of the fate of all attempts at coherent explanations - D&D just Katamari Damacys right over them and adds them to the mess. Today's canon is rendered nonsense by tomorrow's cool new shiny thing.

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