The chokehold D&D has on our art is mind boggling. Imagine if after Pong was released, the mainstream audience was just like "yeah, I'm just going to be playing the newest version of Pong forever"
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It's pretty easy to explain the reason though: compared to comics or video games, TTRPG have a larger buy-in. You need to read the rules, find a group, and agree on a game. You don't need a group of players that have all read the rules to play pong.
It's like comics, where a single genre became the entire medium in this country. Meanwhile, in Japan, there are comics about pachinko and fishing and yaoi.
I'd love to get Alamo to turn D&Drafthouse into something more like Games & Drafthouse, where we run different kinds of games, it's a sad state of affairs I don't think will ever happen. D&D is both how the hobby presents itself to the community at large, invites in new players, and sustains itself.
I'm struggling to think of any other medium like this. Surely there must be others. Is there any other hobby medium art form that has escaped almost total market share dominance like ours is in? How do you break it?
The only other industry I can think of that has the same level of monopoly is the computer industry and Microsoft Windows. The D&D dominance and mindshare has always baffled me.
I agree with the sentiment, however I believe this is a poor analogy. Playing a videogame requires adherence to rules, ttrpgs don't. So the difference between playing D&D while ignoring or making up their own rules and using another system is not worth buying new books for most people.
I'm not sure you have to break it. D&D is the "gateway drug." It has brand recognition for sure, but it doesn't take long for many to look for other games. Look at White Wolf in the '90s & Paizo now. I would even argue there is *more* opportunity now thanks to the internet: Itch, DriveThruRPG, and
Vampire and Pathfinder are pretty much just DnD though. It's not even "There's also Tetris and Space Invaders", it's "There's also Arkanoid and Tennis for Two."
It feels like most TTRPG players have barely heard of—let alone played—a game that isn’t a DnD-like.
Game Master, player characters, dice-based, stat-driven, special abilities, character progression, way more rules for combat than anything else, et cetera.
I have nothing against more traditional role-playing games—I relish both playing and designing them.
I just feel if the width of TTRPGs were better known, more people might discover and enjoy the hobby, perhaps even widening it even further in the future.
There are differences between Coca-Cola (DnD) and Pepsi (Pathfinder). But they’re minor compared to the gap between Coca-Cola and cream soda (Apocalypse World). And even those differences pale in comparison to the leap from Coca-Cola to milk (Fiasco).
other sites help get eyes on so many indie games. Kickstarter & Backerkit do their part, too. I feel like there are more games now than there has ever been, and by a wider range of publishers, including POC, LGBTQIA+, international, etc. Just my two cents. 🙂
My two cents back as one of those aforementioned LGBTQIA+ publishers doing crowdfunding. D&D has movie adaptations with A-list stars, Funko pops, placement in media property like Stranger Things.
Can you point to one time where someone has said the name of a TTRPG other than D&D in a movie or on TV?
D&D itself is a niche hobby. If you're looking at numbers of d&d players in 50 years and comparing them to one year of Fortnite, it's not even 10%. 50 million vs 650 million. And even video games are a small hobby. 1.5 billion watched the world cup in 2022.
I don't disagree that D&D is the behemoth for sure. But White Wolf made enough of a splash with Vampire: the Masquerade in 1991 that Steve Jackson Games did a GURPS version so they could get a piece of that action. Pathfinder 1e made a pretty big splash when it came around, and Matt Mercer's stuff
Some of it is "right place, right time." Some of it is just realizing that D&D is & always will be around. Rather than compete against them, compete *alongside of* them. 🙂
Oh absolutely! Some time ago, my mom got me a hoodie that said "Chase the dream, not the competition." I think about that a lot when I think about my own projects.
I get what you mean, though. When I tell non-gamers I play ttrpgs, I get "Oh, like D&D?" about 99% of the time. I just use that as a vehicle to say "Yep, but this one is about..." which actually hooks people into the hobby more than you might think.
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Hell, I only broke my own D&D (Pathfinder) brain lock recently. I finally admitted to myself I liked basically zero of its fundamental systems.
So many just care what game are you playing and not what art are you making.
It feels like most TTRPG players have barely heard of—let alone played—a game that isn’t a DnD-like.
I dislike how D&D uses dice, stats, skills, and progression, yet I enjoy how they're used in Delta Green.
Ultimately, we likely just have differing philosophies
I have nothing against more traditional role-playing games—I relish both playing and designing them.
I just feel if the width of TTRPGs were better known, more people might discover and enjoy the hobby, perhaps even widening it even further in the future.
But I do think it's a chokehold.
Can you point to one time where someone has said the name of a TTRPG other than D&D in a movie or on TV?
How do you build a truly robust art form if there is one major player and everything else is niche and relying on crowdfunding?
Some of it is "right place, right time." Some of it is just realizing that D&D is & always will be around. Rather than compete against them, compete *alongside of* them. 🙂