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from the would-you-play-differently-online? dept.
Wizards of the Coast, the parent company of Dungeons & Dragons, reported that 8.6 million people played the game in 2017, its biggest year of sales in two decades. That mark was eclipsed in 2018, when D&D sales reportedly grew 30 percent. All of those D&D consumers are snapping up the Fifth Edition, a new rule set released in 2014 that emphasizes a flexible approach to combat and decision-making. New players don’t need to learn as many arcane rules to get started, and sales of D&D starter kits skyrocketed.
Adding to the newfound popularity are thousands of D&D games broadcast on YouTube and the live-stream service Twitch. “Critical Role,” a popular livestream and podcast, features actors playing the game.
[...]What makes D & D[sic] different is that we can never forget about the human beings behind the avatars. When a member of my group makes a bad choice, I can’t look into his face and shout insults the way I would if we were playing online. He’s a person, and my friend, even if he also inexplicably decided to open an obviously booby-trapped trunk, get a faceful of poison and use up my last remaining healing spell.
My 50th-level Magic-User Ferrick the Magnificent scoffs at these neophytes...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:01AM (4 children)
Why not GURPS, though?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:07AM
Because Steve Jackson's a Terrorist Hacker [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:03AM
Or anything more sophisticated than D&D. It was like Brazil (the movie), all the plumbing was exposed and visible, a whole pile of artificial artefacts added to make gameplay work properly, while 2nd-gen and later RPGs had them more or less hidden.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:18PM
Why not T&T [flyingbuffalo.com], which I assume is still a single-book resource to play and prided itself on not requiring anything else for a session but the base rules? Why not Talislanta [talislanta.com] which is completely free now? (Haven't played that one since 2E).
I'd guess that it's because:
1) WOTC flogs D&D stuff through Barnes & Noble. I'd complain if I didn't buy my first AD&D set at B. Dalton (or was it Waldenbooks?) At any rate, the hipster kids can come across it there.
2) Thank God the 'Danes and the Norms think D&D is the beginning and end of RPG's.
I gave most of my gaming stuff away to my nephew who's a gamer, but kept my dice (of course) and also my original Cyberpunk set and my Basic, Expert, and Advanced rules, even though I don't expect to play again necessarily. But I download stuff occasionally. This post made me think about Talislanta again, so now I'm off to download what I didn't have before.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday April 09 2019, @06:25PM
A few reasons:
1. Popularity and brand recognition. Like many hobbies, you enter the hobby with the most popular variant. Most people outside of gamers know Dungeons and Dragons, but GURPS or {insert system here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Role-playing_game_systems [wikipedia.org] } is unknown to a newcomer
2. Polish of rules. 5e is my favourite D&D system because the rules have been streamlined (ease of entry) and the published materials are high quality. WotC is a big company and was able to craft this latest version with lots of playtesting, and furthermore spend money on proofreading and publishing
3. Availability of open games. Thanks to the Adventurer's League finding an open game that you can join is much easier than in the past. Similarly, online tools like roll20 provide robust support for D&D if you don't want to head to your local game store
4. As the article says, livestreaming and recordings. I mentioned before 5e is streamlined and helps move the story along faster than Pathfinder or 4e (I don't know GRUPS myself). Critial Role actually migrated to 5e when they started filming because of the faster ruleset