what if another role playing game had DnDs cultural Impact?

[Johan Larson]

Right now table-top role playing is a small niche hobby. It was a pretty big thing back in the 80s with D&D, but it has shrunk dramatically since then. It also had some lasting cultural influence through its effect on computer RPGs; WoW owes D&D a hefty debt.

It's worth asking whether things had to go this way. Could role-playing be a large and respectable pastime today, if publishers and players had done things a bit differently?

I'm guessing the answer is yes. D&D, in particular, had some occult and diabolical elements that drew a lot of criticism. I don't want to say that the criticism was fair and reasonable (it wasn't) but it got enough traction to make the hobby appear less like harmless fun suitable for everyone and more like weird stuff for creeps and nerds.

And I think this could have been avoided. If the earliest RPGs had focused on something less likely to draw criticism, such as playing cops or even soldiers, I suspect the hobby would be viewed in a more positive light, and would be doing better now.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

And I think this could have been avoided. If the earliest RPGs had focused on something less likely to draw criticism, such as playing cops or even soldiers, I suspect the hobby would be viewed in a more positive light, and would be doing better now.

I doubt that that would have happened.

This was the first era when fantasy took off in a big way, becoming established as a recognized genre (this was before its later fusion with science fiction). The biggest single influence on this was The Lord of the Rings (and early printings of D&D had such obvious borrowings as hobbits, ents, and balrogs, later renamed to halflings, treants, and whatever balrogs got changed to); but Gygax et al. had also read Howard, Lovecraft, Anderson, Vance, Leiber, Moorcock, and others from whom they borrowed freely to produce a fantasy buffet from which you could put anything you liked on your plate. That big wave of new fantasy readers were the people who jumped onto D&D in a big way. And that carried along with it such traits as social awkwardness, fascination with myth and legend, and a touch of "freaking the straights." It was kind of an introvert's version of the occult imagery that attracted many extraverts to metal, and in fact there was some modest overlap.

There really was not, back then, a big crowd of fans of soldiers or police or spies who were eagerly waiting for a hobby of sitting in a room telling stories to each other. There were conventional wargamers, some of whom seriously resented the invasion of their hobby by D&D, and some of whom had played games with freeform storytelling aspects. But they weren't a big group and they didn't have growth potential. It was the fantasy fans who provided that.

The other thing I've seen since then that was sort of similar was the vampire fan craze that inspired White Wolf. Again, you had a key author, Anne Rice, and a game that borrowed from her but stirred in other stuff. So I think you'd want to look for other authors of the past seventy-five years who had big, enthusiastic, but slightly cult followings. I don't think you can discount the power of "we're onto something special" in terms of marketing/recruitment.

[dcarson]

So a action movie/James Bond game might have been a possibility as the first RPG.

[Randyman]

Traveller tried to transition from "pulp sci-fi" to "Star Wars-ish", but didn't quite hit the mark.

[Lord Azagthoth]

Warhammer from Games Workshop.

It has several settings, movies and computer games based on the system. Although it's origin comes from tabletop battles, not role-play.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Right now table-top role playing is a small niche hobby. It was a pretty big thing back in the 80s with D&D, but it has shrunk dramatically since then.

I don't think that's true. Sales are of course somewhat tied to the economy, so they may be down some from their peak, but that probably would have been in the 00s. And it's always been a niche hobby. Estimates for the total number of people to have *ever* bought or played a table-top RPG tend to be around 25 million. That would be excellent for a single computer game (successful titles tend to sell 8-10 million copies, though Minecraft still might have it beat) or MMORPG (World of Warcraft peaked at about 12 million paying customers) but for 40 years worth....

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I don't think that's true. Sales are of course somewhat tied to the economy, so they may be down some from their peak, but that probably would have been in the 00s. And it's always been a niche hobby. Estimates for the total number of people to have *ever* bought or played a table-top RPG tend to be around 25 million. That would be excellent for a single computer game (successful titles tend to sell 8-10 million copies, though Minecraft still might have it beat) or MMORPG (World of Warcraft peaked at about 12 million paying customers) but for 40 years worth....

Haven't computer games reached the point where their sales dominate all other entertainment media, not just books (a niche market for a long time) but movies and video?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Haven't computer games reached the point where their sales dominate all other entertainment media, not just books (a niche market for a long time) but movies and video?

according to these stats by NPR, No.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/12/10/247521444/do-americans-spend-more-on-video-games-or-movies

But they're in the same order of magnitude, and we spend more buying video games either box office sales or aftermarket sales.

The data isn't as easy to find on statistica, but it gives similar figures:

video Games
Books

I couldn't find a combined film statistics, but the numbers generally show that money comes in to all three at about the same rate, and if anything, more is SPENT on books.

These are also all revenue, not profit. For all I know publishing has a very narrow profit margin.

[dcarson]

Wonder how book sales break down between recreational reading and school books. I imagine that documentaries and educational films are a tiny fraction of the film industry while text books seem like they are a good chunk of the book market.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Right now table-top role playing is a small niche hobby. It was a pretty big thing back in the 80s with D&D, but it has shrunk dramatically since then. It also had some lasting cultural influence through its effect on computer RPGs; WoW owes D&D a hefty debt.

there was no glut of players in the 80's. The ratio players:population seems to have stayed the same, but are now divided amongst many more games. Thus players per game system are down (as there are now over 4000 RPGs that have been released, and half a dozen or more per month get released).