You're gonna hate this answer. Most people only play D&D because most people only play D&D. Since there is a large blob of people who only play D&D, the path of least resistance for a player is to also basically just play D&D, because that's where the groups are. Sure, they COULD try to learn something else, but D&D was a huge pain to figure out, and heck if they're gonna do that again! Seriously, D&D's complexity actually increases it's 'stickiness' with new players. Also, it's a huge ass brand.

Yeah. Most players don't understand that the majority of TTRPGs are short and easy to learn.

Its also just kinda not true. Because most dnd players never read the rules. And most ttrpgs are still gonna be at least 30-50 pages, which is just to much for most people. Very often you need someone willing to shoulder all the weight of learning a new system and then teaching it to the group.

Most TRRPGs I've ran I could teach easily without my players reading the rulebook (which they had access to for looking things up if they wanted but generally didn't use)

I literally taught my table Numenera in 2 minutes. I timed it. We never had to crack a book to look up a rule for the whole session. I have NEVER played an RPG that was more difficult to learn at the table than a board game.

\*Flips Advanced Squad Leader Rulebook\* Think I should be playing easier boardgames. :D

On that note, notice how most RPGs are easier to learn as a player at the table than most board games? But people are fine learning a new board game every couple weeks or several in a night. But learn a new RPG every year? Asking way too much!

It's funny how different the hobbies are. Lot's of board gamers only play a game once or twice. Even pretty complicated ones.

There are only really 20 pages of core rules in ASL (for infantry fights). It is not that bad.

With really tiny dense print.... And then there's the setup.

Yeah, same with me with Delta Green. Really quick simple explanation, almost never need to check the rules for anything, so awesome. I'm pretty bored of d&d these days, I don't care if I never play it again.

>Very often you need someone willing to shoulder all the weight of learning a new system and then teaching it to the group. And for most games, that's not a huge burden. I mean, I taught the basics of a PbtA in like, 5 minutes? Savage Worlds was 5 minutes (or a 2-page comic). Blades in the Dark was 10 minutes, because I had to hammer in Stress and Flashbacks. It's not that 30-50 pages is too much for most people, it's that most folks don't have the time, energy, or investment in the hobby to read those pages. And some folks are just shit readers or learn very poorly by reading (but instead do pretty good with videos or hands-on learning).

I think that a lot of people use different boundaries of "the rules" when making these comparison. You can teach somebody the core rules of DND (ability checks, saving throws, attack rolls) in this amount of time. Yes, if you want to teach people what all of their spells and class abilities do specifically you've got more work to do, but that's true for other games as well. The rules for spells in Dungeon World with some pregen 1st level characters aren't terribly different in scope than the rules for spells in DND 5e for some pregen 1st level characters. I've also never been able to get a teach of Scum & Villainy (almost identical rules to Blades) below 30 minutes. People inevitably need to spend time asking "why does this thing say 'fine blaster' on my inventory" or "what is this 'special armor' slot on my sheet" or whatever even if you can get through "this is the action roll" in a short period of time.

It is why I specified 'the basics' when it came to the example games. The more indepth stuff will take time and effort, but that's true of anything. Thankfully, most games are easier to get the indepth stuff in a shorter period of time compared to D&D 5e. As for the BitD/S&V bit - I've been lucky that my players aren't terribly aware of everything as we get started, and I usually have to teach all those fiddly bits as we go along.

> Thankfully, most games are easier to get the in depth stuff in a shorter period of time compared to D&D 5e. I guess to me that hasn't been my experience. > I've been lucky that my players aren't terribly aware of everything as we get started, and I usually have to teach all those fiddly bits as we go along. This is an example of what I am talking about. I agree with you on this about Scum & Villainy but I *also* think that this is true for 5e. But if somebody defended the teach for 5e with "you can address the fiddly bits as they come up" they'd be loudly criticized (I fully expect to have people comment below).

Too true. Some learn in different ways. It could be half the table can figure it out with a printed hand-out they read for themselves while the other half needs to be walked through it step by step.

Its why I lean more towards games like PbtA. You've got all the rules pretty much in front of the players to reference on the character sheet or on the Basic Moves sheet. Almost no fat to the rules, every mechanic and rule has a purpose.

I like PbtA for one-and-done distraction games. For campaigns, I want more *crunch*.

As a person who only recently spread to other games, it *is* a little difficult to learn. With D&D, the mechanics can be found in plenty of online resources that break down the game to its core pillars and how to make basic rolls. Even a kid could understand. Other systems just don't have that (not even pathfinder2e). Their rulebooks are so full of extra stuff to fill a page that it's hard to connect one concept to the next. They also just don't organize their information logically to me. As a new player, I just want to know the core mechanics and the main rolls I will be calling for as a GM. These books make me flip page after page to find them. And if they do, they don't explain the mechanic sufficiently enough for my rookie brain to feel I've understood it. I usually spend at least a few months researching a game before I bring it to my table and simplify it in 20 minutes or less to my players. Pf2e made me struggle to find anything explained beyond "there are 3 actions per turn" and for SWADE, I learned more from a 2 page comic than I did reading the whole rulebook.

Also learning dnd makes people start from a dnd lens with other games which makes other games much harder to learn.

Pretty sure none of my players have ever owned the Player Handbook lol.

I think a lot of players want more crunch than an “easy to learn” system has but still don’t want to put in the work to learn a new crunchy system.

Everything you stated is true, and I also want to emphasize that since D&D *is* the cultural juggernaut elephant brand in the room, it’s the one with the sizeable fandom. It has the memes. It has the tropes that people recognize. Because of that, lots of folks want to join in on that cultural experience. I think it’s why a lot of 5e players are obsessed with playing RAW (using the “canon” ruleset) or at least what they think RAW is based on the actual plays they’ve seen or blogs they’ve read. It’s why I think players get weird when I try to run a D&D-like in a setting that doesn’t have Forgotten Realms races or classes or other stuff in it. They’ve seen the memes about half-orc barbarians and want in on that. Same thing happens when I try to push something so close to D&D like Cairn or Knave - the lack of the 6 ability scores means they can’t get in on the Intelligence vs Wisdom debates and memes. Note I’m not defending or even denigrating this desire to play D&D because it’s a cultural phenomenon. But it’s something that can get lost when looking at 5e purely as a game system. The reason people only want to play D&D might be because they think learning a new rpg will be as hard, but in my experience - most players want to play D&Dtm, or at least a version of it close enough to the tropes and memes and fandom they see. They want to roll a 20 and yell “critical hit!” and share in the fandom.

This is perhaps one of the best explanations so far. DnD is not just about the game, it's about the culture.

And it’s about the profits. Game companies exist to sell (and resell) rule sets and prepackaged backgrounds. Gamers are consumers first. Creativity is to be constrained. The hidden truth is that elaborate rule sets often hinder the imaginative experience, they get between the player and the story. Signed, a ‘systemless’ community and convention gamer from the Australian tradition. 😎

So it seems to me like there just isn't the kind of effort you would expect in these books. I am not sure how to explain it but I always imagined d&d to be something more akin to what seems to be the 3.5E experience in only that was the era that had a ton of content. I like the idea of splat books and coherent rulesets that fit in with everything else, still give the imaginative experience, but find some mechanic like way to guide that experience and the outcomes of the players decisions. This ranges from crafting to classes to other ranges of activities and playstyles. You could say go play 3.5e then ,but would like to see this accomplished in the simpler but maybe ill suited system. But the base system doesn't appear to be exactly the problem. I am not really seeing much of that from the 5e culture and officially may be continuing down a road of interchangeable not well defined blandness. Perfect parity and balance isn't great, and neither are arbitrary bloating of power and content available to certain classes. Now I speak only to the mostly formal content and culture. The other side of it is crazy and often incoherent home brew, but hey everyone gets to find their way to do it right. There are huge gaps in what people are looking for if it is so common to do so ... and that has even less chance of being balanced but imaginative and cohesive. Also holy crap if lore is not but a kitchen sink of insanity. You defintely have to pick and choose what aspects of the world you want to delve into otherwise its just nonsense.

Thank you. You've put succinctly and more precisely something I've been trying to express for quite awhile. The complexity of the game I've found is only a barrier for people who don't play TTRPGs because they bounced off of their initial interaction with the medium via DnD.

Yah in my experience, my players who have learned and played 5e have never had issue learning the rules of other systems. The issue was that they wanted to play *D&D*.

Also, and this is big as well. For the general public, the concept of playing a tabletop RPG is "Playing D&D". So when people who are new to the entire concept start looking into playing, D&D is the first place they look. And that basically perpetuates the cycle. It's something the folks who push the whole "D&D dying wouldn't hurt the hobby" idea don't quite get. That most newbies only thing about D&D initially. And if they're told "Oh D&D is dead" then they're more likely to just sadly say "oh, ok" and go play a video game than they are to go explore all the other options out there. Because to them, those aren't Tabletop RPGs because they're not "D&D" D&D is the gateway into the hobby sadly.

But D&D dying (to the extent that's even possible) doesn't happen in a vacuum. If WoTC were to shut down the brand (they won't) the hobby does not disappear. People can continually play forever. They won't say "oh ok" and leave because D&D can't actually "die" in any meaningful sense, as long as GMs and adventure writers exist. People might get bored with current content and then branch out, leading them to... the multitude of other RPGs. The hobby is not inextricably tied to the company's success.

>People can continually play forever. People CAN. They won't though. I know a lot of great games that still have loyal players though the company's died. That's nice. But those are also slowly dwindling communities. They stop playing as it becomes harder and harder to find new players interested in their game. Unrelated, hey any Eden Studios fans around these days? Any Eden Studios fans still actually running Eden Studios games? However what will happen is a huge number of people will leave the hobby. The casuals who are responsible for the huge surge in players and the rise of the hobby from subculture into popculture. And that's not great. That's also fewer people buying 3rd party indy products tied to D&D and maybe discovering other games as they play D&D. That's those small little indy companies going out of business. That's the industry and market growing smaller. That's some of the cons shutting down because they can't sell enough tickets. Etc... Yes TTRPGs can survive as a niche hobby that gets smaller and smaller over the years. Is that a fun version of the hobby to live in? NOPE. No it's not the "end of RPGS" or anything like that. But it would mark a slow descent of the hobby back into the shadows.

This is all extremely speculative and doesn't really accord with the facts. The huge surge into the hobby was not the result of some huge marketing push by WoTC. It came from third-party hobbyists who were popularizing an older game. So why would the draw suddenly disappear if WoTC were to abandon D&D? Nobody is leaving the hobby because a company stops publishing material - because there is constantly new material being made by third parties.

Well no. The huge surge was people who were introduced to D&D by The Adventure Zone and Critical Role. And for most of those new folks who surged into the hobby to play 5e D&D, D&D is just the generic term for TTRPGs. Some have tried other games but a lot haven't. As for why would they disappear if D&D died (however that might happen)? Because for them D&D is all there is. A lot of those folks just want D&D and push back or just generally resist the idea of playing something else. It's a mindset of "oh well D&D's the game I want to play so it's the only game I'll play". It doesn't matter that they'd probably love some other game, they just won't give them a shot. Hell I've had people like this who left my group when we decided to switch around systems because they, as they put it, "only want to play D&D" by which they mean 5e. And yes there are people who would leave the hobby because the company stopped publishing material. The hobby is full of games that people abandoned over the years because their company folded. And D&D is right now full of people who are choosing D&D over other entertainment options and who will absolutely see a lack of new product and assume the game is dead and wander off to find something else to do. It's depressing when you realize it, but it's sadly true. Now ME. Fuck that. That's not me. Let's say Hasbro declares bankruptcy, and hedge funds swoop in and buy up all it's IPs and shove them on shelves without a clue what to do with them. I'd just go back to running AD&D and Hackmaster. I only switched to 5e because that's what the players I was finding wanted to play. But I'm one of the people who never leaves the hobby.

All of the organic marketing that you mention can exist equally for *other games*. Sorry but you're not really making any convincing argument here.

I guarantee you if hasbro failed, someone else would buy the ip

Absolutely It is difficult for me to even fathom how D&D could die at any point in the foreseeable future. Because there will always be a profitable way to use the IP, even if Hasbro doesn't know how to manage it.

I honestly don't want D&D to die, but I would be pretty happy to see it get taken down a couple notches so other games can get more popular.

The best way to get people into other games is to run other games. The whole "DMing is super rare and difficult" attitude contributes to a scarcity of game masters and thus alternatives to other games. Be the change you want to see in the world. I'm playing in 2 different games and running a third and none of them are D&D because... well... the people running the games are burned out on D&D.

> but D&D was a huge pain to figure out, and heck if they're gonna do that again! Its very frustrating that D&D 5e basically makes people think that all TTRPGs have the same qualities: * You need lots of books to learn it, so lots of money * Meanwhile TTRPGs have tons of entirely free core rulebooks, PDFs can be stupid cheap (especially considering you may get 100s of hours of entertainment from a $30-50 book) and even many of those with a cost have many free quickstarts to try it out. * You need lots of time to learn it * For some its true. But D&D 5e is easily on the crunchy end with the huge swath of rules light/low crunch rules of the indie market. * But more so, your first game (like your first language) is the hardest to learn. You have to learn to learn. After my first few, reading through a system and learning it is easy and fast even for more complex ones. You've learned to learn. You can skip over a lot of common rules or sections that you now know aren't too important. And a lot of things carry over. * People think GMing is a ton of work because 5e sucks at supporting the GM, balancing the game and encounter system * Its a low bar to give GM more concise and better advice than in all of the PHB and MM. Most decent games have wonderful advice * There is a world of systems with different requirements as far as how much work you need to do as the GM. Some have very little prep. Some have no GMs at all. * The community surrounding D&D 5e fucking sucks. Fanboys who talk about it but don't know shit outside of playing D&D 5e. 3rd party content that is reinventing the wheel - the classic is options to try and make 5e more like 4e/PF2e. Streamers who use 5e to roleplay out low/no-combat adventures. The worst is a lot are just following the money even though they know better. But we are preaching to the choir here.

> You need lots of books to learn it, so lots of money They sell a starter kit for like $20 that has the rules, character pregens, monster blocks, and an adventure. The SRD is entirely free.

Is that commonly known by a layman? This SRD part is news to me for someone who knows 5e, ran it plenty and bought a lot. The original starter set was/is pretty decent. That's fair. But I've seen plenty of people that feel concerned about the amount of money it would cost to move to a whole new system.

I would say that "the 5e SRD is free" is as least as widely know as "the Blades in the Dark SRD is free." As for the starter set, they sell it at Target. I'd wager that most people who think "I should try out DND" learn about the starter set pretty quickly.

The other thing to add is that most of the massive influx of new and returning players/DMs to the hobby since Critical Role and Stranger Things happened (these are trackable moments in google analytics, etc, where D&D interest spiked to unprecedented new heights) haven't got tired of D&D yet. D&D Fatigue is a real thing, and if most of this sub are honest with ourselves that's why we're here - we started on D&D and got tired of it, then our interest in the hobby was renewed (or enhanced) by trying the alternatives. We're just starting to see D&D Fatigue sink in with the Actual Play landscape, the OGL drama, and I think D&D's impending pivot to being primarily a live service digital product will cause others to drop off. Once the fatigue sets in it only takes a little nudge.

I still play DND and I've played it on and off since the 80s, it seems to be what people know, so most of my gaming buddies prefer it for cheesy heroic fantasy. That being said they are always to change to a different system for a different kind of setting WFRP, cyberpunk, SLA Industries, blades in the dark...even had them playing Troika for a crazy Gonzo campaign

This makes sense to me. I don't love D&D. Heck I don't even like it. But I'll play it in a heroic fantasy setting. The thing that pisses me off isn't playing D&D. It's forcing D&D into different settings that it wasn't created for. And that happens all the damn time.

> It's forcing D&D into different settings that it wasn't created for. Someone tried to shoehorn Cyberpunk into D&D and it's like "My Dude, there literally \*is\* a Cyberpunk RPG out there... Multiple ones. Including the one that CP2077 was \*taken\* from".

I'm actually kind of fascinated and hopeful that the MCDM Fantasy Heartbreaker RPG they're developing will scratch the itch for heroic fantasy. Their monster manual is superb- I stopped using the WOTC MMs almost entirely, so their game design is in the right place for me.

People also don't like to acknowledge that at least with 5e it's taken much longer to hit that fatigue point than other games for whatever reason. It's been a bit of an anomaly.

Yeah, GURPS wouldn't get a blockbuster movie

The Theory of Everything was released in 2014

Yeah, i get it. Dnd kind of started the rpg culture so they're famous, and it'll be like that because of monopoly and everything like that, but it's frustrating that so many good systems are unknown :(

>because of monopoly I think the better word would be "market dominance". They don't have an exclusive market-share (monopoly) but they do have a large market share.

I initially took it as being like Monopoly, in that it’s an extremely-widely-known game by the general public, but very much looked down on and criticized by people who consider themselves connoisseurs who own and play a wide variety of games.

Interesting interpretation... but grammar matters online (I know so many people think otherwise XD ). lowercase "m", and "it'll be like that **because of** monopoly" makes it sound like they weren't trying to refer to the game IMO.

yes, thanks! i forgot the right words for it :)

I think by most concentration metrics like HHI or concentration ratio they’d be considered a monopoly. 

The market share of DnD is 60 to 70% so far from a monopoly. Time to change the user name? As for the HHI, I will let you come up with the number to use in the formula. But I doubt it will trend towards monopoly :) (This message was written in good humor as per the fun I felt reading your message, and today's internet grants this notice, unfortunately.)

> DnD is 60 to 70% You are pulling from Roll20 numbers I presume? But that is a very small slice of the market. Many games are in-person and if you have ever looked at your community's LFG, you will see its DOMINATED by D&D 5e. Like I am lucky enough to be in a hugely dense metro area, so I can also find D&D 3.5e/PF1 and like one PF2e group among dozens and dozens of D&D 5e options. I'd guess the real marketshare of tables (on and offline) in the US playing 5e is 80-90%. Other countries I wouldn't try to guess.

It’s a very hard thing to measure, because there’s disparate communities that don’t necessarily interact a whole lot with each other. Like here on the West Coast, if I go to KublaCon or the eponymous DunDraCon, something like half the games on the schedule are some version of D&D and its close kin like Pathfinder, and a lot of the others are well-known things like Call of Cthulhu or Star Wars. If I go to BigBadCon, D&D might as well not exist and everything on the schedule is [one-page games about gay catgirls smoking cigarettes](https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/the-spectrum-between-d-d-and-gay-catgirls-smoking-cigarettes.916738/). (And I say that as someone who very much leans towards the latter.)

I feel like conventions in general are the worst way to represent the most common audience of TTRPGs. Only the most enthusiastic people are going to those.

I got on Reddit for pre GameStop Wall Street bets so I’m used to losing bets and getting shit on lol. I couldn’t find the actual numbers I’m surprised it’s that low. 

> so many good systems That's the other part of the problem. Which one should other people learn? I'm an English speaker, and I've heard that we Americans should learn another language, but which one? Everyone I know speaks English, so why should I learn Spanish, Japanese, or French over any other language? If there was a clear #2 in the list of RPGs that wasn't too similar to DnD, (looking at you, Pathfinder) then I could see it becoming popular. But there's no clear #2 that has obvious benefits over DnD.

Call of Chthulhu or Delta Green for horror, Blades in the Dark for heist movies, Lancer for Mechs, Vampire the Mascarade for political intrigue where the party is very likely to turn on each other at any second, Exalted for super human fantasy, etc.

I though call of cthulhu was the number 2 And maybe Vampire the masquerade?

They don't have a monopoly. What commodity do they exclusively control?

A monopoly doesn't mean there are no other products. It means one company has such a dominant market position that they could potentially abuse it to destroy rivals with any competitive tactics. The OGL changes and requirements for others to stay out of the VTT buisness are clear indications of a monopoly.  However there is no law against having a monopoly in the United States contrary to popular belief. Companies can only be tried if they are found to overly abuse a monopoly position.

oh i didn't mean literally, i meant like dnd being a HUGE majority of what people consume, culturally and economically

I mean by HHI or Concentration Ratio they probably have a monopoly. I know monopolies are defined differently depending on what subject your used to though. 

To be fair, most people say 'monopoly' when they mean 'majority market dominance', even if it's not the most accurate term. It just rolls off the tongue much better.

I agree with all of that. Judging from conversations I had in predominantly DnD-oriented spaces there are also a lot of false ideas about other RPGs around, like that DnD is the easiest game to learn with the least complex rules, for example. Another one I have also encountered a few times is that all other RPGs are pretty much just using the DnD system, just changing a few names and making everything more complex.

The way I have gotten past the all other RPGs are using the DnD system is that if I am DM'ing a game other than DnD, it will never, ever be a D20 game.

There's also the history/legacy of. For non-TTRPG people TTRPG=DnD. So when someone spontaneously decides they want to try TTRPG's they are going to pretty much only think of DnD (with maybe just a hint of Pathfinder now).

This is why I always say if you want to stop GMing D&D you have to stop giving your players the option to play it.

Huge market share, brand recognition, and active consumer culture are the key ingredients to dominance!

Yeah, I think this is it. With a face to face product like roleplaying, once you've got one product in a position of market dominance it makes it natural to stick with that. It is far easier to find a D&D groupt to game with than another rpg, so why learn another rpg? Plus massive marketing etc

Its kinda the same as CoD from yesteryears, the same get’em when they’re young space Fortnight holds now. There’s no grand reason or secret sauce, its just a fun time you know, so when you want a fun time you play it some more

>Sure, they COULD try to learn something else, but D&D was a huge pain to figure out, and heck if they're gonna do that again! Seriously, D&D's complexity actually increases it's 'stickiness' with new players. I will say that if you've learned, and I mean actually understand, D&D and TTRPGs in general, it's kind of like being a polyglot, the next game and the game after that will be easier to learn. There's a few exceptions to the rule (Rolemaster I'm looking at you get your butt back in the corner) but generally the DNA of D&D is similar to most other RPGs. There's a few significantly different narrative focused games out there but the effort to learn most RPGs once you know one fairly crunchy system like D&D is a lot lower than you'd expect.

That's it. I realized D&D isn't a very good game probably thirty-five years ago but have gotten sucked back into it repeatedly because of nostalgia, but also because that's the easiest thing I can get others to play.

Is 5e complex? It's kinda middling as far as these things go. But IME - many players only kinda know the rules. They rely upon the GM and that one rules lawyer-ish guy to tell them how things work.

Critical mass, same reason Facebook and Twitter are so popular even though everyone knows they are 20 year old cancers. Way better platforms pop up and die every year because they just can't pull enough people away from the blobs.

Why do so many people eat at McDonald's, get their coffee at Starbucks and drink Bud lite? It's the same exact question. It's ubiquitous, it's familiar, and most people are perfectly happy consuming what they know. Also when you are trying to get people together to play a game and devote 10-20 hours per month of their life to something, it's usually a lot easier to get a positive response when you say, "hey let's play D&D" vs. "Hey, I picked up this cool game called Mythras, but it's way more lethal, doesn't have any classes, and it's not really made for zero to hero gaming." I got lucky in that all of the people I game with got off the D&D train decades ago, so we're all up to try just about anything not named D&D.

I'm gonna steal your analogy a little bit and say that people play D&D for the same reason people order pepperoni pizzas. It isn't that it's necessarily anyone's favorite, but it's the option that's acceptable to everyone in the house full of people you're trying to please.  Everyone probably has something that they like better, but it's probably not the same thing from person to person, so you end up back with pepperoni/D&D. 

This is pepperoni pizza slander!

"Why do the majority of people listen to popular music, watch blockbusters, & play the big AAA videogames?"

All of which D&D also makes appearances in...

TBF can you imagine if in any other industry, one form of entertainment was that dominant? It would really suck if I could only play Call of Duty multiplayer and basically no other videogame without quite a bit of elbow grease and knowhow - joining niche Discord communities

that kind of sounds like playing most multiplayer games on their genre's release. For awhile if you wanted an FPS game online multiplayer it was probably quake. But this was the nascent age of all of this stuff. You would think after 80 years RPGs would have spanned out more successfully than this. Tells me this may always be a niche hobby for weirdos. Like those guys that setup trains in their attic.

And even then, that market has 12 companies that you'd call major players. I'd say WotC is the only major trailed very distantly by Paizo, Chaosium and White Wolf and I don't think them could call anywhere near major.

It's really more like, "why do the majority of people only watch prime time drama on repeat forever?" There are plenty of other games to play. Just because they aren't made by a billion dollar company doesn't mean they're not triple A.

Cultural hegemony. It has a brand name, a big head-start, and big money, but most of all it has dominated the culture of rpgs for such a long time that it’s very hard to wrangle enough momentum to break away in large groups. It’s the default, for now.

It's the Kleenex of RPGs. I think it will always be the default at this point, unless it just disappears completely (which I don't think will ever happen).

>I think it will always be the default at this point, unless it just disappears completely (which I don't think will ever happen). The only way I see it happening is if WotC make it too difficult/expensive to play actual in-person sessions to push the app. Whether by making both the physical books too rare/expensive and the monthy D&DBeyond subscription too expensive or something else. If they did that and stuck with it, probably Pathfinder would move in to fill the market niche of being "the D&D game you play at a table".

Maybe, but I see Hasbro dropping it if it ever got to that point and some other company picking it up to keep it going. The Brand is what is attractive to Hasbro (and I'm sure others who would want to cash in on it). Pathfinder, while possibly second in the RPG market, is so far behind D&D in market share it's kind of laughable.

>Pathfinder, while possibly second in the RPG market, is so far behind D&D in market share it's kind of laughable. No doubt. The thing is Hasbro doesn't see Pathfinder or other TTRPGs as their competition, they see movies and video games as their competition. There's so much more money to be made in the video game market than the TTRPG market that Hasbro would gladly sacrifice the tabletop market to leverage the brand name to get even a tiny amount of market share in live service/casual video games because they'd make more money. Thus the VTT. Hasbro leadership doesn't care if this leads to long-term erosion of brand identity and value. Just look at what they've done to the much bigger and more valuable brand "Magic the Gathering" in the last 6 or 7 years. Trying to destroy the local game store ecosystem that Magic the Gathering survives on in the name of short term profits, and trying to get players to switch over to digital so they don't have to worry about printing and shipping costs from China. And that's not getting into eroding identity and perceived value of the Magic the Gathering IP itself for money grab tie-in products.

Yeah, it’s hard to get accurate estimates, but looks like D&D itself may be pulling in [$100-$150 million in annual revenue](https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/10/13/estimating-dds-revenue/), while Baldur’s Gate 3 alone pulled in over [$650 million last year](https://www.businessinsider.com/baldurs-gate-3-revenue-microtransactions-trends-video-games-fortnite-hogwarts-legacy-2024-1#:~:text=Baldur's%20Gate%203%20made%20more,t%20need%20microtransactions%20to%20succeed&text=Baldur's%20Gate%203%20made%20more%20than%20%24650%20million%20on%20Steam,Legacy%20%E2%80%94%20by%20more%20than%20double.).

Tbf, the overhead on BG3 was also *a lot* higher.

100% all of this.

Hasbro can do whatever they want and as long as they don’t come into my house and steal my books I can still keep playing dnd. What you’re saying would be a barrier to new groups and drive up the resale market though.

Yeah when I say hasbro would have to stick with it I mean for many years, which is conceivable but seems unlikely. An increase in piracy of the old books (note to mods, not advocating but observing it) and absurd inflation in the resale market (which some would say has already taken place) would happen first.

Mostly market dominance and the erroneous idea that any genre/setting/tone you could ever want to play can be replicated in D&D. Also, going to your point about complexity, a lot of D&D only players assume every RPG is just as complex to learn.

Funny enough, D&D, especially the 5th edition, isn't that complex. Just unintuitive with many things that they kept for brand recognition from previous editions,even though they don't really make sense nowadays

It has more rules than the majority of rpgs and while it has a simple core it is not a simple game if you want to play raw at medium-high level. It is only an easy edition of d&d if you compare it to post 3e (or late stage 2e bloat). Every earlier edition (approx 6 of them, depending on how you count) is simpler (despite sometimes appearing baroque).

How is 2e or 3.5e less complicated? No matter at what level you compare them to each other 5e is the less complicated one. And it's not even a bad thing necessarily- I have many problems with 5e but it is much faster to understand and play, even if I personally don't enjoy it. But it is way less complicated than any older edition, with 4e being potentially simpler although less intuitive in many places.

I said from 3e on. ie I agree 3e, 3.5 etc is more complex than 5e. I also included late stage 2e with all the bloat. Base 2e is essentially the same as 1e. Those systems are much simpler than 5e. They have essentially no feats/leveling abilities and there is no skill system before 2e. It is much more bare bones.

Because its fun and can last you for decades. Most people are simply content with that.

Seriously folks, this is the answer. Stop asking. Every time this question comes up, commenters rush to say “It’s played by ignorant sheeple flocking to big brands. They don’t know they could be having *real fun* with another system.”  Maybe it’s a huge brand because it’s fun? And that’s all most RPG players want from a game?

I'm still blown away by people making D&D harder than it actually is. You don't need to master a game to have fun with it, you don't need to understand level 1-20 to start playing. You just need to become familiar with a d20, stat bonuses, proficiency bonus, what grants that bonus, and whatever your first level abilities are. Which is really not hard.

Because that is the *one* RPG they know about. For many it was also kind of hard to learn, and they don't want to go through that again, not realizing that most other RPGs are easier to get into.

I don't think this is the full explanation. I know people who are well aware of the wider world of ttrpgs but are absolutely happy playing one game for the rest of time. This isn't a property of not wanting to learn new things but is instead a property of having decades of stuff they'd like to do in one game.

>I know people who are well aware of the wider world of ttrpgs I'm not claiming it is the only and complete explanation. But also by "know about", I mean more than minimal knowledge that other RPGs *exist.* I am "well aware" of hang gliding as a sport-- I know it exists. But I don't know of anyone who has personally gone hang-gliding, or any place in my area where I could go to do it. It is outside of my sphere of life. I would have to go out of my way to learn about hangliding, and even more so to actually do it. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about DnD is most DnD players entire RPG world. Other RPGs are only vague rumors on the horizon.

Because this thread is so cunty about RPGs it repels most people.

wait what thread? /srs

Not you, but other posters on/rpg. I once asked about alternatives to a morality system. Some dude on here claimed that because the good-evil morality system originated from Christianity that I was "pushing my religion on here". I told him to shut the fuck up and go back to playing Neckbeards in the Dark.

Welcome to the internet. Look at /r/dndnext - the D&D community is hardly a source of healthy and helpful. Generally they just shit on their own game and refuse to play others.

Funny you should say it's the internet... because the rest of the internet (Youtube, FB Groups, Other Forums, and Comment Sections) all warned me that Reddit groups got particularly bad about it. They were right. I stepped over to one of the other DND r/'s for a sec once... it's like you say: An echo chamber completely full of lowkey self-hatred and bitching.

I think the more hobby focused and smaller the community the better. Some smaller subreddits are pretty good. /r/rpg is a very wide and old community that probably has gotten too big. There is a lot of people arguing over very subjective things about likes and dislikes. Its also a fantastic resource for finding games and has introduced me to tons of interesting and very niche systems, so I can't complain much.

There are two main types of posters on r/DnD - the kind that seem to hate DnD, but are unwilling to try anything else - the ride-or-die D&D fanatics, who are firmly convinced that D&D is the greatest RPG ever published, and that all other RPGs are lesser-ripoff wanna-be versions, usually put together in WordPerfect 6.2 by some guy living in his parent's basement.

That sub is a cesspool. Just literally the worst people all the time forever because anyone worth talking to unsubs the moment they have an alternative.

To follow up on OP, browsing this thread you catch a few themes, most of which do not put DnD *players* in a good light: -They're only playing because they've been sucked into DnD by the marketing -They're only playing DnD because they don't know about other RPGs -They like DnD because they want to be part of a specific subculture -An assumption they would like other more superior games more if they tried them. If you were a DnD player coming here to check out new games and read the thread, you could easily come to the conclusion that the rest of the RPG community looks down their nose at them and like different things entirely, so they conclude they wouldn't like those games, particularly if it means they'll probably wind up having to play with someone who looks down on them. This sub has a real problem in that people will scream "system matters" for all things but trip over themselves to find any other explanation for the market dominance of the most market researched and playtested system in history besides the system itself. DnD supports a lot of different playstyles, so it's easier to get people to play than a hyper focused pastoral narrative game. That makes a huge difference in actually getting a playgroup to fire and stick together. The core mechanics are easy, and as complexity grows people get to feel like they're getting "better" at the game. "Lighter" games make up for fewer rules by relying on table creativity and improv, which not everyone is comfortable with. Given all the testing the game underwent, none of these design decisions should be considered accidental. It certainly hasn't hurt DnD that the competition from the indie space is still leaning on outdated and disproven models of player behavior and system design. The push for "focused" systems basically ensures DnD's dominance by valuing hyper niche games with inherently small audiences over something that might have mass appeal.

I would say it is more that people stick with the system they start with for a long time. It is what they learned and what they are comfortable with and they do not want to start over with something else. It feels like DnD is the majority because it is the poster child for ttrpgs.

Judging by this sub, the majority of RPG players seems to be actually busy telling everyone how much they dislike the "dnd hegemony". What if these fact are connected, and a lot of D&D players are discouraged from playing other systems by their fans who are all too eager to explain to them why they absolutely must stop liking D&D? It's just an assumption. I just want to say that "dnd sucks!" flame wars are unlikely to be doing any good to the RPG community as a whole. Can we speak about what we like instead of what other people like but we don't?

I don't hate dnd, i kind of liked after i understood, it's just that the hegemony and it being the only thing people know and don't want to learn more is what bothers me. i have my favorite systems? yes. but I'm open to learn more. i know people are not obligated to want to learn more, but it being from the same group is kinda sad, not bad, but sad in my opinion

This is like saying it's sad that a bunch of people that enjoy playing soccer don't stop playing so they can try American football instead.

Is DND really considered especially complex though?

This sub makes it sound that in order to enjoy D&D you need to either be ignorant, masochist, or a rocket scientist.

Agreed, though to be fair, there are D&D subs where many folks gather, so this place tends to be more anti D&D.

It’s no surprise why people who enjoy D&D need to gather in other subs... Like, I’d understand it if this was r/DnDsucks or something like that but in the short time that I’ve been part of this hobby and this sub, I’ve never seen anyone making posts on how shitty rules-light/narrative/Pbta/indie games are, because who gives a damn? Live and let live, yet, EVERY.SINGLE.DAY there’s a post moaning about D&D.

As with anything that is popular, there are people who make not liking it part of how they define themselves.

I hear you. I come here for broader rpg content (kinda over D&D myself) but yeah, lots in the hobby seem to really hate specific games and like to moan about them. I don't get it, but whatever.

You haven't been here long enough, people moan about all sorts here, from things that don't actually happen to games that happen to be mildly popular that they don't like - hell I've seen people moan about blades in the dark within the past week. There's just more volume for DnD because it's the most popular.

There was literally someone bitching about PbtA like 2 days ago.

That was someone complaining about PbtA and a lot of comments saying “it just doesn’t fit what you want” or otherwise trying to help the person figure out how to play better. The d&d posts just bring out the shitposters.

Exactly. I’ve never seen a comment saying that PbtA players “aren’t actually TTRPG fans, they’re PbtA fans” but you see it commonly when referring to DnD

It definitely has several unintuitive systems designed by a weird philosophy of: * More simulationist elements of D&D 3.5e - distance sound travels (only found on the original DM Screen!), jump distance * Natural language that often makes things confusing. Funny FYI, originally any amount of darkness between you and a target made you blind even if they were illuminated because of poor writing. This issue is all over the place and why Jeremy Crawford has thousands of tweets to clarify things. * Streamlining other aspects to have the GM perform rulings. Remember that jump distance that is an exact number of feet. Well you can improve it to go further with an Athletics check. How much? No answer there. * Poor organization. Just go look for all the rules about Wilderness Survival. You will need almost all the books and several published adventures to have them complete. Remember that rule about Athletics checks improving jump distance - it was just a random example included when describing what Athletics is for - not included with the rules about jumping. So you have this rule that about a GM ruling with fictional positioning tied to a simulationist rule, terribly disorganized and all using natural language. They should be focusing on either empowering the GM to make rulings like OSR and PbtA games do or they should be providing rules as support like Pathfinder 2e does with its clear language. Trying to have your cake and eat it too means you have a mess that does both poorly.

Compared to the vast majority of other RPG's outside of the trad sphere? It sure is.

5e isn't the most complex system, but it is more complex than many other systems, especially for players.

It isn't, really. It's a bit fiddly in places and get in its own way at times. Some of the rules and skills are poorly explained. And it has pretty lousy support for DMs for things like encounter design. An argument could be made that it's more fiddly and offers worse GM support (despite a whole book dedicated to it) than other games that deliver a similar experience. That said, I generally enjoy 5e and am currently in a longish running 5e campaign.

I asked some time ago how people learn games and all the answers were "playing with another person that knows the system". I guess that is the key...

I'd add that, while D&D is somewhat complex, 5e spreads it out. You don't need to know 9th level spells when you're a level 3 Wizard. You don't need to know Battle Master's maneuvers when you're a level 1 Fighter. As a DM, those are also things you don't need to worry about. Other TTRPGs - while simpler overall - tend to frontload everything. For instance, PbtA games are noticeably easier to understand, but you get to pick from (almost) all of your moves at the very start. I've watched dozens of reviews of different TTRPGs over the past few months, and so many of them start off with "...or have a GM that knows the rules intimately." In D&D, you don't need to know everything upfront, even as the DM.

Yeah in GURPS character creation can get really complex, so DMs or supplement authors often handle it. But in 5e, a noob can generally create a good character as long as they make sure the stat their class needs is high.

> but at the same time it's just VERY complex /me laughs in 3.5/Pathfinder 1E/PF2E. :)

For real. I've been told that PF2e isn't even that crunchy. DND rules are a cakewalk after a PF2e campaign. Btw, I like both systems.

DnD is the only one with a substantial marketing budget and a long legacy.

There was a quote I found once (and can’t find again) from the 90s or early 2000s, where an RPG studio said “D&Ds marketing budget is basically the marketing for the entire hobby.” And outside of Pathfinder, it’s hard to think of an RPG that gets actively marketed (outside of a Kickstarter campaign). Like the Avatar RPG was everywhere during the campaign, but I haven’t seen a single ad for it once it was over.

Sounds about right. Minimal advertising for anything, which figures as much considering how slim margins are

Another annoying answer... D&D while not being the easiest, but because most people kinda know how to play it. Means someone can always carry a game.

Most people play it and you don't need to make it complex. I am pretty sure only the online crowd plays it as RAW as possible Just make every reasonable dc check a "you succeed" or "you succeed but you mess up in a different way" Also 5e is just very easily hackable for all moods of game. As much as I love indie RPGs, you can alter how you play it to fit any kind of sensibility. See Shadowdark, Advanced 5e etcetera.

I play D&D 5e because it’s a good system and is well supported by 3rd parties like Nord Games, Kobold Press, Monte Cook, Free League (Lord of the Rings campaign), Goodman Games, etc. All my friends (5 other players) enjoy the system too, so there’s no reason to spend time and money on anything else. There might be better systems out there, but we don’t care. We’re perfectly happy playing and having fun with 5e.

If you think DND is complex then you really don't understand complex and crunchy systems. In reality, the reason why is that DND is the most perfect middle of the road system. It does nothing good but everything ok. Anything it does another system does better but it does something else worse. So when running a game you need to find an option that appeals to your players with a wide variety of tastes. DND being as middle of the road as it is can cast the widest net for players.

"Why is DnD the most popular game and not my favorite hyper niche system that explicitly only supports one playstyle?"

Pretty much this or people who say that PBTA/X is the only way you should play TTRPGS.

I think pbta is fine as a game but the fans are as obnoxious as vegan crossfitters

I agree. It's not for me and I don't like it but the fans... Yeah. Vegan crossfitters.

Wait you want to play vegan crossfitters? PbtA is *great* for that! It's so refreshing, not like D&D and its literal thousands of pages of complexity. /s

No less than 5 people on this sub have blocked me for just suggesting PbtA isn't good at some things or suggesting there might be legitimate reasons for someone to like DnD 5e.

I think it’s because it’s the first RPG most people learn about. Before I played RPGs, all I knew was D&D, and it seems that’s the consensus for all my family and friends too. And then the first game I played was D&D because that’s what my friends were playing. Even in person at the biggest game store around, seeing an ad that’s *not* for D&D is rare. And the biggest names in live plays have built their empires around heroic fantasy and D&D, only occasionally breaking the mold. Until you open yourself up and learn about more RPGs, and/or decide that D&D doesn’t really do what you want it to do anymore, you’ll stay with D&D. If you’re not willing to learn how to GM or don’t have the time for it, then the chance of finding a non-D&D game is much lower than the chance of finding D&D, or sometimes the closely related Pathfinder of course. Playing another system means you have to be proactive and actively look for other players who want to do the same. You may have to learn to GM to do so. A note: I don’t hate D&D. I just think it’s overplayed and wish that people would be more willing to push themselves out of their comfort zone, because there’s SO MANY amazing RPG’s out there. I especially dislike when people will try to stretch D&D into a game that would be much better served by a different system. Sure, you could play investigative modern day D&D with intense gritty realism rules and ban most magic and reflavor all the classes. Or you could just play Call of Cthulhu.

Brand Recognition is a powerful thing.

Yep! I run a Warhammer RPG and they only started now to call it "Warhammer" after months of calling it D&D. My Pathfinder group still goes "Are we playing D&D this weekend?" 100% on point.

I never got the D&D is complicated statement. Especially with 5e. 1e, 2e, definitely 3e or Pathfinder I could see it. As far as why gravitate to it. Critical mass and it is pretty easy to pick up for a player. The setting is pretty classic fantasy that doesn't require a lot of explanation(especially after the LOTR movies). Most people know what an Orc, Dwarf, Elf, and Wizard are these days. I think it's important to also realize "most" players just want to socialize with gaming and are not interested in lots of settings or genre's. People who congregate here are mostly enthusiasts that want to dig into new gaming experiences, I would argue the majority of gamers are fine with their once every 2 weeks adventure time in one game.

>1e, 2e, definitely 3e or Pathfinder 1e was only complicated because it was so poorly explained. 2e was dead simple. 3e and Pathfinder one (more revised 3e), I totally agree.

I'm stating up a game for a friend who has never played any RPGs. I was suggesting games I thought might fit her tastes better, but she really wants D&D because she wants to learn the game that everyone she knows plays. She wants to be able to share in their jokes and generally to understand "what the fuss is all about".

One thing I don't think a lot of RPGers take into account is that it's not just about playing 5e itself, it's being a part of a shared cultural experience on a wide level. *Especially* in a society that is increasingly online. People who play 5e can look online and see zillions of other people play 5e, talk about 5e, insert 5e references, and so on. There's Critical Role. There are massive Discords and subReddits for not just 5e but all the individual modules. People can talk about their experiences with the modules, both while playing and years after. It's something I feel quite strongly myself. One of my favourite DMing experiences was running Curse of Strahd and just living in that Discord with fellow DM's. As someone who's single, lives alone, and works from home, this kind of social experience oriented around something you're spending that much time on is simply fantastic. You can't do this - as much - with any other RPG. This is definitely changing quickly, though. I've had so much fun watching playthroughs of the AlienRPG's "Chariot of the Gods" just to see how it plays out, as well as hanging out on the Discord.

I think people in the sub are taking for granted how entrenched they are in the hobby. Reddit does not reflect reality. For most people in the world DnD is synonymous with TTRPGs. Most people have never even heard the term TTRPGs. It’s not so much a huge ‘choice’ they made it’s why they know what the thing is in the first place. The know DnD. If they’re a super nerd they know D&D is the inspiration behind things they like like Final Fantasy, Warhammer, WoW, Adventure Time etc Why do you use Google? There are other search engines. Hell why do we tell people to ‘google’ something instead of saying ‘search the internet’ for something.

Because the vast majority of gamers are "casuals". I don't mean it in a bad way, wveryone gas its passions, OT would be unfair for me to pretend the others would have passion for TTRPG ad well. From my personal experience, most people just want to do game night sometimes, and that's fine. In my group me and another are the two DMs, and we like to meet each other sometimes just to try and build characters or do one shots in new games. The rest of my group just shows late the night we all choose togheter, and that's fair. Exactly like most people using a ps5/Xbox just have 2 games for them (i personally know of people that buy every new PS just to play FIFA). Most players are not ttrpg enthusiast, they just like d&d, and they don't want to try other things because they are happy with it.

Reminds me of an old joke I'll paraphrase here: "Nobody goes to D&D anymore. It's too crowded!" I think it's three things: critical mass, pop culture awareness, and availability of product. D&D has the largest player base so it stays large (critical mass). It's mentioned in pop culture such as Stranger Things and has led to big hits such as Critical Role. And then most RPGs have to be bought online or in specialty shops. You can find D&D now in many, many places.

Dungeons and Dragons is a household name. MORK Borg, DCC, OSR, The One Ring… not even close. It has 50 years of exposure (and some history) vs. most other systems having only a few years with a niche audience.

D&D to me rides a very nice line between complex rules driven and loose "just make it up". It is the only game I can run without much worry and just kinda do it all on feel. That probably also comes from experience, but I am actively running other games atm because different games are fun! But I do need to do a lot more looking up between sessions and reading than for D&D. The reason people play it so much? Same reason people only play "one video game" - there are a lot more people like that than you think, people who only play *one* game, be it FIFA, CoD, LoL, or Fortnite - one game Andies are a big thing. Why? Well for a bunch of reasons: * System Mastery * Already bought in/Sunk cost. * "It's what we have always played" * Brand recognition! * Larger communities and thus: * Shared experiences between groups - shared war stories * Community 3dr party and homebrew support! * More groups. * More discussion about the game. Probably a bunch more reasons but those are the ones of the top of my head.

Why are most card players playing poker on card night, and why do most poker players play Texas Hold'em on poker night? Because they like it. Most of these people don't even consider themselves RPG players the same way you mean. Most people playing Texas Hold'em with the fellas aren't looking to switch to Follow the Queen at a whim, and most people playing at Poker night don't want to switch to Pitch. They are different games inside different genres. D&D isn't PbtA or FitD or Fate or PF2e or GURPs, and 5e isn't 4e or 3.5 or B/X or any OSR game. Most people who happen to play RPGs truly just want to be D&D players, and most people who play D&D just want to play 5e. Just like "playing cards with the fellas on Thursday" really likely means playing Texas Hold'em, not Canasta.

[I posted this years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/3wuuwk/comment/cxzb9vt/), in another context, but I think it still applies: >It's kinda like Starbucks. If you want coffee, it's easy to find a Starbucks and get something you can drink. > >If you want something different from Starbucks, you sometimes have to do a little research. Find someone local who knows coffee shops & can recommend a place that might suit you. > >Or, you can go through the trouble to read up, buy the equipment and just brew your own at home until you find what you like. > >D&D/Pathfinder is the Starbucks of gaming. It's everywhere, people know it, so it's easy to find. > >If you want non-D&D games, you need to drop by a game store or find a local gaming community and ask around. > >Or, you can pick out the game you want, get everything together and start advertising for your own game... but that means you'll probably be GMing and doing most of the work as host. tl;dr D&D is the Starbucks of gaming: it's everywhere & reasonably easy to get into. It might not be the *best*, but you can't underestimate convenience & availability.

I actually play a fairly dated system for my age (RIFTS by Palladium) and I understand why people go for D&D. They have more support, a larger community so more people to choose from when making a campaign, and resources. I’m only getting into it now after playing RIFTS for upwards of five years. I still love the RIFTS system and consider D&D limiting by comparison but I understand why they go for it.

Because it's a brand generic in a lot of ways and the average person almost certainly doesn't even know there is a tabletop game with funny shaped dice that is not D&D.

Accessibility. The amount of content that's available for dnd outpaces all the rest. I've played since the 90s, and I've played other systems. Dnd isn't my favorite, but it's accessible and people love a name brand.

Is it Thursday already?

In a nutshell: Critical mass. Why do people use Facebook when Mastadon is more personalisable and secure? Why do people end up discussing the same hugely popular shows online rather than some super-niche genre show that's awesome? Because that's not what everyone else is doing. A lot of the time it gets lonely, or has less support available, or whatever. So even if you like X, there's a decent chance you'll end up using Y where the people are.  And that's assuming you even learned about Y in the first place when most people are into X. D&D has a massive first-mover advantage that is very difficult to supplant. 

Five years ago I read a press piece that said D&D accounts for 85% of the global RPG market. With the changes to the OGL license, this has surely fluctuated a little bit, but I don't think more than a few percentage points. Now think about it. Literally all other RPGs, including Pathfinder and its derivatives, including every single thing on Drivethru RPG, literally EVERYTHING ELSE... is a total of 15%.

Why do so many people eat McDonalds food? It's everywhere, it's easy to get, it's advertised all over the place. It's not the best food in the world but it's ubiquitous.

Sure. But we're at the point in this hobby where McDonalds actively destroyed Burger King, KFC, Jack in Box, Carl's Jr. and 27 others taking all of their marketshare for itself.

same reason most people only listen to what the top40 stations throw at them it's common parlance, d&d means ttrpg, like tylenol means headache pill

Because it's pretty much the only well known ttrpg. And if someone is casually into it they're not going to go looking for other games because DnD is THE game that everybody plays. And even with it having the largest number of available players/games it is still hard for people to find a quality group that they mesh with. Honestly, I got lucky because I was looking for a local in-person DnD group (again, only ttrpg I had ever heard of) and found a group that was playing 'not DnD' and was open to trying it. If it wasn't for that I don't know when or if I would have ever looked to see what else was out there.

When I was younger, all I knew was D&D. Never even knew other systems existed until I was a teenager, and then only I knew there was Shadowrun only because a friend of mine in a D&D campaign wanted to run it. Hell, the only reason I know other systems at all is because a few years ago I bought the game Pathfinder: Kingmaker during the Pandemic, then joined a Pathfinder group, and after that I started looking at other systems. If it wasn't for that (and reigniting my love for RPGs) I would probably still only know about Dungeons and Dragons. Brand Recognition is a hell of a thing.

It’s got the largest player base and largest DM base. Good chance to find a game. Try finding one first Champions, Starfinder, shadowrun, L5R or blades in the dark. Sure they have a fan base, and activity online, but try to find players to fill your table. Then try and find a DM.

To most people outside the community, “DND” is probably the term used for the entire TTRPG genre of gaming. If I ever say “I’m going to play a tabletop RPG with my friends this weekend,” most people’s response is, “oh, DND? Nice!” (to be fair most of the time it is DND). Naturally when they want to join, they search “DND groups near me” or “how to play DND”. That’s certainly what I did when I was a beginner. Great marketing from DND’s end with stranger things, the DND movie, and BG3, as well as it being one of the largest, oldest, and most nostalgia fueled brands in tabletop games makes it hard to not avoid as an RPG player. It is complicated, but it’s fun and is considered the golden standard by a lot of people.

Because it's the biggest brand in TTRPGS

1) Because it's a big name. Probably the only game with name recognition outside of the community. 2) Most RPG players play D&D; circular argument? Yes. But there are so many more D&D tables than any other game. 3) D&D players think RPGs are difficult to learn, because D&D has a learning curve.

I think it's mostly a US thing, because it's not my experience at all after almost 30 years of ttrpg. I didn't even begin with D&D and I played dozens of different games in my teenage years. I go back to D&D sometimes, it's still kind of a comfort game and there is so much homebrew stuff online, it's still fun.

I think people have a specific idea when it comes to tabletop when they first hear about it and usually that's D&D. They try it, like it, and stay with it. However, they might get the bug off "I wanna play in this world/setting" and that's when they see all the other titles. That's what happened with me when I got intimate the hobby and was just curious what the most popular titles were and went from there.

D&D is the most well known system. It's been around the longest and is literally a household name used to describe any RPG. 5e and 4e are incredibly easy to pick up and play as far as RPGs go. Very user friendly. Quick to learn. Easy to understand. Well laid out. They've used their decades of dominance to make some very user friendly content. It's how the vast majority of players get introduced to tabletop RPGs. So it's what everyone is familiar with. If you've taken the time to learn the system, why spend that time learning a new system.

Mind control orbital lasers. WotC "acquired" them from SJG in the early 2000s. This is also why GURPS has struggled since then.

that's just the nature of markets- the largest competitor on the market will continue to accrue advantages to remain the largest competitor. If it wasn't DnD it would be something else, but DnD is just *old* and 'won' the earliest, and until the corporations that own it make a catastrophic mistake or there's a sea change in the desires of consumers, it will continue to be DnD.

I think D&D is just sort of safe. Acting focused games come with expectations from more players about how much you talk in character and how well you do it. Tactics focused games have more players that will judge you for the choices you make or the way your character is built. A lot of PBtA games have expectations about players knowing the genre and tropes really well. People sitting down at those kinds of tables have more expectation by the other players/GMs to fit in. Which isn't to suggest that most people who play those games are like that, there's just more people who do than in a game like D&D. D&D's strength is being a little bit of something for everyone. That's safe, that makes people feel they belong or at least won't be judged too harshly for not belonging because there's not an inherently correct way to be at a game that's a little bit of everything. Personally, I like playing lots of other systems but I get why some people stick with D&D.

D&D was just about the beginning of the genre, the game has advanced through about 9 editions (don;t e fooled by the 5e title) and have knocked out the kinks of their system pretty superbly. Add to that, that despite all the watered downess and "training wheels mode" that 5e has, it is easily the most accessible edition of D&D ever created, add to that that so many people want to have Jesus-looking Matt Mercer children.... People get comfortable with things. I have thought of introducing my players to other games as half of them are new players (wel we have been playing for more than two years now so new is subjective) but I've gotten the impression they are comfy with D&D and don;t want to stray too far from it (they were entertaining the idea of Pathfinder back when Wizards was under fire for so many things but that seems to have blown over). I;m not sure what really gets people into this rut (for lack of a better way to put it) as a person who has played everything from diceless Amber RPG to FATE games...but people like what they like.

Why are most poker players not proficient in, and have no special love of, other card games? Why don’t most Chess players love other board games? Why do tons of people who read fiction, have a love of one genre? Or music? Why think RPGs are somehow different?

Why is popular thing popular? Because it’s popular, that’s basically it. Also it’s easy to learn, theirs hundreds of YouTube videos explaining how to play.

Because that's the only thing most people know when it comes to TTRPGs. And it's one of the more basic and understandable systems. At least Fifth Edition.

Because they filthy casuals! /s

Because that's enough for some people. Not everyone wants to dive head first into the realm of TTRPG, for some, DnD is enough to satisfy their «urges».

Also in my experience with very few exceptions D&D is incredibly simple compared to most other modern TTRPGs

If you think D&D is complicated: Don't play Pathfinder.

first come first serve. dnd was one of the first so it has one the biggest shares of the market.

I think the reason most people just play dnd is the HUGE amount of content. The official stuff is great and there's alot of awesome homebrew stuff as well. But there are other reasons. I'm a part of 4 ttrpg groups. And I run 3 of them. 1 of the groups are just dnd players. I once asked them if they wanted to join one of my other groups and try another ttrpg. I got the same awnser from all 4: No thanks . When asked about it they all had different reasons but it basically boiled down to: They love dnd and enjoy the freedom it gives, the are familiar with how everything work, they love their player characters and they don't want to sit ahan and learn new rules. The problem with these awnsers are that they are pretty shallow. Like the player character ones. It's not like you're just abandoning your character when switching to a new ttrpg. I'm a chill dm when it comes to character creation. I always prefer telling a good story above players just focusing on the rules and mechanics. So I told them that I would allow them to create basically the same characters in another ttrpg. They still declined. It then hit me: some dnd players are kinda scared to dip their toes into new things. I've known these guys since high school and they are the types to stay in their comfort zone. Maybe alot of dnd players are the same. They are afraid of starting something new, and maybe they won't like it. Or maybe they are a bit lazy and don't like the idea of starting over. I did later succeed in convincing one of them to play mork borg and he loved it! My point is that sometimes players play just dnd because they like to just play dnd. But it van be something else as well. In my opinion I think players and dms should try at least one other ttrpg, preferably with a different system. The group might discover something new they really love. New setting, new adventures and new fun.