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Role Playing (Games) Television

After 40 Years 'Dungeons & Dragons' is Suddenly Popular (cnbc.com) 182

Posted by EditorDavid from the speaking-of-fantasies dept.
CNBC reports Dungeons and Dragons "has found something its early fans never expected: Popularity." The days of hiding away in a basement rolling dice and playing "Dungeons and Dragons" in darkness is over. More than 40 years after the first edition of "Dungeons and Dragons" hit shelves, video platforms Twitch and YouTube are leading a renaissance of the fantasy roleplaying board game -- and business is booming. "DnD has been around for 45 years and it is more popular now than it has ever been," said Greg Tito, senior communications manager, at Wizards of the Coast. In each of the last five years, sales of "Dungeons and Dragons" merchandise has grown by double digits.

The company, owned by toymaker Hasbro, attributes this massive sales boom to the launch of the fifth edition of the game in 2014 and to "Critical Role," a weekly show on live streaming video platform Twitch that features voice actors from TV shows and video games playing "Dungeons and Dragons...." "When a new edition for a game like this releases, there is that flurry of activity, people get really excited about it and then, historically, that excitement has waned," he said. "The fifth edition has completely blown that model out of the water. With the release in 2014, it has grown and only continued to grow. Every kind of statistical model we've been able to to use from the history of 'Dungeons and Dragons' has been broken at this point. So, we are in uncharted territory...."

"Critical Role" has become so popular that when it launched a Kickstarter last week to create an animated special based on the characters from the first campaign, it was funded within one hour. The team behind the web series had wanted $750,000 to fund the endeavor. With 33 days remaining in the crowdfunding campaign, "Critical Role" has raised more than $7.3 million from 53,000 backers.

It is now the most-funded film/video project in Kickstarter history.
Over the years Dungeons & Dragons -- and the people who played it -- have usually been played for laughs in TV sitcoms like Freaks and Geeks, several episodes of Community, and an episode of Big Bang Theory with William Shatner, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Smith, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
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After 40 Years 'Dungeons & Dragons' is Suddenly Popular More

After 40 Years 'Dungeons & Dragons' is Suddenly Popular

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  • I can attest that it's been 45 years. I can remember the original Blackmoor and Grayhawk books being used by a gamemaster at a local game store. Part of the original fun of the game was the gamemasters, trying to juggle the maps and adventures to create a narrative and the players taking that narrative to places the gamemaster had never envisioned.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thomst ( 1640045 )

      Antique Geekmeister reminisced:

      I can attest that it's been 45 years. I can remember the original Blackmoor and Grayhawk books being used by a gamemaster at a local game store. Part of the original fun of the game was the gamemasters, trying to juggle the maps and adventures to create a narrative and the players taking that narrative to places the gamemaster had never envisioned.

      Blackmore? Greyhawk?

      Hell, I still have my original, white-box set of the three brown pamphlets!

      Come to that, I still have my velo-bound copy of the Chainmail rules ...

      (Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

      --

      Check out my novel [amazon.com] ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thomst ( 1640045 )

        Damn - I forgot to check the "post Anonymously" box.

        My bad ...

        • Please, excuse my jealousy. I've only kept a few of my old gaming materials, in a box of beloved personal memorabilia. It's brought back lessons of knowing what to invest your very limited starting money in, and working with parties you could rely on to have other essential tools. Those lessons were invaluable later in scrums and in project planning for work.

        • Terrible roll, man.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        So in reality, it is NOT about the game, it is about the social interaction. So in an age of digital interactions and complex gaming, the old social games no longer sell and new versions are taking precedence. In this case improve role playing with a story built by the board game and the players acting it out to the best of their combined abilities.

        Is there anything else in that, not really, probably that social gaming system has room to expand, especially in the current digital gaming market, people like

  • an animated special based on the characters from the first campaign

    Sounds like HarmonQuest, a (partly) animated live D&D series by Dan Harmon (the Community guy). That project was a bit hit-and-miss, some of the guest roleplayers were brilliant (they invited a different one for each episode) while others didn't work out so well. Still, worth watching if you're into that sort of thing. I hadn't heard of Critical Role, I'll have to go watch that now...

  • It's a niche product that now is accessible (Score:5, Informative)

    by GrandCow ( 229565 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @05:15AM (#58287408)
    I've wanted to play D&D for 20 years, but have never been in a location where a local group was within a reasonable driving distance.

    I know roll20.net has been around for some time, but for someone that has literally never been able to even watch a game, watching sessions on twitch are an amazing introduction. It's great to be able to watch and see just how people interact with each other when you're an absolute beginner.

    Also: D&D is just group storytelling. Sometimes you just want to watch and enjoy the story playing out.

    • tonnes of people will learn about the 5 regular polyhedra. A few will wonder why there aren't more. And a few of those will be motived to learn why.

  • Stranger Things (Score:5, Informative)

    by bstarrfield ( 761726 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @06:16AM (#58287504)

    D&Ds resurgence has also been helped by its role in the Netflix series Stranger Things, where the heroes are quite distinctly fans of the game.

    • My first suspicion was that it's hipsters and in a few months they'll have found something else to be annoying about.

      It was probably right, wasn't it?

  • Since the release of third edition in 2001, D&D and its derivatives have increasingly dominated the market. Tabletop roleplaying is now such a monoculture that much better games only garner interest in a small fraction of players.

    D&D may be emblematic of RPGs, but is far from representative.

  • Probably caused by Magic (Score:4, Informative)

    by Maelwryth ( 982896 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @06:49AM (#58287566) Homepage Journal
    A couple of months back I ran a group through the 5th edition starter set. All long time Magic players and had always wanted to play DnD but had never run into a Dungeon Master. Lots of fun and they were fantastic at playing characters instead of just for points.

  • Marilyn Manson on D&D (Score:4, Funny)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @07:09AM (#58287596) Homepage

    "If every cigarette you smoke takes seven minutes off of your life, every game of Dungeons & Dragons you play delays the loss of your virginity by seven hours."

    -- Marilyn Manson: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, 1998

    Used to play D&D. Can vouch for the truth of this statement.

  • Then Death appeared to the party (Score:5, Funny)

    by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @07:11AM (#58287600)

    This wonderful XKCD comic appeared very shortly after Gary Gygax, one of the main authors of D&D, passed away.

    https://xkcd.com/393/ [xkcd.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Took me a while to agree with the "funny" mods, but what's with all the conflict mods?

      Overall I'm disappointed that this is the only funny modded comment. I would have thought the topic had more humor potential. I'm guessing the players take themselves and their game too seriously?

  • Their d&d podcasts are great.
  • Iâ(TM)m glad kids these days are getting a taste of our generations paste times around the 8bit era. Now if they could only improve the graphics.

  • Schools & Libraries (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tbuskey ( 135499 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @07:36AM (#58287648) Journal

    About 10 years ago my nephew played in a group at the local library.
    Now, my son in 9th grade, has been playing at his school for 2-3 years as part of a weekly activity block.

    He also attended an event by the local college to get college students playing. They had > 100 players. The college was trying to jumpstart a student run D&D club.

    You just need groups new people can join. That's why Magic:The Gathering got popular: the places that sold the cards would often organize playing events.

  • so the communications guy says the product he is paid to communicate is bigger than ever, points to some podcast thing where only people who would be interested in the game as evidence

  • Version 3 had lots of changes, eventually becoming 3.5
    Version 4 was OK, but came too quick after 3.5. People did not want to buy a whole new set of books.

    Version 5 is good and came long enough after 4, and has lasted long enough without a 5.5.

    It also helps that websites like roll20.net make it easier to play online.

  • In addition to what people have noted about the visibility of the game in mass media, people like Vin Diesel, Dwane Johnson, Tim Duncan, and Curt Schilling are breaking the stereotype of who plays RPGs. They make it a lot harder to ridicule people playing the game, and a lot easier for people to consider poking their head into what they previously thought was solely the realm of nerddom.

    And while I think a lot of people will consider this heresy, 4th and 5th edition (and pathfinder, to an extent) made it a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      I shudder to think about trying to teach someone how to play 1st or 2nd edition at this point. They were really really bad. I have super fond memories, but man, I can't imagine how much better it would have been to start with a more modern version.

      I tried 3.x back in the days and I agree with you how terrible they were. I actually read the rules for I think 2 and decided to never, ever, touch it even with a very long pole.

      But that's not a question of modern. There were better games around already, with better rules and higher playability. It's just that D&D was stuck way too long in its dungeon-hauling-gold-equals-xp ways. They may have dumped the most blatant rules of that mindset, but not the mindset itself.

      I tried Pathfinder and it wasn't real

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sigma 7 ( 266129 )

        I tried Pathfinder and it wasn't really a change. They still try to solve overcomplicated rules by adding more rules.

        I didn't notice that with one of the complex rule sections, which would be combat. Pathfinder mostly left base combat unchanged, thus it remains just as complex in figuring out Attacks of Opportunity (there's still a table showing a list of distracting acts), The attack/full-attack dichotomy (my most recent DM didn't know the rules here), the wolves' trip ability, etc.

        While they did a start a

  • Did games such as Final Fantasy, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights, etc have an influence on keeping the genre alive?

    We also had movies like Conan the Barbarian/etc in the 1980's.

    But during the 1990~2010 period, science-fiction was more popular because of the millennial shift (for some reason), which diminished the popularity of other genres.

    I guess this is simply the return to the equilibrium between all genres being popular that we had as before.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Did games such as Final Fantasy, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights, etc have an influence on keeping the genre alive?

      Yes, but in the worst possible way. They made games that use miniatures and battle maps popular, and modular dungeons and... well, basically RPGs that are complicated board games.

      The real roleplaying happens outside of that. The appeal of pen&paper roleplaying is in the parts that you can't put into a computer game. There have been some computer RPGs that did more than move you from combat encounter to combat encounter with a storyline about as thick as that from Wolfenstein 3D or any other shooter, but

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Zehsi ( 5630632 )
      let's just say WOW killed AD&D, RPG, CRPG, TCG, warhammer, etc, everything. Every freaking thing that has anything to do with RPG. WOW's deathgrip loosened after 2010 but I still think at east 50% of RPG monies goes to Blizzard. I'm glad they failed to roflstomp the cinemas because at least fantasy films have some chance. Every D&D group I have been has been slowly destroyed by WOW. It's a good game but monocultures are never good and it killed a few promising games in the cradle.

      • There's D&D Online, still going.

        • I think Neverwinter is still doing adequately as well. But it has been a couple years since I last logged in there. Got bored playing it solo and not being able to find any teams or even interact with other players for the most part.

  • "Suddenly popular"....
    I've been playing since the early 90's and have seen a steady increase in players at gaming stores and cons for this whole time. Maybe that's what happens when does realize it's a choose your own adventure game and not the conduit to Satan's demonic asshole that those "well meaning" and "very concerned" hyper religious idiots that called themselves parents made it out to be.
    I'm still alive after all these years and still not possessed. How very strange...

  • Pardieu says 'watch out for the Gorvil!'

  • D&D and RPGs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Sunday March 17, 2019 @11:18AM (#58288278) Homepage Journal

    While I'm happy that more people get into the hobby, D&D isn't roleplaying. Especially since they introduced RAW (rules-as-written) it's should be clear to all the naysayers that it's a tabletop war game with roleplaying elements. Miniatures, battle maps...

    This does make it a good candidate for turning it into a computer game and it's not a surprise that D&D has more computer games titles to it than any other RPG system.

    I'm very glad I was introduced to roleplaying games by somethign else, and only years later played some D&D. Never liked it (as if you couldn't tell so far) and soon stopped. Tried again with its bastard child Pathfinder and barely got past the character generation.

    I hope those starting RPGs via D&D soon meet other games as well. There has been such a great revival of indie games and truly innovative RPGs. I haven't even come around to playing all of them. It used to be that we would play some obscure french system with the only guy with fluent french being the GM. Or something someone brought back from the US because it didn't exist in Europe (that was before Amazon and DriveThruRPG, obviously). We played Villains & Vigilantes, a superhero game where you, your real life identity, is the secret identity of your superhero. I'm still searching for a copy of the original rules book, 20 years after they stopped publishing it (if anyone has it, please answer!). We played Justifiers (the 1988 original, not the recent relaunch). I'm still in love with Fireborn, a game where you play dragons and jump between two timelines. Or The Riddle of Steel which is everything that a Conan RPG should be, minus the name. And so much in the grey area between mainstream and indie - Paranoia, Werewolf (Vampire's less popular brother), Traveller, Earthdawn.

    I just wish all these new players that they don't get stuck with D&D and discover how rich the hobby actually is and how much else exists.

    • The Wizards of the Coast, and TSR before that, often stepped in to ensure that the computer versions of the games strictly held to the rules or would insist that the newer versions of the rules be used. To them the computer games were for marketing purposes. Sometimes the D&D games weren't great because of D&D but because the games were good enough that you could ignore the D&D underneath.

    • Or The Riddle of Steel which is everything that a Conan RPG should be, minus the name

      Check out Modiphus' Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of. The system is really neat, and it nails the aesthetic.

  • To me it seems pretty obvious that Penny Arcade is directly responsible for this resurgence. Not only because for a few years now they have made non-electronic games like tabletop cool again with a whole show dedicated to showcasing them, but even more because of the very popular webcast of "Acquisitions Incorporated" D&D sessions.

    That has interested a ton of people in D&D and I think may be the key reason for the rise you see, because they have shown it is cool, and maybe more importantly shown h

    • To me it seems pretty obvious that Penny Arcade is directly responsible for this resurgence. Not only because for a few years now they have made non-electronic games like tabletop cool again with a whole show dedicated to showcasing them, but even more because of the very popular webcast of "Acquisitions Incorporated" D&D sessions.

      That has interested a ton of people in D&D and I think may be the key reason for the rise you see, because they have shown it is cool, and maybe more importantly shown how fun it can be with a good DM and plot.

      That's what got me interested in RPGs again (not that I've been playing them). Their features have been really good at showcasing the different ways to approach the game. They initially got Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast to run their games, who represents the traditional DM, able to keep a game loosely on the rails to follow well written campaigns. Then you have the games Jerry (Tycho) does, where he can take the story convincingly in any direction the players want to go. Then you have Mike (Gabe)

  • There are so many parallels between a good RPG session and film or TV
    Director = DM
    Actors = Players
    Sets = Maps and or Terrain
    Wardrobe = Minis
    Writer = Everybody
    Craft Services = Pizza Delivery Guy
  • I just started watching GOT last season and I gotta tell ya, them dragons are pretty cool. I'm trying to find the minimum number of older episodes to wade through to get the gist of the primary characters without having to deal with the petty squabbling and all the who's related to/at war with/backstabbing who and the minor families.

  • I've been playing since 1st edition, and I've always been cooler than you.

    You know what I don't play? Fkn sports.

  • Read the first comment in the link to the slashdot discussion on 5e.

    Most of the bonus stacking rules are gone, replaced by a mechanic called "advantage/disadvantage". If you have advantage or disadvantage on a roll, you roll 2d20 and take the higher or lower respectively. If you have neither or both, you roll normally. Most things that used to be +2-+4 bonuses of various types are now "advantage", and most things that used to be penalties are now "disadvantage". In practice, you get similar results with a l

    • Should try FUDGE, just tell the players that it's 6e D&D.

    • Re:5e is simpler (Score:4, Interesting)

      by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc.famine@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Sunday March 17, 2019 @05:06PM (#58289514) Journal

      But too often the rules could get in the way of a good time - witness all the tropes about rules lawyers. By simplifying the rules, they shifted emphasis back to the storytelling, instead of the minutiae of the rules.

      I was 100% against 5e as yet another money grab after 4e, and ignored it for a few years. Finally played one evening when I was visiting some old friends, and was instantly sold because of this.

      It helped I had people who I knew well and who knew me well and I could ask, "what's the basic stuff I need to know?" They told me, tossed me a character, and I just ran with it. Didn't read the PHB, didn't worry about the rules because it was the D&D I knew and loved, just with most of the bookkeeping removed.

      "I want to jump off the roof and motherfucking assassin's creed [origin.com] that guy in the back."
      "That's going to be a really high difficulty bit of acrobatics."
      "Sure, but don't I have advantage since I have the high ground and the element of surprise?"
      "DC 21. Go for it."

      And we're done. Roll two dice, take the bigger number, add one number, and we have the answer. Previously it would be rolling a die, adding a skill, figuring out if a height bonus applied, a stealth bonus, a size bonus, what if I have bless, but he's got a displacer cloak so it's -6 and....shit I'm a drow and I get a -2 to everything in daylight....

      Now if there's at least one advantage and one disadvantage, they all cancel out, so once you find one of each, you're done. No reason to keep doing bookkeeping, just role the damn die and get on with life.

      I can't believe how many hours we used to sit around doing bookkeeping to play this game. Outside of the actual game we'd be going through everything to try to figure out how to maximize our math, reading up on what stacks with what, and what doesn't stack. Coming up with tricks to mess up the enemy's math tricks.

      Now it's so much more about the story, and we never worry about "can I do that within the bounds of the rules?" A good DM and the answer is almost always yes. Pick an appropriate skill, figure out if there's advantage or disadvantage, handwave a DC, and lets do it!

    • The opposite if this is something like Shadowrun, which is basically unplayable because it's grown too complex, in terms of both rules and the sheer amount of different systems, all with weird and unforeseeable interactions.

  • Rather surprised that there was no reaction to the insanity manifested on Kickstarter. That much enthusiasm to escape from reality? Something is wrong there.

    Oh well. At least I can hope that the overfunding will cause the project to implode like Diaspora. Hopefully without any suicides attached. Great idea that went away quietly because Kickstarter money took their eye off the ball... Leaving us with the Facebook problem and the need for the FFF solution.

  • I got back into D&D a bit after many years listening to the Dungeons and Randomness podcast. Worth a listen.

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