Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1025561If you've found something you really enjoy, and are still having fun with it, why wouldn't you keep doing it?  Then whether or not you try something else is how available it is and how promising it looks.  I'm a person that likes to try new things at times, but also enjoys spending a lot of time on one thing.  There are only so many hours to spend.  Having spent a decade or more on a single game, I don't have any trouble understanding the possibility that someone would stick with one longer, even though that isn't me.

Nothing wrong with that.  If you've found a game that you really enjoy and are still having fun with it, the only real reason to stop playing it would be because it hasn't been in print for a long time and so it has become difficult to find new players.  Still, that's no longer a problem for D&D as just about every version is now available again.  It does remain an issue for quite a few games though, like Buck Rogers XXVc.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1025623True, mostly added spells, magic items, and monsters.  One can legitimately ask at what point have I glued enough bits on to change the game.

I don't think I have, especially since going back to the pre Greyhawk hit dice and weapon damage, but that's just an opinion.

Thank you, I was just wondering if I was remembering incorrectly.  Or mixing things up.  Again.

Quote from: estar;1025617As a predictor of what a specific gamer knows in the way of RPGs it is quite useless. But the original post for this point was making a general point.

Pundit made two general assertions. I replied to your reply to AsenRG's post which was calling BS on Pundit's more extreme assertion, which was:

QuoteOutside of the type of gamers who go to forums like this one, the vast majority of all gamers only play D&D.

Of which the "all gamers" part is clearly inaccurate exaggeration (e.g. most gamers aren't even RPG players), and the "vast" isn't specific but also seems like an exaggeration, especially with the other assertion "have only ever played D&D".

I have no disagreement that D&D was the first, has always had the most sales of all RPGs, that most people think of D&D when they think RPGs, most RPG players play or have played D&D or some variant of it or Shadowrun.

I've held off on answering this question for a while because I consider "playing old-school D&D" and "playing other RPGs (including d20/WotC editions of D&D)" to be such vastly different hobbies, that the question might as well have been "who here just plays D&D and who also plays board games," or "who here just plays D&D and who also plays football."

I play original/basic D&D regularly.  I play may favorite card games and board games (gin, whist, French tarot, backgammon) less often, far less than I would like to, mostly for lack of interested opponents.  I play most other card games and board games, and all modern RPGs, so infrequently that I can't say they count as hobbies or even activities of mine at all.  It doesn't mean that I don't or won't play them, I just rarely have the occasion to.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1025402Well sorry, but your anecdotal experiences are not an accurate register of the hobby. The huge majority of gamers out there, past and present, have only ever played D&D in one of its variations (including Pathfinder, etc).

Says you. But you also claim other stuff that makes me laugh:).
Let's just say I need more proof than that;).

Some mythical sales numbers are supposed to show what most people play? How so? You can never know whether a given book is going to be played by one person, by a whole group, or by nobody. Might be a Satanic Panic relic who wants to burn them, for all we know. Or it might be sitting in a nice bookshelf as reading material.
All a sale means is someone purchased a book. It doesn't mean it was ever used.
Gronan here is running games from his OD&D he bought in 1974. How many sales is he producing? How many sessions have been played with his books?
And he's just one guy that, admittedly, uses D&D. But ask any Traveller fan about "Classic Traveller fans". How many sales do you think those guys are producing? Yet they run games for other people, including for new people. Now guess what, how many sales are those people producing?
Yeah, sales as estimate of what is getting played sucks.

Oh, and just to let you know, Pundy, freeform does, in all likelihood, dwarf D&D by popularity. It just doesn't produce book sales...except for the IPs that are, sometimes, being used by each individual group.

But of course, most people conveniently can't access the sales numbers. Unless you care to provide me a link to WotC sales?

Quote from: estar;1025431Vast majority not equal all. [/QUOTE
Vast majority means, in common parlance, "over 75%". And no, since we regularly lament how there's no research on RPG players, I don't think Pundit has enough data to make that assertion.

QuoteAnd building one what Gronan said, if you look at the units sold and the dollar volume versus the numbers of folks on the various fora.

Link to the data, please? Have WotC started publishing their numbers? Because barring that, we don't know units sold even for WotC, much less for all the other RPG systems out there.

QuoteThat gamer involved on the internet are dwarfed by the those who are not. That of those not involved on the internet the number of D&D/Pathfinder unit sold and dollar volume versus the rest of the industry implies that yes indeed the vast majority do play D&D and that the odds are high that it is only RPG they play.

"Odds are high" is a much more reasonable, though debatable assertion. You'll note that Pundit doesn't speak about odds, he's certain.

QuoteBut it is not so high that somebody like you have a different view. I suggest go down to a local game store and talk to the store owner about the issue. I know in my area the figures for two stores approaches 80% split between D&D 5e and Pathfinder. And at another store it is more 50-50 largely due to the fact in-store games are part of a gaming club that promote different interest. This is spread over Northwest Pennsylvania.

I have. The problem is, in most gaming stores, my first action should be to persuade said owner to carry RPGs, period:D!
Among those that do carry RPGs, it would seem Dragon Age and Dark Heresy are contenders to D&D (probably due to the IPs).

QuoteFinally what does it matter if it true or not?

It doesn't matter one bit. We're again having debates to pass the time.
Which is why it makes me laugh when someone mentions it as a badge of merit.

QuoteThe internet changed everything and vastly expanded the ability of gamers to find and more importantly play the games that they like. Not just for on-line play but finding people locally to game with as well.

Yeah, it did. Why then do you assume that what might have been true in pre-Internet days (the popularity of D&D) would still hold true?

Internet also changed the playfield for anyone trying to get into RPGs, you know:D!

Quote from: Skarg;1025760Pundit made two general assertions. I replied to your reply to AsenRG's post which was calling BS on Pundit's more extreme assertion, which was:


Of which the "all gamers" part is clearly inaccurate exaggeration (e.g. most gamers aren't even RPG players), and the "vast" isn't specific but also seems like an exaggeration, especially with the other assertion "have only ever played D&D".

Yeah, this. Especially since Pundit has no way to know whether people who purchased D&D has become purists:D!

QuoteI have no disagreement that D&D was the first, has always had the most sales of all RPGs, that most people think of D&D when they think RPGs, most RPG players play or have played D&D or some variant of it or Shadowrun.

Also, this.
But "most people have had exposure to some variant of it"=/="most people only play this".
So, as often happens, we're debating the Pundit's exaggeration, not the facts. Well, most of us aren't debating those facts. I'm sure Pundy wouldn't admit even the possibility of being wrong - unless it is to then go and say "and that's why I was RIGHT!"
And this also means that I'm going to be participating in this "debate" until it stops being fun. Which is a point we're critically close to;).

Quote from: Skarg;1025760Pundit made two general assertions. I replied to your reply to AsenRG's post which was calling BS on Pundit's more extreme assertion, which was:


Of which the "all gamers" part is clearly inaccurate exaggeration (e.g. most gamers aren't even RPG players), and the "vast" isn't specific but also seems like an exaggeration, especially with the other assertion "have only ever played D&D".

I have no disagreement that D&D was the first, has always had the most sales of all RPGs, that most people think of D&D when they think RPGs, most RPG players play or have played D&D or some variant of it or Shadowrun.

Oh my god. First, it was assumed, contextually, that "all gamers" here means "all Tabletop RPG gamers" and not pool players or bridge enthusiasts.

Second, it's not an exaggeration.  The vast majority of RPG gamers who've ever played, have only ever played D&D (in one of its editions).

Agree on the first point. Everyone in the conversation except Skarg understood what gamers meant in context.

To the second, there are plenty of people (and this again is probably nation-dependent) who have played D&D (/PF) and no other TTRPG, but I would say with any kind of confidence that it is majority, much less vast majority. D&D is far and away the biggest, so much so that most times during its' history it has exceeded all others combined. But I don't know if that means that 51+% have never played any other TTRPG. I'm not even sure if that could be known, given the information available.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1026497Oh my god. First, it was assumed, contextually, that "all gamers" here means "all Tabletop RPG gamers" and not pool players or bridge enthusiasts.

Second, it's not an exaggeration.  The vast majority of RPG gamers who've ever played, have only ever played D&D (in one of its editions).

When I read "gamers", I don't think pool or bridge, but I do think wargamers and strategy gamers and non-RPG miniatures gamers and so on.

On the second point, if you were not exaggerating, then what is that based on? Because it seems to me that's unlikely to be anything anyone has accurate numbers for, and it also seems extremely unlikely to be true even if you are talking about only RPGs.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1026497Oh my god. First, it was assumed, contextually, that "all gamers" here means "all Tabletop RPG gamers" and not pool players or bridge enthusiasts.

Second, it's not an exaggeration.  The vast majority of RPG gamers who've ever played, have only ever played D&D (in one of its editions).

In Junior High we played Marvel Super Heroes because D&D was frowned upon because... Catholic School.

Games I like playing: Star Wars (mostly d20 but I started with WEG d6), Savage Worlds, Cortex Plus/Marvel Heroic (mostly as a GM using my own hack which is less Fate, more crunchy), Various Flavors of RuneQuest/BRP/d100, DWAITAS, FASA Star Trek, Aliens powered by Phoenix Command, Mechwarrior. I even liked GURPs at one time.

Quote from: Skarg;1026969On the second point, if you were not exaggerating, then what is that based on? Because it seems to me that's unlikely to be anything anyone has accurate numbers for, and it also seems extremely unlikely to be true even if you are talking about only RPGs.

The proportional popularity of D&D as a cultural phenomenon, rather than a hobby.
Surely, most people who are such serious gamers as to write in this forum have played something other than D&D (probably a lot of other things), but the normies haven't.  

In fact, with D&D5e's huge resurgence, you can go on Twitter (or, I presume, other social media) and see shitloads of newbies who don't even realize there are other games than D&D.

I played a one-shot of D&D 5E, the rest was all non-D&D/d20/OSR.

I know this isn't what you meant, but I honestly feel like everyone is playing D&D variants, regardless of what they call it. My core gaming group from the late 70's on has always called all table top rpg's D&D, as in 'Do you want to play D&D saturday?...Sure; let's get back into that Runequest mess we were playing last week!'. I mean this literally, not metaphorically: OD&D eventually solidified into a sort of canonical family of rules when it was republished as 1E, but in its first couple of years there were three completely different sets of rules for adjudicating personal combat (four if you are broad minded enough to use all the material in Chainmail), and all were so badly explained that it is hard to imagine people didn't mix and match and extrapolate them into dozens of variants. Judge's Guild was probably the biggest 3rd party publisher, and their stuff came with alternate stats, different stat generating and reporting conventions, social status, etc. ICE started publishing rules that look now like the nucleus of a 'different game' but they were really first intended to be a bolt on system of stats and combat mechanics for D&D. 1E Chivalry and Sorcery looks different in detail from OD&D, but if you blur your eyes a bit, it is obviously just an elaborate set of D&D house rules, with maybe 50 % identical genetic heritage, 50 % weird D&D variant and 10 % totally new stuff. What I'm saying is that the border between what was D&D and what was not D&D was pretty hard to draw. The market of commercial games doesn't present itself this way any more, but this is still how I see them.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027314In fact, with D&D5e's huge resurgence, you can go on Twitter (or, I presume, other social media) and see shitloads of newbies who don't even realize there are other games than D&D.

Don't worry, the Grognards are there to enlighten them.

Quote from: Krimson;1027385Don't worry, the Grognards are there to enlighten them.

No, we are there to tell them that OD&D means "ONLY D&D."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1027388No, we are there to tell them that OD&D means "ONLY D&D."

Which means what, exactly.  Cuz I honestly can take it to mean many things.  I honestly want to know what YOU make it mean.