Stan!, a longtime employee and contractor for TSR and Wizards of the Coast has aa YouTube interview show.

He had a recent interview with Ray Winninger, who led the D&D team from 2020 to 2022. I found many parts of the interview noteworthy. I'll link the video, and then provide my summary for discussion. The main D&D part begins around the 39 minute mark.

Interview Link:
My summary:

1) When he took over D&D he was told his teams goal was to double the size of D&D by 5 years. They doubled it in 3 years instead though he doesn't personally take all the credit for that as it was many factors at play.

2) They were selling about as many PHB every year as were sold for MOST of the 3e era. And they were already 7 years in, selling more PHBs every year than most of 3e's entire run.

3) The story up until 5e was each new edition would have a fantastic first 2 years and would taper off at 5 to 8 years off and a new edition would be needed. That never happened with 5e and core book sales increased every year since 5e began.

4) The average campaign lasts about 6-8 months instead of years now, and so from a business perspective people buy more stuff as they cycle through campaigns. This was a change which the company first really noticed in the shift from 2e to 3e. It was a phenomenon first found out in 1997 and 1998 from TSR research, where the average campaign was 9-11 months already. But it took until the design of 5e to actually design an edition with that 6-8 month time frame in mind as much of what they did with 3e and 4e still apparently had longer campaigns in mind despite their own prior research indicating it was likely shorter. This is why 5e launch with "Here's your 6-9 month campaign in a single book" format. He thinks this was one of three main factors which accelerated D&D's growth. [See around 48-50 min mark]

5)  The audience changed from 88% male to 50% male for 5e, but this was not a reduction in the number of males playing but instead a huge additional growth in the number of females playing along with a growth in the number of males playing. This  doubled the size of the audience, in addition to high school boys and now high school girls, which was a big growth accelerator.

6) The ascendance of YouTube in teaching people how to play D&D was a big, probably biggest, growth factor for 5e because it made the game much more approachable. Before that point, it was either find an existing group or go buy these 3 textbook-sized books and teach yourself. Now, you're a high schooler who has heard of D&D and just watches a video to see what it's about and how it works. It also resulted in cross-pollination to other niche nerd interests people had who were perusing YouTube.

7) D&D was at a low point when 5e launched. 4e didn't find the audience it had hoped to. WOTC had dramatically scaled down the department for D&D after 4e and WOTC was considering tabling D&D at that time. Due to this, they published far fewer products on 5e launch. They still would have liked to do a publication every month they just didn't have the resources for it.

[NOTE: Mike Mearls responded to this point and disagreed as follows:

"That's 100% incorrect. Market research showed that the typical D&D fan wasn't interested in buy multiple products a year. This also played into the marketing strategy of building each product up as a big event. You can't do a Stream of Annihilation every month. The product release cadence was a specific strategy."]

[Note 2: Mearls further states, "Yeah, the "they" is me, Nathan Stewart, and Liz Schuh. We had asked about product frequency as part of the playtest surveys. If we had really wanted monthly releases, we would've just brought on more publishers under contract to do stuff. We had signed on Green Ronin, Kobold Press, and Sasquatch to fill out the release schedule while we finished the core rulebooks. He's probably conflating the two."]

8 ) They discovered, accidentally, that by scaling down the number of products they published, the remaining books they did publish sold a lot more. In fact they were not losing in total sales by producing 3-4 books per year versus producing far more books per year. The prior TSR policy of selling 60 books per year was cannibalizing book sales from each other, and to some extent that had been still happening with 3e and even 4e. Even though they knew signs of this problem had been seen in 1998's surveys.

9) When he returned to D&D 5e, he was still under the impression it was operating as a "front-list driven" business, where they newest products you put out were almost all you sold. That had been the main theory under TSR and 3e, that the life cycle of products was 60-90 days.  But 5e had rapidly become a "back-list driven" business. 65% to 70% of D&D sales are the products which had not just come out. New products accounted for just roughly 33% of the sales. Which led to no 5e WOTC products ever going out of print. Out of the Abyss, which is 10 years old at this point, is sill selling for WOTC. Which is an astounding change from prior editions. This change to a back-list business brought certainty, predictability, and health to the D&D business line. This change was so major it's the #1 thing which boosted D&D into this other realm of success.

10) Digital was the last major change and upswing for D&D. Sales of digital books on D&D Beyond are very high margin.

11) This combination of factors pushed D&D "well into the 9 figures".

12) OGL: The huge success of 5e attracted Hasbro executive attention. WOTC was, politely, disagreeing with them. The OGL was one of those points of contention. He was very pleased Hasbro reversed course so quickly after the OGL mistake. The council WOTC gives Hasbro is to recognize both D&D and MtG are unique business types and not normal product lines. There remains still a battle for the soul of D&D between WOTC and Hasbro but he's now optimistic that Hasbro is starting to understand the issues better.

13) Running the D&D team has become more complicated because they're no longer selling to a monolithic set of core audiences who want things like old school heavy Forgotten Realms lore (and it has become much harder to serve the older school core audience as D&D has grown.) For example, the largest growing segment of D&D sales is 11 to 13 year olds now, who come in with no background in D&D. The Team now has to think about so many different audiences and expectations when developing products than they used to have to consider.

14) The people in the D&D team are genuine fans of smaller publishers. He loves for example Pendragon. Everyone on the Team has interest in growing the whole industry and favorite smaller publishers.

15) Advice to smaller publishers is a) keep in mind the multitude of differing audiences now, and b) keep in mind the era is now digital focused if you want a larger audience. That includes remote play, like Roll20, and character creation.

16) D&D is now a major, important, strategic pillar for Hasbro and can no longer be that little thing over in the corner. It is now one of Hasbro's top 5 brands.

17) He calls out ENWorld, Advanced version of 5e impresses him. It's for too small a segment of the audience that WOTC couldn't sell that, but he likes it and hopes it's doing well. Also calls out all the heavier lore stuff selling on DM's Guild which he likes, and Keith Baker's pushing additional Eberron lore on DM's Guild, etc..

18) One of the big TSR mistakes was so many products they put out were dependent on other products. Example: put out Spelljammer, then a War  expansion on Spelljammer, which is only for a segment of the larger audience. Then you put out adventures for that expansion, which reduces your audience again. Half their products under TSR became two or three levels deep in dependency in prior books. That didn't serve new fans well. The original Greyhawk map and vague description outline served new audiences better than the product dependency model that TSR eventually pursued. Products need to be self-contained things to be friendly for new players. This, despite designers liking to do more and more deep lore.

19) He is confident D&D will see another 50 years.

I'm going to press x to doubt that half the 5e playerbase is female.   Has it increased over the past 20 years?  Absolutely, my guess is that it's possibly doubled!  From 10-15% to 20-30% at most and that upper limit includes people that transitioned during that period as well.

Quote from: RNGm on January 23, 2025, 06:25:43 PMI'm going to press x to doubt that half the 5e playerbase is female.   Has it increased over the past 20 years?  Absolutely, my guess is that it's possibly doubled!  From 10-15% to 20-30% at most and that upper limit includes people that transitioned during that period as well.

A marketing study in 1999 found that 19% of the TTRPG player base is female. That's been the best demographic survey that's been made public because it was a controlled representative sample.

https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html

I'm more skeptical about the recent surveys that have released less information to the public, but I'm sure they have better marketing information now, and insiders like Winninger would be aware of it.

Quote from: RNGm on January 23, 2025, 06:25:43 PMI'm going to press x to doubt that half the 5e playerbase is female.   Has it increased over the past 20 years?  Absolutely, my guess is that it's possibly doubled!  From 10-15% to 20-30% at most and that upper limit includes people that transitioned during that period as well.

When is the last time you walked into a game store in a major city that had people playing Adventurer's League games? Lot of girls. A lot of high school students. I know my daughter plays, and her girlfriends play, and they're 13 and 14.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 23, 2025, 07:47:29 PMWhen is the last time you walked into a game store in a major city that had people playing Adventurer's League games? Lot of girls. A lot of high school students. I know my daughter plays, and her girlfriends play, and they're 13 and 14.

Adventurer's League specifically?   Not since before the pandemic but that was still 5e and it was no where near 50% locally when I did.   A major metro store on a weekend filled with dozens of gamers?  This past Sunday... and it was 85-90% guys in total across all games (minis, rpgs, painting, etc).    I'm glad though that your daughter and her girlfriends are having fun playing in it though (no sarcasm) as more gamers of all types is better for the hobby overall.

Quote from: RNGm on January 23, 2025, 06:25:43 PMI'm going to press x to doubt that half the 5e playerbase is female.   Has it increased over the past 20 years?  Absolutely, my guess is that it's possibly doubled!  From 10-15% to 20-30% at most and that upper limit includes people that transitioned during that period as well.

agreed: every convention I have been to, including Gamehole last October had a 5e WOTC D&D room

that room was entirely populated by guys (99%+), most of them younger, almost all of them extremely overweight and sickly. I hate to use the term neckbeard, but it was an ocean of neckbeard

the only women playing 5e are the ones grifting on YouTube and pretending to be gamers.

women do like to play Call of Cthulhu and some other RPGs

TLDR, let alone watch the video. Nothing more than a pro- WoTC 5e D&D fluff piece.

WotC doesn't know what a woman is, so how would they know if half their player base are women?

Quote from: blackstone on Today at 09:23:19 AMTLDR, let alone watch the video. Nothing more than a pro- WoTC 5e D&D fluff piece.

It's about the early days of WOTC making 5e, and admission they were in fact working on a skeleton crew and they nearly pulled the plug on D&D after 4e. I would not say this is a fluff piece, and it is not by WOTC or anyone currently working for them. It's an ex-employee.

Quote from:  link=msg=1300190 date=17376617235)  The audience changed from 88% male to 50% male for 5e

Absolute bunkum.

There are more female players, but it's no 50%. Visiting a gaming con, any gaming con, puts the lie to that.

These guys are in a bubble...

Quote from:  link=msg=1300190 date=1737661723For example, the largest growing segment of D&D sales is 11 to 13 year olds now, who come in with no background in D&D. The Team now has to think about so many different audiences and expectations when developing products than they used to have to consider.

More Bunkum. This actually explains a lot of WotC's missteps. They actually have no idea why D&D is popular.

The 5e boom is functionally no different than the D&D boom in the 80's.

'Thinking about' and chasing those 'different audiences' has resulted in some of their worse selling products.

Quote from:  link=msg=1300190 date=173766172315) Advice to smaller publishers is a) keep in mind the multitude of differing audiences now, and b) keep in mind the era is now digital focused if you want a larger audience. That includes remote play, like Roll20, and character creation.

a) Smaller publishers would do well to utterly ignore this. Just make something cool. If the customers like it, you will do well.

b) Actually true.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 23, 2025, 02:48:43 PM5)  The audience changed from 88% male to 50% male for 5e, but this was not a reduction in the number of males playing but instead a huge additional growth in the number of females playing along with a growth in the number of males playing. This  doubled the size of the audience, in addition to high school boys and now high school girls, which was a big growth accelerator.

Well when anyone can play make believe with genders, sure why not say that.

Anyone living in reality knows this is a lie.