D&D: is it the gateway game for the rest of the hobby?

[TristramEvans]

Well that’s not the job of the core books, the equivalent of the core books during the red box era was AD&D, how good was it at teaching? The question is how good are the current starter sets at being gateway games.

And does random person know that's "not the job" of the suspiciously-named-if-that's-the-case core books?

Like, at least AD&D labelled itself as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (granted, that was mainly to fuck over the hobby's creator).

 

[raniE]

And does random person know that's "not the job" of the suspiciously-named-if-that's-the-case core books?

Like, at least AD&D labelled itself as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (granted, that was mainly to fuck over the hobby's creator).

I don't know what the random person knows, but usually the starter set is right next to them in a store. If you look online instead you're also likely to run into suggestions to get the starter set. One person I know who had never tried the game before bought the starter set as the first thing, because they looked online before making a purchase.

 

[sharps54]

And does random person know that's "not the job" of the suspiciously-named-if-that's-the-case core books?

Like, at least AD&D labelled itself as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (granted, that was mainly to fuck over the hobby's creator).

I figure it’s the job of the clerk at the game store or the ad that WotC puts out to make that clear.

 

[Sloth_in_a_bowl]

One thing that people never really seem to mention in these discussions is my personal take on why D&D is so successful in comparison to much of the opposition and that is simply modules and campaigns. Dozens and dozens of well presented, usually well written and totally usable adventures.

Other games may have a well known campaign or two; for D&D you can have a top ten of great campaigns and a top 50 of other adventures.

Until other games support their player base with the same quality of regularly published ready to run adventures then they will never get the same level of mass market acceptance. Most GM's are not good at creating adventures from scratch and need published works to work with or their campaigns stop when the number of published adventures stops.

My longest running non-D&D campaign as a GM was Shadowrun mainly as I had a couple of dozen published adventures to call on and hack into my campaign world. It was much easier than writing everything from scratch.

 

[DeadBob]

One thing that people never really seem to mention in these discussions is my personal take on why D&D is so successful in comparison to much of the opposition and that is simply modules and campaigns. Dozens and dozens of well presented, usually well written and totally usable adventures.

Other games may have a well known campaign or two; for D&D you can have a top ten of great campaigns and a top 50 of other adventures.

Until other games support their player base with the same quality of regularly published ready to run adventures then they will never get the same level of mass market acceptance. Most GM's are not good at creating adventures from scratch and need published works to work with or their campaigns stop when the number of published adventures stops.

My longest running non-D&D campaign as a GM was Shadowrun mainly as I had a couple of dozen published adventures to call on and hack into my campaign world. It was much easier than writing everything from scratch.

I think you have a point. Most other 2nd tier games have a fair amount of support, for example Call of Cthulhu.

 

[Voros]

Well that’s not the job of the core books, the equivalent of the core books during the red box era was AD&D, how good was it at teaching? The question is how good are the current starter sets at being gateway games.

I think the Essentials set has the superior introduction to the ruleset but the Starter set has the better adventure.

I expect WotC will continue putting out these starter sets for newbies, especially with the launch of the new edition and I think that's a good thing.

 

[TristramEvans]

I don't know what the random person knows, but usually the starter set is right next to them in a store. If you look online instead you're also likely to run into suggestions to get the starter set. One person I know who had never tried the game before bought the starter set as the first thing, because they looked online before making a purchase.

I figure it’s the job of the clerk at the game store or the ad that WotC puts out to make that clear.

OK, so same question though - how good is the starter set at introducing new players to the hobby, in comparison to say the Red Box (not a direct analogue, as Basic D&D was it's own game) or WEG's Star Wars?

 

[sharps54]

I think the Essentials set has the superior introduction to the ruleset but the Starter set has the better adventure.

I expect WotC will continue putting out these starter sets for newbies, especially with the launch of the new edition and I think that's a good thing.

I’m willing to bet the sales numbers of the Stranger Things and Rick & Morty sets didn’t disappoint and I actually heard good things about the latter

 

[TristramEvans]

One thing that people never really seem to mention in these discussions is my personal take on why D&D is so successful in comparison to much of the opposition and that is simply modules and campaigns. Dozens and dozens of well presented, usually well written and totally usable adventures.

Other games may have a well known campaign or two; for D&D you can have a top ten of great campaigns and a top 50 of other adventures.

Until other games support their player base with the same quality of regularly published ready to run adventures then they will never get the same level of mass market acceptance. Most GM's are not good at creating adventures from scratch and need published works to work with or their campaigns stop when the number of published adventures stops.

My longest running non-D&D campaign as a GM was Shadowrun mainly as I had a couple of dozen published adventures to call on and hack into my campaign world. It was much easier than writing everything from scratch.

I dunno, I think one of the things new D&D has lost is that ease of running the game for new DMs by just "drawing a dungeon & then populating it with monsters and traps. I'm not sure a dependence on prewritten adventures, especially those pushing a narrative, is actually a net positive for the game.

 

[Voros]

I dunno, I think one of the things new D&D has lost is that ease of running the game for new DMs by just "drawing a dungeon & then populating it with monsters and traps. I'm not sure a dependence on prewritten adventures, especially those pushing a narrative, is actually a net positive for the game.

There are good tables in the 5e DMG to generate adventures and dungeons for new DMs.

 

[Teotwawki]

I first played an rpg in 1987-88. I began playing somewhat regularly in the 90s and with regular frequency after transplanting to the US in the late 90s. I've played 3 dozen rpgs or more in that time.

Never once played D&D. Almost certainly never will. Of the four friends in our standard group, only one has ever played it and it wasn't his first nor even second.

An adjacent question I'd pose is: How many people who start with D&D keep at with any kind of exclusivity over a given period of time? Or: How many people use D&D as a gateway to *ehem* 'better' rpgs?

 

[Simlasa]

Like a lot of folks, I did start with D&Dl. I'd heard about it before that and had... expectations... of story and characters and exploration and mystery. The first guys I played with were a good introduction and generally in line with my tastes (they introduced me to lots of classic fantasy literature as well). Our games were not combat oriented and spent a lot of time in cities dealing with intrigue/mystery.
But following that I found myself turned off by the greater D&D crowd I was meeting... powergamers and rules lawyers ('lemme tell you about my 20th level wizard!"). I might very well have lost interest in the game if I hadn't found a gamestore at the mall that sold a decent variety of other RPGs.
I'd say that store was my real 'gateway'... it's where I first saw stuff like Runequest, Traveller, Dragon magazine... and I think RQ2 was a MUCH better teacher of how to play the game than AD&D was. Dragon was certainly important in letting me know that not ALL gamers were focused on power-fantasy and combat mechanics (though there was plenty of that too).

 

[raniE]

OK, so same question though - how good is the starter set at introducing new players to the hobby, in comparison to say the Red Box (not a direct analogue, as Basic D&D was it's own game) or WEG's Star Wars?

It's hard for me to judge. The starter set with Lost Mines of Phandelver seems fine to me, the short campaign has also gotten a lot of praise, it opens up with a simple adventure, adds some more complexity, then goes a bit sandboxy/open but having been a player of rpgs since I was six years old I just can't really tell you if its a good introduction or not.

I dunno, I think one of the things new D&D has lost is that ease of running the game for new DMs by just "drawing a dungeon & then populating it with monsters and traps. I'm not sure a dependence on prewritten adventures, especially those pushing a narrative, is actually a net positive for the game.

Every starter set has had one finished dungeon at least though. I remember I had one of the AD&D 2e starter sets, it had two finished dungeons (well, one was a haunted house) complete with a map to lay out on the table, then the third adventure was a dungeon map and room/area descriptions but it was up to the DM to add the area descriptions to the dungeon, wherever you wanted, doors (including secret ones) on the map etc. Then the fourth adventure was the second level of that dungeon, which was a few room descriptions with no map, and the idea being that you would draw your own map and add in those rooms and other rooms of your own design.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think in previous decades that brick and mortar location combined with (sometimes) D&D to form the gateway. I think that for many of us, whether or not we started on or even played D&D, what really started our branching out into other games was what else was available on the shelf at our FLGS or equivalent. For many years the FLGS was the primary place that people ran into new games. Sometimes those people branched out (like I did) and, to use the 90's as an example, perhaps tried Vampire, or Mechwarrior, or Talislanta, or whatever. They tried it because it was there, or because the people they played with or around started playing it. Information about new games flowed from the distributor to the staff to the customers.

Things are a little different now in this regard of course. D&D is available in places (like Chapters) that don't really stock other RPGs (or don't advertise that they do), which isn't the FLGS experience. Beyond that the internet is probably the main avenue of exposure for a lot of people. At least with the internet it only takes a small modicum of interest to find a cornucopia of other games, but on the flipside there are so many fucking games out there that it can be difficult to know what's good, or even simply present an overwhelming amount of choice. In this latter case the role of regulars and staff at the FLGS is probably taken on by some set of internet wanks, which might be great or complete shit. What we have a significantly increased set of vectors for exposure to RPGs which multiplies the possible experiences of a new player quite a bit.

IDK, this isn't really an argument per se, just an observation about the differences between then and now.

 

[Voros]

I think in previous decades that brick and mortar location combined with (sometimes) D&D to form the gateway. I think that for many of us, whether or not we started on or even played D&D, what really started our branching out into other games was what else was available on the shelf at our FLGS or equivalent. For many years the FLGS was the primary place that people ran into new games. Sometimes those people branched out (like I did) and, to use the 90's as an example, perhaps tried Vampire, or Mechwarrior, or Talislanta, or whatever. They tried it because it was there, or because the people they played with or around started playing it. Information about new games flowed from the distributor to the staff to the customers.

Things are a little different now in this regard of course. D&D is available in places (like Chapters) that don't really stock other RPGs (or don't advertise that they do), which isn't the FLGS experience. Beyond that the internet is probably the main avenue of exposure for a lot of people. At least with the internet it only takes a small modicum of interest to find a cornucopia of other games, but on the flipside there are so many fucking games out there that it can be difficult to know what's good, or even simply present an overwhelming amount of choice. In this latter case the role of regulars and staff at the FLGS is probably taken on by some set of internet wanks, which might be great or complete shit. What we have a significantly increased set of vectors for exposure to RPGs which multiplies the possible experiences of a new player quite a bit.

IDK, this isn't really an argument per se, just an observation about the differences between then and now.

God help them if they Google 'rpg forum' to find out more! Jk, only people over 40 would ever do that.

 

[Gringnr]

I dunno, I think one of the things new D&D has lost is that ease of running the game for new DMs by just "drawing a dungeon & then populating it with monsters and traps. I'm not sure a dependence on prewritten adventures, especially those pushing a narrative, is actually a net positive for the game.

Speaking strictly for myself: as someone who almost exclusively runs pre-written adventures, I miss them. I'm guessing they aren't very profitable, but I'm glad to be able to buy DCC adventures for tenbux each. Big, beautiful campaign books are nice, but less likely to hit my table than a ten dollar module.

 

[TristramEvans]

God help them if they Google 'rpg forum' to find out more! Jk, only people over 40 would ever do that.

The sad thing is, they,re likely to end up on reddit to start

 

[Tommy Brownell]

I think both Vampire/World of Darkness and various local games (Drakar och Demoner, Das Schwarze Auge, etc) would disagree.

Is Vampire even a thing still? Honest question. I know it was big 30 years ago but...well...that was 30 years ago.

I freely admit that I can't speak to games native to non-US countries and how well they draw gamers in.

I feel like the important question isn't so much "is D&D the gateway game for the rest of the hobby?"
so much as "is D&D good at being a gateway game?"

Or to put it anther way, how good is current D&D as a "beginner's game"? If someone with no knowledge of RPGs picks up the current rulebook off the shelf, how good is it at teaching them, not just how to play, but the concept of "roleplaying games"?

As good as the red box was?

It's weirdly both the biggest game in the hobby but apparently failing at teaching people the game, according to the alleged 5e DM shortage.

 

[Fenris-77]

DM shortage. Hah. Like that's unique to 5E. Running games is a lot of work and there have always been less people running games than groups looking to play in them. That's how many of us got stuck in the forever-GM role.

 

[Gringnr]

DM shortage. Hah. Like that's unique to 5E. Running games is a lot of work and there have always been less people running games than groups looking to play in them. That's how many of us got stuck in the forever-GM role.

Exactly. It gets to a point where if you wanna play, you haveta run the damn thing.

 

[Zebraman]

Is Vampire even a thing still? Honest question. I know it was big 30 years ago but...well...that was 30 years ago.

I freely admit that I can't speak to games native to non-US countries and how well they draw gamers in.

It's weirdly both the biggest game in the hobby but apparently failing at teaching people the game, according to the alleged 5e DM shortage.

I've never played Vampire myself but over the last 25 years of playing in the UK I periodically come across people who have recently played it.

Funnily enough the most recent was about 6 months ago and were some younger gamers who played it as their first rpg after D&D 5e. Whether this constitutes being a thing I'm not sure.

 

[Zebraman]

DM shortage. Hah. Like that's unique to 5E. Running games is a lot of work and there have always been less people running games than groups looking to play in them. That's how many of us got stuck in the forever-GM role.

One of the earliest critiques of D&D and alleged reason that it would never take off was that while it was fun to play no one would want to DM it....

 

[raniE]

Is Vampire even a thing still? Honest question. I know it was big 30 years ago but...well...that was 30 years ago.

Still drawing players and being big 15 years ago , 5th edition of the game came out in 2018 and had problems due to being brigaded for things that probably aren't appropriate to talk about at the Pub, but still sold well from what I understood.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Still drawing players and being big 15 years ago , 5th edition of the game came out in 2018 and had problems due to being brigaded for things that probably aren't appropriate to talk about at the Pub, but still sold well from what I understood.

Fair enough. All the WoD diehards I knew gave it up a long time ago, so I had no idea if it was still even a thing.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

Fighting Fantasy was my gateway. Warlock of Firetop mountain might have been my first, and I ended up picking up the Fighting Fantasy RPG (which I seem to have misplaced or given away at some point, unfortunately).

Then a few of us started making our own very crude games, before finally getting our hands on BECMI Basic and then quickly moving on to MERP, which was the beginning of about 10 years of predominantly running MERP/RM.

 

[Telok]

One thing that people never really seem to mention in these discussions is my personal take on why D&D is so successful in comparison to much of the opposition and that is simply modules and campaigns. Dozens and dozens of well presented, usually well written and totally usable adventures.

Thats kind of weird to me. See, except for TSR D&D, no game I've ever been in that used a module did anything but end in a crash & burn by the fifth session. For 5e its (ok 5e modules have been all of twice and both with novice DMs) been a crash & burn clusterfuck by session 3, with both guys swearing off DMing.

My experience for the last two decades is the official modules crash out but the homemade ones survive. Although that coild be survivor DM bias. The DMs doing homemade were experienced back to AD&D and with other games. The crash & burns were always newer DMs who hadn't set foot outside D&Ds. Not pushing this as a global natrative or anything. Just my experiences that since AD&D ended new DMs 100% try modules, 100% of them fail, and not for scheduling or RL reasons. Its always their struggle with the system and how the players are playing.

 

[TristramEvans]

Is Vampire even a thing still? Honest question. I know it was big 30 years ago but...well...that was 30 years ago..

It's not what it was in the 90's certainly, but in our very small pond of non-D&D RPGs it's still treading water. I know at least three people running or have run 5th edition games in the last year.

 

[Toadmaster]

I think it is, but I don't think gateway means the same thing to me as to some others. D&D has by far the largest player base, and the most recognition among "normals". How many people haven't tried to explain a game they are playing and had the phrase "like D&D" appear in the conversation.

D&D is to RPGs what Kleenex is to facial tissue.

If a mainstream media source is going to feature RPGs, you can be sure D&D will be used. Big Bang Theory is often brought up as opening the doors of nerds being accepted, maybe even "cool" and they didn't play Mythras, they played D&D. The kids in ET and that other show popular right now whose name escapes me played D&D. I can not think of another RPG that has featured prominently in a film or TV show.

The greatest RPG film of all time*, was focused on D&D.


The high profile of D&D draws many people in. Some may never actually play it, being attracted by D&D, but then see that it is just one of many games and perhaps something else catches their eye. Of course there will also be those who are recruited to the hobby through players of a different game, so they may never be exposed to D&D, but very unlikely that they won't know of its existence or even be curious to "have a taste" simply to know what they are (or aren't) missing.



I don't know what actual numbers are but D&D outsells all other games by a large margin, and not D&D but basically still D&D (Pathfinder, clones etc) is the runner up everything else is tiny.

If 5E is Anheuser-Busch, essentially D&D combined is Heineken, and Call of Cthulhu is I don't know maybe Sierra Nevada, then all the other RPGs are local micro brews, far superior to Budweiser but only known to a small select group of fans and there are tons of people who are quite happy with their corporate beers.


So if the definition of gateway game is players should start with D&D, then I would say no. It is a fine place to start, but I don't think starting there offers any particular benefit. But if gateway means it is where a large number of people become interested in RPGs then yes, it absolutely is.

If D&D has a fan base 5x the size of everything else and only 10% of those who start with D&D move on to something else, that means the players whi started with D&D is still a huge number of the over all players.




* The Gamers, Dorkness Rising. Feel free to disagree, but you are wrong.

 

[TristramEvans]

Big Bang Theory is often brought up as opening the doors of nerds being accepted, maybe even "cool"

 

[TristramEvans]

* The Gamers, Dorkness Rising. Feel free to disagree, but you are wrong.

I can only assume you just haven't seen Hawk The Slayer

 

[Simlasa]

* The Gamers, Dorkness Rising. Feel free to disagree, but you are wrong.

I agree with that part.

 

[opaopajr]

All my life I saw D&D, throughout the editions, bring people into the hobby and then had its saturation spread elsewhere to other games. Only major switcheroo I witnessed was the White Wolf Vampire fad. Otherwise other games usually locked down other genres besides fantasy and became that genre's gateway: CoC - Horror, Traveller - Hard SciFi, FASA Mechwarrior/Battletech - Mecha Duels Melodrama, WEG SW - Space Opera... (Post Apocalypse was always an interesting free-for-all fight, as is appropriate given the genre.)

Nowadays I think the current lack of GMs is due to people not wanting to start juggling all those expected ON material. ( "Curation. Curation. Curation.") It's intimidating for anyone's start. That said, Starter Set & Essentials do a solid job, and I think better than the 3e/3.5e and 4e/Essentials starters. Not as sleek and free as WW starter pamphlets and the like, but enough to guide the new as I saw for myself.

The bigger question is why this as old as the hills 'crabs in a bucket' envy to attract new players to other games? D&D already spoke for itself over the years. Other games have been speaking for themselves for ages too. But desperate ain't sexy; talk up your non-D&D favorite and be alluring. If it doesn't attract your latest desired targets, well, maybe that's not what those people want out of the hobby right now. However it could just be social media being social media to be paid in validation clicks.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

I think D&D during the TSR era was more of a gateway than ever since WOTC took over, in large part because the other games that TSR published (usually) were built around systems that weren't D&D. Even if you intended to be a TSR purist, if you tried and liked, say, Top Secret or Star Frontiers or Marvel Super Heroes, then it was less of a leap to acknowledge that there might be other non-D&D systems you might also enjoy, that just might be published by someone else other than TSR.

Although it was less so by the time I started getting into gaming in the 90's, I think the real gateway to other systems was Dragon magazine back in the late 70's and throughout the 80's, at a time when many D&D players considered Dragon essential reading. The occasional articles, and of course the ads, that couldn't help but draw your attention if you had any inclination toward gaming outside of the boundaries of D&D.

(I suspect that a huge amount of the sales for the 2nd edition of Villains & Vigilantes came from when they ran ads in Dragon that would include stats and a picture of a super you could use in your V&V games. Seriously, those ads were great.)

 

[Toadmaster]

I can only assume you just haven't seen Hawk The Slayer

That is a fantasy film, not an RPG film. It is a small niche of a niche, and most in the niche are awful.

 

[David Johansen]

Dragon Magazine was a great gateway to other games. I suppose that's why WotC ditched it. Like it or not, D&D is the biggest point of entry. It would be nice if it wasn't but I'm not really sure what else could take its place. I imagine the closest contender would be Warhammer 40k. If it were to get a really good, high budget film or TV show and somehow the rpg was also good and got the right attention and copies in GW stores which were cheaper than getting into the miniatures game. After that, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Marvel have had their shot and it never worked out.

The ideal thing would be for and open source generic system to have a cultural moment (I dunno, Oprah praises it constantly or something) where the key thing was that it was a gateway for personal creativity and in hitting the sweet spot of clean and simple mechanics and a few key creators with brilliant ideas and artwork who don't turn out to be assholes. It'd probably help if schools and churches pushed it for a year and then banned it and loudly protested against it for a while.

 

[Endless Flight]

My brick and mortar store back in the day was Waldenbooks. It was essentially my gateway to RPGs.

 

[Acmegamer]

I think yes, but not as much as D&D fans would have us believe.

It brings people to other games in the sense that they come to D&D and then a tiny percentage look elsewhere when that grows thin.

But it's probably less of a decent entry to other RPGs than pretty much any other game on the market.

It is to RPGs what Little Wars H.G.Wells is to historical miniatures gaming.

Fixed that for you. All those pretenders to the throne beware.

 

[Ravenswing]

As someone who started RPG's with The Fantasy Trip, in 1980, and a few months later, tried D&D and thought it was really dumb by comparison, I feel like I need to regularly represent those of us who didn't start RP'ing with D&D, and those of us who never got into D&D ...

I hate being on a TFT or GURPS forum, and seeing people looking for ways to have D&D expectations happen in those games. "My character just died when they got hit in the head with a battleaxe!" or "How do I have a party of four beginning adventurers enter a dungeon full of monsters and survive and kill them all without anyone dying or taking serious injuries. It's 'no fun' to have to stop adventuring to heal."

It's one reason why I never cottoned to the Dungeon Fantasy line (except in so far as there's a lot of neat stuff in it that can go into any GURPS game). Look, if you want to play DF, D&D's been doing that for half a century now.

The first paragraph's the main deal, though. Like Skarg, I started gaming with another system -- EPT, in my case, in the 70s. And this points to the essential element to the OP: how many of you started gaming with something OTHER than D&D?

Now factor in that this is a relatively small forum comprised of a lot of posters who do different games -- instead of the (probably) many D&D-centric forums.

I've introduced a lot of people to playing GURPS over the years. According to my records, I've had 71 players since I flipped from TFT in '85. Several were new to the hobby; around six or seven had played GURPS before. So by definition, the great majority of my players started somewhere else, and it's very likely they started with D&D.

 

[lategamer]

I think you have a point. Most other 2nd tier games have a fair amount of support, for example Call of Cthulhu.

In the article I was reading,

5e had 50%+ of the market.
CoC had 10%
D&D3.5 had 3%

And pretty much everything else had ~1% or less. The "rest" of smaller than 1%s made up around 11% or 16% I think. I can't recall exactly.

I guess what I'm wondering is what percentage of people actually escape the gravity well of D&D. D&D sources say they got a massive shot in the arm from Stranger Things. A real bump in sales. They'll get another from the new movie. And this is on top of no-one other than specialist FLGS (of which we have 1 in Northern Ireland) carrying anything bit D&D. I went into Forbidden Planet a few days ago - all they have is D&D. And the cherry on the cake is the number of times you might have to say "A bit like D&D" to get someone to understand what roleplaying is because that's the only touchpoint they have.

If they have the biggest brand, market saturation, mindshare, active promotion and licensing (cartoon, movies), accidental promotion (do you think they PAID to be in Stranger Things? or E.T.?), I think that people playing other games are just contrarian weirdos (hey, they're my people!).

 

[PolarBlues]

One thing that people never really seem to mention in these discussions is my personal take on why D&D is so successful in comparison to much of the opposition and that is simply modules and campaigns. Dozens and dozens of well presented, usually well written and totally usable adventures.

Other games may have a well known campaign or two; for D&D you can have a top ten of great campaigns and a top 50 of other adventures.

I think it goes further than that. Place yourself in the mind of kid who has never played a roleplaying game, never heard of these well known-modules or even know they exist. What they get with (many? most?) version of D&D is a section with the minimal viable instructions for creating their own game;
(1) draw some rooms,
(2) roll on various tables to stock it with treasures and monsters
(3) play.

This may not produce the most polished gaming experience, but is something even a total novice , who is already confused enough by this "you play characters" stuff, can grab hold off. Not a lot of non-D&D inspired games provide this.