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Is D&D A Monopoly (Extended) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-04 15:16:47
Imported:
2026-06
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How much of a market share does D&D have--and is it changing? PDM analyzes.

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Is D&D A Monopoly

Comments

Brian Carthey

Thank you for sharing your work while you develop Deathbringer. I also understand how hurtful broken trust can be and hope it doesn’t discourage you continuing. You inspire and get my own creative process flowing! What I find odd with WOTC is they dominate the table top RPG and TCG world but want to move into a digital world that they compete with video games and other digital producers?

Graham Kane

The thought that a patron actually put your work up out there is pretty shitty. I know it's no consolation but it happens with pretty much everything now, Shadowdark (which I backed on Kickstarter myself) is also up on Scribd. It's just a shame that it disproportionally hurts the small creators a lot more. Like Brian said, I hope it doesn't discourage you from sharing your thoughts and processes.

Scott Spears

D&D is the big dog on the block but I think there is room for indies. I'm trying to get my group interested in Shadowdark but they are so married to the D&D Beyond and the ilk it is tough. Sorry to hear somebody is putting your stuff out there for free. I make films and teaching filmmaking and I talk to my students about downloading films for free and the cost to indie filmmakers. I've seen it up close and personal.

Matthew Crismali

Dan - love what you do. I currently only patron your patreon. Looking forward to whatever you do in the future. I'm saddened to hear someone put up your Deathbringer game on scribd. I hope Deathbringer tracks them down and they get what they deserve.

Gregory Helding

I feel D&D is the market maker. Without a behemoth like that, indie games would be a niche of a niche market - and maybe not worth the effort commercially. I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that it’s up to GMs to do their part. I was recently asked to run a D&D game for Halloween. I brought and ran a DCC funnel instead and they all loved it. I’m also part of a weekly group that has rotating GMs and tries different systems all the time. We’ve actually never played 5E. What I find is that once you play a few systems, you begin to appreciate the RPG as an art form and not a brand. We enjoy experimenting with how the different mechanics mix and match to produce different play styles.

Gregory Helding
>>121441104

What I’ve done is just have a new game all set up when people show for the session. Shadowdark’s half-sheet character sheets are easy to navigate and 5E players can adapt easily to it. They may just need the push.

Spencer Wright

Some people just suck. Poleaxe them with a C&D!

Steven Bogart

I read Dragon magazine when the issues you showed came out. At the time, there were not a lot of other sources of information about rpgs. Today, the internet makes it much easier for people to find out about the world of rpgs beyond D&D. Thanks for the great content. Sad and frustrating that someone is posting your work elsewhere.

Keith

Does D&D lift all boats? I guess I would say that it used to, but I don't think it does that so much anymore, and I would expect less so in the future. Particularly if you're right that One D&D will eventually be some kind of separate video gamey thing (like Epic Games' Fortnite maybe?)

Elvis Ramone

As far as bringing people into the home brew style, Olde Swords Reign, Five Torches Deep and Shadowdark are the best stepping stones, in my opinion. The first two are both good, but from what I see Shadowdark has the key ingredient, a pretty large community. Yes it is dint of the OGL debacle, but the iron was hot and Kelsey struck true. Even those that are anti-OSR talk about Shadowdark. These three games all have taken the best of 3, 3.5 and 5E mechanically and added back in the best of the old school, danger and choice not restrained by a character sheet. Now to keep the momentum up, that's the rub.

Elvis Ramone

I read Dragon religiously from #74-#128, but my favorite was White Dwarf, until it became worse than just a showcase for GW models and games, but a catalog with one article per magazine. The old ones from the early days were packed full of advertisements for other companies, articles about other games and gaming insight. It was some really good stuff.

jnlsn family

D&D is good for the hobby but not at the pace that indie game developers want- you gotta wait 20 years. You don't know how right you are when you say you have to make new players. All 3 of my kids play, they all started with D&D but now they play everything. This type of player will be the future of gaming.

SJBehindtheScreen

risky move for someone to go up against Deathbringer wielding a +2 sword of C&D!

Chuck Thorin

Break out the C&D. But seriously, I've pretty felt that way about WOTC for a long time now. But I will say that DriveThruRPG is also acting like a monopoly.

MrGunn

Greetings PDM. I hope you are feeling well, give us a health update when you can. Lot's to unpack here, first of all, F'ing Phil, that guy, am I right?! 🤣🤣🤣 An interesting question crossed my mind maybe you have an answer, has the actual percentage of TTRPG players increased relative to population growth? In other words if there was a population of 1000 people and 1% played TTRPGs or 10 people, over 20 years the population grew to 10,000, is the relative number of players still 1% or 100 players or is that number now 5% or 500 players? Is D&D a monopoly? 🤔 Hmmm... I think that when it comes to consumer choice, no, however, D&D's brand recognition is so great it is synonymous relative to TTRPGs like Q-Tips, Kleenix, Frisbee, Band-Aids (plasters), and Xerox (for the youngsters in the room, Xerox made photocopiers a household name, it is how we oldsters made duplicates of hardcopy documents before scanners, PDFs, and personal printers.) so it overshadows everything else. Normies don't know Call of Cthulhu or Traveller or Path Finder, but they do know D&D. Further the choice I mentioned above is more like regional food specialties little known outside of their region or those in the know, Maid-Rites, Cincinnati Chilli, Tenderloin Sandwich, or coleslaw and chili on a buger. I think as you and others have predicted, D&D and TTRPGs are headed for a digital divide. With one faction headed towards a Baldur's Gate experience and another set headed towards the Lost City. It won't surprise me to see the D&D VTT evolve into a more digital game with seasons aka DLCs that one subscribes to and you just log on and play with a bunch of randos and an AI DM.

MrGunn
>>121460483

Those Son's of Beehivez, $3.99 and you are stealing it, come on!

Chuck Thorin
>>121504745

OH and just picked up Fleaux by Kobayshi. Even more along the lines of Deathbring and Warhammer Fantasy...Just saying.

Bagel-Man

That is such a shame about the piracy of Death Bringer.

samurguybri

That sucks that someone shared your stuff. No honor and no privacy these days. On another note Erik Tenkar just put looked over some data showing the the prime customers for DnD are people in their 35-50’s or something like that. it should be easier getting those big fish to move to the Dark Side of DnD since they are cynical X’ers and hate a lot of corporate stuff. Seriously though, there should be a way to tap into that demographic who has al the money and support indie game makers.

samurguybri
>>121459850

We play 5Td and the kid who i helped into the hobby and who is a DM in his game club at school ran that system for us today!!!

Jared Davis

Professor, you’re the anti-monopoly for RPGs. Due to your work on YouTube and your Patreon, I gained awareness of many independent RPGs. I’ve purchased most of them. I now have dozens of such games in my library. As a hobbyist game designer, your ideas combined with what I learn from other systems helps me to use and / or modify them for my own use. I’m sorry to hear some have chosen to pirate your work online. Personally, I’ve enjoyed each iteration of Deathbringer you’ve released. Perhaps it will make you feel better to know that even though I’m a patron, I bought an extra copy of the Deathbringer tri-fold to help support your continued work. Maybe others have also. In closing, thank you for being part of the open, abundance-minded community of independent RPG publishers and for sharing your ideas with your audience. I especially like it when you have an idea and later state that you’ve changed your mind or reversed course. I hope to meet you in person someday. In the mean time, I hope you’re able to pay off your house when you’d like to do so. Take care.

MrGunn
>>121534685

As a Gen Xer, I should be insulted, but being a Gen Xer I can't bring myself to care. 🤣🤣🤣

Gregory Helding
>>121534685

I think Tenkar’s video was saying that OSR gamers skew older and have more money than 5E players. The 35-50 demo is prime customer base that every product goes after because we have money. In that video, Tenkar advocated not ignoring the younger (and other) 5E players, but trying to attract them into the OSR because it needs new blood to continue and grow. I would expand that sentiment to indie and small publisher games. (As PDM rightly points out, all other publishers are “small” compared to Wizards).

Chuck Thorin
>>121504745

Yes. But any Indie game that isn't on DriveThru has even more cards stacked against them. Plus they sort of do price fixing with their terms & conditions for the non-exclusive license. If you sell something somewhere else, you have to sell if for the same price.

samurguybri
>>121534685

Perhaps I misunderstood the video. I thought they were referring to 5E customers, I’ll do a rewatch.

Van Davis

I keep getting a note that the video does not exist from Vimeo

Nicholas Sokeland

A rising tide might lift all boats, but D&D crowds the harbor. There's an industry that's not even controlled by Hasbro of creating content for 5e. People create and sell material for the game, run paid sessions, stream game sessions, or create videos discussing 5e and how best to play the game. D&D has definitely lifted those boats. But, between all that content and the sunk-cost of not just the beyond subscription but the money paid for books and the time spent learning the game, it's hard to get past D&D to all of the other stuff. Those who do get past D&D are probably going to run into Pathfinder - yet another complicated fantasy RPG system. The internet provides an infinite marketspace, but discovery of new products seems to be difficult, and your average person probably isn't getting past Coke (D&D) and Pepsi (Pathfinder).

NØKKEN_WAITS

I have a 5E group i run (we started playing 4.5 years ago!) and when I broached the subject of changing system, there was panic among the players. SO, I started introducing "homebrew rules". Now what we play is barely recognisable as 5e. We even have deathbringer dice, lots of Runehammer ideas... the next step will be doing away with the dumb and slow as hell initiative system. It'll be "sit in the order you want to go in". Basically ,the players have their 5E character sheets, but the chassis we actually play on is a whole new beast. What I do is actually closer to Mork Borg/deathbringer in play style, which I (and my players) find WAY more fun and cinematic. Your channel is the one I stumbled across four years ago when I was frustrated with 5E. I had played 3.5 as a kid, but my GM had handwaved so many of the complexities so me and my ADHD riddled friends could understand what was happening. I found the 5E GM's guide felt sort of... unhelpful? Way to much about money, and page filling crap. Barely anything on engaging players. Then, lo and behold; dungeoncraft came to the rescue! Thats so frustrating about deathbringer getting leaked like that. It's a really, really cool system, and I for one look forward to pledging and buying the actual printed product.

Ruben Benes

As a fellow teacher, I can relate to the end statement :P When wizards did the OGL thing, I said to my players that I would be swapping systems to pf2e. I got a complaint, and my answer were along the lines of: "Alright, but I'm the gm, so I decide the system. If you want to play something else, then I'll be happy to play in your 5e campaign, but I will not be running the game anymore." After that he stopped complaining :) I think that if we as game masters just put our foot down, there is nothing the players can to to oppose us. I use more time to worldbuild and prep sessions than they will ever do building characters and learning the system, and so it is actually more important for the game that I'm having fun during that process, which I now am. I love the pathfinder monsters, they feel more unique and they give me ideas for story hooks. The 3-action economy is also easier for new players than the "action, bonus-action-movement" thing from 5e which I disliked from the start. Also, all the pf2e content other than modules is free, so the sunk cost thing is removed :D

Adam

There are many many games out there. Cheaper than Hasbro's version. As far as I can tell they don't set the price of the printed version the printers do. Hasbro suck, no argument, they dominate the market unfortunately... I can't get people to try OSE or Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Not that I am ever going to quit trying. :) As much as Hasbro sucks, I would not say they have a Monopoly. They might have millions of dollars for marketing, we pretty much just have you and a few others. That is the difference.

John Mason

Hey Professor great video funny enough I had a argument with one of my players about this exact subject the other day. Been trying to switch from 5e to play other stuff but man it’s been a uphill battle.

Mark Hanson

Great video as always, sir! I am currently running a Castles and Crusades game for a friend and his wife ( they are each playing two characters which is interesting), and I had a conversation with him about this topic a week ago. He also runs a D&D 5E game for our other friends, and while he did say he prefers D&D, he also admitted that if he decides to run a game at GenCon next year, he'd likely run C&C because it is simpler to run. So I take that as a bit of encouragement. Win'em over one at a time.... I am also troubled to hear of people stealing Deathbringer and putting it up on web sites. It's not like it's expensive to buy.I picked up the latest version off of DTRPG and quite like it after reading it over, and if I weren't already running C&C I'd be looking to run it as well, or Five Torches Deep. I love your content and the videos where we get a glimpse at your thought process as a DM and creator are very helpful. Your videos have inspired me to use some house rules in my C&C game, such as DM Scotty's Luck Dice and your tips on making the game run faster have been aces. May all your dice explode (in the good way, not the horrific way).

Brian Peters

Awesome insights. Glad to know Dragonbane is getting some love. I am really loving everything free league puts out. Looks like they have another kickstarter starting in Dec.

MrGunn
>>121579590

@Ruben Benes There is nothing more satisfying than putting your foot down on the player's necks, am I right! 🤣🤣🤣

Ben McInnis

"Have you ever heard of Pathfinder?" PDM: "Yes, I've heard of it..." (disdain implied, lol)

MrGunn
>>121680522

@Ben McInnis LOL yes, Pathfinder, the RPG with a rule for that...