In 2019 geeks thought D&D was past its heyday

Nostalgia is a powerful sentiment, and it encourages us to view the past with rosetinted glasses. In contrast, being optimistic about the future seems much harder to do.

In November 2019, 8 months ago, long before Wizards of the Coast had felt the need for their diversity statement, Geek Native ran a survey to discover whether D&D was at peak popularity.

Yeah, I should get swifter at writing these surveys up, but at least we can now make an interesting comparison.

Also, please note, this was not a scientifically robust survey. It was part of a competition to win Mind Flayer drinking coasters which means people may have simply clicked at radio buttons to make a grab at the prize without due consideration for the question. Despite the geeky prize non-geeks may have entered. Lastly, there were just over 100 entries, and that’s not a huge amount.

There was just about 5% difference between the “been more popular” and the “will get even more popular”, but if you add in the “at its peak”, then the clear majority of respondents in this survey thought the only way for D&D to go was down.

The survey doesn’t entertain options like D&D 6e or even a 5.5 revision that makes significant tweaks to races. The success or failure on either of those two options would be dramatic.

Equally, the Dungeons & Dragons movie could yank the popularity needle in either direction.

What do you think?

Using Google Polls, Geek Native has opened the survey again (sorry, no Mind Flayer prize this time) with all four options repeated.

If you’re on a mobile phone, you may need to scroll within the poll iframe to see the options.

[Survey link]

Is D&D at peak popularity

Google updates the results of the new poll into this chart after a few minutes. You can see how readers have been voting and, after a short wait and a refresh, how your vote has influenced the final score.

Creative Commons credit: Cave Dragon by Robert Crescenzio.