D&D has been around since I was a kid but I’ve always wondered, since the game is really not your typical “Hey, let’s pull out a board game and play for a couple hours”, and people unfamiliar with don’t understand its not a something you can set up in 10 minutes, how many of these got sold on a whim and people later discovered that it was just way too involved and never bothered to play.
Now I’m sure there are separate predesigned quests you purchase, but with the initial beginner’s set there is no “game” there. You have to find a DM who will create a quest out of their imagination.
Just wondering how many copies of these got sold at Target/Walmart by a well meaning adult buying for their kid or family only to later find out “what the hell did I just buy? Yeah, this is never going to get played.”
The number of unplayed D&D = the number of unread copies of A Brief History of Time
WAG: I’m gonna say 20% were bought/gifted by people who had no idea what they were getting into and never got as far as an abortive two hour experience.
On the flip side, I’ll guess that at least 40% of other TTRPGs sit unplayed, bought with the intent of starting a game but never getting off the ground. Probably because everyone else only wanted to play D&D. Or were bought basically for idea fodder for a D&D game.
I don’t think that I ever bought one of the books but I tried to go through the character creation - from the online rules - once and, try as I might, I couldn’t find a character sheet that matched the fields described by the rules and, probably, a quarter of the fields on the sheets were, invariably, not to be found in the rules.
I felt like that was enough information to tell me that, basically, you could just come up with almost any set of rules that felt fair to you and run with it and the books don’t serve as anything more than inspiration for cooperative storytelling where overly unrealistic participants are tied down by hiring a referee to make up something on the spot that demonstrates the unrealism.
I don’t see the value of buying a whole book when I was just able to give all of the rules that matter in just that one paragraph.
I own about 30 GURPS source books and have never actually played the game. To be fair they are fun reads on their own.
(GURPS—Generic Unvirsal Role Playing System)
I doubt that there were very many people who bought it without knowing what they were getting into, because the books are much more expensive than most tabletop games. Someone might drop ten bucks on a board game just in case they ever get a chance to play it, but when it’s $50, that’s not so likely.
The starter set for 5e is like $15-$20 though. I doubt a lot of people are just loading up with a Player’s Handbook, DM’s Guide, Monster Manual, etc for the hell of it but I could easily see someone buying (or getting) a Starter Set or the old Red Box and setting it aside before ever playing. Or people who may have bought one for the tie-in (Stranger Things, Rick & Morty). Or people who wanted to play but just never got a few interested friends to schedule for it.
Only about 10 never-actually played GURPS sourcebooks for me. And, I agree, they are excellent source material, and usually very well-researched.
I honestly could see someone buying the Monster Manual just to read the monster descriptions without any intent of playing the game. I did-it was a fun read.
That’s fair and I could see that. I was just saying that, while a whole D&D “kit” isn’t likely to be bought without a plan and intent, it’s still pretty easy to “buy a D&D game” for not much money. Or get one as a gift. Or to know what D&D “is” but start reading the rules and just think “eh, maybe later”, etc. Maybe my 20% guess is too high but I’m still going to say between 10-20% based between the initial start-up investment from the DM in time and prep and the need to get some like-minded people on board.
I assume the rate for other RPGs is much higher because it’s harder to find players and many of those likely were intentionally bought as “fun to read” or get ideas from by people who are already into RPGs. And probably some percentage bought by franchise fans who just wanted the merch or lore, like someone buying Star Wars RPG products to read more Star Wars universe stuff but not intending to actually run a game.
Since everything is WAG, I’m guessing something like 10-20% (similar to others) - but more likely from friends saying ‘hey you should really try this’ rather than parents or the like. Various starter sets provided a lot more ‘all-in-one’ options than buying individual books, but still, it was a confusing buy for someone who wasn’t already in the know.
I personally own a ton of games that I’ve never played, but that was because I’d often buy up the discount bin / used copies of games that were never played and mine them for ideas for other campaigns and settings. And I have TTRPGs that I bought because we intended to have a game set within them which fell apart for all the usual reasons but I was bound and determined to have the rules because I am a self-aware and semi-recovering powergamer/rules lawyer.
Honestly though, it reminds me of myself and others in the more modern gaming environment that have dozens of purchased but un-played Steam Games that we thought would be cool and/or were purchased on sale, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Although during the early days of COVID, I did burn through 3-4 of those and at least started a half dozen others.
I began role-playing with AD&D, and the three large hardcover books. But I bought a set of the original booklets, just as a historical curiosity.
I have a good number of games I haven’t played, but just because I grabbed something that looked good (or was cheap/free) and my friends weren’t interested. But I’ve read them all.
And we have a TON of board games still in plastic, because we don’t have time for them.
I still have an unwrapped Settlers of Catan which I was given in 2016.
I suspect that, for most other RPGs, a significant fraction of sales is to people who say to themselves “I should get my D&D group into this”, and a significant fraction of them then don’t go on to get into it. But for D&D itself, that dynamic wouldn’t apply.
Back in my day, the D&D Basic Set came with a “predesigned quest” (The Keep on the Borderlands).
I don’t know what you get nowadays when you “buy D&D,” but surely they sell user-friendly versions that include something to allow beginners to begin playing as soon as possible?
They do sell a boxed set for 5E, which contains pregenerated characters, instructions created for first-time players, and an adventure that can get the characters up to 5th level or so (link below). But, even so, getting started in D&D, if you (and your friends) have never played an RPG before, is a very different thing than picking up a new board game. OTOH, thanks to social media, Youtube, and TV shows like Stranger Things, a lot of new players likely are already familiar with how RPGs actually play.
https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Starter-Set-5th/dp/B07D5ZL8WB/
It would apply to supplements, though. I think my husband often never even intends to play half the supplements he orders. He just likes reading them, and even just the actually having them. Collectors collect.
Timely example: he juat ordered SpellJammer. I doubt he will ever play it, any more than he played the 2nd edition SpellJammer it will sit next to.
I was going to mention this as I remember that it did come with some sort of game included which I think had a puzzle of what letter is next in this sequence OTTFFSS which the answer is E.
I had the top secret SI game set with sourcebooks and I even had the rare as hell 3 book set on real espionage agents and operations (the 60s/70s Mossad were insane and f’n lucky )… and someone going through my stuff ruined all of it … I never got anyone to play it tho but it sounded fun as heck tho