It is, after all, the beginning of all online games. It tops every game because it is infinite. Every game has limits, even Minecraft, Dungeons and Dragons doesn't. Actually, dungeons and dragons should be the most popular game, no matter if online games, board games etc. I took part of League of Legends a few days ago and inserted a huge dragon, against which my 5 teammates then fought Combat of course done. The next day they did a fight against a Titan that I took from World of Warcraft to protect God. It's just fantastic. Why hardly anyone likes that?
When you talk about pen and paper in general, it's already very popular.
But if you're just talking about dungeons and dragons, that wasn't the first pen and paper, it just builds on that.
Here in Germany dungeons and dragons are not very popular, mostly dsa (the black eye) is used as the main rule set.
Dungeons & Dragons shouldn't be famous?
I think it may not be so famous here in Germany, but it is definitely famous in America and everyone knows it. I think it is rather badly spread in Europe / Asia
D&D is already known.
But there are now so many rules, especially more entry-friendly, and above all more flexible, that D&D is "just" another name between DSA and Pathfinder.
We have reactivated our group since Corona, but none of us has had any experience with the 5th edition. We first had to get used to two sessions. This works out; but only if there's at least rudimentary knowledge. If you start directly with Pen & Paper I would rather recommend FATE. You can easily overlay any scenario. No matter of fantasy, film noir or SF. And you can also play it with normal D6.
D&D is also known among role players here, just like DSA or HeroQuest. All great games that you hardly know these days is simply because people prefer things like WoW etc pp…
I still have them all here in the closet, as well as a few old Magic the Gathering card decks.
But I don't understand why. It beats the PC for miles. Still everyone likes it more
Because it has just become too exhausting for many, you open the box on the PC, open the game and you can basically start with it.
Magic the Gathering and DSA were also available as PC games, but that too had more charm than some modern Rpg.
With DSA, for example, you only needed a few keys, but most of the things you could do with the arrow keys… Magic, on the other hand, was a pure mouse click game, you could put together your deck as you wanted and then play against the computer.
I think it's a shame that something like this doesn't happen too often anyhow, but there are still a few people who have contact with such things.
Dungeon and Dragons or Pen and Paper Games are still a niche hobby. Its popularity has been in waves for the past few decades.
In its early days, in the late 70s, it was so popular that there was TV advertising for DSA and D&D in Germany in the 80s. The game boxes could be bought in every department store, not like today, only in special hobby shops. The rules deterred many players and they weren't very easy to get started with. Back then, only nerds and nerds played these games. Bad press ("Satanic Panic") then made it disappear again.
In the 90s, games like vampires, werewolf and mage finally also addressed female gamers. But it is still difficult to explain the gameplay to outsiders.
Magic and WoW have pushed pen and paper to the very edge of the general perception. Although WoW have now made the RPG mechanisms widely known.
Only through the social media and the boom of the 80s is pen and paper better known than ever. See Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things etc.
The gameplay can finally be spread widely through YT. In the meantime, PnP is more about the story told together than tactical battles like in the table top.
A Kickstarter project filming Let's Palys in a D&D round on Twitch has raised $ 11 million. D&D is more famous than ever at the moment.
If you want to know more about the history of D&D, I recommend this podcast:
https://www.3w6-podcast.com/podcast/2019/9/4/zeitsprung-crossover-eine-kleine-geschichte-von-dungeons-amp-dragons
Hopefully I could help.
