Looking at Roll20 numbers
- after a drop from a peak in 2019 on Roll20, 5e increases a bit, remains largest with >50%
- the is coherent with trend seen on Obsidian Portal, both show lots of other games, no single major challenger
- in contrast to the 4e era, there is no obvious threat (then Pathfinder) to fight off with a radical redesign
- there seems to be a ceiling for D&D at ~ 75-80% of TTRPG players
- this shows why the mood music from WotC points to the planned 50th anniversary edition in 2024 being a continuity edition not a radical change
Looking at the latest from Roll20 and setting them as the full-year 2021 representative we can now set out the last seven years, charting the rise of 5e. This continues the discussion on edition evolution we have been having here for a bit.
The down-tick in 5e numbers over 2020 and 2021 does not read to me like cause for rushing a new edition in 2024, mainly because while 5e is down a chunk, there is no serious contender to capture back a chunk of the market from. Things have diffused, people have wandered off in a bunch of different directions, but for the core block of people playing something that looks like D&D, they are mostly playing 5e.
Compare this to the longer-term view we get from the Obsidian Portal campaigns; here we get to see almost all of 4e and the pattern that must have freaked out the people at WotC at the time and driven the push to do something very different from 4e.
In 2009 we had a somewhat similar D&D dominance with ~ 51% of all campaigns played with 4e, another ~21% still with 3.5e and ~22% playing non-D&D. By 2014 Pathfinder has grown to take 31% of the pie, more or less taken straight from 4e (down to 5%). 4e was now behind 3.5e which was at 9% and there were almost as many people testing Next (4%). Retro-clones had grown to equal 4e at 5%. Non-D&D TTRPGs had doubled to 44%. One can imagine the tense discussions at WotC, their flagship was now trailing not only its previous edition, but the *retro-clones of the editions before that*, never mind Pathfinder which at least did them the flattery of taking 3.5e and developing it further.
If alarm bells had not been set off by this, at the same time ICv2 reports in late 2013 were showing D&D placing 3rd or lower behind both Pathfinder and Star Wars. Non-D&D was driven by Savage Worlds, FATE, Shadowrun, World of Darkness and Star Wars at the time. We will take a look at the biggest non-D&D games at a later point.
Looking to the future, while WotC has declared the 50th anniversary edition in 2024, there are none of the flashing red lights they would have seen at the last edition change. It seems unlikely WotC would shoot for something too radically different so as to avoid upsetting this (for them) nicely set up apple-cart. While there are calls from the margins to rework various bits of 5e, from lore to mechanics, 5e continues to sit solidly atop the ICv2 "top RPGs" and increasingly it is being joined in the top 5 by 5e-compatible stuff from other publishers. I think that unless there is a significant shift where WotC heads off in a new direction and the play-space splinters like during 4e, the room for retro-clones will remain constrained, effectively in head-to-head competition with the 5e behemoth.
While there has been chatter about rehabilitating 4e or at least recognising that it got some things right, I think the 2024 release will be a 5.5e more likely than a very different 6e. This 5.5e will be backwards compatible, similar with tweaks. 4e shows the risks if things go wrong while 3.5e at the same time shows the resilience of a prefered edition even without ongoing support. To me it looks like the potential space for a new edition of D&D is the gap between the current edition and about 75% of TTRPG players - the other 25% prefer different systems and genres and are not going to be brought in with yet another D&D edition.
At present 5e still has most of that 75% potential 'hearts and wallets' with WotC benefitting from the earlier editions through DriveThru and other sales of their back catalog. They also managed to claw back much of what they lost to Pathfinder. If I were WotC, I would see a lot of downside risk and not a lot of upside potential in a radical change at this point.
Similarly, for those throwing rocks at independent companies creating 5e compatible versions of their stuff (Symbaroum, Iron Kingdoms, etc) - this very much looks to me like the sensible thing to do that they may survive. Recognising that there will be a chunk of folk out there playing merrily away in pure analogue space without any online footprint and another chunk who may be online but like games that do not require VTTs like Roll20 or campaign management systems like Obsidian Portal - there are no signs that these are massive chunks that radically change this picture.
I think the 'time between editions' argument is an interesting one for an edition that has held its share of market so long. What happens when everyone has their PHB? I think the answer is 'you sell them minis' or potentially digital bells and whistles but we must wait and see. Possibly the answer is 'you sell more PHB's by massively expanding the player base' but as Enworlds catalogue of mass media articles reflects, there continues to be surprise at D&D's resurgence, so maybe there is still momentum in the growth.
Personally, I am happy enough to see a relatively strong continuity - I would like to see more settings and adventure anthologies rather than another ruleset.
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