Nine THOUSAND people responded to a survey, saying
what they really think about Dungeons & Dragons and its parent company Wizards of the Coast!
And we’re gonna look at the results to find out if the people love them, or hate them; think
they’re getting more popular or less popular; do they like the direction of
the game and company, or not?? Because I’m Bob, this is where we learn
how to have more fun playing RPGs together, and there's an asterisk on this data. WotC
published this survey, shared it on Twitter, but they were probably ever gonna share these
fascinating results! So I made a copy of the survey and a video about it with a sarcastically
conspiratorial tone of WotC hiding the real data. But then coincidentally, their one week-old
survey CLOSED, like right after my video went up! So comments and response videos
doubled-down on this coverup idea, meaning a lot of people were drawn to this
satisfaction survey with a negative pretext. However, we must also acknowledge that
even the official WotC survey wasn’t gonna capture a great sample!
Maybe it was shared elsewhere, but only about 800 people took the millisecond
of time to heart their Tweet about it. We got 9000 actual responses! So huge thanks to
everyone who took the survey and shared it! Now following Sly Flourish’s advice, I’ll be sharing my predictions of the results
for each question, which I wrote ahead of time, and then viewing the results for the first
time, and we can discuss them from there! Question 1. How do you feel
about Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)? I think this is gonna be roughly 50/50 “love
the game” and “like the game” because I believe the vast majority of people who watch my videos
and the Professor’s video understand that “D&D” means pretty much any game with d20 a rolling
Strength, Dexterity, there’s dragons, owlbears, elves, etc. And since we make videos almost
exclusively about how fun these games are, I think the people who watch our video
agree with that! Let’s check it out!... oh boy okay 30% love sorry 35% love 39% like
and then a larger portion of neutral don'tlike and even hate than I would have suspect it I
overestimated the love the like is pretty accurate and I completely underestimated the neutral and
don't like and hate because I assume that would be pretty much zero now I have to assume that
comes down to people's interpretation of what is DND D but nonetheless there's a lot of
love and a lot of like for DND D out there And I’m glad to see that so many people are still
happy with D&D because, like I said earlier, so am I! That’s why I still make videos about it,
and it’s why I’m launching my first Kickstarter TODAY, to publish a whole dang book about how
to actually run dungeons! DELVE: (tagline) How to Build AND Survive Deadly Dungeons! Because it’s
got material for game masters and for players. It starts with my own compilation of the best advice
and guidelines for designing and safely exploring dungeons! It has simple but thorough rules for
creating and solving traps and puzzles; and it’s got a bunch of dungeons to play, traps, puzzles, and monsters that you can
plug right into your game! Some of those monsters are crafted
by Professor DM, Hankerin Ferinale, Ginny Di, DnD Shorts and more of your favorite
creators! And to really make this happen, I’ve partnered up with Eventyr Games
who has published several successful 5e Kickstarters, BUT we’re also producing
a Shadowdark version of this entire book, and whichever version you get, you
get both PDFs for the price of one! Also, for players, there’s new races, new
subclasses for 5e and talent tables for Shadowdark, there’s dice, and there’s cards of
all this stuff for easy GM reference-- and yes, so the PCs can activate your trap card-- and if
you back the Kickstarter in the first 48 hours, you can get special holographic
cards of our dungeons’ boss monsters! So shiny stuff aside, we’re making this
book because we love D&D! We feel like 5e needs this support for dungeons
as a foundational part of the game, and Shadowdark is already aligned with what
I want to do, it’s awesome in its own right, and it helps bridge the gap from 5e to games
like Dungeon Crawl Classics. So, thank you for listening to all that, I’m very excited, and
please use the link below to check it DELVE today! Whew, okay. 2. When was the last time you
recommended D&D to someone else? One minute ago! Nah, but I think most
people taking this survey have probably not recommended D&D to someone in the last
month, partially because most people aren’t making videos and publishing materials for
the game! But generally, I don’t think most people are going around to their coworkers or
classmates telling them they should play D&D. Let’s just say 80% sometime in the past year,
20% haven’t done it in more than a year. Aaand… and we got 30% in the past year wow and yeah
a whole 20% actually saying they have in the past month and then 40% % more than a year ago so
people are definitely recommending it more than I thought and I guess less than I thought if uh the
percentage from more than a year ago is is higher I guess overall it is a more even distribution
than I would have guessed with that sliver of never people have never recommended it which is
interesting in itself I would not have suspected that anyone here has never recommended D and
D like who who are you playing with maybe they were the newest person in a group and then
they never brought anybody else in but yeah And hey, maybe that has something
to do with this next one! 3. Do you think D&D is becoming less popular,
becoming more popular, or staying the same? I think the majority of people
watching videos about D&D on YouTube, have probably only started playing
within the last 5 or maybe 10 years, or started playing AGAIN in that timeframe after a
long break since the 80s or 90s. And technically, I think the majority of people who have EVER
played D&D have only started in this last decade because of the incredible growth since the launch
of 5e and Stranger Things about 10 years ago. So what I’m getting at is that many of these people
probably understand that the main reason they’re into D&D right now is that D&D has become
way more popular in the last several years. But I also think that many people who
regularly watch RPG YouTube may assume that D&D is currently becoming less
popular because creators like myself, Mike Shea, and Professor DM, talk
about more than one RPG these days. However, I also think that I previously answered
this with “staying the same” for my own opinion, because we’re in a lull between
seasons of Stranger Things, and I may have swayed some viewers with that. But ultimately, I’ve changed my mind on this one.
We got a new version of 5e coming out this year, new season five of Stranger Things probably
coming out in a year or two. So even if we are in a lull right now, I think there’s
another wave of D&D popularity coming soon, and I also think that many people see
it coming. So I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and call it a perfectly
even 33% for each of these responses… hey and actually not not too far off
there 25% becoming more popular 33% becoming less and 40% staying the
same that is really interesting And this is where I expect
things to get a little negative. 4. How do you feel about the
current direction of the D&D game? I’m just gonna keep this one quick and say like
60% negative side, 20% neutral, 20% positive side, mostly because of the ~WotC conspiracy~ framing
of these particular videos. Let’s check it out!... okay so I said 60 negative side and the actual
is 38 + 24 so like 65% negative side boom and I said 20% neutral it came out 25% neutral and
20% positive side so there is only 11% positive and strongly positive but uh that's hey I
was pretty close there I'm a little bummed about how negative it is but I yeah I'm I'm also
not super positive about the current direction of the game and like I said I think it was just
mostly based on the framing of these videos kind of attracting people with a more negative opinion
about watt C and therefore the future direction of D and because watt C is the ones controlling it
I guess that contradicts a little of what I said at the beginning with d and d being more broad
than just what waty produces but oh right cuz And here’s where that’s gonna get
wayyy worse! “Next, we'd like to ask you a few questions about Wizards of the Coast.” 5. How do you feel about Wizards of the Coast? Now, I wish that no one would go so
far as to say they hate or love a company. Like they’ve done some nasty things,
and I know because I’ve made videos about it. I’m definitely disappointed, and there
were times when I was angry about it, but “hate” feels extreme to me. Still, I’ve seen
enough YouTube comments in my day to know that extreme opinions are common on the interwebs,
and lots of people do claim to hate this company, so I’m gonna guess 80% between hate and
don’t like, 20% for the rest of it... and we have dude okay so partially on basing
this off of uh it's called the Paro principle where a lot of things just kind of fall on
an 8020 split but this is uncanny 30 well okay 28% hate 50% don't like that is very close
to my prediction of 80% hate and don't like and then the remainder is obviously very close to
20 between neutral and uh and like now I guess I wasn't very specific about like where that
division between hate and don't like would fall I just said that whole negative category
would be 80 and the positive and neutral category would be 20 oh and it looks like we
actually have a teeny I can't even see it how do I see how many people said love I can't even
highlight not surprising though and moving on 6. When was the last time you
recommended Wizards of the Coast products to someone else? Unless people are out
there recommending Magic the Gathering regularly, this is gonna be similar to question
2, which off the top of my head I don't remember the results of already. So
I'm repeating my guess-- you know, again, I scripted these predictions earlier:
80% past year, 20% more than a year ago. and we got whoa all right I'm going to have to
check out number two again 50% saying more than a year ago where last time we had 40% saying more
than a year ago and we had 30% in the past year this one is 177% in the last year so these are
not the same though like here we have 7% of people said they recommended a wizard the coast product
in the last month but up here 23% of people said they recommended D and D in the last month so I
guess this has to then go back to the perspective I said before where some people might be viewing
DND d as a wider category Beyond just whatever wad C makes including things like Shadow dark for
example so we're just going to go to the next one 7. Do you think Wizards of the Coast is becoming
less popular, becoming more popular, or staying the same? Again, based on the framing of these
videos my hypothesis is that THESE results will show people think Wizards is totally tanking,
80% less popular, 20% same, 0% more popular! and there it is 84% uh becoming less popular 12%
staying the same but we do have a a non negligible but small amount of people saying that Wizards
is becoming more popular right now and that might have to do with what I said in my video where I
was like kind of conflating popularity with infamy but really it's not like popular means people know
about you and like you and uh probably more people are hearing about wizard the coast these days
but it's for all the wrong reasons and here we go 8. How do you feel about the current direction
of Wizards of the Coast? Same guess as the previous one, more or less, but I’ll go
with 40% strongly negative, 40% negative, and 20% between neutral, positive, and strongly
positive. And before we look at these results, friendly reminder that the best way to steer the
direction of the RPG industry is not by saying “I don’t like what WotC is doing” it’s by supporting
the publishers who are making stuff you like more! So even if you support my Kickstarter purely out
of spite for Wizards of the Coast, I’ll take it! and we have oh so kind of close to what I
had actually written down I said 40% strongly negative 40% negative and it fell at 55 and 35
so there was more in the strongly negative and then yeah cuz I said 20% neutral and positive and
it's actually only about 10% between those two so I overestimated the nutr ity and positivity
by double what it actually came out to be And finally, my added question that
was not on the original survey… 9. How often do you watch or read content
about RPG news and current events? Now, I added this question because I think it
will reveal how myself and everyone taking this survey is really tuned in. We know about all the
bad stuff WotC has done, and that informed our opinions. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the
D&D community, not represented in this survey or WotC’s official survey for that matter.
They have no idea about what Wizards of the Coast has been up to, probably never even heard
the name! They’re just playing D&D for fun, and that’s awesome. So I’m thinking 50% daily news,
40% weekly, 10% monthly, and probably 0% yearly or never because those people would probably
not have clicked on the video! Here we go!... and we have okay yeah I said 50% daily it's
40 2% daily and 42% weekly that's crazy it act straight up tie between daily and weekly L
42.8% each and 10% monthly or rather 12% monthly where I said 10% that is really interesting and
apparently we ended up with 1.2% of people who watch or read about RPG news uh like once per
year and and this was their I don't believe that just happened my battery just died okay
and I don't know if this watsi conspiracy has more to it than we thought but my camera just
died totally unexpectedly so so I I think I've been hacked by wat C guys we got to pull the
plug on this thing we're going to wrap this up So once again, thank you for being tuned
in to this independent RPG scene because that attentiveness and support is how we
can make this new book AMAZING together! Please tell everyone you know about
it, and always, thanks to the Bob World Builder patrons for making this
video possible, and keep building! :)
