A little while back, I polled various members of the D&D and TTRPG community with some very big picture questions. This was done in a very unscientific way with an online survey and no control group and its own share of additional problems. One of the problems was that these questions were a bit different than the usual surveys you see go around. They were designed not to review a product or to even map out gaming behavior in any sort of in-depth way. Instead, they were meant to capture a sense of the hopes, frustrations, and lives of the people in this community in a fuller way. The tried to look at the whole person. Often this left the questions lacking a defined context, and feeling both too big, too simple, or too unclear for many people to answer. (You can see the questions here)

Ultimately my goal for the questions was to try to capture a sense for people both in and out of the gaming world. I wanted to look at who is the TTRPG community beyond the gaming table? My hope in this was to better empathize with the people of this community, and to help other creators do the same, as we seek to create gaming content (rules, adventures, etc.), gaming experiences (retreats, conventions, gaming days, etc.), and offer advice on how to get the most out of the experience of play.

For all of the survey’s faults, I feel like I was still able to capture some interesting data. From that survey data, there were two main takeaways: the barriers to play are high and TTRPG gamers care deeply about the state of the world.

The Barriers to Play are High

Whether it was adult priorities like work and family obligations, the difficulties of finding or building a gaming group or a gaming community, or just the time required, over 90% of respondents described high barriers to play. 100% of those who responded to the survey reported that they engaged with out-of-game tabletop roleplaying content (like books, blogs, streams, shows, social media, and other complementary or supplementary products) multiple times a week, while 36% reported playing actual games either monthly, less often, or never. The most commonly reported frequency of actual play was playing every other week, which 27% of respondents reported.

Though people engage in out-of-game content with higher frequency, it is not necessarily because they want to. Some of the comments people shared around this issue were:

“It’s proving VERY difficult to get into the hobby without having an established group.”

“I wish I had more time to devote to the hobby.”

“I’m pre-occupied with trying to get work and family obligations taken care of well.”

“The biggest obstacle is feeling exhausted.”

“Everyone is vying for money.”

“Tables are full. People just want to charge you to play, not play for fun.”

TTRPG Gamers Care Deeply About the State of the World

One of the surprises in the responses I got was how much people reported struggling with the broader issues of the world. Over 90% of people shared worries and concerns about the world at large. People shared struggles with racism, sexism, corruption, and commercialism, among other things.

A sampling of what people wrote:

“People are worried that life is coming apart at the seams.”

“I see pollution and commercials and societal decay.”

“Oppressive systems and capitalism are obstacles. Racism and economics have hampered growth, and directly affect many of those important to me.“

“Ideally I would like to mesh my face passions with my gaming passions.”

“I want to build something that means something, something that makes a difference.”

“Obstacles are the political divides that seem to pull people away from caring for each other.”

What Does This Mean?

I have my own thoughts on how these two big takeaways will influence my work going forward, which I’ll address in a blog post next week. Before I get there I wanted to talk a little bit about why I wanted to do a survey that asked big picture questions in the first place. It’s all part of the Design Thinking Process, a process I’m using to order my work this year. Here’s a map of it:

The Design Thinking Process is a process that’s meant to help navigate adaptive challenges, problems without easy answers, problems that require innovation and creativity to address. The first stage of this process is Empathy. The goal is to try to get a deeper understanding of people and identify their explicit and implicit needs. Too often when we create an event, design a program, or create content (gaming or otherwise), we are creating with a goal to “fix” people and situations, rather than understanding their point of view. Design thinking explores how the people we are designing for see the world and how they make meaning of their lives.