It would be interesting to know if it is disproportionate attention, though. If 50% of Roleplayers play D&D primarily, then yeah, the level of exposure is spot-on. If not (and I suspect that the number is less than 50%) then yeah, D&D is disproportionately blogged over.

I find it hard to believe, with games like White Wolf’s old and new Worlds of Darkness, ShadowRun, GURPS, Mutants and Masterminds, L5R, In Nomine, Exalted, Savage Worlds, Burning Wheel, etc out there and doing as well as they are, that D&D is the primary game of half of all roleplayers.

I’d say 25%, even 30%, but not 50%. Certainly more than 50% of roleplayers have played D%D at some point, and D&D is definitely the biggest game out there in terms of players, there’s no doubt about that. I just don’t credit 50%. (these are just gut-check numbers, not actual supportable data)

I also have to wonder if one isolated group, such as bloggers, who so frequently are just talking to each other, are a valid representative sample.

Heck, with the trends I see, if I was concerned with hits I would just generate top ten lists all day :)

This is not to dismiss your concerns about the the state of the industry. WOTC is just a small part of a big company, and I can easily see the plug getting pulled as soon as it ceases to make a profit. Heck, with the economy being the way it is, I would not be surprised if I read tomorrow “Hasbro shuts down D&D division”.

If Hasbro shut down D&D, would the smaller companies get a bigger piece of the pie? Would we just start making up our own games (maybe based off of the OGL, maybe not?). Would the hobby die off and be called an “80′s fad”? I honestly can’t say.

If Hasbro went out of business tomorrow, I’d still be writing mostly about D&D 4e, because that’s what I’m playing and running most right now. If I were to switch to primarily playing another game, I’d mostly write about that.

I’ll write about other games now if something about them interests me. But I won’t do it to support indie games, or whatever. Indie games will earn my support by producing interesting products that make me want to play and run them. When that happens, I’ll write about them, too.

Content is therefore based upon what I’m currently involved with rather than an arbitrary decision to support a specific product or draw traffic.

I personally love D&D. I have played on and off for about 35 years now. And I have seen several RPG’s fade away. I guess that might be the first reason D&D dominates blogging.

Another reason is that not matter what kind of press D&D gets it get WOTC attention. Whether it is the pros and cons of 4th edition, the “links” ;? to suicides or the ever famous “D&D is EVIL………” stories from church groups and people who are blinded by their own reality.

I say GAME ON! D&D forever and all that jazz.

ps. Other fantasy type RPG blogs of a generic sort are cool too. Except I haven’t found one yet….

I try to blog about obscure things sometimes, including games, but I’m personally not as interested in say, Cthulhutech, as I am in D&D. I also don’t have anything nice to say about, say, World of Darkness, so I might as well not say anything.

As for the why in regards to #s of posts about D&D, like may replies here, I subscribe to the fact that many are just posting what brings them traffic. Others, because it’s the game they’re running right now. I know with my piddly blog (not on RPG Bloggers [yet?]), I’m only posting about D&D because it IS our current game. But throw me behind a different screen and things will change. Though I may try and vary a few posts here and there.