I visited three Friendly Local Game Stores in one day.
A couple of these stores have such a small roleplaying section it’s barely worth noting. Most stores carry the bare minimum of Dungeons & Dragons. The new 2024 Player’s Handbook seems to be doing unimpressive numbers. Two out of the three had staggering numbers of the D&D Character Record Sheets.
Side Note: I’m not putting any product links or pics in this article, so it doesn’t look like I’m favoring any one game over all the others. There are too many fantasy game options to list coming out on the market. Let’s try to give them all a fair shake.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
I’m used to game stores having a big D&D section. They have (had) the largest market share in the industry prior to 2024. The amount of Third Party support for Fifth Edition D&D is still incredible. (*Tinfoil Hat moment incoming) The days of 5E Third Party content is waning rapidly and will eventually disappear altogether. That’s my kooky theory, though.
Then there’s the rest.
Holy crap it’s getting confusing out there! Let’s go over the companies whose products are already on shelves in most stores. Pathfinder is running wild with Player Core, Player Core 2, GM Core, and Monter Core on top of adventure paths and Tian Xia. PF2E Remastered is no longer a game- it’s a major investment. Paizo’s pricing is out of control. About $60 per Core book, $50-ish for most of the player’s splat books and adventure paths. And the Tian Xia World book comes in around $80 MSRP? Outrageous!
Sorry, Paizo, but I can’t afford your game anymore. Starfinder 2E isn’t looking too appealing, either. I can find other mecha and space games that I like. I don’t need your lore, clunky mechanics, or outrageous price tags.
Paizo isn’t the only company who’s gone a bit nuts.
I found a lot of Kobold’s Tales of the Valiant out there. I will say I think a two book deluxe slipcase edition is a bit out of range at $160. ToV also released strangely, and the GM’s Guide hasn’t hit the shelf yet as far as I can tell. In regard to ToV, I guess we could just say, play 5E for the time being. ToV is a great idea, but the price is a major turn off for me.
Then there are the dozens of fantasy games that aren’t necessarily D&D clones. One store had an awesome Dragonbane RPG section. Coincidentally, it’s the one I frequent the most these days. They also have Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Blades in the Dark, One Ring, Warhammer Fantasy, and Old School Essentials. Fantasy AGE, Dragon Age, Symbaroum, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Cypher System. The store up the road from them had Adventurer, Conqueror, King, Index Card RPG, EZD8, FATE, and asked me if I had any suggestions for expanding their TTRPG section. (I was nice and held off commenting or we would have been there all day.) A couple of stores had Forbidden Lands, Castles & Crusades, and Pirate Borg.
2024 and 2025 are the years for new fantasy TTRPG releases.
We still don’t have Daggerheart in hand yet. The MCDM game is still out there somewhere. Brandon Sanderson’s new games are still being produced. Those are just the big titles. Let’s not even get started on all of the fantasy Kickstarter games right now.
Poor D&D at this point. They may have the most books in production out of all the games available along with a big, fancy Virtual TableTop. I think its popularity may be declining. The competition is heavy right now and with the prices on all of these products being so high, it’s going to almost force people to choose one game over the others. Buy into the Wizards of the Coast walled garden? Buy into Paizo’s Pathfinder franchise? Go head first into Tales of the Valiant. All three of these games do the same thing.
Unintended consequences or are they?
Okay, calling my Tin Foil Hat Society together for this one. I think this might have all been contrived by Wizards of the Coast. At the very least, I think they’re going to benefit from the massive fracturing of the TTRPG community. Did they have this planned back in late 2022-early 2023? I’m starting to wonder.
Was the D&D Open Game License Debacle of 2023 really staged to break people off of the bandwagon? Could this have all been planned by Wizards of the Coast to somehow split everyone off onto their own licenses and properties so they could take more exclusive control of D&D? Call me “conspiratorial,” but I really think this has all worked out to WotC and Paizo’s advantages more than anyone.
I’m starting to lump Paizo in with WotC more all the time because they share employees seemingly at will and are starting to follow surprisingly similar business models. The real benefactors of the OGL Debacle were Paizo because they cleared the shelves of their Pathfinder 2E material only to turn around less than a year later with a set of four Core Remastered books totaling almost $240 combined. Plus Paizo is jacking up the price of splat books such as the Tian Xia Player’s Guide. I’m sorry. $47.99 for 136 pages? Come on now.
Then there’s the absurd collaboration over on D&D Beyond between WotC and MCDM, Kobold Press, and other major fantasy game Third Party Publishers. Is WotC going to start cashing in on Tales of the Valiant and MCDM, too? Isn’t that why we fought against the OGL changes in the first place? What happened to breaking off with WotC, guys? Seriously? It seriously makes me wonder if the OGL Debacle was all smoke and mirrors.
Conspiracy ranting aside, it’s just too much for me.
I’m on a pretty tight budget. I’ve decided to pretty much stick to the fantasy games I already own. My beloved Dragonbane tops the list currently. The release schedule for it is incredibly mellow. (Path of Glory is almost out. I’m so excited for this!) I’m also grabbing bits and bobs of 5E material to supplement it because why let good sourcebooks go to waste?
I’m also still into Shadowdark, Old School Essentials, Fabula Ultima, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. Again, it’s super easy to beg, borrow, and steal from other games such as D&D that I’ll never run out of material to use in my games. I’m really happy and grateful for the collection I’ve amassed so far, which is not to brag, but to say I’m living in an abundance of good source material and games I can run. I don’t need to buy into D&D, Pathfinder 2E Remastered, or Tales of the Valiant.
There are still going to be plenty of players outside of D&D who want to hang out and game. There are probably lots of gamers who can’t afford to buy into 20 systems or even shell out between $150-$240 for new D&D, PF2E, or ToV core rulebooks. There are plenty of smaller games that rock their whole system in one boxed set, something the bigger companies are backing off of for now.
My educated guess is that next year will see a flood of “Beginner Boxed Sets” with maps, dice, tokens, and enough character info to play through 3rd level. It’s an old TTRPG industry strategy. If D&D does it, everyone and their dog will follow suit if they haven’t already.
I think Dragonbane Core Boxed Set blows them all out of the water. You get a full rulebook, maps, tokens, custom dice, and adventures for around $40-$50 USD depending on where you get it. The digital copies are cheap, too.
As much as I love other games, it’s all still part of the massive collage of fantasy game titles out there. This article barely scratched the surface of everything we could talk about. We’ve hardly touched all the OSR games out there plus a huge volume of 5E based games. You can’t swing a dice bag around in a game shop right now in the TTRPG section and not hit at least fantasy title.
If I were to give any advice in this article whatsoever, it would be to settle on one game system your group likes and run like heck with it. As always, do what works best for you and your group. If you play D&D 5E 2014 Edition and don’t want to convert- there’s nothing wrong with sticking to it. There is no saying you have to buy into D&D Beyond or any VTT subscription. ALL of these games work just great analog. Just go out there and have fun with a fantasy TTRPG.
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Jeff's Game Box 