In a lot of ways, I’m a curmudgeon of a luddite who is afeared of technology. I mean, sure, I’ve literally worked on space telecommunications, but for some reason podcasts seem new and terrifying. Video streams, and even YouTube channels, don’t seem weird or foreign, but podcasts? It’s strange magic performed in the woods by the Sheldon gang summoning the Black Goat of a Thousand Young. Shubby N. is a good dude, I’m sure, but we have a hard time relating to each other. We just have very different backgrounds, ya know? I have a similar problem when it comes to audio books. I am always reading, but I can’t follow along with an e-book, because I have poo brain and drift in and out of paying attention. I wish I could pay attention better – my reading list is gigantic – but I just can’t. Unfortunately, D&D falls into the same space as audiobooks and podcasts, because of the way the medium is presented. However, this has little to do with the major issue facing the expansion of D&D’s popularity. The major problem with the burgeoning, yet ultimately stunted, performance of D&D on the streaming scene is simple to explain: there is no parallel play experience for D&D. Let me unpack that a little bit more, and expand the statement: It is extremely unlikely, approaching the point of impossibility, that any two D&D games are similar. Naturally, this puts D&D in a space where any game might be wholly unrecognizable from another. For example, the game I run can often go sessions without combat, focusing on wealth and stronghold building, but can end up with multi-session dungeon crawls at the drop of a hat. The game is hugely focused on PC action, with no care given to what I “prefer” (check out this for some insights into what I am currently running), while one game I play follows an adventure path approach. The other two games I play are more once per month, feature affairs, and vary wildly. One is much more open than the other. None of the games really resemble each other, despite some having overlap in players. I understand that part of the idea of Adventurer’s League is to standardize the experience to within a certain tolerance. After all, a paladin running around at third level with a holy avenger when the rest of the party has a ring of protection between them is not really a great experience for most people. However, you simply can’t standardize GM-flair, preference, or group dynamic. Nor can you standardize player expectation. The rise of streaming has been really cool to watch. I was pretty competitive in several online scenes for some time, and I have loved seeing people get into the time-honored tradition of “want to watch me play games?” I watch both personal streams and produced content. The produced content is preferable, for me, because I don’t care too much for the chat components, and I am a huge proponent of analysis. That said, the personal feel of user-run streams in unmatched. It’s the accessibility of Twitter with the intimacy of a coffee shop. You share a secret as the two of you lounge in pajamas, drink coffee, and burn the forests down in order to Not Starve. However, both of these things are bound together by an underlying common experience. This is where D&D falls apart. When I watch Hearthstone in a stream, a lot of things are going on. First, it might be competitive play, solo adventure play, friendly scrims, private tournament play, public tournament play, arena, or brawl mode. I should be able to tell if the are playing wild or standard at a glance. I should have a reasonable grasp on the heroes and decks I see, even if I have been out of the game for awhile, which I have been #season2legendsrepresent. The one thing I cannot reasonably expect is the players possessing the exact same cards I possess at this moment in time. However, there is no barrier outside of time and money that sets this limit. No matter what is going on. If I invest the time to earn gold, and spend the gold on packs, or on arena if I can guarantee at least seven wins, I will eventually have these cards. Once I have done this, the only limiters I face are my individual skill and the random people I face in games. I can mitigate, but not eliminate, or ameliorate as opposed to ablate, if you’d prefer, these two factors, in large part thanks to the streams I watch. The more I watch, the better understanding of the meta I should gain, and, more importantly, the better understanding of why those plays were the correct plays I should gain. In short, the more I watch the stream and dedicate energy to studying it, the better it makes me. Even if I am not looking for betterment – let’s say I am already a legendary hero – I can listen along, or watch and judge, let’s be perfectly honest, here, and have a reasonable expectation that the Hearthstone Ranked 5 player TygerBallz[RawR] is experiencing is the otherwise the same Hearthstone I would experience. This is absolutely critical to understand, because D&D does not, and cannot, provide this important aspect of the collective experience. While I am not saying D&D has not enjoyed a boon from streaming and YouTube, I am confident in saying that the boost it has enjoyed is marginal compared to the rest of the popularity it has gained in recent years. Sure, people watch some celebrities playing in a highly-produced weekly game with their celebrity friends, but the fact is, this should be a much more popular thing than it is. There are myriad streams and channels dedicated to playstreams, but these numbers are casually shattered by the average afternoon game viewing of even the third most popular MOBA.The fans of D&D and number of […]
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