How many D&D players are there?
How many Dungeons & Dragons players are there worldwide? This seems to be a perennial question! Whilst the number of global D&D players does not really affect your home game, there is a natural human desire to be part of a hobby that is successful and growing. And for those of us who are creating D&D content to sell, there are clear reasons for wanting to know the size and trajectory of the market.
Companies are often reluctant to share information like this for fear it will put them at a competitive disadvantage. However, Wizards of the Coast released the infographic at the bottom of this page in early 2020 which states that D&D had “over 40 million fans around the world.” We also know from a Hasbro earnings call in late 2020 that D&D has enjoyed a 20% increase in sales over the previous year. Assuming sales roughly correlate with the size of the fan base, we can estimate that by the end of 2020, Dungeons & Dragons had over 48 million fans around the world.
Some of you will notice that the infographic uses the word “fan” rather than “player.” I suspect their definition of fan includes both active players and those who primarily enjoy the game via streaming. I think it is reasonable to group those two categories.
How does this compare to historical data? This information is hard to come by. In the middle of 1978, Gary Gygax estimated there were 100,000 D&D players (The Dragon Issue 16). By 1981, it was estimated that there were 3 million Dungeons & Dragons players around the world. In the 1985 60 Minutes report on D&D, they estimated “3 to 4 million kids play the game.” It’s not clear if that figure includes adult players or not.
If we fast forward to the famous Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary released by Wizards of the Coast in the year 2000, we see they estimate the number of people in the United States playing any tabletop roleplaying game at least monthly to be 2.25 million, with a total number of 5.5 million having ever played a tabletop roleplaying game.
To me, these market survey figures seem low, and a 2004 BBC report estimated that “20 million people worldwide have played D&D since it was created.” In an interview in 2017, D&D’s executive producer stated there were “12 million to 15 million [active players] in North America alone.”
Clearly there are challenges with the historical data, but it all seems to indicate that Dungeons & Dragons is bigger than it has ever been before—and still growing!
