Something I've seen multiple times from convos I've had is that generally people brand new to TTRPG have literally no idea games other than D&D exist. They don't go to LGS and see the shelves. They see the genre as D&D. These convos are eye opening 🧵

See also: Warhammer and other minis manufacturers.

Anecdotally I've found those who are just getting into playing D&D are very much up for exploring other games. It's an exciting new hobby and they're excited about being able to play in their favourite genres

In my experience even when you do go to the LGS it can be quite hard to spot the non-D&D stuff…

To be fair, often the LGS shelves are all D&D or D&D, Pathfinder, and maybe some Shadowrun. Back in the 80s/90s, you'd find a ton of other games on the shelves, even at Waldenbooks.

Also, to an extent, you're going to need to tolerate the fact people only have 5e as reference points. I cringe inwardly that one of my newbies sees "Strahd" rather than "Dracula" as the obvious vampire reference, but it will resolve itself in time and I stay quiet.

The lack of onboarding options is something we need to do better on. We can't compete with Hasbro's marketing budget or their actual play resources. But we can do more to make sure that not 5e clubs are there and advertised.

In marketing it's first to market advantage. Being the first gives products name recognition which means they normally become the dominant player in a market. Oddly it's why companies need to avoid their name becoming a generic term because if you become generic you can lose that position.

It's very much like 'Hoover' - other brands exist, but the memory is ingrained.

GW does the same thing in the miniatures space, very deliberately branding their product as *the* hobby, or "the Warhammer hobby". They never acknowledge the existence of a wider hobby, whereas indies are usually much more supportive of each other.

I sort of had that conversation with my dad. He went into a shop because he knew it was full of nerdy stuff and I liked nerdy stuff. I had to explain to him it was a TTRPG shop and yes, most of it is -not- DND.