2035 Predictions
At the turn of the year, everyone hurries to make their plans and predictions for the coming year. I’m not sure I’ve ever been good at that. Here are my predictions for the next decade of TTRPGs. In the grand tradition of the worst futurists, I’m just kind of vibing it out.
Pauline Frederick - Potiphar's wife. Via the Library of Congress.
D&D Stagnates
As the enshittification1 of D&D continues, it ultimately becomes a dilute collection of brands, bought, sold and licensed. We don’t see any grand departures from 5e, but perhaps we see more revisions like the “2024 version.” People still play it, but fewer people choose it. Increasingly only people willing to engage in the “official” modes of play will bother: actual play, organized play, and fully-integrated digital-enabled play.
D&D Lives Forever
I’ve often joked about using “D&D” to refer to any game in the hopes that it will one day be generic. I think that will be spiritually true, if not literally. In today’s era of retroclones and forks and editions and revisions, it’s easy to miss that basically, all these games are still D&D. When Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, 2034 Version is only available as a patch to the 2033 content pack for D&D Infinity, people will still be playing B/X and Pathfinder and 4th Edition and plain-old 2014 5e and all kinds of hacks. Long-running campaigns, pick-up one-shots, irregular hangouts, these will all continue to use whatever “D&D” is at hand.
An Analog RPG Breaks into the Mainstream
I don’t just mean “awareness of,” I mean the gameplay itself. Maybe it goes viral due to some societal factor and good luck, like Among Us. Maybe some streamer figures out how to make it look accessible and it takes off like Balatro. In any case, the game will have bespoke rules, minimal overhead, and be replayable and cappy. Think For the Queen or Fiasco (although it may not come directly from any existing RPG scene).
Someone Cracks Mid-size Fulfillment and Distribution
Year-to-year logistical hurtles aside, there’s an open niche for a small company that can reliably handle printing, packaging, warehousing, shipping, etc. for mid-to-low-end projects, and I think in the next ten years, someone will move in and then stick the scale-up. After early successes, it’s tempting to move to bigger projects, but there’s a fat tail of little projects that need that expertise.
Which is to say, as the focus of the official game is increasingly driven by shareholder concerns, in the original sense of the word. (Not simply as it gets “worse.”)↩︎