“Dungeons and Dragons” and “popular” haven’t historically been used in the same sentence.
While the TTRPG was more often likened to basement-dwelling dweebs who couldn’t find girlfriends, the game has recently taken off in popularity, partially due to being featured in TV shows.
- See also:
Actual-play shows like Critical Role and Not Another D&D Podcast have also worked wonders in showing that a wider variety of people can play, and enjoy, the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons, bringing tens of thousands of new players and fans into the hobby.
But has that newfound popularity already reached its peak?
We took a look at Google Keyword Trends, and found that the keywords “dnd,” “D&D,” and “d and d” seemed to have reached a crest in August 2020 after a steady climb beginning at the start of 2017.
The keyword “dnd” seems to currently be more popular than the other two (“Dungeons and Dragons” and Dungeons & Dragons” were both lower as well) so we’ll take a closer look at that one.
According to Google Trends, world-wide interest in dnd reached 100 in April, May, July, and August 2020. In the time since, however, it has dropped to its current score of 80 as of February 2021, though had dipped as low as 79 in December 2020.
So the real question becomes; does this mean that interest in D&D is waning following it’s peak last summer?
Well… yes and no.
There’s no denying that the chart shows a decrease in interest when looking at the start of 2021 compared to the spring and summer of last year.
However, the chart also shows that there has been a pattern of highs and lows over the past three years, with the summer months seeing a rise and the winter months consistently seeing a decline.
Whether or not the line jumps back up to 100 come summer 2021 remains to be seen, but given how the past few years have played out (and how the pandemic has affected what people can and can’t do together) we’re guessing that D&D’s popularity is here to stay.
Or at least we’re hoping so, given that we made a whole site dedicated to the hobby.
Fingers are crossed.
- See also:
