Is there any way to reliably establish what tabletop RPG's are the most played at the moment? Say, over the year 2016? Any sales charts, twitch or Youtube statistics? Sometimes I feel like browsing Veeky Forums doesn't give me a comprehensive outlook on what's hot right now.
Most Popular RPG's?
Liam Sanchez
Chase Foster
The top six places at minimum will all be variants of D&D.
Tyler Williams
Hi. Please note that "games" means number of games from all time that are still not deleted, so they are still technically going on. And "players" means people who are signed up to all of those games.
Brody Green
Also, 4fags BTFO.
Thomas Wood
I'm a little surprised Shadowrun and Traveller don't rank higher
Noah Lee
>Popularity = Quality
Landon Campbell
Roll20 is heavily skewed towards games that require or benefit from a full virtual tabletop. Things like D&D would still be the most popular, but the numbers for other games are likely to be relatively lower since a lot of them gain no benefit from being played on Roll20.
Ryder Phillips
> Plebs are just too dumb to enjoy my system
Stay delusional, 4fag.
Elijah Torres
icv2 publishes a ranking twice a year, top 5 only though.
>icv2.com
is the last we got
Charles Ramirez
Alternatively, a game that caters well to a specific niche isn't innately worse than a game with more broad appeal. 4e is a niche game, but it still has a healthy playerbase who appreciate what the system has to offer.
Lincoln Baker
SR ranks high, Traveller is old and classic Sci-Fi isn't hip these days.
Ethan Taylor
The way it works is that half the people play D&D, while the other half play a wide assortment of games that don't amass to any significant percentage by themselves. These other games have so few players, that as little as five hundred people is a dramatic change for them.
You can sort of see that reflected in how some anons proselytize as much as they can, effectively advertising for free in order to get more people playing their games. They're desperate for any new blood, because the list of games that have faded into obscurity is quite long and it can take as little as a single year for a game to lose almost the entirety of its players.
The perception of this changes in some countries and regions, where one game might have firmer roots, but in a worldwide perspective the only game you could really classify as "popular" is D&D, specifically the 3rd, 4th, and primarily the 5th edition.
Ethan Gray
>The way it works is that half the people play D&D, while the other half play a wide assortment of games that don't amass to any significant percentage by themselves.
...in the USA. not quite so in europe.
David Bennett
>The perception of this changes in some countries and regions, where one game might have firmer roots, but in a worldwide perspective the only game you could really classify as "popular" is D&D, specifically the 3rd, 4th, and primarily the 5th edition.
Oliver Flores
gencon.com
This is a list of the most in demand rpgs for gencon. I assume it's based on actual requests and last year's event sales.
>Call of Cthulhu - 6th & 7th edition in basically equal measure, but Dark Ages & 5th are pretty high, too
>Star Wars - almost entirely for the new FFG editions, but Saga has a decent unserved demand, too
>Dungeons & Dragons - setting aside the RPGA/Baldman/Adventurers' League stuff, it's almost all for 5th & 1st
>Shadowrun, 5th edition
>Savage Worlds, Deluxe edition
>Dungeon Crawl Classics
>Numenera
>Trail of Cthulhu
>Paranoia, 2nd & XP editions, mainly
>7th Sea - it's all about the new (2nd) edition
>Dread
>Dresden Files - the Fate edition, not a home-brew
>Hero, 5th edition
>Fate - mostly Core, but reasonable demand for Accelerated
>Eclipse Phase
>Sentinel Comics RPG
>Dark Heresy
>13th Age
>Mouse Guard
>Night's Black Agents
>Delta Green
>Firefly
>Dungeon World
>The Strange
>Mutants & Masterminds, 3rd edition
>Toon
>Kobolds Ate My Baby
>The One Ring
>Outbreak: Undead
>Mutant Crawl Classics
>Cypher System
>Achtung! Cthulhu
>Dragon Age
>Fantasy Age
>QAGS
>Luchador: Way of the Mask
>TORG Eternity
>Gamma World - split pretty evenly between 4th & 7th edition
Obviously a lot of these are newer games, but keep in mind these are con games so you've got a lot of things people just want to try (either because it's new or not often run by their group etc) or things that work well in one-shots. Lots of these are flavour of the monthy. Not sure how else to get real stats for this, but I think this is probably the best answer. BGG might have some stats too tho.
Really best answer is 5th ed, Fantasy Age(titansgrave, dragon age etc), Dungeon World, Fate, Star Wars ffg, uhh.. shadowrun maybe? 20th anniversary world of darkness is probably doing ok too and savage worlds is always popular.
Evan Diaz
>Luchador: Way of the Mask
I need to have a look at this
Landon Baker
I'm happy CoC got so high.
Kayden Martinez
>Dungeon World
Not a game.
>Dread
Also not a game.
>Fate - mostly Core, but reasonable demand for Accelerated
Please.
Dylan Lee
Oh goody, I love this stupid argument.
Can you provide us with your definition of a game, please?
Julian Harris
not DW, not Dread, not FATE
Isaiah Howard
Man, you're not even trying.
Zachary Torres
>Can you provide us with your definition of a game, please?
None of these are games because the mechanics only exist to reinforce the group's freeform powerwanking.
If you define playing a game as roleplaying and rolling dice but completely ignoring the dice (thus they might as well not be present other than lending false legitimacy to the players' actions) then I guess these games are games. To the rest of us, they are free-forming trash that makes free-form RPers think their aspergers-infused "campaigns" are legitimate RPGs.
Julian Smith
So you can't pose a consistent definition of a game that excludes them as games?
Good to know you're just talking bullshit purely based on your preferences and dislike of a different playstyle.
(And before you call me a butthurt FATEfag, I don't even like ruleslite games that much. I just think shitting on people who do and trying to argue they don't count as games just makes you kinda pathetic)
Carson Watson
>d20 games dominate roll20
James Phillips
Which Dresden Files, though? Fate 3.0 or Fate Accelerated?
P.S. can confirm DFAE is great.
Kayden Morgan
There is D&D, everything else is barely relevant.
Oliver Wood
D&D (and 3.5finder) seems dominate most of Europe. Germany is the only exception I know.
Parker Perez
I imagine a lot of people play D&D, and branch out to try other things once in a while.