Roleplaying Games is basically D&D 5E + Pathfinder... and that's pretty much the entire sector

>And D&D's market share is shrinking.

But it's not. 5e actually was at less than 50% of the market share less than a year ago, but continues to dramatically expand as it draws in new players. 5e gains in a month more players than most other games have.

5e just keeps gaining momentum as it continues to take in pathfinder converts while also being the "go-to" system for new players.

You want more CoC, Sparta?

Not as much as he really seems to hope it is.

It being about online games might actually help skew it in the direction of the lesser known games, because it's easier to find a group of people willing to play these more "obscure" titles online.

Because D&D's market share was once 100%. Its position of absolute dominance is getting weaker.

A lot of which it regained from Pathfinder.

I suppose I should clarify. I'm counting D&D, PF and all the psuedo-D&D systems as a single unit with these statements.

But why would they use those services if none of the features add to the experience?

Honestly, I find those and the roll20 results kinda surprising, so many groups using these services without really needing any of the extra features they provide. I still play all my non-D&D online games with an IRC channel and a dicebot, because it's all you really need.

>5e actually was at less than 50% of the market share less than a year ago
I would even dare to guess 5e was at 0% in 2013.

>Because D&D's market share was once 100%. Its position of absolute dominance is getting weaker.
Not only is that retarded logic (counting from OD&D), it's not even true. Even in the 1970s people were playing Blackmoor and Tunnels & Trolls & Traveller etc. D&D's share has never been 100%.

And we're specifically talking about the latest editions, not since the beginning of time. WOTC has confirmed several times that D&D's share fell during 4E and has spiked up dramatically since 5E.

>Because D&D's market share was once 100%

Not really. While D&D was the first published system, there were several contemporaries that were being developed and played in parallel.

Paranoia. I'd love to see someone try to minmax in that and have those egregious stats be their mutant power... and get found out early.

Plus it encourages actual roleplay when played right, or at least creative thought.

They add people, by far the most important part

That's where he was the most wrong tho. You don't need a grid to play either system, and even if you did the idea that there's some huge "shadow demographic" of non-D&D players who are underrepresented in online data because of it is just laughable

To find groups?

>World of darkness - 1053

How the mighty have fallen.

>What game would you like to see dominate the market the way these two giants do?

While that chart is certainly indicative of something, the numbers certainly don't provide an accurate representation of what role-playing games are being played. AD&D (is that 1st and/or 2nd edition?) has 1562 games, and Castles & Crusades has 3140 games, while there are 0 games of Basic D&D or any of its derivatives? I here more about Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry than I do about Castles & Crusades. And that's just in the D&D family.

D&D and PF are built around grid combat. That is a fact of their design. You might be able to not do it, but the sheer amount of positional powers in the game makes it ludicrous to say otherwise.

>What game would you like to see dominate the market the way these two giants do?
>runequest isn't even on the chart
Well guess that's a lost cause

Savage Worlds isn't too far behind Pathfinder there.

>If I keep asserting something, eventually it will become true!

I don't want a dominant product. My fantasy is that nerds stop being overly opinionated children who aren't willing to try anything outside of what they define to be THE TRUE RPG.

...What is there to assert? It's a system full of AoE spells and positional flanking rules. It is built with the assumption that you will have a direct way of gauging relative positions and making decisions based on that. The design of the system doesn't make sense otherwise. Even really basic shit like Attacks of Opportunity only makes sense, design wise, if you are assuming the exact representation of position that comes with a grid. Gridless D&D is basically just handwaving all that away, but that doesn't stop it existing in the first place.

>runequest isn't even on the chart
BRP is though. Granted, it's only about a third of a percent, but it's up there. (So is Call of Cthulhu, for that matter, but even if it shares the same basic rule system, it's too much of its own thing for me to really think it counts.)

He's not wrong. Nearly every combat related ability is designed around specific distances that can be applied to grids. You can play without, but its obviously meant to work with

Have you actually played 5e? My group doesn't use a grid and it's been working out great.

It is true though. I mean, you CAN play it without a grid, but eventually there's going to be an argument about where someone is relative to an enemy, or how many enemies they hit with an AOE.

One of the reasons people play crunchy games is for consistency and a grid is always going to be more consistent than a vague sketch of where everyone is. If you're abstracting combat and removing the grid, why even bother playing Pathfinder or DnD? They dont do anything outside of encounters particularly well.

>What is there to assert?
That you need to use a grid to play D&D. You know, that thing you keep asserting. You're acting like I'm talking about getting rid of dice and not the most people use the system in my experience. Again, the idea that this is massively skewing the data is laughable, or at the very least a big claim you haven't come close to proving.

>Attacks of Opportunity only makes sense,
D&D5 doesn't even HAVE AOOs, dumbass. That's why it's stupid to start by saying "D&D is..." because each edition of D&D is almost a different game.

OD&D as played by Gygax didn't use grids with minis. It was Theatre of the Mind with real-world distances (feet and miles) until 3.0 and 4.0 when grids and minis became almost mandatory. With 5E it's mostly mini-less.

My groups played 3.5 and 4e without grids. This means nothing. Imagination can fill in for whatever specifics the game request, but that doesn't mean the game isn't asking for specifics that would be better perceived and tracked with a grid.

That's an infinity percent increase! Give it a couple of years and 3 out of every 2 games being played will be 5e.

5e.d20srd.org/srd/combat/MakinganAttack.htm#opportunityAttacks

I'm not saying you need a grid. I'm saying the default design assumption of D&D is that you have a grid. Which is a fact.

Um... AD&D literally measured shit in tabletop inches. Don't get me wrong, my group never used miniatures back in the old days, but it's not like they were alien to the game.

>D&D5 doesn't even HAVE AOOs
When a creature leaves your reach you may make an opportunity attack on it as a reaction
Did your dm hoyuserule this away or something? Are you sure you're playing 5e?

r u dumb?

Not at all true, there was always competitors. If anything DnDs market dominance has grown over time.

Call me crazy, but it sounds like you're admitting that grids help but are not necessary.

...Yes? The game is made for grids, but no game NEEDS to use grids. We can imagine those in our heads like we do with every other aspect.

I wouldn't take FG as an accurate portrait of the market, but it made me smile to see SW right behind PF.

Then frown when I saw WoD.

Turns out vilifying your players isn't a good idea!

HERO and 4th Ed

More like NWoD was a mistake.

I picked up the PDF copy of the latest edition, and it's just lost a lot of the je ne sais quoi that made the XP edition so hilarious. It's not just the change from Communists to Terrorists the computer fears, but in a way, that change is representative of how the new devs don't really understand what's funny.

What can be done to fix this? Other than playing XP, of course?

the FFG star wars/Genesys system. Non numerical take on the dice rolls that I love.

Considering Exalted sold a lot of copies, I wonder why it wasn't even listed in the graph?

One can only dream.

Good games. 5e is pretty decent, but 3.PF, CoC, WoD, 40KRP, Shadowrun and Numenera are games that should not be played IMHO.

Give me some Savage Worlds, GURPS, Iron Kingdoms, D&D 4e or DCC and I'd like it a lot more. Well designed, functional games, regardless of what image they provide to the outside, makes the hobby more enjoyable.

>What can be done to fix this? Other than playing XP, of course?
play 2E, you massive pleb

>CoC not well-designed
and then there is this moron. also 40KRP is bretti gud

>b-but muh 5E
kys. seriously. you're a scourge to this hobby.

Despite mostly agreeing with you, I wouldn't say they shouldn't be played. But people who want to play them should be properly informed as to the problems they have and the best ways to work around them, which a lot of system fanboys actively work against by insisting their preferred system is perfect and shouting down any attempt to discuss its flaws.

I love a lot of very flawed games. Hell, even on your 'good' list, the Iron Kingdoms RPG has a lot of issues. I enjoyed my time with it, but I wouldn't recommend the system to anyone without explaining some of the big issues it has, like the whole Warcaster problem.

How so?

Everyone is overly opinionated about something.

Like you, overly opinionated about the overly opinionated.

It's a centralized location to find other players, and it has character sheets for a lot of games. As a DM, I like being able to quickly look at someone else's sheet.

Macho Women With Guns.

>no game NEEDS to use grids.

That's good to know, because the point people were disputing was here>D&D and Pathfinder are some of the only games that actually require an online tabletop and grid

Many 5e groups prefer not to use a grid, my own group included. The game easily facilitates tracking things in the mind.

But D&D "needs" a grid vastly more than say most WoD games.

Can you go into detail on this? I find it hard to think up a more grid reliant game than D&D/PF. There are so many positional abilities that rely on you being engaged with one person or not the other, and the whole AoO system is built around controlling precise positioning.

If you're not using a grid, why use the system at all?

The upcoming 4th edition of WHFRP

>"It's an user get's proven wrong and must now move the goal posts episode"

What details do you need that you can't find in the rulebooks? The most important part of positioning in any fight is distance, and it doesn't really take much to remember "They're 60 feet away from you" or to determine how densely packed a group of enemies might be.

When it comes to close quarters, it remains the same sort of thing, where distance relative to the PCs are all that anyone needs to remember, and they for the most part keep track of that individually.

It did take a little time to adjust to not using a grid, but by the end of the first gridless session our group had the hang of it.

>D&D5 doesn't even HAVE AOOs, dumbass.
lmao

get a load of this cuck

Genesys.

But honestly, I'd support ANYTHING that's not DnD. No other games have as much dumb, bad-habit-forming, anachronistic baggage as it and its ilk do.

Holy shit, World of Darkness is that small? That's sad.

Huh, maybe I should look at Savage Worlds.

Keep in mind that this VTT is not very popular. Roll20 stats are more accurate.

>What game would you like to see dominate the market the way these two giants do?

None. The same way I don't want to go into the supermarket and see an entire aisle of corn flakes with only three other cereals. Monopolies are bad for consumers.

Do you have those? I'd be surprised if DnD wasn't still more than half of all the games.

There's really no reason to play it on d20. It uses range bands and stuff like that so literally doing it over discord/skype is just as effective.

From sales figures and stats, I'd say that D&D and Not!D&D systems like Pathfinder make up about 2/3 of the hobby, and that's including the fact that online tabletops are skewed towards games which make use of them.

Here you go.
blog.roll20.net/post/159952619415/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2017

Cool. So yeah, it's not that different.

This. I run a wod game in discord and play in a fantasy age game on slack. We don't need roll20 for those. And when we played a Fire Emblem homebrew rpg on roll20 I doubt it was factored in to any charts.

There's a bit less DnD than the other srvice would indicate, which is a positive sign.

Let alone all the dice things you have to do. Re roll this or that number, count this number as 2 success's. No online thing does that well to my knowledge.

Do me a favor, can you dig up the Q1 report for 2016?

>a positive sign.

I didn't realize there were people trying to keep score.

I'll tell you this though. If you're really that upset about a game's popularity, you should plan to remain upset for several decades at least.

I'm upset that a game which ingrains poor behaviors and expectations into players is the main point of entry, and even more unfortunately, the roleplaying graveyard for many.

It's not about the game that is popular, it's that one game dominating the hobby is a bad thing. A monopoly isn't good for anybody except the people holding the monopoly.

>fucking Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles and Crusades more popular than WoD
>CoC almost 9 times as popular as WoD
This probably isn't that accurate, just saying

>What game would you like to see dominate the market the way these two giants do?
Anima: Beyond Fantasy. Same sort of ridiculous high fantasy world with more options (and more interesting options) that even pathfinder. Also, it doesn't suck to play. If anything had to fill the void of D&D, I definitely think it would be the best option.

It doesn't matter that much, honestly. It'd be great if the hobby became bigger in general and more options became available (I'd kill for a generalist system that wasn't either narrativist fluff or GURPS level of crunch), but nowadays finding a group for almost ANY game isn't an issue

I'd like if OSR became more prominent, though.

blog.roll20.net/post/156907010215/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2016
blog.roll20.net/post/152869666945/the-orr-group-industry-report-q3-2016
blog.roll20.net/post/148840854540/the-orr-group-industry-report-q2-2016
blog.roll20.net/post/143493281735/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2016
blog.roll20.net/post/137560897420/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2015
blog.roll20.net/post/131974066335/the-orr-group-industry-report-q3-2015
blog.roll20.net/post/131574182890/for-the-record-orr-group-industry-report-q2-2015
blog.roll20.net/post/116828584295/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2015
blog.roll20.net/post/107957194710/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2014

That's all their reports. Someone else can visualize the date if they want.

60% isn't a monopoly.
It's not even that dominant. It's the primary one, but not to the point it can start dictating to other companies.

It's got enough name recognition that it's what people are going to think of and default to when they think of RPGs, and nothings going to replace that. It doesn't mean other games can't be created and succeed.

Band-aid isn't going out of business any time soon, but they don't have a monopoly.

Old World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu/BRP say hi. Also GURPS.

I've always wondered why Savage Worlds exists.

But it's not a monopoly. Game systems aren't limited resources or restricted business sectors, there's really nothing stopping anyone from learning, teaching, and playing any game aside from the inability to convince other people to play it, and that's not something you can blame the populace for any more than you can blame people for choosing one brand over any other.

More importantly, game systems function something like a language, and it's actually good for there to be a common language.

Should D&D be the only system you know? Of course not. Should everyone know D&D? There's really nothing wrong with that, and it really lends itself to everyone at least sharing certain common understandings and being able to play with generally everyone.

Ignoring the crazy coming from this guy,
D&D has worked to remain modern, adaptable, and versatile, and it serves as both a good introduction into the hobby as well as an enduring system to play for years to come. There's really no reason to get upset about it being as popular as it is.

You are loony if you think any of those approaches the brain-damage-like condition DnD creates in players.

Can you trip up already?

Nwod vastly improved Changeling lore and tone, so there's that at least. It also introduced Promethean, though that could of course have easily been done in owod if that had been the active line at the time. It also managed to avoid the excesses of metaphor owod suffered from. So I wouldn't say it was a complete mistake.

This checks out.
I also run all my games via Discord.

Savage Worlds goes from 3rd biggest in OP to nowhere in the top 8. Also, Pathfinder scores almost a third as high as 5e rather than less than a fifth as high. I like the chart in the OP better.

I'm going to save this for the next time a pathfaggot goes around saying Pathfinder is still the most popular game in the market

Not everybody who disagrees with you is a tripfag boogeyman.

I just want to see ttrpg's get more popular in general. As it stands any single moderately successful video game or movie probably out sells the entire rpg market.