FANTASY GROUNDS Confirms D&D 5E Lead On VTTs

Last time I wrote about the relative popularity of games played on the largest virtual tabletop platforms, D&D 5E had finally surged into the lead, passing Pathfinder. That was the Orr Group's (them who makes Roll20) quarterly report for Q1 2014. As you may know, Fantasy Grounds also releases such figures, and its latest stats have just come my way - and it tells the same story. These charts are for 2015 so far, and show an enormous surge which took place in March/April of this year.

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Now, there's an obvious caveat. Fantasy Grounds became the official licensed D&D 5E virtual tabletop round about then, so that surge is to be expected. Thanks to Fantasy Grounds for supplying these figures!

Interestingly in these latest figures, you get four "flavours" of D&D (5E, Pathfinder, 3.5, and 4E in that order) before you see the next highest system, which is Savage Worlds.

Measuring the relative popularity of games is an imprecise thing. I try to keep up with various ways to do so. The two VTT reports are great tools, and I report on them every quarter or so. Also relevant is the ICv2 survey figures which come out every quarter or so, and which I maintain a chart of here. Finally, I also track mentions of various games on thousands of forums and blogs in this chart (ignore the arrows on that chart; they're wonky - but it's also intersting to see Green Ronin's AGE system climb up that chart to #13 since Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave launched).

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[neobolts]

What in the world is DSA_DZ_4.1WE? I came up empty on a Google search, as well as trying to correlate it with ENWorld's own Hot Games charts ( http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php ).

 

[Nylanfs]

Yea! #Graphporn

 

[Nylanfs]

What in the world is DSA_DZ_4.1WE? I came up empty on a Google search, as well as trying to correlate it with ENWorld's own Hot Games charts ( http://www.enworld.org/forum/hotgames.php ).

Dark Eye maybe? I know there's a pretty big German FG following.

 

[Paul3]

What was interesting to me is that 3.5 and 4e have also seemed to get a little bump from 5e.

 

[God]

My first thought when seeing a graph like that is that someone needs to check for a data error.

I haven't gotten past that first thought. (FWIW, I'm a big 5E fan and would expect a bump. But I'm skeptical that it almost doubled FG's business, especially considering the ridiculous price they're charging for modules.)

 

[smiteworks]

DSA is Das Schwarze Auge (Translation: The Dark Eye). It's really popular in Germany, which has a sizable RPG gamer population as well.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Schwarze_Auge

I don't know how these games compare outside of Fantasy Grounds. This data just shows what is the most popular to run and play on FG.

Regarding the data, it's solid. D&D has sold extremely well on the platform since the announcement, dwarfing all other products combined. Once people buy one of the adventures, they tend to buy every one of them.

 

[Perram]

Well, I trust the Roll 20 numbers more than these because Fantasy Grounds has an active partnership with 5e. I don't think they are cooking the books, but more that because they actively market and sell official 5e support it would be artificially higher on these platform.

However, the Roll 20 data supports that 5e is more popular as well, though to a much less extreme margin.

 

[smiteworks]

The launch of the official license is the primary factor for the sudden surge in April. Prior to this, we had no official support, although people could still play 5E games if they didn't mind entering the data on their own. Pathfinder has had strong support on Fantasy Grounds due to the proliferation of officially sanctioned Pathfinder Society Games run on Fantasy Grounds and OGL data support. There is a section of the forums there specifically for those games and DM's can share modules with each other as long as they follow the guidelines to prove ownership -- something that the ventrue captains worked out with Paizo. We do not, however, have official Adventurer Path support for Paizo like we now do for D&D.

Savage Worlds is also strong because we have strong support from Pinnacle Entertainment Games and a very active and involved community of gamers and community developers that help support and promote it.

Star Wars Edge of the Empire and Das Schwarz Auge are probably more popular than the stats let on because those are both community built rulesets that don't have commercial data available or strong support from the property owners.

 

[mattcolville]

My first thought when seeing a graph like that is that someone needs to check for a data error.

When the data doesn't conform to your expectations, it's the data that needs adjusting!