Fantasy Grounds Game Stats for 2017: D&D 5E Up By 6%, Pathfinder Holds Steady!

It's time for the statistics which tell us what games are being played on Fantasy Grounds, the virtual tabletop. This always gives a great sampling of which games are popular at the moment. As usual, D&D 5E leads by a large margin, followed by Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, then Savage Worlds. "Core RPG" in the data below refers to Fantasy Grounds' 'default' RPG module, so can reasonably be viewed as the "other" option. These stats represent the whole of 2017.

Fantasy Grounds' Doug Davison notes that there is a bit of a dip around December, but that same thing happened in the previous two years.

See 2016's figures here. Over the year, D&D 5E increased again, this time from 58% in 2016 to 64% in 2017. Pathfinder held steady at 12%, and Savage Worlds at 6%, while D&D 3.5 dropped from 6% to 4%.​

Ruleset	Total Games
5E	395,748
PFRPG	74,551
SavageWorlds	37,693
3.5E	21,992
CoreRPG	12,704
Call Of Cthulhu	10,928
4E	9,948
MoreCore	8,975
Star Wars EotE	7,642
GURPS	6,176
AD&D	4,028
DSA	3,657
Castles and Crusades	3,638
WFRP	3,261
RolemasterClassic	3,208
WH40K	2,593
Numenera	2,507
Fate Core	2,300
VtM	1,852
Basic Roleplaying	1,482
Shadowrun	1,044
Mutants and Masterminds	1,006
World of Darkness	997
DCCRPG	783
d20 Modern	768
Grand Total	619,481

 

[darjr]

Wow! Thanks for that. And really thanks for making your numbers available.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I ran the Zipf distribution on these data. The Zipf distribution is easiest to visualize: One plots the log-counts (taken from the data) on the log-ranks (here 1 to 25). (Note: These are natural logs.) A Zipf distribution says that the frequency of occurrence is proportional to the inverse of rank. A Zipf distribution fits if this plot is linear and negatively sloping. It's not though it is approximately so.

The Yule-Simon distribution would probably fit better but I don't have a program to estimate it (looking around there's one in R... I'll have to check). The usual explanation for something having a Yule-Simon distribution is "preferential attachment." Anyone who knows about making a game knows all about that!

View attachment 92626

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Is Adventures in Middle-earth OGL, by Cubicle 7 part of the 5E number?

There is an extension for this on top of the 5e ruleset, so I assume it shows up as "5e".

 

[Tid.biT]

For a little more math fun:

Gain in 2017 over 2016:

5e 395748-255004= 140744 (+55%)

PF 74551-53908= 20643 (+38%)

SW 37693-28002= 9691 (+35%)

3.5e 21992-27089= -5097 (-19%)

Other 89497-75117= 14380 (+19%)

 

[Myrdin Potter]

For people new to FG, let me give a few examples.

There are 2 community built AD&D rulesets (not licensed, mechanics only, as compared to the licensed rulesets which have all the rules text).

This one runs off of a heavily modified 5e ruleset base and is a 2e base with an extension to turn it to 1e:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?37777-Project-AD-amp-D-Core-Ruleset

This one runs off of Castles and Crusades ruleset

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36009-AD-amp-D-Ruleset

If you want to play Adventures in Middle-Earth (5e), then you use this extension for the standard 5e ruleset (extension is community developed):

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?37167-Adventures-in-Middle-Earth

Extensions tend to identify themselves based on the ruleset they extend. So Adventures in Middle Earth will show up as 5e. AD&D (both versions) are rulesets so show up as AD&D.

Fantasy Grounds has a "generic" ruleset called "CoreRPG" that give dice rolling and text and map handling, but no real automation. Does not check to hit rolls, for example, where the 5e ruleset checks to hit, applies damage, does concentration checks automatcially, etc.

Many RPG have special die rolls and other features that CoreRPG does not have built in. Some there is a community ruleset built off of CoreRPG called Morecore that adds a ton of specific dice roles and other features, but still way less automation than the full licensed rulesets.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?34860-MoreCore-Ruleset

Morecore is a great base and you can make it rules specific via an extension like this for the Conan 2d20 rules:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36019-Conan-Extension-V-3-1 (go to the link in the last message in this thread for the most advanced version).

Here is the community rulesets forum for more examples:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?92-Rulesets

 

[agrayday]

i assume DSA = The Dark Eye? I had no idea it is as popular as the numbers it has...

 

[smiteworks]

Wow! Thanks for that. And really thanks for making your numbers available.

No problem. Every data point helps for those of us that like to analyze and predict stuff in the industry.
[MENTION=57770]AGR[/MENTION]aday

Yep, DSA is The Dark Eye. It gets consistent numbers; however, we had trouble trying to find a community dev to work on making an updated release of the ruleset when they rolled out the English version. We don't see any traffic or chatter about it on our site, so it must be getting organized and talked about completely off of the main FG site.

 

[Jhaelen]

Yep, DSA is The Dark Eye. It gets consistent numbers; however, we had trouble trying to find a community dev to work on making an updated release of the ruleset when they rolled out the English version. We don't see any traffic or chatter about it on our site, so it must be getting organized and talked about completely off of the main FG site.

'Das Schwarze Auge' used to be (and probably still is) the most popular RPG in Germany. For most Germans it's what got it all started (although 'Midgard', another German RPG was released at an earlier date, it was much more like a fan release while DSA was released by a major board game publisher and heavily promoted).

What I cannot say, is, how many German users there are on Fantasy Grounds.

 

[Hussar]

Holy crap that's a lot of games.

5e's running 33000 (ish) games per MONTH? WOW. Think about that for a second. Even if we posit that some people play multiple games, you're probably looking at somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred THOUSAND gamers. That's fantastic.

There's one thing about it, there's no more excuse for not being able to find a game.

 

[Morrus]

Holy crap that's a lot of games.

5e's running 33000 (ish) games per MONTH? WOW. Think about that for a second. Even if we posit that some people play multiple games, you're probably looking at somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred THOUSAND gamers. That's fantastic.

There's one thing about it, there's no more excuse for not being able to find a game.

That’s an interesting question. When we see 33K 5E games in sequential months, is that 33K new campaigns started each month, or are the same campaigns being counted anew each month? The totals add them together, suggesting it’s the former.