Green Ronin Joins WotC and Paizo on ICv2's Fall 2015 Chart

Icv2's latest tabletop gaming survey (for Fall 2015) is in, and Dungeons & Dragons has maintained its top spot on the chart with Pathfinder and Star Wars following behind. Great news for Green Ronin Publishing is that two of their games, Dragon Age and Fantasy Age separately make up the 4th and 5th spots, spurred on by endorsements from Wil Wheaton and his Titansgrave web show for the game. The usual disclaimer applies (before the thread turns into a lengthy list of people saying it) - this is a survey based on interviews of retailers, distributors, and manufacturers, and isn't a report of actual sales figures.

1	Dungeons & Dragons	WotC
2	Pathfinder	Paizo
3	Star Wars	FFG
4	Dragon Age	Green Ronin
5	Fantasy Age	Green Ronin

There hasn't been any change in the top three positions (D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars) in the last year. Pathfinder held the top spot for three years from 2011 until 2014, before D&D regained its position in 2014.

Here are the compiled charts from 2004 until now. Here is ICv2's Fall 2015 report.

 

[Henry]

True enough. I guess from that perspective, the top spot has always been a flavour of D&D, albeit under a different brand name for a few years.

Let's put it this way - find any random person on the street; ask if they play tabletop RPGs. Once you've gone through a few thousand or so, and find one who does, ask what their group plays 50% of the time or more. It will most likely be some variety of Dugeons and Dragons, or what Robin Laws calls "an F20 game." While nothing lasts foerever, cultural inertia is a hell of a force.

I'd almost be willing to bet that self-driving cars will be the predominant mode of transportation in 1st world countries before D&D leaves the top 5 of that list - or the last Top 5 RPG list ever printed will have D&D on it.

 

[Morrus]

I'd almost be willing to bet that self-driving cars will be the predominant mode of transportation in 1st world countries before D&D leaves the top 5 of that list - or the last Top 5 RPG list ever printed will have D&D on it.

But it already has left the list. It's far from implausible. It just takes a badly handled end of this edition cycle, and a strong challenger. We know this, because we've seen it before.

 

[Henry]

But it already has left the list. It's far from implausible. It just takes a badly handled end of this edition cycle, and a strong challenger. We know this, because we've seen it before.

What do you mean? It was called Pathfinder. Like I said, i'm talking about F20 in general. If it won't be D&D current, it'll be Pathfinder, or Swords & Wizardry, or some other D&D. Like Carl said, it got beaten by itself, more or less. I don't think you'll ever see a list with no F20 on it, not while the GenX'ers are alive anyway.

 

[Morrus]

What do you mean? It was called Pathfinder. Like I said, i'm talking about F20 in general. If it won't be D&D current, it'll be Pathfinder, or Swords & Wizardry, or some other D&D. Like Carl said, it got beaten by itself, more or less. I don't think you'll ever see a list with no F20 on it, not while the GenX'ers are alive anyway.

Oh, I see. I thought you meant D&D specifically. Yeah, some variation of it will be on the list for the foreseeable future.

 

[Jabborwacky]

D&D definitely deserves top spot on this list. On the other hand, I'm somewhat frustrated with Pathfinder from a marketing perspective. Paizo sustained a successful campaign long enough to develop an amazingly supportive fanbase and create the first real competing brand for D&D. They should be hiring Green Ronin to help them build Pathfinder 2.0 instead of allowing Pathfinder to fall into obscurity like previous systems have done because, in the end, WoTC is beating Piazo by emulating the successful practices of Paizo.

Giving a company like Green Ronin the Pathfinder brand to build a new RPG system would be like giving a level twenty paladin a keen-edged, vorpal holy avenger. Even though working out the details for a new system is difficult, the path to victory is pretty obvious. Paizo, just do it already!

 

[Morrus]

Pathfinder isn't falling into obscurity, [MENTION=98608]Jabborwacky[/MENTION]. Don't worry! It's the 2nd best selling RPG in the world.

 

[darjr]

Giving a company like Green Ronin the Pathfinder brand to build a new RPG system would be like giving a level twenty paladin a keen-edged, vorpal holy avenger. Even though working out the details for a new system is difficult, the path to victory is pretty obvious. Paizo, just do it already!

Green Ronin already has access to the brand and have done some very successful products with it.

http://greenroninstore.com/collections/pathfinder

But if you mean Green Ronin doing the 2nd edition of Pathfinder.... that doesn't make any sense to me. Paizo is perfectly capable to do a 2nd edition of Pathfinder, what's more they might figure out a way so as not to invalidate thier previous books.

See Pathfiner Unchained.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think when people mention tabletop roleplaying to someone not into the hobby, Dungeons and Dragons is the one the general population have probably heard of.

I believe that's only true for the U.S., and maybe other English-speaking countries like the UK.

Here in Germany, "Das Schwarze Auge" is better known. IIRC, in France and in Poland, at least, there's also local RPGs that overshadow D&D.

 

[delericho]

They should be hiring Green Ronin to help them build Pathfinder 2.0 instead of allowing Pathfinder to fall into obscurity like previous systems have done because, in the end, WoTC is beating Piazo by emulating the successful practices of Paizo.

Why on Earth would Paizo hire GR to do something they're quite capable of doing themselves?

The issues with Pathfinder going forward aren't Paizo's ability to do a 2nd Edition, but rather questions of when they should pull the trigger and, especially how much to change. A significant segment of their fanbase are quite resistant to change while another significant segment strongly like the plethora of options (some might say bloat) that makes up the current edition. Given that the OGL means that PF 1 can never be removed from use, they have to be careful that they don't leave too many people behind when they do PF 2.