More games, and gaming, now than ever before?

[Herschel]

Here in the Twin Cities there's now (with 4E) a much larger and more vibrant RPGA scene.Not only new players but also most of our former skirmish players are playing D&D. I'm involved with four groups currently and had to bow out of a fifth really cool concept due to time constraints.I

 

[samursus]

Anecdotally, my current 4e group includes 2 old-time (AD&D 2e, BECMI respectively) players/DMs having gotten back into playing regularly, and 2 completely new to RPG's players.

This has been a massive increase in my own personal PnP gaming in over 10 years.

 

[TerraDave]

I had been looking for new players for my 4E game.

A few weeks ago, we had our "induction session". One player who had not played since 1999, one who had played since 2005, and one who was playing 3E but had not played 4E. I didn't yet know any of them, they all had posted somewhere they wanted to play.

And I have interest from others. I might find myself with 7 players, after having just 3 for years (but that is another thread)! (And, I remain impressed out how quickly people can pick up 4E and really do something with their charecters. But that is also for another thread)

 

[MonsterMash]

There are probably more different RPG available now, particularly if you count pdf or other electronic only releases in the sales. Because of the amount of free electronic versions of some games it's hard to have accurate sales figures across all formats. D&D has historically been the market leader, but there will always be peaks and troughs in sales of any edition of any game.

I don't know for sure if the overall number playing pen and paper RPG is higher or lower than it was as there are more fragmented gaming communities now around the different games. It'd be interesting to know if gaming convention attendances are higher or lower than in the early 1980s when D&D first had mass popularity, but that is not a particularly good measure of the overall gaming population.

The number of new games coming out is not the best indicator of number of gamers playing as there are plenty of people who might still be playing 1e AD&D that they bought in 1980 so wouldn't necessarily register in games sales these days.

 

[Scribble]

so much gaming, I will give this just one bump.

Hard to tell... Guess I'd have to look at two catalogs and compare?

I'm not sure the gaming situation has changed one way or the other actually. I remember when I was a kid I'd see ads for new games all the time, or there would be buzz in the gaming circles about this or that new game... Now that I'm older? I see pretty much the same thing.

One thing I'm excited about is that the idea of new systems seem to be back. For a while it felt like any new game, if it wasn't one of the established big systems was going to be some modified form of the d20 system, which for me was a love hate thing... I like the d20 system, but I wanted more ideas.

 

[catsclaw227]

Depends. Personally I think not because of the lack of OGL support for 4E.

What does lack of OGL support for 4e have to do with the question? He is asking if there are more gamers (rp-gamers) playing the vast multitude of RPGs -- including OGL and non-OGL games -- than in the past.

 

[Dannager]

And over the past few months Dark Heresy, Pathfinder and Warhammer 3E managed, for a time, to outsell D&D or at least to sell equally well.

This isn't true. You may find that a single Dark Heresy product might outsell any given D&D product for a short period, but I don't think Dark Heresy has ever outsold D&D. I doubt even Pathfinder has managed that.

 

[maddman75]

This isn't true. You may find that a single Dark Heresy product might outsell any given D&D product for a short period, but I don't think Dark Heresy has ever outsold D&D. I doubt even Pathfinder has managed that.

I think he meant Pathfinder + Dark heresy + WHFRP > D&D, not that any of them individually sold more. That's something I could believe.

 

[Obryn]

I think he meant Pathfinder + Dark heresy + WHFRP > D&D, not that any of them individually sold more. That's something I could believe.

From his other posts, I think he might be relying solely on Amazon's top lists, which are updated (IIRC) hourly. I could easily believe that any of them would outsell a D&D book in any given hour, too. Likewise, a new core book for a not-D&D system will often outsell a non-core book for D&D. So, WFRP3 could very well outsell The Plane Below.

-O

 

[Dannager]

I think he meant Pathfinder + Dark heresy + WHFRP > D&D, not that any of them individually sold more. That's something I could believe.

No, what he meant was that other RPGs have temporarily appeared above D&D on Amazon's top sellers list. Ignoring that these instances last a matter of hours, you cannot use that list to make the claim that any other RPG has outsold D&D. All that list tells you is that, over a very short period, a single given product has sold more than any other single given product. But I'd be willing to bet that this would be wildly different if you added up the sales for the entire D&D game, and not just a single supplement. I don't think any other game would come close.