A tale of three polls

[The Shaman]

Here are the results of my poll on how many tabletop roleplaying games the respondents' played in 2011. The poll was posted on three forums: rpg.net, EN World, and Dragonsfoot.

rpg.net

EN World

Dragonsfoot

The zero option dropped off on the rpg.net poll, unfortunately, probably because I typed in the numeral 0 instead of typing out the word. I corrected that for the other two polls.

Two to five games proved to be the most frequent answer among respondents, with nearly half of the votes at rpg.net and Dragonsfoot and nearly two-thirds of the votes at EN World.

One roleplaying game received the most votes as a percentage of the respondents at Dragonsfoot, which isn't too shocking for a site which focuses on old school D&D. What I found somewhat surprising is that there were more votes for one game than for ten or more on rpg.net.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm not too surprised- IME, people tend to keep playing campaigns that are enjoyable, and only switch when they are dissatisfied, want a break, or have a desire to play something else in particular. Given the pace of a typical campaign, I'd expect few people play more than 2-3 systems in a given year, and many would play only one...and your numbers inch that up a smidge.

 

[haakon1]

Of course, there is always some room for interpretation.

I put "1", but realized shortly afterwards that while I was thinking 1 = D&D, I could have put 2 for 3.5e D&D and 4e D&D.

Of course, I could have also put the number of sessions I had played of each, if I had thought of that as a (mis-)interpretation of the question.

And I could have included computer RPG's in answering the RPG.dom question (which didn't mention table top), which would up it by at least +1 and possibly +2 (depending on the interpretation of computer RPG).

 

[The Shaman]

I put "1", but realized shortly afterwards that while I was thinking 1 = D&D, I could have put 2 for 3.5e D&D and 4e D&D.

Of course, I could have also put the number of sessions I had played of each, if I had thought of that as a (mis-)interpretation of the question.

And I could have included computer RPG's in answering the RPG.dom question (which didn't mention table top), which would up it by at least +1 and possibly +2 (depending on the interpretation of computer RPG).

Did you actually read the thread that went with the poll, 'cause I addressed this in the example?

 

[haakon1]

Nope. I don't read the commentary because I don't want to be biased by what other people are saying about whatever the poll is about.

 

[felixjsc]

Nope. I don't read crown3dsthe commentary because I don't want to be biased by what other people are saying about whatever the poll is about.

Yes, your approach is very correct.