Roll20's Latest Numbers: Cthulhu Holding Strong!

Roll20 has released its usage stats for Q4 2020, and D&D maintains its multi-year firm lead with over half the games being played, and Call of Cthulhu continues to cement itself in 2nd place. There was strong growth from Cyberpunk Red and the French game Chroniques Oubliées (Forgotten Chronicles).

The report also says that usage in general of the VTT increased by 5% in that quarter (following a 6% growth in the previous quarter), and that Roll20 has reached 8M users (that's users ever, not active users).

 

[darjr]

 

[Michael O'Brien]

I'd also love to know what's in the 'uncategorized' category, but I guess there's no way to tell!

The 'Uncategorised' category is home brew stuff. The 'Other Games' are quite literally all the other games.

 

[lud]

The 'Uncategorised' category is home brew stuff. The 'Other Games' are quite literally all the other games.

And this includes games that are not RPGs.

We use Roll20 to play a space battle wargame using the hex grid, an image of a star field and the appropriate tokens. We can even turn the ships to they face the proper hex side.

 

[Aldarc]

Whether a lot of people play it or not, it is drawing in a lot of revenue. Kind of reminds me of 7th Sea. I expect a lot more people are buying the books than will ever actually play. But the only thing that matters is people are happy with the purchase.

Which is the case for all TTRPG books. What TOR has over AIME is that it's a system created from the ground up to support the tone and feel of questing in Tolkien's Middle Earth and from all accounts I've read it does so marvelously.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Which is the case for all TTRPG books. What TOR has over AIME is that it's a system created from the ground up to support the tone and feel of questing in Tolkien's Middle Earth and from all accounts I've read it does so marvelously.

Agreed. But in my community I know lot of people who bought 7th Sea and few who ever got a game off the ground. So there are degrees.

 

[Aldarc]

Agreed. But in my community I know lot of people who bought 7th Sea and few who ever got a game off the ground. So there are degrees.

Same. I know a number of fans of the first edition of 7th Sea here in Austria that were disappointed with the end result of the second edition. They backed it thinking it would play mostly the same, but weren't too pleased with the differences once they got their hands on the books.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Pretty sure that Matt Mercer STARTED his campaign using Pathfinder 1e (hence Percy being a gunslinger which at the time had no equivalent in 5e as well as the mention of some Golarion based deities early on in the recorded games) and switched over to 5e for ease of use for his players.

 

[MNblockhead]

Yeah, PF2 players are mostly on Foundry now and they haven't published these kinds of stats by game system (that I am aware of).

Foundry wouldn't be able to. They sell the software, they don't host it.

Some of the hosting providers like The Forge might be able to.

 

[Loren the GM]

Yeah, I don't think that could possibly be the real number of daily players. Whether it's 8 million total users ever or 8 million active users (however active would be defined) makes a big difference, of course, but either way, it can't possibly be 8 million different users playing on Roll20 on a given day. That would imply a total active user number many times higher than 8 million, because the vast majority of players don't play every day.

And that sentence is a slippery one. To me it reads like it's crafted to give the impression you got, but without unambiguously stating that as fact. To me it reads like this: "Our 8 million users play games on Roll20! How many games do they play? So many! How often are games played on Roll20? Every day!"

They talk a little about this in their most recent community round table: Relevant timecode is at about 41:52. Also a bit more at 45:40.

They have 8.4+ million accounts. They had a record amount of simultaneous players during Gen Con 2020, over 100,000 players concurrently. They hosted over 2000 of the 7000 Gen Con events on Roll20. And then in November they beat that record with over 300,000 players online concurrently.

 

[TheSword]

Hang on a second. Are we honestly saying the second largest ttrpg company can’t get Roll20 to provide modules for PF2 yet tiny companies like Cubicle 7 can?

My understanding from talking from people working on WFRP4e was that it’s the publishers that produce the modules (in conjunction with Roll20) and character sheets and roll20 then host them? Or is this not the case?

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs if the PF2 team is choosing not to support the largest TTRPG company.

I mean I have and like Foundry in some regards, but I can’t believe that needing to pay $50 up front for software. Plus find and pay a hosting service, then upload your module work is a particularly efficient way of recruiting new players!