What Does a "Successful" RPG Look Like?

Reynard said:

When does it take effect? How do you determine? I can still buy Angel and Buffy RPG books, even though it has been DECADES since they were otherwise supported. Are those game sdead?

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I think whether they are dead or not, it's clear that they are not successful. WEG D6 still gets a ton of play both at home and at cons, but I don't think you can list it as successful. I wish Gallant Knight Games the best of luck, but I'm not sure 2e D6 is making big waves in the community.

MGibster said:

Dead to me means the game is no longer in publication. I don't care if people play it. If we go by that standard, there's no way to truly determine if a game is dead because we don't know for sure whether someone is playing it.

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If a lot of people are playing it, that's probably pretty easy to find out.

MGibster said:

It's interesting because the introduction of PDFs have made it possible to purchase all sort of games. It's easier for me to get my hands on Oriental Adventures for AD&D today than it was in 1990. I should amend my definition to be games which no longer have new material published for it. It's always possible for someone to cast resurrection on a game for it to come back to life.

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Does the new material have to be official? Because I can think of a lot of games that regularly receive fan supplements and the like. WEG is among them.

Celebrim said:

I think whether they are dead or not, it's clear that they are not successful. WEG D6 still gets a ton of play both at home and at cons, but I don't think you can list it as successful. I wish Gallant Knight Games the best of luck, but I'm not sure 2e D6 is making big waves in the community.

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So would you say that a successful game can stop being successful when the company that produced it stops producing it, in which case it is no longer to be considered a successful game?

Micah Sweet said:

I don't recall the OP asking what makes a successful business RPG. That was your choice.

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Has there even been a consensus here on what "successful" means? All I see is the usual confusion

I think a modern RPG will be successful if they are linked to a popular franchise or theme, e.g. Avatar The Last Airbender, Discworld, etc. Or they have a general fantasy theme that is easy to understand and fun play, e.g. Shadowdark. If a game is too complicated or the rules system detracts from the fun I don't think it would be very successful.

Being popular will also mean people talk about it and review it and possibly have third party material published which will always increase a games success and longevity.

brodahisou said:

I think a modern RPG will be successful if they are linked to a popular franchise or theme, e.g. Avatar The Last Airbender, Discworld, etc. Or they have a general fantasy theme that is easy to understand and fun play, e.g. Shadowdark. If a game is too complicated or the rules system detracts from the fun I don't think it would be very successful.

Being popular will also mean people talk about it and review it and possibly have third party material published which will always increase a games success and longevity.

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I think the first point is only true for financial success, and we've got a lot of recent-ish games which kind of demonstrate that, especially the Avatar RPG, where it made huge amounts of money (for a TTRPG), and moved a ton of copies, but no-one actually seems to be playing it or talking about it beyond asking why no-one is playing it! I would suggest indeed most "popular franchise" RPGs go the same way - sell decently to very well, but then don't get actually played or discussed much (other recent examples being the Bladerunner and Terminator RPGs), essentially becoming collectibles rather than something people actually play, with only SW, ST and Alien being the obvious exceptions (I would suggest most Marvel RPGs have gone the same way, though FASERIP didn't). There's nothing new about this of course - the Aliens RPG back in the day was similarly not played much, but was a sought-after Aliens collectible.

SlyFlourish said:

A while back I posted a thread on "What does it take for an RPG to die?".

Now I want to flip the question. What does a "successful" RPG look like?

With Daggerheart just released, Shadowdark having completed a gangbuster Kickstarter, MCDM's Flee Mortals coming out soon, Dragonbane running their own Kickstarter, a new Player's Guide 2 for Tales of the Valiant Kickstarting right now, 13th Age v2 on the verge of release – we're seeing a lot of movement from a lot of different systems.

A common statement is that these never really compete with, much less beat, D&D. Ok, but who cares? Is that what success has to look like?

Obviously not. There have been hundreds of RPGs published for fifty years – some quite successful and some not.

So what, to you, does a successful RPG look like? How do you judge whether an RPG has caught on or not? What measures, metrics, or vibes (as the kids say these days) do you use to determine if an RPG was successful?

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I wanted to reach back to the OP.

I want to use Blades in the Dark as an example, because I slept on it and it was not until I realized how successful it was that I gave it a go (and really liked it; though I like Scum and Villainy better).

The things that made me think BitD was a successful game was primarily its ubiquity: everyone seemed to be talking about it, even if not everyone necessarily loved it. It was also showing up regularly at the 3 regional (NE USA) cons I run games at and attend regularly. Finally, there seemed to be a LOT of 3rd party products for it, even if the game itself had essentially no official support. All of those things together made me think "This is a successful game that I should at least try."

Now, it turned out that Blades was also something I enjoyed, but that is not always true of a successful game or thing. For example, I bounced really hard off Dungeon Crawler Carl, which shares many of the same traits in the indie fantasy space: it is ubiquitous, the fanbase is constantly making illustrations and unofficial RPG stuff, and it is spawning lots of copy err inspired by material.

Ruin Explorer said:

I think the first point is only true for financial success, and we've got a lot of recent-ish games which kind of demonstrate that, especially the Avatar RPG, where it made huge amounts of money (for a TTRPG), and moved a ton of copies, but no-one actually seems to be playing it or talking about it beyond asking why no-one is playing it! I would suggest indeed most "popular franchise" RPGs go the same way - sell decently to very well, but then don't get actually played or discussed much (other recent examples being the Bladerunner and Terminator RPGs), essentially becoming collectibles rather than something people actually play, with only SW, ST and Alien being the obvious exceptions (I would suggest most Marvel RPGs have gone the same way, though FASERIP didn't). There's nothing new about this of course - the Aliens RPG back in the day was similarly not played much, but was a sought-after Aliens collectible.

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Yeah, that's a fair point.

Theory of Games said:

Has there even been a consensus here on what "successful" means? All I see is the usual confusion

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I'm just saying no one was assuming lots of profit is the only metric of RPG success.