D&D 5E Up 4% In Latest Orr Group Industry Report

Roll20's Quarter 1 2016 data analytics report has just arrived in my inbox, so, as always, it's stats time again! Not surprisingly, D&D 5th Edition remains the most-played system on the virtual tabletop (35.44% of all games, increasing by 4.05%), while Pathfinder, D&D 3.5 and D&D 4E all decreased slightly - but only by a single percent or so each.

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Additional analysis from The Orr Group:

• Star Wars Systems: We saw an uptick in Star Wars systems this quarter, with 266 more games and 963 more players than last quarter. We suspect this increase was influenced by RollPlay’s recent Star Wars one-shots on Twitch and YouTube ("Age of Rebellion" in December and "Balance of Power" in March).
• World of Darkness: World of Darkness also performed well, with 143 more games and 757 more players. We hope this is due to our user base enjoying Roll20’s new Mage campaign!
• Mouse Guard: Mouse Guard RPG games have doubled since Q4 of 2015, which we attribute to both the release of the second edition of Mouse Guard, as well as Roll20’s own one-shot of the game in January.
• Increase in Non-English Games: Roll20 is continuing our efforts to make our site more accessible for non-English speakers. We were glad to see enough activity in foreign-language games Tormenta (Brazilian) and Chroniques Oubliées (French) to validate adding these titles to the Orr Group Industry Report. We’ll continue tracking these going forward.
• Increase in Smaller Games: There are a few more new titles in this quarter’s report, which we gave special recognition due to increased activity in their game-specific character sheets. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a survival horror game, while Paranoia is a darkly humorous dystopian RPG. It’s great to see more indie RPGs being used on Roll20!
• Kickstarter Games: Tavern Tales is a recently-funded Kickstarter RPG that is currently in open beta. We’re happy to see people have begun playing this new indie game on Roll20!

The report's data is pulled form two locations within Roll20 member profiles. Player numbers are drawn from the “Enjoys Playing” and “Seeks Group For” sections, while Game numbers come from the “My Campaigns” section. The percentages can total more than 100%, particularly Player numbers, since each player will list their interest in multiple games. The report is meant to be a representative sample, and the game listings are curated by Roll20 staff. There is a more detailed explanation of the methodology here.

Up above are the quick stats, but below you'll find the detailed stats.

 

[BrockBallingdark]

Very cool to see these reports. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Nylanfs]

Yea Graphporn! Now if Doug would just get Smiteworks pretty graph out...

 

[Chaz Rambone]

Right Nylanfs! Hard to call it an "Industry Report" with only one virtual tabletop being presented, love me some 5E but I bet Savage World and Cthulhu would be much more prevalent.

 

[Morrus]

The Smiteworks one always comes out about the same time, too. Don't worry. This happens every quarter.

 

[GreyLord]

I find it interesting that AD&D is still played in the amount it is. It has 1/5 or ~20% of the players 5e does, but considering the advertising and promotion (along with what's available at retail for the most part), it's doing surprisingly well in consideration. I wonder what else drives it to be such a high game on those charts (above other newer games such as Dragon Age and 13th Age).

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

A bit disappointed in the FFG Star Wars numbers.

Mostly because I bought the EoE starter box, read through it and was a little confused with the ruleset. It is definitely a lot to take in compared to a more traditional D20 system. Honestly, I think my group's lack of desire to tackle the game is Roll20's lack of support in their generic Dice roller.

Sure there are workarounds, like using the API, which we don't sub to, or building rollable tables for the dice... but it just seemed like a lot to do to just to try it out during our rotation.

With all that said we are still playing a Star Wars game for May 4th here in a week or two... I guess we'll see.

 

[Chimpy]

A bit disappointed in the FFG Star Wars numbers.

Mostly because I bought the EoE starter box, read through it and was a little confused with the ruleset. It is definitely a lot to take in compared to a more traditional D20 system. Honestly, I think my group's lack of desire to tackle the game is Roll20's lack of support in their generic Dice roller.

Sure there are workarounds, like using the API, which we don't sub to, or building rollable tables for the dice... but it just seemed like a lot to do to just to try it out during our rotation.

I'm not sure FFGSW is any more take in - I think it's just different. For people used to d20 there is a flow they get used to and games like FFGSW have a different cadence. I think one of the reasons FFGSW doesn't see more play is because it's easier for players to stick to what they know.

If you launch the Roll20 game using the google hangouts option, it has a star wars dice roller app you can plug in.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Am I reading this correct. The "player" numbers are based on what people on Roll 20 list as being interested in or looking for a game in?

That doesn't seem like a very good way of tracking actual player numbers. If I was on Roll 20 I'd probably list that I was interested in Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu and Feng Shui, yet I haven't played any of those RPGs in several years now. Heck, I'd probably even list AD&D, and my last AD&D game was probably in 1999!

I guess you have to take the player numbers as a measure of the general interest level in a particular game, rather than the number of people actually playing the game.

 

[mrm1138]

I'm not sure FFGSW is any more take in - I think it's just different. For people used to d20 there is a flow they get used to and games like FFGSW have a different cadence. I think one of the reasons FFGSW doesn't see more play is because it's easier for players to stick to what they know.

If you launch the Roll20 game using the google hangouts option, it has a star wars dice roller app you can plug in.

I've started an Edge of the Empire game with some coworkers, one of whom had never played a tabletop RPG before. I think it will be especially interesting to see how quickly she gets used to the system compared to those of us who are familiar with games like D&D. We've only made it through the beginner game so far, but everyone seems to be digging it.

 

[happyhermit]

Very interesting. Looking back at the report from last April, one thing that I find odd is that while it looks like Pathfinder, 3.5, and 4E all gained similar % of players saying they are interested in playing those games, Pathfinder was the only one to have any increase in actual games while 3.5 and 4E had less games. That seems very odd, because the numbers show a LOT more players.

I wonder how much of this is players choosing other systems versus GMs not running the quantities or types of games those players want. I suppose "table" size is another factor but I think that still leads back to number of games.

5e nearly tripled the number of people open to playing it, and the number of games almost doubled, which must mean that 5e players are very active in terms of number of games.

 

[LordEntrails]

If I understand this part right:
"The report's data is pulled form two locations within Roll20 member profiles. Player numbers are drawn from the “Enjoys Playing” and “Seeks Group For” sections, while Game numbers come from the “My Campaigns” section."

This means these numbers don't actually indicate session type numbers. So I'm very curious if these actually accurately relate to usage. Just because someone indicates "Enjoys Playing" doesn't mean they have actually played that game recently, if ever. And I'm suspecting that the number of My Campaigns doesn't actually indicate how many of those are active, or how many times they have been played in the listed quarter.

It's interesting to see the numbers, but I don't know if these actually mean anything useful. Do they?

 

[happyhermit]

It's interesting to see the numbers, but I don't know if these actually mean anything useful. Do they?

They are more useful in showing trends than actual numbers. For example, if almost 3 times more people "Enjoy playing" 5e than 1 year ago on roll20, and there are twice as many games, that is useful and meaningful. Regardless of the factors you mention it is obvious that it is growing in popularity (on roll20). Sure, there may be older systems that are still showing slightly more popularity due to games still appearing on their profiles, and the a similar argument can be made for player preferences, but the trends will still correlate.

 

[Shasarak]

Is it just me, or do the numbers not seem to total up properly?

 

[Morrus]

Is it just me, or do the numbers not seem to total up properly?

Both. They don't add up, but it's just you who didn't read the explanation why in the article.

 

[Nylanfs]

Because "math"...

 

[Shasarak]

Both. They don't add up, but it's just you who didn't read the explanation why in the article.

Game sample size 46000, actual number of games 47974.

Confidence in results: 75%

 

[Lalato]

Anyone have this data in line graph form to see trends. If not, is this data archived somewhere in an easy to digest format so that I can graph it up?

 

[LordEntrails]

Anyone have this data in line graph form to see trends. If not, is this data archived somewhere in an easy to digest format so that I can graph it up?

There is this thread; http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1984-Top-5-RPGs-Compiled-Charts-2008-Present