D&D and Call of Cthulhu Climb Again in Roll20's Latest Stats

Roll20 has released its latest usage figures. These are for Q2, 2021. And they have a new fancy format!

D&D is, of course, still right up there at the top with nearly 54% of the market -- up from 53% in Q1 of this year. Call of Cthulhu continues its inexorable rise, climbing from 11% to 16%, and Pathfinder 2E gained from 1.5% to 1.8% (I'm told that most VTT action for PF2E happens on Foundry, not Roll20).

Roll20's Latest Report Shows Growth Everywhere!

Roll20 has released its latest usage stats. These are from Quarter 1 2020, and while there isn't much change in the relative ranks of different games since 2019, they report that nearly everything has doubled during these pandemic times when a lot of gaming has shifted online to virtual...

www.enworld.org

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...

www.enworld.org

 

[Jaeger]

ROTFLMAO.

The fact that you keep repeating that mantra of "on merit" as if that means anything pretty much says it all.

But, hey, you do you.

Timeline shown and sources (other than Lisa Stevens) linked.

Yet once again it has been established that Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

 

[Malmuria]

For all the attention (and thus support) that 5e gets you would think it would actually account for more than 54% of roll20 games

 

[Hussar]

/edit

Apologies for the threadjack. My total bad. Nothing to see here.

 

[Umbran]

3.5/PF1 does well. While 4e continues to cry in the corner.

WotC scorched the earth when they tossed aside 4e and its fans.

EDIT: And AD&D is even beating 4E.

In any case, 3.5 and AD&D are lording it over 4E.

Mod Note:
Wow. How childish. It isn't 3.5 and AD&D lording anything. It is YOU PEOPLE.

All of you are behaving like sore winners. It is not enough that you got what you want, you have to rub other people's noses in it, forever. This is not how to be a good person, folks.

It is well past time to stop. Move on, and stop reveling in the result of painful times. Be bigger people than this. Be better. Be kinder.

 

[teitan]

PF1e doubling PF2e...wonder why? Probably has to do with the fact there wasn't a real demand for it and PF1e was doing just great, then Paizo tossed it aside for PF2e like it was the best thing ever to come to gaming. Bad idea to have their fanbase split apart, they could've gone strong with PF1e but I guess that's the point of a venturing risk...it's a risk for probably success or failure.

Because PF2 is more strongly supported by Foundry.

 

[teitan]

In defense of: "WotC scorched the earth when they tossed aside 4e and its fans."

They were compelled to.

WotC had already made an own goal of epic proportions with the switch to 4e.

PF1 showed that 3.5 still had legs for a good 4-5 more years. Give or take.

They had alienated part of the fanbase with the way they rolled 4e out, and continued to run into various issues early on. Which when taken all together, ensured that for various reasons; 4e was just not a very well received edition of D&D.

The proof in the pudding was the fact that 4e got outsold on merit, by a clone of the previous edition.

Yes, it happened... D&D, the all singing, all dancing, market leading mother of RPGs, got outsold by a clone of its previous edition.

For Ha$bro/WotC, this was an unacceptable situation.

Unacceptable. Period.

Whatever merits 4e had as a system were made irrelevant when Pathfinder took over the number one spot.

Good, bad, didn't matter. 4e was divisive for the D&D fanbase. Yes it had fans, but not enough fans!

It had to go.

So house was cleaned, heads rolled at WotC, and Mike Mearls herded cats on keyboards until 5e popped out the other side.

And we continue to see the proof today that WotC made the correct decision for D&D.

As soon as WotC gave D&D fans a reason to come back into the fold of "Official D&D"; they did.

PF got put firmly back into the number two spot almost immediately, and 5e has been putting all things Pazio way way back in their rear view ever since...




And in Pazio's defense of: "...then Paizo tossed it aside for PF2e like it was the best thing ever to come to gaming."

They had to do something.

Pathfinder 1 took the number one RPG spot from 4e on merit. But once 5e came out Paizo began to hemorrhage market share back to WotC like a bleeding swimmer at a shark frenzy.

By Pazio's own admission they never fixed the underlying math issues with 3.5. The Pathfinder rules were essentially an employees house rules laid on top of the OGL. Whether you want to admit it or not, the roaring success of 5e has shown that 3.x D&D had reached the end of its edition life cycle...

So Pazio had to do something to generate excitement for its brand and try and reclaim some of the paying customers lost to 5e. (IMHO Pazio was just trying to stop the bleeding, and even they had no notions about ever being the number one fantasy RPG anymore.)

Personally, I think that they waited too long, (almost 5 years from 5e's launch), and went in the wrong design direction. But it is easy to backseat drive with 20/20 hindsight, and tell other people what they should have done with their money.

While one can quibble that roll20 is not accurate for PF2 because it is better supported on other platforms, but given that the subject has been discussed at length on other threads, I don't feel I am being controversial at all when I state that I don't think PF2 was quite the success that Paizo was hoping for.

Regardless, the end result is largely as you mentioned; Paizo has essentially split their fanbase.

They also continue to support it interestingly, not with new product but the digest books have not yet gone OOP.

 

[lud]

To better understand the level of integration of PF2 in Foundry.

You have all the ancestries, class features, feats, spells, items and monsters details in the system. To add an ancestry, feat or spell to your character you just need to drag it to your sheet. The sheet will change its values and add options based on your choices. This includes full descriptions of all those elements.

And they are kept up to date with the releases from Paizo.

In combat, conditions applied to a monster or character adjust the corresponding stats. A raging barbarian will see her AC lowered, the same for a monster made clumsy by a spell. A player cast a spell on a monster that requires a save... you just target the monster and click the "save" button associated to the spell DC in the chat. No need to check numbers on the character sheet or the monster entry in the bestiary. The system will even roll persistent damage and save for monsters at the end of their turn.

This is why it is the most recommended VTT for PF2.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

To better understand the level of integration of PF2 in Foundry.

You have all the ancestries, class features, feats, spells, items and monsters details in the system. To add an ancestry, feat or spell to your character you just need to drag it to your sheet. The sheet will change its values and add options based on your choices. This includes full descriptions of all those elements.

And they are kept up to date with the releases from Paizo.

In combat, conditions applied to a monster or character adjust the corresponding stats. A raging barbarian will see her AC lowered, the same for a monster made clumsy by a spell. A player cast a spell on a monster that requires a save... you just target the monster and click the "save" button associated to the spell DC in the chat. No need to check numbers on the character sheet or the monster entry in the bestiary. The system will even roll persistent damage and save for monsters at the end of their turn.

This is why it is the most recommended VTT for PF2.

That is pretty much in Fantasy Grounds as well, and Roll20 and FG posts some numbers every quarter.

Although there obviously is merit is arguing that Foundry has some PF2 players, there is nothing concrete to be looked at. So hard to just accept that somehow those numbers would greatly change everything.

 

[Jaeger]

They also continue to support it interestingly, not with new product but the digest books have not yet gone OOP.

No reason to pulp old stock when they can at least get some money back for it over time.

Nice of them not to purge it though. Companies have done crazy stuff like that in the past...

 

[darjr]

That is pretty much in Fantasy Grounds as well, and Roll20 and FG posts some numbers every quarter.

Although there obviously is merit is arguing that Foundry has some PF2 players, there is nothing concrete to be looked at. So hard to just accept that somehow those numbers would greatly change everything.

Good point. Is it possible that foundry has ten times the numbers of PF2 players as Roll20?