D&D 5E Dungeons & Dragons Boom!

[ccs]

Pathfinder never sold well comparatively speaking. It doesn't matter how old something is if its total sales are still tiny.

?? What alternate Earth do you come from?

 

[Morrus]

And also its greatest strength.

Look, if you want DMless D&D?
Go play a board game. Specifically Descent or Wrath of Ashardilon (or the others in that series - Elemental Evil, Drizzt, Ravenloft, I forget their exact names, but they're basically all the same). Tomb could also work.

Well, yes. Board games are an order or magnitude larger than RPGs. I’m not sure you’re making point you meant to.

 

[ad_hoc]

Pathfinder sold fantastically. ‘Comparatively speaking’ is not relevant information. Just because Avengers Endgame exists doesn’t mean that Jurassic Park didn’t do well. The fact that Everest exists doesn’t mean the Empire State Building isn’t tall. Outliers are not the standard.

Right, but we're comparing the player counts between 5e and Pathfinder.

The statement was that Pathfinder sold well so it stands to reason that the player numbers of 5e and Pathfinder will be close.

Well, comparatively speaking, that just isn't the case.

 

[Reynard]

And also its greatest strength.

Look, if you want DMless D&D?
Go play a board game. Specifically Descent or Wrath of Ashardilon (or the others in that series - Elemental Evil, Drizzt, Ravenloft, I forget their exact names, but they're basically all the same). Tomb could also work.

Gloomhaven is explicitly a multiplayer dungeon crawler CRPG in board game form.

 

[Zardnaar]

Paizo at PAX East 2014 gave 250k sold for PF. Similar to 3.5 which apparently sold 250-350k.

Sold reasonably well compared with most D&D editions except the really big ones (1E, B/X, 5E).

At its height it had more players online than any D&D edition.

 

[Hussar]

And also its greatest strength.

Look, if you want DMless D&D?
Go play a board game. Specifically Descent or Wrath of Ashardilon (or the others in that series - Elemental Evil, Drizzt, Ravenloft, I forget their exact names, but they're basically all the same). Tomb could also work.

His point isn't wrong though. The biggest impediment to the growth of the hobby is the need for a DM. The need for at least one person at the table to be willing to spend a LOT more time on the game than everyone else. Never minding the need for that person to learn the game first as well.

It is a big hurdle.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Right, but we're comparing the player counts between 5e and Pathfinder.

The statement was that Pathfinder sold well so it stands to reason that the player numbers of 5e and Pathfinder will be close.

Well, comparatively speaking, that just isn't the case.

This may be more of a reply to several people, but your comment was the easiest one to quote for this. Anyway, what kind of sales between the two are people even talking about? When talking actual books sales, and not including various digital platforms, Pathfinder is sold in both physical and pdf formats, while all legal sales of 5E books is only physical. Plus, a lot of Pathfinder player got both the physical and pdf versions of the books, either with the pdf being free or bought at a greatly reduced price. So do Pathfinder sales numbers include print and pdf? If so, then those numbers would show a lot more copies moved than actual players of the game.

 

[SovietDM]

Here's a 'sample' of the player base on roll20 from their June 2018 quarterly report.

They use the term 'sample' so I'm unsure how to read this. What we can do is look at Pathfinder. We know that the total number of Pathfinder players in the world is minuscule compared to D&D both from icv2 earnings reports as well as Amazon sales rankings.

Yet on roll20 Pathfinder players are almost 40% as numerous as 5e players.

What we can conclude from this report is that roll20 is not where 5e players are playing while Pathfinder players are more likely to be playing online.

76000 is less than .4% of 5e players. Even if we increase that 10 fold to 760000 we haven't even hit 4% while if we increase Pathfinder 10 fold then 270000 has to be a huge chunk of their player base right? So I think it is entirely possible that this 'sample' is close to their actual player counts.

Does anyone have Pathfinder player numbers?

View attachment 113397

Can we recognize the fact that not all people that play D&D, or other RPG's online use roll20?

 

[ad_hoc]

Can we recognize the fact that not all people that play D&D, or other RPG's online use roll20?

Are you really sticking to your 50% claim?

I think that number is ridiculous.

 

[SovietDM]

Are you really sticking to your 50% claim?

I think that number is ridiculous.

Oh, no. Of course not, I just made a very bad guess. I looked into it some more, and I agree that number was
ridiculous. I'd just like to recognize that not all people that play RPG's online use roll20.