FANTASY GROUNDS Confirms D&D 5E Lead On VTTs

Last time I wrote about the relative popularity of games played on the largest virtual tabletop platforms, D&D 5E had finally surged into the lead, passing Pathfinder. That was the Orr Group's (them who makes Roll20) quarterly report for Q1 2014. As you may know, Fantasy Grounds also releases such figures, and its latest stats have just come my way - and it tells the same story. These charts are for 2015 so far, and show an enormous surge which took place in March/April of this year.

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Now, there's an obvious caveat. Fantasy Grounds became the official licensed D&D 5E virtual tabletop round about then, so that surge is to be expected. Thanks to Fantasy Grounds for supplying these figures!

Interestingly in these latest figures, you get four "flavours" of D&D (5E, Pathfinder, 3.5, and 4E in that order) before you see the next highest system, which is Savage Worlds.

Measuring the relative popularity of games is an imprecise thing. I try to keep up with various ways to do so. The two VTT reports are great tools, and I report on them every quarter or so. Also relevant is the ICv2 survey figures which come out every quarter or so, and which I maintain a chart of here. Finally, I also track mentions of various games on thousands of forums and blogs in this chart (ignore the arrows on that chart; they're wonky - but it's also intersting to see Green Ronin's AGE system climb up that chart to #13 since Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave launched).

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[Akodoken]

Even more important, only minor drops in the other games coinciding with the launch of all those new 5E campaigns. Two thumbs up for more games being played overall (even considering some of those are probably just folks moving from one medium to another). That's a win for the community as a whole.

 

[damned]

a lot of players who have had Fantasy Grounds licenses for a long time but were no longer actively using them have rejoined and are playing 5e using Fantasy Grounds and a lot of new players have purchased Fantasy Grounds specifically to play 5e. on a recent gaming day where 16 one shots ran 7 of them were 5e. and it is bringing old gamers back and new players in and they are spilling over to other systems too. d&d seems to me that it would be intimidating to the other publishers because of just how big it is - but also good because it is the primary drawcard for the hobby...

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Beyond the 5E spike I think it's interesting that 4E and 3.5 spike at the same time. Maybe it's the Steam marketing, as becoming the official 5E platform doesn't seem like it would be a big factor there. The 4E games almost double from March to April so there's definitely some kind of impact.

 

[Nylanfs]

Probably people just finding out that they can use a tool in the FG forums to scrape their existing DDI subscription to make FG modules to play 4e on FG.

 

[damned]

Beyond the 5E spike I think it's interesting that 4E and 3.5 spike at the same time. Maybe it's the Steam marketing, as becoming the official 5E platform doesn't seem like it would be a big factor there. The 4E games almost double from March to April so there's definitely some kind of impact.

The 3.5 and 4e rulesets are also very robust on Fantasy Grounds. 3.5 comes prepackaged with a bunch of OGL material and you can use your DDI subscription to pull all the 4e data into Fantasy Grounds too. 5e is bringing gamers back to the table and it helps most games grow their userbases as those gamers branch out again.