Orr Group's Roll20 Stats Q2 2019 Use New Method; Cthulhu Up, D&D/PF Down

Roll20 has posted its latest usage stats for Quarter 2, 2019, using a new method. Instead of only using "user selection data", they are now looking at the usage of character sheets across their 4 million accounts. As always, D&D comes in first, and is followed by Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu (which rank differently based on whether you are looking at players or campaigns). The new counting method has resulted in some changes!

​

There's also a lot of uncategorised games -- 13%-14% of the total, which includes custom character sheets with no listed system, or games without character sheets.

One interesting facet of the Call of Cthulhu rise is that the average game length is about a quarter of that of other systems -- "We found that they have an average playtime of 11.9 hours, compared to 40 hour average game times for other systems on these charts."

So how's D&D doing? Back in 2015, D&D had 25% of games and 31% of players. In early 2018 it has surged to 61% of games and 70% of players. This year, however, the figure has dropped to 51% of games and 54% of players. It's hard to tell whether this is just due to the new method of counting.

Looking at those same three reports, Pathfinder had 21% of games and 40% of players (fairly similar to D&D's stats) in 2015, in 2018 had dropped to 10% of games and 27% of players, and is now sitting at about 6.5% of games and 8% of players.

Call of Cthulhu, the third placed game, began with 1.3% of games and 8% of players in 2015, increased to had 2.6% of games and 7.3% of players in 2018, and has grown in the last year to 9.5% of games but dropped to 3.4% of players.

As I mentioned, it's hard to tell how the new counting method has affected these figures.

 

[timbannock]

What's still interesting to me is that AD&D predominantly rises above any other OSR by a pretty big factor, but so much of the OSR tries to emulate B/X or OD&D. OSRIC, the AD&D clone, has a highly active playing and forum community yet seems to be ignored in terms of getting an SRD out, having a working website and easy means to get books, or get many compatible releases on DriveThru. People just straight up say "Compatible with 1e and BX" more often than choosing a specific clone any more.

 

[GMMichael]

Looks to me like D&D is followed by Indie Games, not Pathfinder. Personal bias, maybe? Although that Systems list looks pretty thorough...

 

[volanin]

The discrepancy between the pie chart and the numbers is because that Top 10 only accounts for 88.69% and the pie chart is based on just the Top 10. So D&D 5e in the Campaign Percentage is 51.87% overall, but is 58.48% of the Top 10.

If you dump those numbers into a spreadsheet, and build the chart based on just the Top 10, it looks precisely like the one shown.

So, it might have made more sense if they included an 11.31% slice for "Everything else."

Edit to Add: Also, for the Account Percentage data, that Top 10 only covers 86.94%. That's why D&D 5e's 54.44% is shown as 62.62% on the pie chart.

Thanks for that!
I assumed "Uncategorized" was "Everything Else".

 

[Mistwell]

Since uncategorized means character sheet that isn't the Roll20 supplied one, or no character sheet, I suspect the largest portion of those are 5e and PF2, since both have character sheet generators out there in high quantity. For example, if your players are using DnDBeyond to print character sheets and using Roll20 with those sheets in their hands, it's getting set as Uncharacterized rather than 5e. Same probably goes for PF.

 

[dave2008]

The title states that Cthulhu is Up and D&D/PF are down. However, we can't truly know that if the numbers are using different data from 2015-2018 than they used for 2019.

This would be kike saying my son grew 6" from 2015-2018 but he shrank in 2019 because he weighed 160 lbs. Different data, we can't compare them.

We really have no idea how 2019 compares to 2015-2018.

However, this is all moot if the graph presented is based on the same data, i.e. they went back and re-figured the 2015-2018 figures with the same date/method they used in 2019. Do you have any idea if that is the case?

 

[Morrus]

The title states that Cthulhu is Up and D&D/PF are down.

Half of it does.

However, we can't truly know that if the numbers are using different data from 2015-2018 than they used for 2019.

That’s the other half.

Calm down man. We’re saying the same thing.

 

[dave2008]

Half of it does.



That’s the other half.

Calm down man. We’re saying the same thing.

I'm calm, just wasn't paying enough attention! Thanks for the clarification and sorry to bother

 

[LordEntrails]

Am I just being pessimistic and assuming they are not actually providing any raw number because they don't want to show a decrease in active users, games played, number of campaigns or anything else that could be compared to the growth numbers of their competitors?

I agree this is a much better way to collect data, but just telling us percentages really keeps the data from being very useful for comparison to anything else , including the older reports.

 

[kenmarable]

Am I just being pessimistic and assuming they are not actually providing any raw number because they don't want to show a decrease in active users, games played, number of campaigns or anything else that could be compared to the growth numbers of their competitors?

I agree this is a much better way to collect data, but just telling us percentages really keeps the data from being very useful for comparison to anything else , including the older reports.

I agree that it is less useful without knowing the sample size (other than imprecise “4 million+”). However, to offer a more charitable motivation, it could just be that when their sample sizes were a small fraction of their users, that is important to be upfront about. Now that their sample size is all users, they might have thought it wasn’t as important. After all, this isn’t a separate research firm, this is just from the programmers who build Roll20. Statistical research and polling isn’t their specialty, writing code is, of course.

Alternatively, you may be right that they are intentionally hiding their exact user numbers. Even if they aren’t going down, a lot of businesses (across many industries) seem to think revealing that sort of info helps competitors. Heck, even with D&D being wildly successful, WotC is pretty secretive about actual sales numbers. So not publicly stating that info isn’t necessarily a sign of losing business.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

The two releases (Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds) are marketing releases. They show increasing user counts and that a lot of the most popular game is played on their system and plenty more. Roll20 has always marketed their user account number because it is a big number and they never discuss how many are active and playing because that is not a positive story for marketing.

The stats are interesting and I am glad that both companies release them even if they are marketing exercises.