Roleplaying outside the U.S.

[Maggan]

Hmm. I guess it's possible that RQ or Traveller was the primary rpg back when I started roleplaying (1980), but I'm fairly confident it was Dungeons & Dragons. Everyone I knew was into one of those three games before 'Drakar och Demoner' was released, but Dungeons & Dragons seemed the most common. At least that's the way I remember it. Though, of course, it's been a few years.

Ouch. You're right, of course. AD&D was probably dominant among the early adopters of the hobby, but there was probably stiff competition with RQ and Traveller. Since I didn't start until 1982 with Drakar och Demoner, I tend to forget that part of the era.

So I amend my statement ... D&D/AD&D was in close competition with RQ and Traveller until 1982, when Drakar och Demoner was released, killing all other game systems and taking their stuff.

/M

 

[Ravellion]

The most prominnet RP game in the Netherlands is definitely D&D. I think there is even only a very small possibility of playing a non-D&D game in the Netherlands; even less likely than the US and the UK.

 

[Gold Roger]

I'd say that D&D and DSA (Das Schwarze Auge, german RPG) are about even, maybe D&D currently a bit stronger. WoD has a pretty strong presence as well.

 

[JRR_Talking]

Drakar och Demoner

Just looked at the Wiki, lots of elric pictures for editions 2 to 5. Very good sales hit per head of population too!

John

 

[Odhanan]

AD&D was very prominent in France at one point. Call of Cthulhu soon became just as popular, and loads of French RPGs started popping up all over the place in the end of the 80's and (mostly) the 90's.

Now with Third Edition D&D has made a huge come back on the French scene. There are dozens of indie games around and a few successful French RPGs still around, but I suspect D&D makes up the silent majority of role-players in France now (silent as in: not as vocal on the internet as indie gamers are).

 

[Sammael]

In Serbia, the role-playing hobby was introduced in the early nineties. If I recall correctly, the most popular RPGs at the time were RIFTS, Mechwarrior, Shadowrun, Warhammer FRP, and, yes, AD&D.

RPGs never gained as much popularity here as did tabletop wargaming (mainly WH, 40k, and derivatives) and CCGs (M:TG rules supreme). Right now, the scene is horribly splintered, with no clear-cut winners. D&D is probably more popular than any other RPG system, but D&D (and d20) players are often met with condescension and disdain from players of other systems (WoD, WHFRP, GURPS, Rolemaster, MERP, Chaosium CoC, and so on). There are some D&D players who still play AD&D 2nd edition, but they are few and far between).

To the best of my knowledge, no RPG was ever translated here. Rules for WH wargame got a translation, which few people took seriously. People play using a mix of Serbian and English.

I only know of one Serbian RPG system, the SRP, which, while being a labor of love, sucks beyond belief.

 

[MadMaxim]

I really have no idea, but I think Dungeons & Dragons is pretty big here in Denmark. It's funny that you mention "Drakar och Demoner", Maggan, because I have a copy of it. It was translated into Danish (you wouldn't want to have heard me trying to read Swedish when I was 11-12 years old, believe me ), and it was actually the first real roleplaying game I got. I don't think Hero Quest and Space Crusade count, though they certainly sparked my imagination back when I was around 10.

 

[Ry]

D&D for sure in Canada.

 

[Turjan]

For Germany:

1. No, D&D is not the primary RPG.

2. D&D was never the primary RPG, except perhaps in the very beginning, but that was before RPGs were really known as a hobby by more than a handful of people.

3. The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge) has been sitting on the number 1 spot nearly since its start in 1984. I guess that Shadowrun and D&D are fighting for the number 2 spot.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Dungeons & Dragons is and always has been king in Australia. We don't really have a roleplaying industry of our own - we're too small and too culturally close to the United States and the United Kingdom to sustain a unique instantiation of the hobby like Germany, France, or the Scandinavian countries do. Just as D&D dominates roleplaying here, for instance, Warhammer dominates the wargaming hobby.

Basically, we're not that different from the U.S. White Wolf games are popular, probably most closely followed (at a distance) by GURPS. Our gaming shelves are dominated by d20 and OGL products first, and everything else second.

When I worked at Games Paradise in Sydney we had a lot of the more prominent minor games - Legend of the Five Rings, Shadowrun, Gear Krieg, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, that sort of thing - but they weren't particularly successful. Lots of back stock on our sales tables, while White Wolf had about two-thirds as much space as the d20/OGL section (and GURPS about half of that).

I will say that I don't get the impression that Palladium Books has been as successful with its games in Australia as it has in the U.S. - which isn't to say that they're unknown. I know at least one guy who was really into Nightbane back in the late Nineties - but whenever I hear people on, say, RPGnet asserting that Palladium is or once was the second- or third-largest player in the industry by market share, it surprises me greatly.

Though we don't have much of a native industry, we do have our share of designers involved in major games thanks to the magic of the Intarwebs - Steve Darlington in Brisbane writes for Games Workshop/Black Library's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Second Edition, for instance, and Patrick O'Duffy in Melbourne (formerly in Brisbane) wrote for White Wolf's Hunter: The Reckoning and Demon: The Fallen (at least) and more recently for Green Ronin's new Freeport products. Off the top of my head.