Roll20 RPG Usage Stats: Growth Everywhere During Pandemic!

Roll20 has posted its latest Industry Report, revealing that the first quarter of 2020 shows growth for almost every game on its platform during the pandemic. D&D, of course, remains by far the most popular (up from 50% to 53% after a dip last year), with Call of Cthulhu and Pathfinder coming in behind. Call of Cthulhu has seen a bit of a drop from 12% to 8.5%, while Pathfinder is approximately steady.

(See the Quarter 1 2020 report here).

Cyberpunk Red saw high growth of over 100%, as did Tormenta, City of Mist, and the Year Zero Engine.

Here's the full list!

 

[Guest 7025638]

There's nothing wrong with having a preference.
Really, I would encourage you to go through Roll20's Looking for Group forum and if you don't see any open tables on your systems of choice, try starting a thread asking if someone would be willing to GM one of these systems. You might find a whole group of people wanting to play something like City of Mist, for example.
The great thing about going online, it's like every day is a Convention. You can find so many games. You can find groups of people willing to try anything.
(I've played City of Mist in person several months ago, before the pandemic. I was the Headless Horseman/Brom Bones by way of Johnny Lawrence from Cobra Kai.)

Your idea is still good and I thank you for that, but for now I'm good, I play 3-4 times a week, all different systems so I can't complain (it's getting too much, already, to be honest). But it hasn't been always like this (quite the contrary) and I do "fault" D&D in this as 80% or more LFG-advertisements are about that. And a few years ago I did post questions if people would be willing to GM some of the games I would like to play/try - and either I did not receive a response at all (in majority) or people told me to GM and "players will come". No, thanks, I always said.

 

[Jeff Carpenter]

I don’t want to start a fight with anybody, I just shared my opinion, so take everything I say like that. Because D&D is (and have been ever since it was created, I started playing with AD&D) a tactical wargame with some RPG elements. It’s enough to take a look at a character sheet to see this where 90+ % of the elements are combat related.
My few favorites are: The Dark Eye, Masks, Worlds in Peril, City of Mist, Genesys (and FFG’s Star Wars, as well), to name a few. Again, this is what I think, not a universal truth, and I don’t wish to hurt anybody’s feelings.

So less combat oriented games. I get that. The wonder of RPGs is they are so versatile and can be played many different ways.

That said people who play games less reliant on a tactical grid may be less inclined to use Roll 20 and just play directly on sites like discord.

 

[Guest 7025638]

So less combat oriented games. I get that. The wonder of RPGs is they are so versatile and can be played many different ways.

That said people who play games less reliant on a tactical grid may be less inclined to use Roll 20 and just play directly on sites like discord.

And I find this true, I rarely play on Roll20, basically only when I play D&D 5e.

 

[Teemu]

Yes. The products available on that service and more heavily promoted are going to appeal to players on that platform. PF2, which I do play on there, has a character builder that's not nearly as good as 5E (essentially a form fillable PDF), the compendium hardly works at all, and the first Adventure Path hasn't even been put on.

The first PF2 AP is on the Roll20 marketplace now. It wasn't for a good while, but it looks like Roll20's PF2 support has grown a fair bit over the past few months.

 

[Nilbog]

I think like @Retreater posted earlier that the stats will be skewed somewhat by the availability of resource for a particular system

When lockdown hit, I wanted to port my pf2 campaign onto roll20, but the lack of options made doing that and learning roll20 (I'm an online noob) too steep a curve

 

[Ibrandul]

I know what you mean, ibenny. Even though I like D&D 5e a lot and play it the most of any RPG, I also wish it wasn't so extremely dominant over other options. I'd be happier if D&D were just the most popular of many popular games rather than actually being more popular than all other RPGs put together. (By many, but perhaps not all, metrics.)

But thinking that way kind of assumes that, if the numbers were at least a little more even, then the people who are now playing D&D would play other RPGs instead. And yeah, obviously that would be great for those of us who like other RPGs, because then it would be easier to find players for games we're excited about (such as The Dark Eye, which you mentioned as a favorite, and which appeals to me too).

While that's probably true for some D&D players, I'm not sure it's true for most. In the US, at least, I see D&D a little like I see WotC's other big property. If Magic: The Gathering were less dominant of the collectible card game market, I don't think that would be because a lot of MtG players had started playing other CCGs instead. More likely it would be because a lot of MtG players stopped playing CCGs altogether. Same for D&D, I suspect.

So I've stopped lamenting D&D's runaway success, and started hoping for a little more of a trickle-down effect that might bolster the other games I love.

 

[Morrus]

I think like @Retreater posted earlier that the stats will be skewed somewhat by the availability of resource for a particular system

And indeed that Roll20 is an official licensed outlet for D&D and sells the new adventures on day 1 when they release.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Because it shows the overbearing dominance of D&D, which we can sadly experience elsewhere, too, while many-many amazing games are barely presented in the charts at all.

To be fair, it only shows that 5e DnD is the most popular RPG amongst people who use Roll20, which is itself only the most popular (but by far not the only) VTT platform. I don't imagine that most folks playing Blades in The Dark or Monsterhearts are using Roll20.

So less combat oriented games. I get that. The wonder of RPGs is they are so versatile and can be played many different ways.

That said people who play games less reliant on a tactical grid may be less inclined to use Roll 20 and just play directly on sites like discord.

Yep, and even many of us who do enjoy combat oriented games either prefer theater of the mind combat, or view roll20 as too cumbersome to bother learning, and use something else.

MY wife is running CoS in Astral Tabletop, but even that can be a bit clunky, especially the system for drawing line of sight obstructions and doors and windows, etc, so she is looking into other systems. My ongoing project is to set up a physical table with a top down webcam view, and have that computer on mute and just watching the table, with me and my wife moving miniatures in real space.

I deal with complex systems enough at work, I don't want to learn a complex system so that I can manage it on top of the complex system of the RPG we're playing.

 

[Guest 7025638]

To be fair, it only shows that 5e DnD is the most popular RPG amongst people who use Roll20, which is itself only the most popular (but by far not the only) VTT platform. I don't imagine that most folks playing Blades in The Dark or Monsterhearts are using Roll20.


Yep, and even many of us who do enjoy combat oriented games either prefer theater of the mind combat, or view roll20 as too cumbersome to bother learning, and use something else.

MY wife is running CoS in Astral Tabletop, but even that can be a bit clunky, especially the system for drawing line of sight obstructions and doors and windows, etc, so she is looking into other systems. My ongoing project is to set up a physical table with a top down webcam view, and have that computer on mute and just watching the table, with me and my wife moving miniatures in real space.

I deal with complex systems enough at work, I don't want to learn a complex system so that I can manage it on top of the complex system of the RPG we're playing.

To the first part: yes, but I find DnD overbearingly dominant everywhere else, too, not only on Roll20.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

And indeed that Roll20 is an official licensed outlet for D&D and sells the new adventures on day 1 when they release.

It is a licensed outlet for PF2 as well. Roll20 is usually lagging in getting content up. Fantasy Grounds is better at it. I assume that D&D sells a lot better so gets the support.