Roll20's Latest Report Shows Growth Everywhere!

Roll20 has released its latest usage stats. These are from Quarter 1 2020, and while there isn't much change in the relative ranks of different games since 2019, they report that nearly everything has doubled during these pandemic times when a lot of gaming has shifted online to virtual tabletops like this.

Since Q4 2019, D&D has climbed back up (from a previous drop) from 47.54% to 50.4% of campaigns. Call of Cthulhu has dropped from 15.35% to 12.15%. Pathfinder has dropped from 4.97% to 4.49% (but Pathfinder 2E has climbed from 1.13% to 1.23%), and Warhammer has dropped from 1.48% to 1.3%. World of Darkness and Star Wars both also show drops. Note these are relative shares, not absolute figures -- in most cases the actual number of games has increased. Notably, Call of Cthulhu remains the second most popular game on Roll20 by a large margin.

The first chart below shows the campaigns run for each system, and the second shows the players. Roll20 says that only games with at least one hour of playtime are counted in these results.

Those with the biggest growth are HeroQuest (4000%!), Old School Essentiants, Blades in the Dark, and L5R.

Here's the full chart. One of these days I'll put all this data (and the Fantasy Grounds data) on a combined chart like the one I do for ICv2 stats.

 

[TheSword]

There has to be an issues with 3 times as many players sticking with the old edition of pathfinder than play the second. Where do they put their resources?

Stop producing 1st Ed materials and miss out in a huge part of their market. Fail to focus on 2nd ed though and people will never switch. I don’t envy them.

Glad to see more people on Warhammer though than Pathfinder 2nd Ed.

 

[Aldarc]

D&D 3, PF1, and D&D5 came about because the players demanded these games. 4E and PF2 came out because the companies that made them demanded better financials (IMO).

So WotC and Hasbro not demanding better financials was not responsible for 5e? Hmmm... I think that I smell a propagandist with an anti-4e and anti-PF2 agenda to sell.

 

[dave2008]

Like I said earlier it is hard to tell right now with the ridiculous growth of the VTTs due to the pandemic, but 2E double the number of games on Roll20 this quarter. (that is in the full report). Doesn't mean it will be a factor forever, but it is definitely still growing and less than a year old.

EDIT - already covered.

 

[DaveMage]

So WotC and Hasbro not demanding better financials was not responsible for 5e? Hmmm... I think that I smell a propagandist with an anti-4e and anti-PF2 agenda to sell.

No agenda - observation. 2E was bleeding players (or really, had bled players) thus 3E was a welcome refreshing of D&D and players came back. 3.5 was quite popular, but per Ryan Dancey, 4E was made in part due to financial ultimatums at WotC/Hasbro. 4E was also designed to encourage more buying of product (e.g. spreading out "standard" races and classes over PHB1 and PHB2.) Players (in significant numbers - not every individual one, of course) rejected 4E and thus, since there were significant numbers of 3.5 players that loved the system, embraced PF1. Many of those players welcomed 5E (again, as a refreshing of D&D). I think many of us that started with D&D want to love the current version of D&D, and thus 5E (especially with its embracing of past editions) is popular. (Although, I do admit, I was skeptical that WotC could pull it off. But they certainly did.) Pathfinder 1E still has lots of fans, and I didn't see any significant evidence of demand for a new edition by players. Obviously, WotC and Paizo must do what's best for their bottom lines, but the perceived lack of interest in PF2, likely has to do with the fact that players were not demanding a new edition, Paizo did.

None of this is to say that those designing 4E or PF2 were intending to make a game that didn't appeal - only that these new editions were not perceived as needed by the ones playing the current editions (3.5 or PF1) of the time.

 

[dave2008]

None of this is to say that those designing 4E or PF2 were intending to make a game that didn't appeal - only that these new editions were not perceived as needed by the ones playing the current editions (3.5 or PF1) of the time.

I don't know the numbers, but personally I completely skipped 3e/3.5e. I didn't come back to D&D until 4e came out, which is much closer to the D&D this fan was asking for. Now I'm playing basically as blend of 4e and 5e.

 

[JFranklin3000]

No agenda - observation. 2E was bleeding players (or really, had bled players) thus 3E was a welcome refreshing of D&D and players came back. 3.5 was quite popular, but per Ryan Dancey, 4E was made in part due to financial ultimatums at WotC/Hasbro. 4E was also designed to encourage more buying of product (e.g. spreading out "standard" races and classes over PHB1 and PHB2.) Players (in significant numbers - not every individual one, of course) rejected 4E and thus, since there were significant numbers of 3.5 players that loved the system, embraced PF1. Many of those players welcomed 5E (again, as a refreshing of D&D). I think many of us that started with D&D want to love the current version of D&D, and thus 5E (especially with its embracing of past editions) is popular. (Although, I do admit, I was skeptical that WotC could pull it off. But they certainly did.) Pathfinder 1E still has lots of fans, and I didn't see any significant evidence of demand for a new edition by players. Obviously, WotC and Paizo must do what's best for their bottom lines, but the perceived lack of interest in PF2, likely has to do with the fact that players were not demanding a new edition, Paizo did.

None of this is to say that those designing 4E or PF2 were intending to make a game that didn't appeal - only that these new editions were not perceived as needed by the ones playing the current editions (3.5 or PF1) of the time.

This is all really proving the point, 2e was bleeding players so a new edition was done to try to stop the hemorrhaging (financial decision). 4e was a financial decision, and at this point I think we can say a bad one. 5e was again a financial decision to bring people back to D&D. PF1 was hemorrhaging player's as well and most of the 3PP publishers had moved to making 5e products. So a financial decision was made to make a new edition. It is definitely too early to tell if this was a bad decision or not, 9 months and the first major player supplement isn't even out yet.

 

[Morrus]

This is all really proving the point, 2e was bleeding players so a new edition was done to try to stop the hemorrhaging (financial decision).

The creation of 3E was a lot more complex than that. TSR had collapsed for a wide variety of reasons (and none of those were "2E is unpopular"), and WotC acquired it and started anew with their own iteration. There's tons to read on the internet about that, and the origins of 3E.

 

[Retreater]

I'm going to defend Paizo's decision to release Pathfinder 2e a bit, even though I'm not a massive fan of the (and honestly, still prefer 5e). While we can only guess about their financials, they have mentioned their reasoning to create PF2, and it doesn't seem purely financially motivated. They mentioned being restrained by the design of 3.5 D&D - since they were building PF1 to be largely compatible with 3.5 they couldn't really change the game, make it their own, or give it their identity. PF2 seems to be the game that the designers wanted, and they hoped that their fans (and other gamers) would also like it. As it turns out, many do not like their vision of the game, choosing to play PF1, D&D 5e, or other game systems.
Personally, I don't care for 13th Age or Numenera, and neither of them rival the success of D&D 5e. But the community doesn't respond with "these are failures of systems whose creators were blinded by greed to give us bad products." PF2 provides a crunchy, rules-dense alternative to D&D 5e. It is sort of like a hybrid of 4e and 3.5/PF1 - so we can consider it a natural progression of the 3.5 family of games. In my opinion, PF2 is a natural progression of PF1, staying closer to the spirit of D&D than 4E did (which I have also enjoyed).

 

[Jimmy Dick]

The first thing to realize is this report is trash. It is not an accurate picture of what is being played. The data collection system doesn't come close to addressing what is actually being played. It seems to use character sheets made for an account. It doesn't bring time played with those sheets into the report and it even acknowledges that. If an account has sheets used for multiple game systems, then they all show up.

Here's another thing. A lot of PF2 games are Society play. Many GMs build tables with multiple scenarios on them and use them over and over again. They don't count correctly. I've got a table with 14 scenarios on it that I've used to run over 40 sessions. This report doesn't count each session ran. It seems to go by accounts and character sheets. That's not in any way an accurate measuring system.

Another issue that the report doesn't tell us is what character sheets does it count. Does it only count official Roll20 sheets? What if there is no character sheet? What about hours played on an account? Why does it not factor that in? I typically average 50 to 100 hours a month in Roll20. There is no way you can give equal weight to a someone who only puts in 5 hours a month.

This is just bad data.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...these new editions were not perceived as needed by the ones playing the current editions (3.5 or PF1) of the time.

Except me.

I was elated to hear that 4th edition D&D was coming and the claims it was going to fix all the issues I had with the then current edition. It turned out not to actually do what I wanted it to in the end for various reasons, but I definitely perceived 4th edition as needed.

Pathfinder 2nd didn't get as much of a reaction out of me because I have forced myself to temper my excitement of new games since 4th edition so that I don't have the same feeling of getting a bait and switch, but it was still announced at a point when I was finished wither Pathfinder 1st and definitely wasn't going to play it ever again despite that it had given me a way to satisfy my D&D cravings after putting 4th edition on the shelf for good. And it released at just the point when I'd gotten worn out by the way D&D 5th edition plays over long campaigns, so again I perceived a need for the new game.