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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8175331" data-attributes="member: 7026617">There's a couple of things to say here.1. One can make an argument that absolutely everything but D&D is niche if one wants to.  D&D has had a gravitational advantage even from the start that is virtually impossible for any other game to overcome no matter how good it is, in that its already well distributed and the vast majority of people know about it.  This is self-reinforcing in that no matter how many people like another given game, they're going to have more heavy lifting to find players/GMs because there are already a lot of people who play D&D and can't be bothered to learn another game.  This changes a bit if someone learned something else first, but again, since few people self-teach most games, they're probably going to have learned from someone, and because of the social network already in place its probably going to, again, be D&D.This does not say that there are not things about D&D that attract people or that its of bad quality; it does, however, say its entirely possible for it to be a mediocre experience for someone and still get played for the same reason a rather large number of people use Windows.2. I realize one only has what data one can find, but there's a dynamic that makes Roll20 less commonly select for some systems than others one shouldn't ignore; and that issue is how relevant any sort of battle board is to play of the game.  Obviously Roll20 offers some other things, but I'd suggest people who are not concerned with being able to move pieces around a board are notably less likely to bother with Roll20 because other platforms--often free ones--provide much of what they need without the need to pay for it or be as dependent on their servers.   I can't speak for Forged in the Dark,, but none of the Cortex games I'm familiar with would be in the least difficult to play with just Discord if you're not super fussy about being able to supervise dice rolls.  As such you're not going to get the same ratio of Roll20 games vis a vis D&D and its immediate kin and Cortex games as is likely in actual use, because I higher proportion of online Cortex game just aren't going to bother with Roll20.I think you're seriously underestimating the benefit of the social network.  For someone new especially, just being able to find a game is often the most important criterion, and guess what game that's most likely to be true about?</blockquote>

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