Top 5 Tabletop RPGs Spring 2021: Cyberpunk Gains!

ICv2 has released its periodic bestseller list of tabletop roleplaying games in the US and Canada for spring 2021. Dungeons & Dragons takes the top spot as it has done every quarter since Summer 2014, R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk displaces Pathfinder as it continues its climb to 2nd place since it first appeared in the chart a year ago, and for the second time ever '5E Compatible' has appeared on the chart, while Alien maintains its position.

Position​	Game (Publisher)​
1​	Dungeons & Dragons (WotC)
2​	Cyberpunk (R. Talsorian)
3​	Pathfinder (Paizo)
4​	Alien (Free League)
5​	5E Compatible (Various)

As always I keep a historical record of these charts here.

 

[Staffan]

Paizo had some major problems with customs recently, so a significant portion of their April, May, and June releases got released in July instead. This includes all three installments of the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix adventure path as well as the retail release of The Mwangi Expanse. That's going to affect the spring numbers.

 

[ART!]

We shouldn't be surprised if we can notice the famous videogames has been the best adverstising.

Would be interesting seeing number of how many copies are sold for each game.

I wouldn't characterize Pathfinder at #3 as a dip, necessarily. More that Cyberpunk got a really nice surge. The industry as a whole is seeing consistent growth, and a video game tie-in must certainly help.

When my son bought the Cyberpunk videogame for his XBox, it came with a digital version of the Cyberpunk ttrpg. I haven't checked to see how recent an edition that pdf (or whatever) is. Regardless, the success of the ttrpg is even more significant if people are buying the game despite so many free copies having been given away.

 

[Morrus]

To be fair, outside of WotC, no other RPG publisher runs as large of an operation in terms of product released and number of people employed. Most even mid-tier RPG concerns are at most like, half a dozen actual employees.

Modiphius is comparable.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I start to wonder if the boom of the TTRPG could be linked with a potential crack of videogame industry. How can be this possible?, videogames are making a lot of money! Yes, but the gamers start to feel ....unhappy. The CEO of the big videogame studios are like "predators" and through their eyes the gamers who spend their money are only "hunt pieces". The prestige of serious videogame companies has started to fall.

If you have spent your money to buy Diablo II, then you don't want other new edition or clone, because it is like always playing the game. Some gamers want to try other thing, and here they discover TTRPG offer the option to show your creativity. TTRPG is the perfect game for the fandom who loves to create their own fanfic.

Why to buy the books? And why not? It is like buying the collector edition with pictures and some figure.

* WotC buying Paizo? I doubt it because this would rather creative freedom. Maybe some day like a candy WotC could offer some licencing or partnetship as a test for Paizo, like the ones by Renegate Studio Games. Modiphius maybe? We can't safe that. I love this type of speculations but some things would cause a great surprise for me.

* WotC is going to translate their own books into other languages. The time of the 6th Ed. is still too far.

* The cyberpunk fiction from 2019 year and 2022 will be not the same after some events in the society.

* Cyberpunk 2020 is a good example of sci-fi fiction gets old very bad. The new generations miss real technology that don't appear in the old titles, for example the mobiles.

 

[Parmandur]

When my son bought the Cyberpunk videogame for his XBox, it came with a digital version of the Cyberpunk ttrpg. I haven't checked to see how recent an edition it is. Regardless, the success of the ttrpg is even more significant if people are buying the game despite so many free copies having been given away.

People like hardcopy books.

 

[OptionalRule]

Like everyone. I'm assuming Cyberpunk Red is the main driver there. There have been some great streams of it on twitch of late.

 

[gss000]

I look forward to watching another YouTube video from someone using this ranking to declare that Paizo is dying and will soon be bought by WotC.

It is interesting how Paizo seems to be held to the same standard of sales performance as WotC by so many in the industry, but no other rpg publisher is held to that same standard.

I don't like using these rankings to judge a product's health because it tells you nothing other than how one product is doing relative to another. That said, I will note that there have been several Pathfinder boosters who point to this as their go to metric over things lile Amazon rankings. If people say being #2 is a major indicator that Pathfinder 2e is doing well, it's not surprising if others then think a drop is a bad sign.

 

[TerraDave]

This was the first time that I looked back over the history of these sales charts...and as usual, the history tells an interesting story.

2008: D&D 4th Edition was released.

2009: Pathfinder RPG was released.

2010: D&D sales begin to flag, and Pathfinder sales rocket; Pathfinder ties with D&D for best selling RPG. "D&D Essentials" was released.

2011: Pathfinder becomes the best-selling RPG, and D&D falls to 2nd place for the first time ever.

2012: D&D falls to 3rd place, behind Pathfinder and Star Wars. D&D 5th Edition was announced.

2013: D&D slips to 4th place, behind Pathfinder, Star Wars, and Fate Core.

2014: D&D 5th Edition is released that summer, and D&D jumps to #1 again before Christmas. D&D has remained #1 ever since.

It's fun to talk about the possibility of a "6th Edition" of D&D, and to speculate about what it might look like and how it might evolve over the years...but I don't really see it happening until their sales begin to slip. Right now, D&D is more popular than it ever has been, and selling more copies than it ever has. Until D&D slips to the #2 or #3 position on that chart, I doubt they are going to tamper with their product. Those were hard lessons to learn, and too important to forget.

Pretty unusual set of circumstances. D&D always dominates, it is just that at that time, Paizo was making the more popular version of it. Pretty sure 2e, 3e, and 3.5e were all developed while D&D was the top seller. Even if sales had come down substantially in each case.

You never know...except that some newish edition is coming in 2024.

 

[darjr]

I think it’s short term too. For instance Pathfinder 2e core book and the Cyberounk Red core book are both in “Toys and Games” at Amazon for sales rank.

When I recently checked Cyberpunk Red was 24549 and PF2 was 9204. Both are really good considering the block they are in, ALL toys and game sales at Amazon.

Though that’s just the core books so doesn’t match up with icv2s ranking.

Sadly I wasn’t looking at CyRed rank until today. PF2 has been much higher just a few weeks ago so it’s possible they crossed at some point, but if so that’s a big change for one or both.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

If, and it’s a big unknown if, paizo sales are dipping with 2e, I hope they release some 5e compatible adventure paths.

I’d definitely be interested in those, but they seem to not want to do that. I’m guessing Paizo are worried it would potentially lead their customer base back to 5E instead of Pathfinder, rather than widening their customer base to also include people like myself, 5E players that don’t play Pathfinder.