Total number of roleplayers?

[Bullgrit]

According to this, there are some 1.5 million active D&D players and 24 million lapsed players.

Anecdotal information worth less than the electrons it's transferred on:

Recently when I organized a D&D game for my son and his friends, every boy we invited: his dad was a past D&D player. Four dads out of four randomly selected were former D&D gamers, in their youth (high school and/or college). Two of the dads joined our game.

My wife commented that she never knew anyone in high school who played D&D, and I was the first and only person she met in college that played. (Discounting people she knew only through me, my game group.) In high school, she never heard of D&D. And now she discovers that all these dads, our generation, were playing it back the day.

Bullgrit

 

[Pentius]

There are currently exactly seven roleplayers.

And only one of them is a True Roleplayer.

 

[Kaldric]

The reason all those Dads used to play is that they played when it was a momentary fad, when everyone tried it. One person in Twenty kept playing after the fad passed. Now they're reliving a nostalgic experience from their adolescence or childhood, which may or may not "stick" as a hobby.

 

[Hand of Evil]

36,734 - from Gen Con this year

 

[Jhaelen]

I didn't know Germans were so nerdy

Ha, that just shows how little you know about us!

Back in the (late) Eighties you could find a couple of roleplayers in every class at our school. I think the popularity of rpgs has declined, but there are still several in every age-group.

I'm not sure if playing rpgs is as much a part of the 'nerd' image here in Germany as it appears to be in the US, though.

 

[prosfilaes]

36,734 - from Gen Con this year

Then it's trivial; we just divide by k, the percentage of gamers that go to Gen Con and we'll have our number. (Hey, it's still simpler than Drake's Equation.)

Apparently Wizards claimed six million D&D players worldwide in 2007. ('Dungeons and Dragons' Makes Big Move Online - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com )

 

[Jan van Leyden]

36,734 - from Gen Con this year

n+1

 

[MichaelSomething]

36,734 - from Gen Con this year

I'll admit that beats Otakon's 31,000 attendees, but what other RPG conventions will you go to after that?

There are gaming conventions, but many of those seem to focus on computer/board/card gaming as well and RPGs are just a part of the greater "gaming" world I think.

Anime conventions tend to be more about, well, anime. Okay, there's manga too.

This is just guessing on my part though.