What are the most played roleplaying systems anymore?

[pawsplay]

Comparing the number of copies of GURPS available new to the number available at Half Price books, I'm going to guess GURPS is pretty hot right now.

 

[Piratecat]

I know far more groups playing MnM than I do, say, Conan.

 

[Thondor]

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamers Bible (2nd ed) does have a list of what were the top 10 (?) Companies at 2 time periods. That data is rather dated (1999) but its still imformative. Unfortunately my copy is 5 hours away, and I won't be back there for about a month.
The older time period I believe was TSR then Palladium, the Newer one WotC and then White Wolf.

 

[Treebore]

I don't see any reason to assume that convention gaming is reflective of home gaming, to be honest. The vast majority of gamers don't go to conventions; trends there are no more representative than trends on sites like EN World.

Very funny. I guess if you wanted to find out what gamers were interested in the last place you would go to find out is locations where gamers hang out.

What makes a "poll" valid is the number of people you question. Doing so is more and more likely to cut across age, sex, financial, and any other demographic your interested in lessening the effect o

Polling/surveying ENWorld members or Convention goers is no less valid than polls made with cards in the back of products or made to phone numbers of "registered RPG players". Especially if you get 1,000+ responses.

 

[RFisher]

I don't see any reason to assume that convention gaming is reflective of home gaming, to be honest. The vast majority of gamers don't go to conventions; trends there are no more representative than trends on sites like EN World.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager cons are less representative than ENWorld.

 

[The_Universe]

What about GURPS? Mutants and Masterminds? HERO?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Very funny. I guess if you wanted to find out what gamers were interested in the last place you would go to find out is locations where gamers hang out.

What makes a "poll" valid is the number of people you question.

Yes, but when you talk about going to a convention, you're already limiting your potential pool of interviewees from "gamers" down to "gamers who go to conventions".

"Gamers who go to conventions" are not the majority of "gamers".

Likewise, "gamers who post on EN World" are not the majority of "gamers".

Hell, these days, "gamers who visit gaming stores" may not be the majority of "gamers".

If you want to find out what "gamers who go to conventions" are playing, you go to a convention and ask the gamers there. Thinking that will be at all representative of what "gamers" in general are playing is foolishness. If nothing else, the original premise was "what games are being run at conventions", which is a distinct category from "what games do convention-goers play in general".

There are too many obfuscating factors. Some gamers go to conventions precisely because they get a chance while there to play different games, which they can't convince their home group to try. Any kind of organised play like the RPGA confuses the issue further, because the whole point of organised play is to get games happening when otherwise they might not be run. Some gamers play at conventions because they don't get a chance to play at all back home in Nowhere, Arkansas.

Broaden it beyond "games run at conventions" and you're still no better off. Gamers who attend conventions are, first and foremost, gamers who can afford to attend conventions, especially once you get beyond local attendees and into out-of-towners who have to pay for hotel rooms. That's a separating factor from "gamers" as a general class. Gamers who attend conventions are also gamers who want to attend conventions. They're a subset of "gamers" which excludes gamers who want to go but can't, or who can afford to go but don't want to.

Drawing any conclusions from even a properly-conducted survey at every convention in the world would be a) hard and b) misleading enough, much less the sort of screwloose "analysis" that involves looking at what games are officially run at conventions like GenCon.

It's just like sales data - people are arguing in this very thread that White Wolf games have a higher proportion of "readers" than "players" compared to other games. Whether or not that's true, the fact that there are "readers" who aren't "players", and the fact that we don't have any reliable data on the proportions for any one game much less all of them, means that sales data is useless as well except as the very broadest indicator.

The same thing goes for anecdotal evidence like the number of books for each game you might see on your gaming store's shelf, or the number of books your gaming store's owner says he sells from each game.

If you want a proper analysis of what's being played, you would need to commission a proper poll, which would necessarily involve calling up a randomly-selected proportion of the population and asking them if they play roleplaying games, and if so which ones.

(Even then, you'd have to be aware of factors like gamer kids without their own phone lines and parents who don't know enough to identify the games they play, the extent to which randomly-selected people would be interested in participating in a phone poll, et cetera.)

 

[Treebore]

Yes, but when you talk about going to a convention, you're already limiting your potential pool of interviewees from "gamers" down to "gamers who go to conventions".

"Gamers who go to conventions" are not the majority of "gamers".

Likewise, "gamers who post on EN World" are not the majority of "gamers".

Hell, these days, "gamers who visit gaming stores" may not be the majority of "gamers".

If you want to find out what "gamers who go to conventions" are playing, you go to a convention and ask the gamers there. Thinking that will be at all representative of what "gamers" in general are playing is foolishness. If nothing else, the original premise was "what games are being run at conventions", which is a distinct category from "what games do convention-goers play in general".

There are too many obfuscating factors. Some gamers go to conventions precisely because they get a chance while there to play different games, which they can't convince their home group to try. Any kind of organised play like the RPGA confuses the issue further, because the whole point of organised play is to get games happening when otherwise they might not be run. Some gamers play at conventions because they don't get a chance to play at all back home in Nowhere, Arkansas.

Broaden it beyond "games run at conventions" and you're still no better off. Gamers who attend conventions are, first and foremost, gamers who can afford to attend conventions, especially once you get beyond local attendees and into out-of-towners who have to pay for hotel rooms. That's a separating factor from "gamers" as a general class. Gamers who attend conventions are also gamers who want to attend conventions. They're a subset of "gamers" which excludes gamers who want to go but can't, or who can afford to go but don't want to.

Drawing any conclusions from even a properly-conducted survey at every convention in the world would be a) hard and b) misleading enough, much less the sort of screwloose "analysis" that involves looking at what games are officially run at conventions like GenCon.

It's just like sales data - people are arguing in this very thread that White Wolf games have a higher proportion of "readers" than "players" compared to other games. Whether or not that's true, the fact that there are "readers" who aren't "players", and the fact that we don't have any reliable data on the proportions for any one game much less all of them, means that sales data is useless as well except as the very broadest indicator.

The same thing goes for anecdotal evidence like the number of books for each game you might see on your gaming store's shelf, or the number of books your gaming store's owner says he sells from each game.

If you want a proper analysis of what's being played, you would need to commission a proper poll, which would necessarily involve calling up a randomly-selected proportion of the population and asking them if they play roleplaying games, and if so which ones.

(Even then, you'd have to be aware of factors like gamer kids without their own phone lines and parents who don't know enough to identify the games they play, the extent to which randomly-selected people would be interested in participating in a phone poll, et cetera.)

You talk like a majority is ever interviewed. They are not, not for marketing studies, not for voting, not even medical research. As for randomly selected, anyone selected at a convention, or even here on ENWorld, is statistically viable.

The main thing is to be aware of any shortcomings your poll responders.

So if you want a sense of whether or not there is a significant portion of the population who likes 4E best, or 3E best, or 2E or 1E, ENWorld is still a good population to poll. Why? Because ENWorld is still a large number of RPG gamers.

Who you gonna poll about RPG's? As large a number of players of RPG's as you can. You get that on ENWorld and at gaming conventions.

 

[darjr]

Why such confidence in the claim that gamers at conventions in no way is reflective of gamers in general?

Isn't the fact we don't have good numbers part of the problem? How can any body say the above claim is absolutely true?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Why such confidence in the claim that gamers at conventions in no way is reflective of gamers in general?

I'm not saying that they're not, necessarily, I'm just saying that they don't represent the majority.

(That's trivial to demonstrate; unique gate numbers at conventions across the world, even discounting the obvious factor of people who go to multiple conventions, don't begin to approach the number of active gamers suggested by market research.)

Most gamers don't go to conventions. So, like EN World, gamers at conventions only represent a minority of gamers - so polls conducted there or here are only of limited use.

It's like how polls conducted here are only of limited use for another reason - it's a self-selecting sample of people who choose to respond to the poll. It's pretty obvious from traffic numbers that most people don't respond to polls on EN World, too - you see poll numbers in the hundreds, out of over 75,000 registered members. Even if only 10% of EN World members post actively - and I'm sure the administrators have the actual numbers - that's still 7,500 people, and you don't get 7,500 responses to polls.