What are the most played roleplaying systems anymore?

[TerraDave]

The Barnes and Nobles and Borders around here carry:

-4E D&D
-WoD
-Warhammer
-D20 leftovers

I am guessing there is some correlation to play.

 

[Wardo]

For another irrelevant data point, how about search frequency?

Google Trends: dungeons and dragons, gurps, shadowrun, mutants and masterminds, world of darkness

Warning: once you start playing with Google Trends, it's hard to stop.

 

[Betote]

I have tried desperately to find this game for a few years now. I am left with the impression that it is incredibly rare, today.

It is, even in Spain. It was a very cheap book, and the comics it was based on were very popular back then. It even spawned some related games, as Fampiro or... I can't recall the name of the Space Opera one

 

[WizarDru]

It's a difficult question, after you get past the big two (4e & 3e), and even for those two, we don't have any hard data about which is the most played (or if that distinction can be made).

My personal, anecdotal experience has been that 4e is the most played, 3e is right behind it (though descending)...and then there's a big drop. From there, you've got World of Darkness, Mutants and Masterminds, GURPS and Hero in no particular order. While I agree that conventions are hardly a good measure, they do act as at least some relative indicator of popularity, IMHO, if not an indicator of their popularity relative to each other.

By the same token, Gencon is going to be disproportionately in favor of D&D, while some conventions are going to be disproportionately against it. For example, if I were to go by my experience of Gencon, Origins and Dreamation this year, then I might think that Dread is one of the most popular RPGs on the market. And while I think it is a indie game darling (and rightfully so, I might add), I think its penetration in the market is incredibly small.

The issue of purchasing gaming materials without the intention of playing them (or the inability to do so, due to circumstance) is another question entirely. I have a bookshelf of GURPS books that have never seen active play, but were great research materials and reads. The same is true of a lot of games I have. WoD and GURPS, in fact, are famous for having materials that are often purchased without the intenion of play.

 

[thalmin]

Based on our sales numbers, discussions with customers, games played at our store, and notices posted on our cork-board, my numbers are similar to WizarDru
At numbers 1 and 2, way up on top are both D&D 4E and 3.X (including Pathfinder)
In the second tier I would place Shadowrun, Champion, L5R, Star Wars Saga, Dark Heresy, Exalted, and M&M.
In the third tier would be Gurps, World of Darkness, Rifts, Traveller, and Warhammer Fantasy.

I may be forgetting a game or two (we carry many more RPGs than this).

Now for a bit of explanation. D&D 3.5 is played more at the store, but sales for 4E are much, much better and on a par with 3.X in their day. Discussions about games with customers seem to run about 50/50. While we sell a good amount of Pathfinder, no one talks about playing it, only using it in their 3.5 games. But each game, 4e and 3.X, seems to be played and purchased more than most of the rest of the games combined.

 

[Dragonbait]

My LFGS is a hodgepodge of books, so I have to reference the three local B&N for games with shelf space: D&D 4E and 3.X dominate, with WW (can't recall which books specifically, but since Changeling stands out visually I know that there is always at least 1 copy of that book at any B&N) and Star Wars coming in second, followed by other d20, L5R, Warhammer (both fantasy and scifi), and typically one or 2 Palladium books. I have only seen 1 Shadowrun core book outside of a game store that is now out of buisness.

I've heard that regions affect sales. For instance, Kenzer Co. once said that Kalamar products did well on the east coast but not the west coast. And I also heard that OA and L5R did well on the West coast than the east coast. I wonder how valid those ideas are?

 

[Scribble]

So the idea you can't use an ENWorld poll, especially if it hits 1,000 respondents, or randomly poll 1,000 of the 30,000+ GenCon attendees, and get good data is seriously erroneous. If you want to make it even more solid ask demographics. Age group, income group, racial group, sex, etc...

I'm not sure I can agree with you on that point.

If I were to walk out onto a street corner and ask a random sampling of people "Are you worried about your job in this economy?" I don't know that I would get the same answer then if I were to walk into say JP Morgan Chase and ask the same question...

Gencon I think you have a bit more leeway with, but I think Enworld is a bit too "stylized."

That said, I don't think info obtained from polls at enworld is useless, but you'd just have to also pay attention to other polls to get more info about who and what you're dealing with.

IE 40% of predominantly male gamers over age 25 feel a certain way about issue X.

 

[RFisher]

You have the basics of it. A "sample" is just that. A sample. You NEVER interview the entire population. This is why polling surveys are so popular. It allows you to question a very small portion of the population and derive accurate information that can be generalized to the over all population.

Only the most naive are going to argue that you need to interview the entire population.

Anyone with any basic knowledge of statistics knows that a minority is sufficient to generalize from.

I don’t think these points are seriously in contention.

I’ll freely admit to never studying statistics, but from what exposure I’ve had to it, I was under the impression that the important thing for these generalizations is that the sample is random. (In a free country, that is likely an ideal you can never reach, but one you seek to approach as best you can.) People who vote in ENWorld polls are entirely self-selected. Random polling of con attendees is random polling of a self-selected subset of gamers.

Am I mistaken?

It seems perfectly plausible that gamers who vote in ENWorld polls approach the hobby differently than those who don’t. It seems perfectly plausible (if not self-evident) that gamers who attend cons approach the hobby differently than those who don’t.

Based on my experience, it seems unlikely that a cross-section of con attendees would match a cross-section of gamers-at-large.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Yes, you´re mistaken. What you need is a sample that is representative of the whole gamer population. A minority is indeed enough to generalize from when that minority is comparable to the majority in diversity and composition.

So, if you poll ENworld, you can generalize stuff about hard-core D&D DMs and players that post on the internet. Not the D&D gamer population as a whole.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Yes, you´re mistaken. What you need is a sample that is representative of the whole gamer population. A minority is indeed enough to generalize from when that minority is comparable to the majority in diversity and composition.

So, if you poll ENworld, you can generalize stuff about hard-core D&D DMs and players that post on the internet. Not the D&D gamer population as a whole.

Keefe summarises my original point quite succinctly: EN World and GenCon attendees, in my opinion, are not representative of the general population of gamers.*

I'd say the same about a place like RPG.Net, too, where I spend more time these days; if you try a poll of what RPG.Net posters play, you'll get a lot more "indie"/small press games, alongside other games which tend to have a small but loyal, enthusiastic, and vocal playerbase. You'll also see fewer Palladium system gamers, for historical reasons to do with the snarky relationship between RPG.Net, Palladium Books, and the official Palladium forums.

* The other side of the equation is, of course, that there's a self-selection bias to a web poll with voluntary participation even greater than that of a phone poll or even stopping random people on the street.