The Orr Report

[estar]

The Orr Report for 1st quarter 2016 is up. It is a report on the breakdown of games on Roll20 and covers 47,000 players.

The Orr Report

What is the Orr Report?

Q4 2014
Q1 2015
Q2 2015
Q3 2015
Q4 2015

[Soylent Green]

So basically 70% of games played are D&D in one form or another.  The more things change, the more the stay the same.

[Simlasa]

So basically 70% of games played are D&D in one form or another.  The more things change, the more the stay the same.

I've managed to find groups on Roll 20 for all sorts of games I would otherwise probably not gotten to play, but still only mainstream stuff. I think part of it is the perception that there aren't widgets set up for a lot of smaller games and without those (or the wherewithal to build them yourself) you might as well just play on Google Hangouts or over Skype. That's where I've played and run various things that don't even get a listing on Roll20.

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

Poor Runequest.

Also, kudos to Sine Nomine, looks like Stars Without Number has quite the following for a one man operation.

[Simlasa]

Also, kudos to Sine Nomine, looks like Stars Without Number has quite the following for a one man operation.

Stars Without Number is still under the vast D&D tent. So not all that surprising given the exhibited tastes of the clientele.

[Shipyard Locked]

Also, kudos to Sine Nomine, looks like Stars Without Number has quite the following for a one man operation.

Am I understanding these charts right?

SWN appears to be well above Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy RPG. That's pretty good proof that it might be the most successful OSR product, isn't it?

Wow, it even beats out Traveller (any).

MAID RPG: 96 games, 326 players

:confused:

[Simlasa]

MAID RPG: 96 games, 326 players

I've seen some groups form on Roll20 that are for discussion or other purposes... like cooperative world building, laying out maps, etc. I'm guessing the measurements don't discern if the games are actually being played. There have been a number of games I've joined that had a few meet-and-greet, character build sessions and then never gotten further.

[JesterRaiin]

...

All Warhammer games are treated like one and the same, even though WFRPG has nothing to do with WH40k.

Weird.

:confused:

Channers.

[SineNomine]

SWN appears to be well above Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy RPG. That's pretty good proof that it might be the most successful OSR product, isn't it?

Wow, it even beats out Traveller (any).

I think a lot of that is an artifact of the venue, which tends to be closely bound to the Swan Song SWN Twitch podcast by Adam Koebel. I'm sure that drives in a lot of people. Even so, the free version's seen about 13K downloads over the past year, and a nonzero percentage of those people must be in a game.

SWN as a whole is a very strong seller for a one-man indie RPG, though, and as the flagship line for Sine Nomine. The house has grossed a little north of 150K over the last year, and while that number's substantially less after OBS' cut, print costs, and production costs, it's still just a wee bit more than I was expecting to make when I started this five years ago. I'd be surprised if S&W products as a whole and Labyrinth Lord products as a whole didn't outgross it, but that money goes to a lot of different people and so the individual take is less. For LotFP, Raggi seems to sink a huge percentage of his take back into production, author splits, and art costs, and I salute him for the results, but that's not really my cold, gimlet-eyed business style.

I'm tentatively planning an SWN revised edition Kickstarter for next spring, so I'll get a chance to see how solid the market really is for it.

[Apparition]

I'm tentatively planning an SWN revised edition Kickstarter for next spring, so I'll get a chance to see how solid the market really is for it.

You will definitely have my money.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm tentatively planning an SWN revised edition Kickstarter for next spring, so I'll get a chance to see how solid the market really is for it.

Have you considered alternate setting sourcebooks? I love SWN system, but the existing background, to be blunt, is very bland.

[SineNomine]

Have you considered alternate setting sourcebooks? I love SWN system, but the existing background, to be blunt, is very bland.

Sadly, setting sourcebooks are not great sellers, historically speaking. They implicitly gate buyers twice- once in that you have to play the game, and a second time in that you have to want to play the setting being sold. Genre books like Suns of Gold or Skyward Steel can be structured so as to apply only one gate- you want to play that genre- with the game-dependent rules in them more a side dish than the main course.

You can, of course, structure the setting book so that it's effectively system-neutral, but the number of people who want to play Sci-Fi Setting X is always going to be much smaller than the number of people who want to play Sci-Fi Sub-genre Y.

The SWN default setting is intentionally somewhat amorphous because honestly, 9 out of 10 buyers have no intention of using anything but their own creations. So you make a low-fi background and stick in a bunch of tools to augment the GM's stuff-creating abilities, and catch a nice net of customers who have no intention of using your rules or setting, but want the tools you're vending.

I'll be experimenting a little with the viability of setting gazetteers with the Ancalia sourcebook for Godbound, and I'll see what the sales numbers tell me about the idea. If it seems to have wings, then maybe Proteus Sector for SWN will come out sooner than later.

[Shipyard Locked]

Sadly, setting sourcebooks are not great sellers, historically speaking. They implicitly gate buyers twice- once in that you have to play the game, and a second time in that you have to want to play the setting being sold. Genre books like Suns of Gold or Skyward Steel can be structured so as to apply only one gate- you want to play that genre- with the game-dependent rules in them more a side dish than the main course.

You can, of course, structure the setting book so that it's effectively system-neutral, but the number of people who want to play Sci-Fi Setting X is always going to be much smaller than the number of people who want to play Sci-Fi Sub-genre Y.

The SWN default setting is intentionally somewhat amorphous because honestly, 9 out of 10 buyers have no intention of using anything but their own creations. So you make a low-fi background and stick in a bunch of tools to augment the GM's stuff-creating abilities, and catch a nice net of customers who have no intention of using your rules or setting, but want the tools you're vending.

This post (especially the bolded portions) is very thought provoking and I'm debating spinning it out into a separate thread for general discussion. It would need a good title though.

I'm interested in how this idea can go beyond just game sales and into campaign pitches and gamer psychology. For instance, I suspect many players going to a GM for a game are so focused on their character's potential awesomeness that the GM's cherished setting is often viewed as more of an hindrance to that focus if it isn't generic enough.

Player Going In: Aww sweet, D&D! I'm going to play that badass Clint Eastwood type character I've always wanted. Gonna get me some hand crossbows and a beat up hat and stubby cigar and -

GM Proudly Unveiling: Alright guys, as I stated in that two page handout I sent you two weeks ago, my campaign setting is special and different! Everyone is either a gnome or a half-ooze gnome, and you're going to ride through the innards of the purple ghost on a giant crystal caterpillar that feeds on the sense of community given off by gnomes dwelling in the great library on its back!

Player Going In: :rolleyes:

[RPGPundit]

I can understand why you'd want a corebook like SWN to be somewhat setting-neutral; I wouldn't call it "bland" so much as open to running various different types of campaigns.
I'd say that at the same time, setting books can do well; particularly if they're easy to use in systems other than the core rules.  Dark Albion is the only book I ever made that didn't focus on system, and it's the one that sold best for me by far.