I always find the business side of TTRPGs to be very interesting. Recently I found this https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2020-8-million-users-edition/ by Roll20 on games on their site.

It's crazy when you consider just how many games are getting created that about 6 companies have 80% of the games being played, with about 53% of that being D&D 5th edition.

D&D 5E is not a game I play or even own any of the books for but you have to respect the ability to grab that much market share.

They really need to define Uncatagorized since it is the second largest category...

Quote from: Palleon on June 07, 2021, 09:27:50 PM
They really need to define Uncatagorized since it is the second largest category...

When you create a game in roll20 you can select a character sheet from a whole bunch of systems but one of the options is "None" where you need to manually add attributes and abilities. My guess would be that is the Uncategorized.

I was surprised at the German RPG, The Dark Eye, making a 34% increase in campaign growth.  I didn't realise it had become so popular.  I guess Germans like Roll20.

Nice to see Delta Green having a small, but decent showing, AD&D 1e & 2e are still somewhat popular (more GURPS players than the TSR stuff?  I'm a bit shocked by that).

Even 4e is way ahead on a lot of titles that seem to have been hyped more than actually played, which amuses me as most parrot how terrible it is to the point of being a meme.

Interesting reading.

Quote from: rocksfalleverybodydies on June 08, 2021, 12:34:20 AMEven 4e is way ahead on a lot of titles that seem to have been hyped more than actually played, which amuses me as most parrot how terrible it is to the point of being a meme.

I've seen several commenters on Youtube that claim to like and still play 4e so this isn't that much of a shock. Plus the fact is that 4e is exactly the kind of map-focused, tactical RPG that does well on Roll20. When I used Roll20 (and I haven't in years), I only used their die rolling function. So my game would be in that huge "Uncategorized" category.

While it's great to have some actual play data. The fact is that the main features of Roll20 are only useful for a particular set of RPGs and many that I play (OD&D in particular) work just as well in Zoom or Skype. So the data is sort of self selected.

Quote from: rocksfalleverybodydies on June 08, 2021, 12:34:20 AM
Even 4e is way ahead on a lot of titles that seem to have been hyped more than actually played, which amuses me as most parrot how terrible it is to the point of being a meme.

4e D&D is still D&D. There are a lot of people who play D&D editions who are not in the know on any of the indie scene.

Actually - it surprises me how low it is. There are still people who claim it was the best D&D edition - it was just misunderstood. (Though even most of them seem to agree that early-on it had issues that were fixed late in the cycle - such as HP bloat.)

Where does the PBTA army play if not on Roll20? I assume they take a break from bad/wrong/funning everyone on reddit and message boards to eventually play some games, but it looks like them plus FATE almost gets you three quarters of a point in market share.

Quote from: FingerRod on June 08, 2021, 09:25:16 AM
Where does the PBTA army play if not on Roll20? I assume they take a break from bad/wrong/funning everyone on reddit and message boards to eventually play some games, but it looks like them plus FATE almost gets you three quarters of a point in market share.

Roll20 is tied to a virtual table top. I know for a fact a lot of the FATE games are theater of the mind so they just play on discord and use a shared google doc.

This data in general, is interesting but not fully complete since it is only roll20 data.

Quote from: FingerRod on June 08, 2021, 09:25:16 AM
Where does the PBTA army play if not on Roll20? I assume they take a break from bad/wrong/funning everyone on reddit and message boards to eventually play some games, but it looks like them plus FATE almost gets you three quarters of a point in market share.

We looked at Table Top Simulator when we first started online.  That's what I'd use for PBTA and FATE.  roll20 seems like it'd be a nightmare for those.  $20 gets you a lot with TTS.

Quote from: Primarch_XI on June 08, 2021, 09:59:05 AM

Quote from: FingerRod on June 08, 2021, 09:25:16 AM
Where does the PBTA army play if not on Roll20? I assume they take a break from bad/wrong/funning everyone on reddit and message boards to eventually play some games, but it looks like them plus FATE almost gets you three quarters of a point in market share.

Roll20 is tied to a virtual table top. I know for a fact a lot of the FATE games are theater of the mind so they just play on discord and use a shared google doc.

This data in general, is interesting but not fully complete since it is only roll20 data.

We are back in person for the games I referee, but I leveraged your same setup for our games (OD&D and LotFP) with Discord and a shared file folder. It worked great across tablets, phones, whatever.

If you want to hear something barbaric, I still play in a 5e game that uses Roll20 BUT is also 99% theater of the mind. We don't even use the dice roller. 

Quote from: rocksfalleverybodydies on June 08, 2021, 12:34:20 AM(more GURPS players than the TSR stuff?  I'm a bit shocked by that).

There are dozens of us.  Dozens!

Is World of Darkness really still relevant? I was under the impression that their sales collapsed in the late 90s and they never recovered (last I heard they sold a total of 6-7 million books lifetime). White Wolf doesn't even exist as a company anymore since it was bought, dissolved, and sold by video game companies. Their recent werewolf video game was a disaster, their big vampire game is in development hell after an extremely tumultuous development cycle that scrapped most of their work, and their remaining titles on Steam are low budget text adventure shovelware that are eclipsed in quality by indie mockbuster titles like Red Embrace: Hollywood.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy on June 08, 2021, 11:59:02 AM

Quote from: rocksfalleverybodydies on June 08, 2021, 12:34:20 AM(more GURPS players than the TSR stuff?  I'm a bit shocked by that).

There are dozens of us.  Dozens!

Ha!!!  Well played.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 08, 2021, 10:06:02 PM
Is World of Darkness really still relevant? I was under the impression that their sales collapsed in the late 90s and they never recovered (last I heard they sold a total of 6-7 million books lifetime). White Wolf doesn't even exist as a company anymore since it was bought, dissolved, and sold by video game companies. Their recent werewolf video game was a disaster, their big vampire game is in development hell after an extremely tumultuous development cycle that scrapped most of their work, and their remaining titles on Steam are low budget text adventure shovelware that are eclipsed in quality by indie mockbuster titles like Red Embrace: Hollywood.

Depends. I'm currently playing Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th on Telegram with several others and all we ever use is the dice rolling bot I added to the group; we don't follow any canon details White Wolf set up for the world as a whole, so the Wyrm has been severely weakened and there's a possibility we may find one of the White Howlers or the Apis. As for who plays this IP besides us, if the most recent books are any hint, and I mostly use 1D4chan for info on those releases, only the most slavering SJW tards play beyond the 20th Anniversary (4th Edition) versions, or maybe Revised AKA their 3rd Edition if they have those books. (I still find it hilarious how White Wolf thought framing the president of Chechnya as a literal monster and encouraging violence against him would go over well. Idiots.)

Otherwise, yeah. Earthblood was a letdown. I was expecting at least an action-RPG like Bound by Flame or Technomancer, but no, it's just an action brawler game with a stealth system that is weaker than the Styx games, which were developed by the same company no less. How does that work? Heart of the Forest is typical text adventure dross, just with the Werewolf lore and some WOD systems in place. Hell, the devs even praised it as helping feminist causes after it came out. Ugh, gag me.

Vampire the Masquerade 2 probably won't ever come out without severe compromises or buggy code. The game has been moved to another developer, and as I hear, the script might be getting a rewrite, even though it was already done, so make of that what you will.

The guys who made the original back in 2004 were at least held in place by the understanding that unless they made the best game they possibly could, Troika would go out of business. The devs now are being held up by Paradox, the company that bought them, so they could produce something like Cyberpunk 2077, something worthy of an hour long AVGN episode, and barely lose any people.

Quote from: Renegade_Productions on June 09, 2021, 01:16:36 PM
The guys who made the original back in 2004 were at least held in place by the understanding that unless they made the best game they possibly could, Troika would go out of business. The devs now are being held up by Paradox, the company that bought them, so they could produce something like Cyberpunk 2077, something worthy of an hour long AVGN episode, and barely lose any people.

What is strange is that they produced a very interesting "actual gameplay" video (like CP 2077 did) only to suddenly fire, IIRC, the lead creative guy and either the producer or one of the developing houses (I could check but I'm lazy). The crowds became restless but I fear that they looked at the real product, then at CP 2077, and realised that for no reason in the world they wanted that. Someone messed up. I hope that the Publisher's intervention will be out of good sense.