can we know how many players there are for each tabletop RPG?

[Myth27]

I kinda rember seeing somewhere that there are more than 15 million people playing dnd 5e (worldwide? nationwide? I don't know). Do you think it's possible to have a very vague estimate of how many people are playing 5e, 3.5 pathfinder, world of darkness, ctulu, star wars, shadowrun, ars magica. Etc... I mean I would think it's impossible to know in a strict sense, but maybe there is some clever trick to have an estimate or at least get a relative number to create a top 10 list of most played rpg with semi-accurate position

[PhoenixPhyre]

Confounding factor: many people play many games.

I know that there are data sets that include things like
* games advertised on VTT sites (especially roll20)
* games advertised on various LFG forums (including reddit)
* (D&D 5e only) campaigns created
* etc

But those are going to be highly skewed both in location (favoring the US heavily, since many of those are more common there) and in system, and you'll never catch what I believe are the majority, which are people who find each other via clubs, word of mouth, or who have been together for years.

So I think the answer is "we can get a very rough ranking in ordinal terms, but we can't do much more than that without access to proprietary data. And even that will be limited." TTRPGs have a very long tail--the top couple are way more popular, but there are a lot of game systems with loyal followings out there. Decidedly not a normal distribution of players.

[Yora]

I think it's practically impossible. RPGs are private events that leave no paper trail. And everyone who owns the books for a couple RPGs knows that most of them get to get played three or four times in total at best, often even not that. And usually it's one book per GM, not per player. So sales numbers don't tell us anything about acrive games.

In theory, a random sample and statistical analysis could estimate the total numbers, but how do you get a random and representative sample of all the people who play RPGs? You'd have to sample the whole population, of which perhaps 1%, 0.1%, or 0.01% actually play RP.Gs.

You could get numbers for the games that are being played in public play spaces, but since that isn't the norm for RPGs, that wouldn't tell you anything about the total population of players. Only about a specific subset that is notably different from the rest.

[MoiMagnus]

While it doesn't truly answer your question, I think you might be interested by the following:
Roll20 publish regularly a report on number of campaign and players for each system on their website.
You can find the latest here: https://blog.roll20.net/media/orrrep...-q2-long-2.pdf

This is a % of account, so to convert in an estimate in number of players, you just need to know that there were 8 million accounts on roll20 in March.

[Obviously, Roll20 users are only a very small fraction of the TTRPG player base, and popularity of a given RPG on Roll20 might not match IRL popularity.]

[Anonymouswizard]

It is however well known that done games dominate the market. Generally the three that have managed to do so at various times are D&D, World of Darkness, and Pathfinder (which is really just D&D), so we can probably assume that those three systems still get the majority of people playing.

Then there's very niche games, where the number of people playing will vary a lot over time. Some popular niches such as Arthurian Legend might keep systems like Pendragon in a stable player base, many won't. There might be six groups playing Heirs to Heresy now, none by New Year's, but fifty by 2023.

Plus, once groups stop playing a single system they're much more likely to play a lot of different systems. Those Pendragon players might play Traveller or Trail of Cthulhu just as often.

[dafrca]

It is however well known that done games dominate the market. Generally the three that have managed to do so at various times are D&D, World of Darkness, and Pathfinder (which is really just D&D), so we can probably assume that those three systems still get the majority of people playing.

Is that World wide or just US? I ask because I would be curious if those three are really the top three world wide.

Not claiming to know, more you have raised my curiosity is all.

[Batcathat]

Is that World wide or just US? I ask because I would be curious if those three are really the top three world wide.

Not claiming to know, more you have raised my curiosity is all.

While I suspect that the games that are the biggest in the US might be the biggest in the world too on account of the US accounting for a big part of the world's role players, I'm pretty sure individual countries have their own giants. At least in Sweden where I live Swedish games probably dominate the market (or at least they did, when I was more in touch with the Swedish RPG community), though the above and other foreign games certainly have a noticeable presence. From what I've heard, the same is true of at least some other countries.

[Anonymouswizard]

Is that World wide or just US? I ask because I would be curious if those three are really the top three world wide.

Not claiming to know, more you have raised my curiosity is all.

I mean, I was focusing on the Anglosphere. Because I don't live in the US but US games dominate the market.

[Kurald Galain]

While it doesn't truly answer your question, I think you might be interested by the following:

And likewise, so does Warhorn; with the same caveat that is a relatively small sample.

[Myth27]

While it doesn't truly answer your question, I think you might be interested by the following:
Roll20 publish regularly a report on number of campaign and players for each system on their website.
You can find the latest here: https://blog.roll20.net/media/orrrep...-q2-long-2.pdf

This is a % of account, so to convert in an estimate in number of players, you just need to know that there were 8 million accounts on roll20 in March.

[Obviously, Roll20 users are only a very small fraction of the TTRPG player base, and popularity of a given RPG on Roll20 might not match IRL popularity.]

wow, thank you so much, this is super intersting. I think the main bias here is that it favours rpg where a grid is very useful. "less tactical" rpg are just played on discord withouth maps for example. but still is a very nice start

[KorvinStarmast]

I think it's practically impossible. RPGs are private events that leave no paper trail.

And that's a good thing. Going by sales is a 'good enough' index of a game's popularity, probably.

[dafrca]

And that's a good thing. Going by sales is a 'good enough' index of a game's popularity, probably.

I know a few groups out here by me who have not made the switch to the latest new RPGs. One group still plays AD&D 2e and another plays several older RPGs in rotation.

I also look at several folks I know like me who have purchased RPGs, read them, put them on the shelf and never played them for various reasons.

I wonder how sales figures for D&D5e for example reflect those folks that are still part of the overall RPG community.

[Martin Greywolf]

With problems like these, you may well turn to guessing the edge numbers. If DnD 5e sold 15 mil books, and one group of players it at most 6 people, you get 90 mil players at most. Well, not really, since pirated copies do exist, and there is no way of tracking those.

A decent estimate could probably be made if we had roll20 data for 2020, most lockdowns happened at the same time and a fair amount of people would make the switch there. Make a rough estimate of how many people would switch to roll20 vs use something else vs stop playing vs break restrictions and you'll get somewhere. It's not gonna be terribly precise, but...

Is that World wide or just US? I ask because I would be curious if those three are really the top three world wide.

I can only speak for central Europe, and... yes but no? If your main language isn't English, there will usually be some sort of TTRPG that's the most popular for the language, and odds are it was made in early 1990s. Worldwide, the big 3 rule supreme, mostly because they include all the anglophne countries and a fair bit of extra on top, plus all the contries that don't have their own TTRPG for whatever reason.

[farothel]

I know a few groups out here by me who have not made the switch to the latest new RPGs. One group still plays AD&D 2e and another plays several older RPGs in rotation.

I also look at several folks I know like me who have purchased RPGs, read them, put them on the shelf and never played them for various reasons.

I wonder how sales figures for D&D5e for example reflect those folks that are still part of the overall RPG community.

Totally agree. I have a number of books on my shelf that I bought at some time (and even more as PDF bought from sites like DriveTruRPG) and that I never played (most of those are still on our group's To-do list though). In our group we also play a lot of older and niche systems that we like. For instance, we never played DnD 5e, never played Pathfinder 1E, 1 campaign of D&D 3.5 and 1 campaign of PF2e.

I think sales can't be used unless you go back decades. I could have bought a book 20 years ago and still use it today. The only way to get some numbers is by doing a survey, with all the advantages and disadvantages of those.