Roll20's Latest Report Shows Growth Everywhere!

Roll20 has released its latest usage stats. These are from Quarter 1 2020, and while there isn't much change in the relative ranks of different games since 2019, they report that nearly everything has doubled during these pandemic times when a lot of gaming has shifted online to virtual tabletops like this.

Since Q4 2019, D&D has climbed back up (from a previous drop) from 47.54% to 50.4% of campaigns. Call of Cthulhu has dropped from 15.35% to 12.15%. Pathfinder has dropped from 4.97% to 4.49% (but Pathfinder 2E has climbed from 1.13% to 1.23%), and Warhammer has dropped from 1.48% to 1.3%. World of Darkness and Star Wars both also show drops. Note these are relative shares, not absolute figures -- in most cases the actual number of games has increased. Notably, Call of Cthulhu remains the second most popular game on Roll20 by a large margin.

The first chart below shows the campaigns run for each system, and the second shows the players. Roll20 says that only games with at least one hour of playtime are counted in these results.

Those with the biggest growth are HeroQuest (4000%!), Old School Essentiants, Blades in the Dark, and L5R.

Here's the full chart. One of these days I'll put all this data (and the Fantasy Grounds data) on a combined chart like the one I do for ICv2 stats.

 

[DWChancellor]

I wonder how many of the systems at the bottom of the list are just the designers testing them.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I am thinking, and I guess WotC will try to test some new ideas for the future Ravenloft to create its own version of "investigators against lovecraftian cults".

 

[JFranklin3000]

I've enjoyed the few games of 4e I've played on VTT. It probably is better there than in person.
I wish PF2 had a greater presence. I don't think it's getting its due. Personally I think the pandemic is really hurting it, as it's not getting time to be promoted and played in person at events and hobby shops. It didn't really have traction going into this and not a ton of support on VTT in general.

If you look at the full report PF2 actually grew 199% over last quarter (So almost doubled the number of games on Roll20). So it is a bit hard to compare quarter to quarter when there is so much exponential growth because of the Pandemic.

 

[Jester David]

I wonder how many of the systems at the bottom of the list are just the designers testing them.

Well, a LOT of people use Roll20. A game that is 0.07% might have two or three dozen games played monthly. Or more. There's just that many more D&D games.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I've enjoyed the few games of 4e I've played on VTT. It probably is better there than in person.
I wish PF2 had a greater presence. I don't think it's getting its due. Personally I think the pandemic is really hurting it, as it's not getting time to be promoted and played in person at events and hobby shops. It didn't really have traction going into this and not a ton of support on VTT in general.

I wish PF2 the best, but given that it was released last August and had middling success in the seven months prior to the pandemic really hitting things, I don't think you can blame its lack of presence on the current situation.

Choice and competition tends to make things better, so I hope it does well.

 

[Morrus]

I wish PF2 the best, but given that it was released last August and had middling success in the seven months prior to the pandemic really hitting things, I don't think you can blame its lack of presence on the current situation.

Choice and competition tends to make things better, so I hope it does well.

Middling success? It was (and is) the second most popular RPG in the entire world!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Middling success? It was (and is) the second most popular RPG in the entire world!

Pathfinder 2 is the second most popular RPG?

 

[JFranklin3000]

Pathfinder 2 is the second most popular RPG?

According to ICV2 and Amazon, yes.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

According to ICV2 and Amazon, yes.

I didn't see ICV2 have any sales figure, or disambiguate between PF1 and 2.

As for Amazon-

Amazon Best Sellers: Best Fantasy Gaming

Discover the best books in Amazon Best Sellers. Find the top 100 most popular Amazon books.

www.amazon.com

Who knows. I guess it depends on definition of "popular...." Looking at Roll20 and other charts, I'm not seeing a lot of people playing PF2 in comparison to PF1 and D&D 3x, which I don't think bodes well.

But maybe I'm wrong. Happens all the time.

 

[JFranklin3000]

I didn't see ICV2 have any sales figure, or disambiguate between PF1 and 2.

As for Amazon-

Amazon Best Sellers: Best Fantasy Gaming

Discover the best books in Amazon Best Sellers. Find the top 100 most popular Amazon books.

www.amazon.com

Who knows. I guess it depends on definition of "popular...." Looking at Roll20 and other charts, I'm not seeing a lot of people playing PF2 in comparison to PF1 and D&D 3x, which I don't think bodes well.

But maybe I'm wrong. Happens all the time.

ICV2 is not the best of course, but the release of the new CRB moved them back into the number 2 spot, where they have been since.

#21 on the Amazon link is the CRB, and everything ahead of it is 5e, that would make it the 2nd best selling game.

Like I said earlier it is hard to tell right now with the ridiculous growth of the VTTs due to the pandemic, but 2E double the number of games on Roll20 this quarter. (that is in the full report). Doesn't mean it will be a factor forever, but it is definitely still growing and less than a year old.