The biggest RPGs

[Bedrockgames]

Think of this in terms of ice cream and fast food.

In the USA, more vanilla ice cream is created, bought, and sold than any other flavour. In the USA, more hamburgers are sold by McDonald's than anyone else.

Are these the best? The most easily accessible? The one's people know about most?

There is often a aast difference between what people know about, what they can get ahold of, what they like, and what they prefer.

Sure. I don't deny that a company's ability to get its game on shelves is going to have a major impact here. But I do think for the most part, people buy what they like. There may be a game out there that would suit them better, but if they don't know about it....

I would also draw a distinction here between "best" and "biggest". If we want to debate who has the "best" game out, that is a whole new conversation. I think the best games are often very underplayed. But "biggest" here doesn't have to have anything to do with quality. It just mean the most well known and played.

 

[Bedrockgames]

WOD (as a line) got really close a couple years in the 90s, really really close.

I agree. I don't think WoD was a distant second in the 90s at all. They gave TSR a real run for its money. In fact I recall TSR putting out a ton of WoD-type products. Even the Ravenloft line starting seriously resembling Vampire toward the end. There was even a period where (around here at least) the number of White Wolf gaming groups outnumbered the D&D gaming groups by a large margin.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

What would be the largest RPG by weight?

I have picked up Ptolus and it is nowhere as heavy as even one of the two books that make up Hero 6th edition.

 

[Hussar]

What would be the largest RPG by weight?

Ninja'd by Alan Shutko.

The only RPG I know of that can potentially stop (some) bullets.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb1rWQ8kB-g]Will Hero RPG stop a bullet? - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Ariosto]

Stack up the Hero System supplements on top of that -- then compare side by side with the D&D 3.x corpus and the AD&D 2nd Ed. volumes. (I'm not even counting scenario and setting material.)

 

[Hussar]

Oh, if we're going by total supplements? D&D wins hands down. At a guess, I'd say that the entire D&D library (all editions) would come close to outweighing a large chunk of all other RPG's combined.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I would have to say D&D is the biggest.

 

[Chris Knapp]

GURPS has a load of supplements too.

 

[prosfilaes]

GURPS has a load of supplements too.

Working from the LibraryThing series lists, there have been about three hundred supplements for GURPS. D&D 3.0 & 3.5 each had about 50, AD&D 1 had almost 100, and AD&D 2 had almost 350. This only counting official TSR/WotC stuff.

 

[Bluenose]

Working from the LibraryThing series lists, there have been about three hundred supplements for GURPS. D&D 3.0 & 3.5 each had about 50, AD&D 1 had almost 100, and AD&D 2 had almost 350. This only counting official TSR/WotC stuff.

Counting publications across all the publishers and editions, Traveller must be pretty high up there - even without including the magazines. Certainly hundreds of items.