Purely out of curiosity, I was wondering what everyone thought the most common games played/wanted were on here. Looking through Wanted: Players and the games that most recently received posts, it looks like a lot of D&D 5e, Pathfinder, and freeform. I know that can't be 100% true, as any Shadowrun game gets more applicants than they can shake a stick at. So what does everyone else think?

Freeform > D&D (various editions, but mostly 5e and 3.5e) > everything else.  Systems seem to come in waves, they'll be a bunch of Pathfinder flavors one month, then SWADE games, then whatever...  but for some reason Freeform is the most super popular, which I'll never understand.

I always see you running GURPS (which your bio kinda also tells me). How popular do you feel GURPS is compared to everything else?

I've never really understood freeform. Can anyone point me to some kind of blog or write-up about how it's supposed to work?

In reply to liblarva (msg # 4):

Generally speaking Freeform is exactly what it says.  The GM can develop as many rules or as few rules as they like.  I have been in some games that are a complete free for all and focuses mostly on character interactions.

I have also been in games where the GM creates rather compelling situations that the characters must work through.  Those are by far the most interesting in my opinion.  It is sort of like writing a community short story or novel.

I have been in games where the GM uses a loose rolling system to determine PvP and I've been in games where PvP is strictly forbidden.

It's kind of a grab bag.


Here is a lovely article: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/...-play-by-e-mail-game
This message was last edited by the user at 19:03, Thu 05 May 2022.

GURPS is extremely niche.  SWADE is currently probably more popular, in general and on RPoL, if that means anything as a comparison.

Among GURPS Players, we do tend to be a fairly fanatic, we do play other systems, but because "GURPS does it all" a large number of GURPS fans don't see any point in playing much of anything else.  GURPS GMs very rarely run anything else, unless they really have a system that just handles doing something different (like FATE handles social and mental conflicts and the narrative system), then they'll switch back and forth, but really, GURPS GMs tend to be even more rabidly single system than most other rabid single system GMs.

In reply to Katwood (msg # 5):

>Generally speaking Freeform is exactly what it says. The GM can develop as many rules or as few rules as they like. I have been in some games that are a complete free for all and focuses mostly on character interactions.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding...but isn't that what most GMs do anyway?

>I have also been in games where the GM creates rather compelling situations that the characters must work through. Those are by far the most interesting in my opinion. It is sort of like writing a community short story or novel.

I guess I don't understand how that's different than how most GMs run games.

>I have been in games where the GM uses a loose rolling system to determine PvP and I've been in games where PvP is strictly forbidden.

>It's kind of a grab bag.

Here is a lovely article: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/...-play-by-e-mail-game

Thanks for the link. It reads as general running PBP advice rather than anything specific to freeform play.

I'm starting a new thread to avoid cluttering up this one.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:22, Thu 05 May 2022.

D&D is the most common game, by far.

And this is across many of the play-by-post and VTT games that I have looked at.

Eh.... sure.  But in most non-Freeform rpgs the GM is using a standardized set of rules and then, if they wish, making changes.  Inversely with Freeform, most Freeform games do not use any standardized rules, or no rules, or minimal "Be Good To Each Other" rules.


Freeform is far, far closer to a Narratively driven Storygame than a regular rpg.



D&D is still the market leader by such a long shot, that even combining every other rpg game in existence, I don't think they equal a quarter of D&D's market.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:20, Thu 05 May 2022.

I run 8 Freeform games s.  It to me is creative writing by a group of like minded people spinning a great story together.  No stats or systems to have to remember.

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 9):

It is at least 60% of the market.

Well, there, you're getting into a semantic difference between 'most common' and 'most popular'...

There are a lot of really popular older systems out there that tend to get a big response every time they open up for new players, just because people really enjoyed playing them before or they have some sentimental value, or even just because of name recognition ("I keep hearing my friends talk about this game...I should try it out...")

That said, because they're older systems/editions, they're out-of-print and some may or may not have PDF versions available, so while there are no shortage of people who are interested in them, there's not a whole lot of NEW interest in them, so they become less and less common.

Even the discussion about D&D being the most common game out there (which is almost certainly a given, since it's probably the single-longest RPG in production and without a doubt one of the best marketed) becomes a little dicey, because it's a REALLY broad category and while the base mechanics are still pretty much the same, AD&D was vastly different from 3E which was vastly different from 5E and there's also a small forest of mostly-homebrewed games that people are listing as 'D&D' because they're using those same basic mechanics with a bunch of their own home-rules--but it's still closest to D&D so people will recognize that listing.

And, as stated, games tend to come in waves.  Granted, I haven't looked for a new game for a long, LONG time, now, as I'm generally content with the ones I'm in and what little gaming time I have beyond that is taken up with games I've been invited to join...but I can remember, at various points in the past, seeing Wanted:Players filled up with ads for Serenity/Firefly games, Star Trek games...Predator-themed games had a heyday for a while...Harry Potter...all in addition to the standard leaders of D&D, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, etc...  A little over a decade ago, I could find, on any given day, five or six games that were running the D6 Star Wars rules, but I don't know if there are any that are even active, anymore, much less looking for players.

So, the answer to your question is highly conditional and could be very different a month from now.

They're also missing the other side of the equation; just how many applications most D&D games get...  the two I joined, one was Spelljammer, the other was Dark Sun, both were 5e.

Now, Spelljammer and Darksun are a bit 'niche' for D&D standards¹, but both GMs claimed they had well over fifty applicants and were sad to turn so very many people away.  And again, those were Spelljammer and Darksun, which are niche because they are far, far, far less popular¹ than most of the other settings in D&D (not to mention your run of the mill "homebrew kitchen sink" setting many GMs run, which is "I'm not using a setting guide, I'm just running from the DMG and Player's Guide and using modules/homebrewing adventures" which is almost as wildly popular as the more popular settings) and were run before 5e had a setting book for them so tremendous amounts of the setting crunch was being homebrewed/adapted to fit 5e (which is a further 'buzzkill' for an awful lot of D&D fans).




1 I have no idea what the preferred settings are, but in my gut:  Forgotten Realms > Mystara > Golarian² > Dragonlance/Eberron³ >  and then Dark Sun, Kara-Tur⁴, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft seem to have roughly equal numbers of completely rabid fans... a rabidity you should note because I, someone who hates D&D, signed up for two of those games.

2  Pathfinder is D&D, don't @me.  /shotsfired

3 Pretty sure they're equally well liked because they are equally garbage settings.  /shotsfired

4 I remember when Kara-Tur was it's own setting.  /shakescanegetoffmylawn

Just out of curiosity, why do you "hate" D&D?

I don't want to steer the thread off-topic. I've just never heard anyone say those words. And I love the game almost as much as I love my two sons. So it's hard for me to wrap my head around.

Related question. Clearly you love RPG's in general. If you hate D&D, what games do you love? Maybe I've been missing out on better options for the past 40 years.
This message was last edited by the user at 07:56, Fri 06 May 2022.

Different strokes for different folks.  I can understand hating some games as I can also some not liking Freeform.  I would never put one or the other down.

If you look at Wanted: GMs and Wanted: Players you will find there are more Systems games wanted than Freeform.  I will add that because if the huge number of games this site has, how many are still actually ’Active’?  How many Members are?
This message was last edited by the user at 08:33, Fri 06 May 2022.

Fair enough. I guess I am combining most common and most popular together (I'm blaming the poor wording on the fact I was in the middle of a call with a customer while writing this).

What I should've wrote is that I would like to find out which games/systems are most popular (or perceived as most popular) among both GMs and players. D&D will always take the crown -- I know from experience that you get so many applicants that you can pick and choose the best ones, and still have to turn good players away -- but I don't know much about how other games/systems are perceived popularity-wise. Looking at Wanted: Players and Wanted: GMs gives a small insight, but it often winds up corrupted by flavor-of-the-month games built around whichever TV show is currently popular.

Well, Roll20 (usually) provides a quarterly report on how many games are running on Roll20, with percentages of how many campaigns are X game out of the total number of campaigns, and what percentage of players are paricipating in X game campaign.

It's probably a bit sketchy, data-wise, since they don't say how many campaigns are 'current', compared to completed.  They also don't list the number of users they have.

A quick google shows that the D&D website boasted (it may still do so) 4 million D&D players on Roll20, while a recent article says there are 10 million (total) players on Roll20.

D&D rules the roost, with Uncategorized, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2, Warhammer, WoD, D&D3.5, Tormenta, Starfinder, and Star Wars rounding out the top ten.  While D&D and Pathfinder are sorted by edition, Star Wars, Warhammer, WoD and others are not.  So all of the WoD games are counted under one entry, for example.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:13, Fri 06 May 2022.

This is a solvable question. We have a search bar that can find every active game and is searchable by system.

68 active freeform "games".
212 D&D games, the search is a little broken so it finds anything with "Dungeon"
98 Pathfinder games
11 Vampire the X games
6 Werewolf the X games
11 Exalted games
19 Mutants and Masterminds games

Probably one and two offs of other games. Not sure if there was a major system I missed.

In terms of what is "In demand" I could have filled 3 or 4 groups up with my RTJ's from when I started my Ars Magica game. Seems the same every time I have applied to an Exalted Game. I know the Warhammer community is always jonsing for a Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Only War, Black Crusade game.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 18):

Same for Shadowrun, D&D and World of Darkness, in my experience.  Fills up fast, take a night to consider a concept and you miss out.

Which is interesting to me, as it wasn't one of the games listed in the search you provided. I'm assuming Ars Magica is like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020: everyone wants to play, but there's not enough games around.

I did the search route that you did before asking this question, but I also knew it wouldn't really show me how popular these games are perceived. I also knew it would miss out on anyone who didn't list the game system (and is sometimes finicky with abbreviations).

Ars Magica has 3 games including the community chat "Game" I looked but it wasn't a significant contributor.

There aren't that many "unknown" games looking for players right now so I wouldn't expect a lot of them out there active. The available game lists is very long and exotic games are just less common in general. So it's probably not that statistically significant.

In any case asking the community isn't really a good way of gathering data. People are just observing the trends and only have their own viewpoint. Freeform probably seems popular because there are a few freeform game runners that are constantly recruiting where apparently the D20 games post and then fill up.

There are also 37 "Homebrew games" but obviously that isn't a monolithic thing jus a category.

That's the whole thing: I'm not looking for data. I'm looking for viewpoints, opinions, and perceptions. The things that hard data doesn't show -- like your experiences with Ars Magica.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 18):

13 active Call of Cthulhu games of various editions. And they tend to fill up very quickly as well.

16 active Savaged Worlds games.

36 active Star Wars games, various types.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:33, Fri 06 May 2022.

GURPS has 18 currently running games from a list of 20 Active Games (I skipped the one that hasn't actually started yet and the Community 'game').

However I strongly suspect that most of those gaems have Player bleed over, as in I'm betting half the Players in each game are in at least half the games... so while there are a bunch of games, it's not a tremendously large Player base, just a fairly active and enthusiastic one.

Which really can be wildly misleading, as 'Star Wars' can be D6 Star Wars (the original WEG rules), D20 Star Wars, Star Wars Saga Edition (a revised D20), and I think there are another one or two Star Wars variations out there, as well.  And in my limited experience (having only played the D6 and Saga Edition rules), they are NOTHING alike once you move past the setting.

Star Wars actually has six different entries in the list of systems:

• Star Wars (West End Games)
• Star Wars d20 rules
• Star Wars Saga Edition
• Star Wars: Age of Rebellion
• Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
• Star Wars: Force and Destiny

This message was deleted by the user at 17:16, Mon 09 May 2022.

Yes, I know.

However, it would stand to reason that newer versions would be more popular.  They have support, they have advertising, and much more likely to have digital versions, thus more convenient and cheaper.

That and the last three are the same game; system, genre, and setting.   Should really just be listed FFG's Star Wars (or as I sometimes call it, FFG Star Wars: The Shameless Cash Grab).  It's like separating D&D 3.5 into D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms, D&D 3.5 Mystara, D&D 3.5 Eberron, D&D 3.5 Dragonlance, D&D 3.5 Ravenloft, D&D 3.5...

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 29):

Yeah, setting and genre are inconsequential since we're talking system, and for those particular three, it's the exact same, as you say.

Technically not true. But they are close enough to cross pollinate.

There are only two substantive differences, Professions (and thus Talent Tree/Force Trees) and the Drawback - Obligation/Duty/Morality, and it doesn't matter which one you use.  You can run a Jedi from F&D in an Edge of the Empire game just fine, a Scoundrel with Duty in an AoR game, etc.  You can even mix the Drawbacks, but it does take some work (and kinda represents well, Han having an Obligation while everyone else has Duty to the Rebellion through Empire Strikes Back).

I'm well aware of the differences. That's doesn't make them not there.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 33):

It's not enough to make them completely separate systems.

Please remember that the final decision on what should (and should not) be included in the list of systems rests entirely with the Moderators.  While users can request that systems be added, whether they are, or not, is based on brief Moderator research.

Also worth mentioning that the fact that there are multiple X listed, instead of just one, does not, in fact, impinge on anybody's enjoyment of Y.