02 June 2021

Stand the test of time - looking at UK gaming in 1987

A deep cut into gaming history - graphing up the results of the 1987 White Dwarf survey of gamers - from back when White Dwarf covered general TTRPGs. I was tipped off from this article on Enworld, back tracked the twitter thread and then during a bout of insomnia typed up the table, et voila. Raw numbers at the bottom of this piece.

This is a great photo of what was going on back in the day - for instance we see Traveller as a top 10 most played game. We see this is an era when D&D and AD&D were different games. No less than three different super-hero games appear - Golden Heroes, Marvel Superheroes and DC Heroes. A different age indeed.

A second interesting thing I found was 'which games do you want to see more or less of' which is neat way to gauge the passion in the playbase for any of these games. I have ranked these by net positive - using 'want to see more' minus 'want to see less' to get a sense of how much people cared.

Taking a look at this - there was a lot of love for MERP and WHFRP on one end and the three hero games seemed to have a strong push-back against them.

Looking at that list, there are some games that have stood the test of time - D&D, Cthulu, WHFRP - and others that have faded away almost entirely - where is Judge Dredd today?

Below are the data tables in case anyone wants to have a look themselves.

Question: Which four RPGs have you played most in the last year?
Game Most 2nd Most 3rd Most 4th Most
AD&D 2012.00 642.00 419.00 270.00
D&D 714.00 617.00 380.00 262.00
MERP 484.00 532.00 493.00 399.00
CoC 367.00 590.00 543.00 375.00
Judge Dredd 259.00 511.00 463.00 359.00
WHFRP 364.00 451.00 414.00 344.00
Traveller 201.00 433.00 401.00 328.00
Runequest 255.00 230.00 241.00 225.00
Golden Heroes 83.00 158.00 195.00 187.00
T&T 63.00 108.00 131.00 151.00
Star Trek 45.00 77.00 112.00 126.00
Bushido 28.00 66.00 93.00 104.00
Paranoia 22.00 66.00 68.00 99.00
Star Frontiers 16.00 47.00 65.00 76.00
Marvel Superheroes 24.00 55.00 56.00 55.00
Stormbringer 19.00 41.00 51.00 67.00
Toon 10.00 31.00 54.00 72.00
Dr. Who 9.00 23.00 41.00 41.00
Twilight 2000 7.00 19.00 35.00 42.00
Pendragon 12.00 21.00 31.00 35.00
Ghostbusters 9.00 15.00 25.00 42.00
Battletech 2.00 13.00 22.00 29.00
Ringworld 7.00 10.00 23.00 23.00
Indiana Jones 3.00 8.00 19.00 19.00
DC Heroes 3.00 10.00 7.00 22.00
Other 294.00 390.00 384.00 375.00


Question: Which games do you want to see more/less of?
Game More articles Fewer articles No vote
AD&D 2307.00 1854.00 1217.00
D&D 1869.00 1476.00 2033.00
MERP 2506.00 765.00 2107.00
CoC 2220.00 1443.00 1715.00
Judge Dredd 1913.00 1862.00 1603.00
WHFRP 2219.00 807.00 2352.00
Traveller 1967.00 1202.00 2209.00
Runequest 1698.00 1236.00 2444.00
Golden Heroes 759.00 2940.00 1679.00
T&T 896.00 1212.00 3270.00
Star Trek 1133.00 1349.00 2896.00
Bushido 1283.00 756.00 3339.00
Paranoia 1366.00 752.00 3260.00
Star Frontiers 610.00 1117.00 3651.00
Marvel Superheroes 468.00 2315.00 2595.00
Stormbringer 950.00 818.00 3610.00
Toon 849.00 1086.00 3443.00
Dr. Who 783.00 1348.00 3247.00
Twilight 2000 552.00 1168.00 3658.00
Pendragon 844.00 789.00 3745.00
Ghostbusters 893.00 1013.00 3472.00
Battletech 710.00 882.00 3786.00
Ringworld 600.00 909.00 3869.00
Indiana Jones 457.00 1369.00 3552.00
DC Heroes 340.00 1861.00 3117.00

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