To figure out what exactly to count as a retro-clone I went with this "List of D&D-esque Games" which may cast a slightly wide net but I wanted to see what a generous interpretation came up with. This was to allow that perhaps people had moved off older editions into strict retro-clones like For Gold & Glory or Old School Essentials and then on to slightly odder stuff in that same OSR space like Mothership or Mork Borg.
Going back to the data gathered from Obsidian Portal (2008-22) and extracting retro-clones from the 'other' bucket, the surprising answer was that they tracked the behaviour of the older editions quite well. The same up-tick in the 4e era during the big shift to variety then fading back down in the 5e era but much less than older editions so that today there are as many new retroclone campaigns created as 3.5e and earlier editions together. For this iteration I mashed D&D Next together with 5e given that it was a proto-5e rather than a pre-5e edition. Red is 2014, the year before 5e dropped, the height of diversity of systems.
So, it looks to me like the retro-clones more or less captured the old AD&D players. New AD&D campaigns faded around the time the retroclones his their stride. This may be because new retro-clones like OSE turn up to renew things, but either way it does seem lead to people starting up campaigns using these systems.
This looks similar on Roll20 (looking at the 4Q 2021 report as our latest) and we see a similar pattern -~1% of campaigns are using retroclones, similar to the ~1% for all pre-5e editions.
Breaking this out so we see all the retro-clones and D&D-esque games we get the following stack. This is ordered by what were the most campaigns ever created on Obsidian portal. The grey wedge at the bottom right is d20/d20 modern which while not an official 'D&D edition' I think is not really a retro-clone, it is a variant use of the 'current' edition at the time.
Taking the top 10 over the ~13 years we have full year numbers for we get:
1. Dungeon World - 2012 (Apocalypse world engine)
2. 13th Age - 2013 (hybrid 3.5e/4e)
3. Dragon Age RPG - 2009 (AGE engine)
4. Dungeon Crawl Classics - 2012 (1e feel using own system)
5. Stars Without Number - 2010 (1e derived)
6. Shadow of the Demon Lord - 2015 (own system)
7. Fantasy Age - 2015 (AGE engine)
8. Castles & Crusades - 2004 (2e feel using d20 mechanics)
9. Swords & Wizardry - 2009 (1e clone)
10. Fantasy Craft - 2009 (3e clone)
Of these we see two groups - the group tying back to an earlier edition either directly or by feel/style and the group that is doing its own thing mechanically.
Looking for the same thing in the latest Roll20 numbers gets us
1. Dungeon World (own system)
2. Stars Without Number (1e)
3. 13th Age RPG (3.5e/4e)
4. Mothership - 2018 (own system)
5. Shadow of the Demon Lord (own system)
6. Dungeon Crawl Classics (1e)
7. AGE System (own system)
8. Old School Essentials - 2019 (1e B/X clone)
9. Basic Fantasy RPG System - 2006 (1e B/X feel using d20 mechanics)
10. Dragon Age RPG (own system)
Again we see 1e as the favoured edition where an edition is followed, otherwise people are using all sorts of systems.
The presence of Old School Essentials and Mothership on Roll20 show there is appetite for people to try new variants and for them to become popular. The longevity of Dungeon World, 13th Age, Stars Without Number and Dungeon Crawl Classics - all 4e contemporaries that are still placing well within their peers all this time later would seem to say they got something right. I am interested to see that both AD&D and play of older editions have faded off to be replaced with 1e-derived retroclones or different systems in the same genre - whither the 2e community? Shall they get their return to popularity in due course? The chatter online today is that 4e is due a revival but let us see what happens. Certainly 1e looks to be sticking the test of time.
The one element that pops out at me here is cross-compatibility; I have heard people call B/X the lingua franca of the OSR but looking at this you would be doing quite a lot of tweaking for most of the top 10 games - 5 have their own systems (Apocalypse World, AGE, SotDL, DCC), 2 are 3e/D20 derived (13th Age, Fantasy Craft), 1 is 2e/AD&D (C&C) leaving just two B/X plug and play systems in popular use - and one of those is a sci-fi adaptation (Stars Without Number).
In the world of infinite time and patience, I wonder if I totalled up the small slivers of all the remaining retro-clones and what edition they use, would I find that overall B/X users group is larger? A question I may have a crack at in future.
For now, I will close to say that it looks like the retro-clone explosion is allowing people to really pursue the specific type of game they like - more random and chaotic magic? Go DCC. Want to play 1e just with nice neat layout? Old School Essentials. Want to do 1e but lasers and starships? Stars Without Number. Want your 4e big damn heroes but with the 3.5e universal ruleset? 13th Age. I could continue, but time to get this out the door.
It is nice to have options, long may it continue!
You seem quite confused about the early editions of D&D. 1e isn't B/X, it's AD&D. They are very different things.
ReplyDeleteOSE and Basic Fantasy are B/X, Sword & Wizardry is OD&D (which, again, isn't 1e).
Although in fairness what OSR is and includes is quite blurry, Shadow of the Demon Lord isn't usually considered part of it, and Dungeon World, 13th Age, AGE, Fantasy Craft, most certainly aren't. Citing them to dispute the "B/X as lingua franca of OSR" claim is either ignorant or disingenuous.
Finally, Basic Fantasy RPG isn't "B/X feel using d20 mechanics", it's a proper B/X (not 1e) retroclone, just like OSE.
Alas, I can only work with what gets recorded on Roll20 and Obsidian Portal - the categories are D&D (1.0) and AD&D (2.0) on Obsidian portal and Original D&D (Any Edition) and AD&D (1st Edition and 2E) on Roll20. This is a coarse lens, and it would be nice if we had that more detailed breakdown.
DeleteGiven that the borders of the OSR are blurry, I wanted to cast a wide net and see what are the top ten 'things that are not D&D or Pathfinder' and see what people were playing.
> the categories are D&D (1.0) and AD&D (2.0) on Obsidian portal
DeleteThen they are incorrect, which makes their statistics questionable.
I'm more willing to accept Roll20's "Original D&D (Any Edition)" as an ugly shorthand for "OD&D + the Basic line (Holmes, B/X, BECMI, RC)".
> I wanted to cast a wide net and see what are the top ten 'things that are not D&D or Pathfinder' and see what people were playing.
Which is totally legit. But that doesn't make them OSR.
It is difficult to find any stats at all for this kind of thing so we have to try and read what we can with this coarse stuff. Surveys are scarce and we are poking about in activities that are way out on the curve - 5e takes up most of the space, then other popular non-D&D stuff, then 3.5e, Pathfinder - and then way out we find these older editions.
DeleteDo you think our understanding of what is going on would change? For me, I think it is pretty clear, even if the D&D (1.0) and AD&D (2.0) categories are wrongly bucketed and contain elements that should be in the other one, the overall picture does not change. It looks like the newer retro-clones and D&D-esque games are seeing more activity (on these sites) than the older editions.
Note - all this cannot speak to the offline players, so while I think this tells us something about trends in time and the rise and fall of popularity of editions, I do not think it can speak to how many people are playing these games.