Popularity of games on Obsidian Portal (2008-22)

Troy Press tipped me off to this with their article in 2019 looking at RPG campaigns played by system where they looked at the top 10 games. When I first looked at this I realised Obsidian Portal has been around since 2007 so the Wayback Machine could allow us to push back the veil a couple of years from the earliest Roll20 Orr report in 2014.

This could give another view on the old question of whether 'edition collapse' after the release of 5e had really been as sudden and severe as it looks from Roll20 data. It appeared from Roll20 and pre-2014 surveys that there had been a multi-edition ecosystem with 3.5e, 4e and Pathfinder all being played at the same time. After 2015 it became dominated by 5e almost immediately. This appears to be verified by the Obsidian Portal numbers.

This was done by loading the Campaigns page on Obsidian Portal and noting the campaigns per system for each year available (back to 2008) using the Wayback Machine. Happily the format never changed to greatly and it is possible to get a roughly mid-year capture for every year.

What is notable is that after ranking by top campaigns that ever ran, to capture games that may once have been popular but are no longer played, we see 5e has become dominant despite a late start. It is also driving recent activity

Including top 10 campaigns ever we see
- mixed environment in 2014 - as indicated on Roll20
- 5e snuffed out 4e; the only edition with negative year-on-year change - these were converting to 5e perhaps?
- 3.5e hung on a bit longer but also declined
- Pathfinder held on longer, its fade out is beginning to look like 3.5e during the early Pathfinder era.

What is really interesting to me here is that you can see the OSR - the rise to a peak in old editions in ~2014 - which then melts away with 5e. I would read the steep drop off in 4e numbers as an expression of dissatisfaction with that edition. The rise in Pathfinder is known but the fact that old editions and non-D&D are rising at the same time paints a picture of a dispersal towards many things, reversed by 5e. In particular the negative numbers in 4e post the release of 5e is something I interpret as campaigns being switched over to the new edition - something that did not happen until a new official D&D was available.

Similarly one could argue that the peak in variety in 2014 (the other, non-D&D group) was the world moving in a better direction with more different kinds of games being played - which has been reversed though at least stabilising at a lower point as opposed to just running to zero like the other D&D editions.

I find this view on what happened particularly telling because it is zero-sum. There were approximately the same number of campaigns being created every year - unlike on Roll20 where the massive increase in numbers allowed a smaller share of users to still be a large group. Here a smaller share means less new campaigns and players every year.

Altogether it appears we did in fact have a glory era in 2014 with a point of maximum variety and since then 5e has become all consuming, for better or worse.

Compiled numbers from Campaigns page on Obsidian Portal via Wayback Machine, please excuse the clunky formatting:

New Campaigns / year	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
D&D 5E	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6747	4599	5955	7301	7424	8591	4103	6538
Pathfinder RPG	0	142	862	1644	2895	3467	3863	3261	2052	1847	1593	1175	881	354	342
D&D 4E	0	3079	3946	3312	2394	1521	663	-364	-118	-150	-135	-68	-73	-19	-38
D&D (3.5)	200	1307	1875	1906	1883	1776	1177	634	221	178	147	110	140	59	63
Savage Worlds	9	74	182	244	343	376	489	434	276	278	217	173	234	76	126
Fate RPG	0	11	58	133	160	248	521	547	249	219	156	131	144	105	58
Shadowrun	3	74	129	171	194	249	379	445	276	243	209	136	95	56	54
World of Darkness	9	125	193	227	272	281	385	313	125	183	173	82	90	68	75
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire	0	0	0	0	0	76	476	621	520	304	209	124	165	68	28
Call of Cthulhu	4	22	68	88	115	134	158	148	103	136	147	136	161	123	137
Vampire: The Masquerade	2	32	53	69	114	104	103	132	94	116	134	144	179	121	141
AD&D (2.0)	2	77	138	209	250	227	141	89	54	26	29	38	60	38	48
Pathfinder RPG 2e	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	531	267	357
D&D "Next" (Playtesting)	0	0	0	0	0	336	516	172	45	75	17	-5	-20	-1	-8
Mutants and Masterminds	17	40	85	99	106	98	96	95	76	70	78	66	79	40	30
GURPS 4th Edition	0	0	0	0	73	173	165	201	94	80	56	58	56	40	23
Dungeon World	0	0	0	0	6	74	181	161	99	117	110	78	112	39	35
Star Wars Saga Edition	8	131	148	146	112	92	87	45	56	28	15	22	26	-3	16
Exalted	1	62	85	79	142	80	104	89	118	10	7	12	10	6	7
GURPS	8	96	129	198	131	29	26	8	12	33	32	6	19	8	22
other	105	815	1938	2776	3349	3384	3086	2813	2012	1964	1911	1837	2348	1207	1700