Les Rollistes - AideDD stats, le Thiase surveys give a look at TTRPGs in France

Revisiting the AideDD app stats to take a look at race and location data. We saw before that the app is showing the 'generalist' profile same as D&D Beyond or other online tools with fighters and rogues preferred compared to heavy spell-caster preference of forums. From last years data we also saw that preference for races is more stable in apps compared to the forums.

Looking at the respondent profile - AideDD originating in France - has a large French user-base not seen in other polls and anglosphere parts of the hobby.

Given the large fraction of users from US, Canada, UK, Australia, we could take this as a maximalist estimate for the share of D&D that is played in France and an indication of the size of the jeu-de-role scene that we do not hear so much about because of language barriers.

The fantastic Le Thiase surveys give us a window into the jdr scene - three surveys conducted in 2010, 2014 and 2018 - and due again in 2022. Comparing what is in these surveys we see a few interesting points.

Comparing frequency of play to surveys from anglophone sources it looks like the average player gets to game less frequently.

30% of rollistes play less frequently that 1/month compared to ~10% from recent surveys of TTRPG players.

Session length when people play seems to be longer - 56%-68% getting 5 hours gaming or more compared to a range of 10-22% playing that long in anglosphere TTRPG players.

Looking at the long list of games played we see a lot more variety than in the anglosphere - while this is a list of all games played the fact that D&D tops out at 52% is very interesting. I would have expected that to be ~75% at least if the question is 'what games have you played'. Pathfinder looks huge relatively speaking. The actual games appearing are not surprising - the games popular elsewhere are also popular in France. The RPGs originating in France are popular there - Donjon de Naheulbeuk, Chroniques oubliees, Ombres d'Esteren.

Other interesting facts from the le Thiase report:
Remote gaming had already taken off substantially in France (54% in 2018) prior to the pandemic.
The same 'aging of new joiners' effect is seen with 70% of new rollistes in the 1970s being under 15 compared to 40% joining before 15 years old post millenium
Gender breakdown of players also shows mostly men ~ 90% for 40+ age reducing to 75% for under 30s.

The le Thiase reports are well worth taking a read through and I am looking forward to the new one, due at the end of this year.

Sources

Le Thiase 2018 survey

Le Thiase 2014 survey

Le Thiase 2010 survey