New Campaigns on Obsidian Portal (2024 Update)

tl;dr: very stable on 2023 - 5e still 2/3 of campaigns, Traveler muscles onto non-D&D leaderboard, absolute number of campaigns down 50% of long run average

With the old Roll20 Orr Reports fading ever further into the past , we have to look elsewhere to get a sense of the ebb and flow of games popularity. It has been a whole year so we can turn once more to new campaigns on Obsidian Portal to try and read the tea-leaves of what is going on out there. This was initially sparked by Troy Press writing in 2019 on RPG campaigns played by system and I have been tracking this for a few years now - and we have a 2024 update.

To recap - 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.

Looking at the raw numbers of new campaigns added since last we looked, we see a chunky drop off in actual numbers, worse than we've seen post pandemic - now half down off the average for the past ~ 15 years.

If we normalise these varying number of campaigns to see just the relative change in popularity of systems we see things pretty much continue to go sidewayseverything else pretty much goes sideways, slight uptick in 5e share, Pathfinder stable, slight down-tick in the 'smaller' stuff outside the top 10.

I reality checked what we were seeing against Roll20 numbers for as long as those were available (2014-2021) so it seems to be coherent for digital players.

As noted before way back we can see the last days of 3.5e and the switch to 4e (2008-2009), then 4e stumbling and the bifurcation between 4e, Pathfinder and the prolonged afterlife of 3.5e until 5e comes along (2010-2014). From 2015 4e is snuffed out like an asteroid strike, 3.5e slightly more slowly - I guess if you've clung on that long, what is a little longer? - and Pathfinder begins a long, slow fade.

The 'other' block in there contains a lot of churn - small absolute numbers but games that have 'popped' - with more than 33% more games in 2024 compared to the average of the last few years - include Fallout, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade, Monster of the Week, Pendragon, Wrath & Glory and Shadowrun Sixth World. Fallout is a new kid on the block but it is nice to see the World of Darkness games coming around again, ditto Pendragon and Shadowrun.

Pulling out all the non-D&D and high-lighting the most popular ones we see the growth of variety until 5e then the slow decline, with some systems clinging on longer than others; the main interesting point between this year and last year is the swap out at the bottom from the Dresden Files RPG to Traveller; no big shifts just a minor uptick in one over the other is enough for Traveller to muscle in.

Looking at the D&D editions broken out and grouped individually we see that this year bascially says that this is the new normal; even 4e has stopped fading, all the older editions are clinging on to the slivers of popularity they retain, 5e has plateaued.

Looking at the non-D&D games we see a few instances of the same trend - games that had their heyday and grabbed a chunk of audience before 5e ate everything continuing to fade down, some more rapidly than others. The recent up-tick for Traveller being somewhat of an exception - but that is a build up from an existing base. I wonder if there was a moment to make a name ten years ago that has just closed now - that there are so many games out there that building sufficient share to be able to squeeze out one of these old legacy games is more difficult that we appreciate?

Take all these individual movements with a dose of salt, particularly on a year which shows Obsidian Portal as a whole hqaving its numbers drop. The actual count driving these graphs are relatively small but this year looks much like last year. I will be intrigued to see next years, after 5.5e/OneD&D and all that - will it make any difference or is this year the mould from which future years are going to be poured?