Alright you guys know I'm the GURPS-lover around here....but after 4 years at a game store I know how to distance myself from my bias and look at what people are ACTUALLY playing.


 Here goes...

 Dungeons & Dragons
 ALL versions. People are still playing that one. Doesn't matter about the 3.0 and 3.5 stuff. Customers that are still playing 2nd edition will come in and sometimes buy the current pre-paint minis or a new adventure book to get a map or two. They buy the PAIZO Gamemastery maps for D&D - no matter what version of it they are playing.

WORLD OF DARKNESS

...STILL somewhat popular but it seems to be slowing down quite a bit. If we get 3 or 4 customers in at the same time that play that - almost always a conversation drifts into which was better - oWOD or nWOD.  It sells alright but doesn't seem as "hot" as it did in 2003.

GURPS - it sells sporadically in unpredictable spurts. The sad thing is I can't perfectly track my favoite system. Last week we had a group in purchasing REAPER fantasy miniatures to be their characters in a campaign. Usually that means the customers/browsers are in a D&D game, but then one of them mentioned another player's character had Lecherousness. I said "That sounds like a GURPS thing." Customer says: "DO you play GURPS?"
 So - those 4 wouldn't show up as GURPS purchasers on our records but they are playing in a longterm GURPS Fantasy campaign.

RIFTS/Palladium - We still get a few shopping for that in the store. As I've mentioned before my favorite one of those customers was an attractive brunette with beautiful blue eyes. She was running TWO RIFTS campaigns for awhile. One of her groups was all women.

SHADOWRUN - That game haspicked up a lot more interest recently and I'm not sure why.  I can think of at least 3 different groups that started playing that one within the past month and a half. Heck, this past Saturday ONE customer bought $260.00 worth of SHADOWRUN books because he was thinking about getting back into that game.

HERO system - That one its mostly interest in the main rules book and the sidekicker thing. I get the feeling there are at least 2 groups that stop by our store that play that - they just don't talk about it much.

MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS - I know thats a d20/OGL variation thing, but I can think of at least 4 to 5 groups that have had campaigns either ongoing or starting with setting or system within the past year.


SAVAGE WORLDS -  At least TWO possible groups have tried it or started something with it in the past 6 months in our area.

By-the-way, when I say a "group" that means browsers/customers where I can tell the GM and at least 1 or 2 of her/his playetrs have stopped by the store and bought stuff for their campaign or have talked about . (Or both of those in the same conversation).

 All the stuff I said above is tip-of-the iceberg phenomena. There is no way for me to usually tell whats sold during the other shifts or get a feel for RPG systems are popular from their point of view and the customers that they meet.

FOR EXAMPLE: I thought that we had not been doing well with White Wolf's SCION. Turns out I was wrong, we actually got replenished on that one TWICE. So that means we sold out our initial 3 copies, then sold another 3 copies of it.  I only sold ONE copy of it during all the work shifts I had since it came out.  My best guess is that we've sold 6 to 8 copies of the corebook sinvce its release. (if anyone is curious I can check the actual number on Wednesday)

Those charts from COMICS & GAMES RETAILER magazine? From what I can tell they are pretty close to whats happening across the nation. We have some regional variation. For whatever reason Aces & Eights has not just hit in the local area yet, I don't know why.

Forge/Indie games ?  Hardly anybody locally has heard of them if I mention them in conversation. When I try to describe fairly and objectively what the games are or how they are played, the usual reaction is : "Well why would anybody want to do that?".


- Ed C.

I'd agree with this.  The top-selling indie games are only selling a few thousand copies - (six thousand for Burning Wheel, around two thousand for Spirit of the Century -- less than 2000 per year).  That's at the bottom of the middle tier in terms of sales.  

On the other hand, people do actually play them, just not in large numbers. Like Amber, or Star Frontiers, they have a dedicated but small base of players.

Star Frontiers I've actually heard mentioned in conversation in the store.  

Also a diluted version of that setting is in the D20 FUTURE book that we usually have 1 or 2 copies of onhand.

Hell, I think I owned that one when I was much younger. Even may have run a CAR WARS combat on the shopping mall map that was included with the boxed version of it .

 ...but I digress......


- Ed C.

Fair enough.  I don't dispute your experience.  I don't know any indie gamers in Cincinatti, and I don't see any on NearbyGamers.  (Though neither of those are conclusive.)  

However, I'd point out for comparison the Year of Sales at Endgame as a different retailers experience.  Endgame is a prominent retail store that stocks indie games and sees substantial sales of them.  

I'm still not sure that I see any real disagreement here.

I've seen people buy both D&D and WoD stuff at my store. Some people think WoD is a D&D variant.

I know a group that plays all kinds of different systems regularly. But that's one group playing a bunch of different games.

even though its hard anecdotal evidence, Id like to see more of this kind of posting, as its more relevant than it might first seem.

Here's the list of RPGs I know are played regularly in my local scene:

3.0 and 3.5 D&D

Savage Worlds

Exalted

Vampire

Pendragon

HackMaster

HERO System (mostly Champions, some Fantasy Hero)

BESM

A longrunning local Wraith LARP just recently came to an end, IIRC.  Mekton Zeta, Feng Shui, and Deadlands have all had at least one campaign each in the last couple years.  GURPS once held as big a place as HERO and may still, but in the 90s the local scene was split into opposing GURPS and HERO camps.  I'm not sure whether the Jackson Heretics still practice their blasphemous rites.  I'm pretty sure that Shadowrun is an on-again, off-again favorite locally as well.

Traveller in many of its forms has it adherents around about here.  Not surprising given my relative proximity to the Hallowed Halls of GDW, but I have my doubts that any of the old crew have actually run a campaign recently.

I'm not in touch with my local scene, although I wish I was.  My group has no interest in other groups and only goes to the game store to buy dice or something they don't want to wait for, like Scion...

I know that there are a bunch of other groups down here who have nothing to do with the game store, and there are a bunch that do.  I've run many an Indie game over at Castle Perilous, but the owner seems uninterested in stocking them.

Here's the games I'm aware of in my local area:

- D&D (all editions).
- World of Darkness.
- Unknown Armies. People go crazy for this one.
- Call of Cthulhu.
- Classic Traveller.
- Cyberpunk 2020.
- Witchcraft.
- Numerous smaller games, normally played in short campaigns or as one-shots. Spirit of the Century, REIGN, Weapons of the Gods, Tunnels and Trolls, JAGS...

@Koltar

What age groups do you see buying said games? Teens, College, Adult, Middle-Age, Old? Just curious the age of your buyers.

Quote from: KoltarSHADOWRUN - That game haspicked up a lot more interest recently and I'm not sure why.  I can think of at least 3 different groups that started playing that one within the past month and a half. Heck, this past Saturday ONE customer bought $260.00 worth of SHADOWRUN books because he was thinking about getting back into that game.

Up until a couple of months ago Shadowrun was in a holding pattern. The game was sold and books started being printed again. Until then players had just the core rulebook and the magic book (if you could find it). GMs had a little bit of setting info aimed at them, and a screen.

After the sale the Catalyst Games Labs the cybertech book hit the shelves immediately and several more are on their way. I know this rejuvenated my group's interest in SR.

Also, I noticed no Scion or Exalted on your list. Were they being lumped in with WW's WoD? I ask because the Scion stuff at least flies off the shelves here. When our group decided to start playing it I had to call all over to find a copy. Every game store in my city and the next was sold out of the main book (Hero), as were most of the regular bookstores.

Exalted also sells out fast, although none of the books are on my "must have now" list like Scion was, so I just order them through my FLGS and wait the week it takes for his shipment to come in.

Quote from: Koltar.......................

FOR EXAMPLE: I thought that we had not been doing well with White Wolf's SCION. Turns out I was wrong, we actually got replenished on that one TWICE. So that means we sold out our initial 3 copies, then sold another 3 copies of it.  I only sold ONE copy of it during all the work shifts I had since it came out.  My best guess is that we've sold 6 to 8 copies of the corebook sinvce its release. (if anyone is curious I can check the actual number on Wednesday)
..................

- Ed C.

James MacM,

 SEE? I did mention SCION in the original post.


 As for EXALTED ?


 I haven't sold an EXALTED corebook or related book in close to a year (or more).We have them on the shelf and they disappear from time to time...at least the ones on the shelf seem to decrease every 3 or 4 months. All I can figure is that if EXALTED is selling - then its only been during shifts that I'm not working.

 Which , by-the-way has NO connection. I have never talked bad or good about that line of RPG books one way or the other in all 4 years I've been there.

EXALTED just seems to have died out as an interesting RPG setting for people locally.  

When we first opened in 2003 to early 2004 we had some regulars who bought EXALTED books quite often and had a regfular group . Last time I talked to any of those former regukar customers they said they had changed over (or back?) to DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and occassionally MUTANTS and MASTERMINDS.

- Ed C.

Oops. It didn't start the paragraph, so my brain filtered it out.

Quote from: jhkimHowever, I'd point out for comparison the Year of Sales at Endgame as a different retailers experience.  Endgame is a prominent retail store that stocks indie games and sees substantial sales of them.  

I think that game stores, like general bookstores, tend to sell what they have on their shelves. My FLGS has a salesguy who's into somewhat "indie" games, so he makes sure there are always copies of Burning Wheel, HeroQuest and so on. But another game store never has copies of them, "oh but we can get them if you order them." Unsurprisingly, if you talk to the first store's salespeople they say "indie" games are popular, if you talk to the second store they say they're not. Few people will hear of a game and then take the trouble to order it, they just buy whatever's on the shelves.

Having a bit of support from or promotion by the game store people - just on that conversational one-on-one level, plus wilingness to put it on the shelf before anyone's ever heard of it or asks for it - makes a big difference, I think. I'm sure Koltar's store sells more GURPS books than a similar store with an assistant manager who is only interested in CCGs

I am going to post in BOLD more. It makes every post into a pithy masterpiece.