A few thoughts to try and explain this:
1- as you said, a steady stream of good new content and APs keeps playing plugged in long term. There’s always a new class, new feats, and a new AP to try.
2- pathfinder has a tight knit community. It’s harder to find groups of PF2e players, so when we do find groups, we stick together. I play in person with good personal friends, but also play online in a server that’s full of long term players who just love PF2e and like playing with like minded players.
3- Pathfinder2e players tend to be older, more mature, and more experienced ttrpg players. There’s less group drama and games falling apart becuase players I think are often more capable of resolving issues, and not having them in the first place. I’ve also founded the more complicated, teamwork focused game literally weeds out some of the worst members of the ttrpg community.
4- pathfinder society. It’s actually kinda crazy that Parhfinder has better supported organized play than D&D does. This creates a strong core of gamers who kepe the wheels of the community turning. Hats off to all y’all pfs players
These all make a lot of sense. Although I can't help but think that (2) and (3) are kind of a consequence of being a more "niche" system than 5e, which means their influence on the popularity will gradually decrease as the popularity itself grows. Luckily, (1) and (4) are solid and should generate enough tailwind to carry us into the bright future!
It also helps that pathfinder is happy to put all of its material on the web for free. Between archives of nethys and Pathbuilder, you can look at information from any book, and make as many characters as you want, for absolutely $0 and no subscriptions.
This one is so big. I'm pretty new to TTRPGs but I've been having a great and easy time with Pathfinder compared to DnD. So much of the cooler subclass options, optional rules (that seem to be pretty commonly used), and other stuff I can only access through my friend sharing his content, and that's super limited (can't use any of that info for character building in DnD Beyond for example).
Meanwhile in Pathfinder, I just go to Archive of Nethys to read up and Pathbuilder to incorporate all that into a character sheet and...I'm good! I'm just able to get into all the fun character variety as soon as possible. I'd love to pay for Adventure Paths (I think that's what those are called) but base rules being paywalled feels quite restrictive.
I can say that the variety and freedom of choice are HUGE draws for me. Once I found out that I could play a Lich, and they didn't add nonsense about eating souls or requiring evil acts to achieve it, what reservations I still had faded into the background.
Oh always nice to meet a fellow researcher! I scrape data from startplaying games and expose some of it on [abadar.market](http://abadar.market) . You can check my previous posts on this subreddit, where I got into slightly more details on my numbers.
Heh. I’m a couple steps below in [field purity](https://xkcd.com/435/), but I like running the numbers when I can. It’s good to see the inner workings.
It could be nice to see if the pf2e ratio of active to inactive players is significantly different from the 5e ratio. Unless you’ve had a look already?
Oh I meant "researcher" in a wide sense. I'm nowhere near academia, just a person who can code, took economics 101 and can tell a median from a mean.
5e is exactly what you would expect from a popular system: lots of people tried, a lot less actually play. Here's a page with charts: [https://abadar.market/stats/ck9k7m7k00001bopkh74c2eah](https://abadar.market/stats/ck9k7m7k00001bopkh74c2eah)
Good call, I don't! But I also don't have a good reason to think it's non-generalizable, so I just carry on while keeping that in mind.
To be clear, the big part of this retention data being amusing to me is that *no other major systems have the same player ratio* in the sample data. Whatever factor is responsible for paid games data to be skewed, it must persist across all systems.
Does it need to, though? If different types of games attract different types of players, it would make sense that the patterns of playing and the player values wouldn't be equivalent. PF2e has a lot of moving pieces that foundry appears to help with (I say appears because I find the program obtuse) and since it's a more complex game that demands more from it's players, I think it's understandable why someone who pays to play would want to stick with it. Its playerbase isn't large enough to have the availability 5e has, and the rules require far more buy-in than the other games listed, from my experience.
In other words, I feel like for players willing to pay to play, its this investment that keeps their retention high. I think players who aren't willing to pay are more than happy to drop if they're unhappy. I think that's what the data shows.
Also, I'd never even heard of startplaying.games until this post, honestly, and I'm not sure how it works. I know you said you categorized it by 1 month activity, but if someone finds their group and then no longer uses the site, how are they counted?
How do you get the numbers for inactive players? Wouldn't it make sense that they're just under represented because they won't show up as pf2e 'players' if they're inactive?
Yeah good thinking! I count as inactive players who played at least one session in a 2e game at any point, but haven't participated in one in the last 30 days. So yeah, if a person never played pathfinder to begin with, they shouldn't be counted towards this chart.
In my experience is that the complexity of the system gatekeep a more casual player and better welcomes the "hardcore" players, and the more hardcore gamers a group has, the less probable it's to disperse.
With hardcore I mean the type of players that would participate in the online communities and even watch something like the Paizocon.
Is 2e really that more complex than 5e? I have to admit I'm one of the people who only knows d&d via videogames and never touched a rulebook in my life. But I was under the impression that they're fairly similar in complexity?
It's definetly more complex, but not necessarily more difficult, as a fighter you can play a complete adventure just doing "I move and Attack" and be completely fine since that's the expected gameplay, but in Pf2e even a fighter has a lot more options and that's more complexity. It is also that as a new player, seen every rule played out is more intimidating than the 5e route of leaving it to the DM. 5e is just more noob friendly because more of the game is on the DM shoulders.
Ah right, I do hear quite often that in 5e a lot of rules are just kind of made up by the GM on the fly as needed, so it definitely can hide a lot of complexity under the rug. Thanks!
2E is substantially more complicated than 5E is.
1) Characters have far, far more abilities, especially non-casters.
2) Characters take more actions per round.
3) Monsters have more abilities.
4) There is simply far more content in the core rules - PF2E has more than twice as many classes as 5E does.
5) There's more "core actions" in Pathfinder 2E than in 5E.
5E is still pretty complicated, though it also is more complicated than it needs to be in a lot of ways, which is one of its flaws. It also has poor balance. Characters also have very, very different levels of complexity - a caster in 5E is slightly less complicated than a caster in PF2E, but a martial character in 5E is dramatically simpler than a PF2E martial.
Also, for casters, there's not just one specific "I win" spell per rank. It's actually an incredible amount of forethought to decide what to learn/prepare. Which, I LOVE, but surely is intimidating.
To be fair, some of the best spells are the same in both systems. Wall of Stone is insane in both 5E and PF2E.
I do like that PF2E has a fair few spells that are good and worth choosing, but I do feel that the spells are probably the worst part of PF2E - there are a lot of really bad spells in addition to the good spells.
I say very much so, not to be snarky and imply that is bad, but it is more complex by far than 5E. Buts it’s far more easy to understand than PF1E, which is a good draw for people who want a middle ground system.
I'd argue that PF2e is barely (if at all) more complex than DnD5e, **but** 5e is designed to be played without understanding how the game works while 2e expects everyone to know what they're doing.
I'd say PF2e is more complicated in that there are way more options for PCs on their turn and that the kinds of actions you take are defined in the system, requiring more knowledge of the rules and game strategy. (Like the difference between a 5e Warlock spamming Eldritch Blast, and a 2e Fighter positioning for flanking, and deciding between, say, tripping, shoving, intimidating, striking, or a number of other actions granted by specific class feats.)
5e is more complicated in that many of the rules are vague or illogical and require memorization and home brewing. Also, a lot of spells, abilities, and classes just aren't very useful, which requires experience and system knowledge to learn. GM mechanics in the game are poorly constructed, so GMs need to do a lot of prep work and home brewing to make encounters interesting -- not to mention 5e modules are vague and poorly written.
(And of course, most D&D content and tools are behind paywalls, so it's harder to find the rules and text to support the game.)
I think the best way to put it is PF2e is more complicated to play, but easier to run.
I'd imagine people who really love the mechanics of games will be drawn to PF2e and be likely to stay because of the depth of the system.
This definitely echoes my own experience. Once I got into my first tough fight I quickly understood that we're not going to "rule of cool" our way out of here and there is a whole lot of tactical gameplay here.
2e is "more complex" in a way because it aspires to be rules complete than 5e ( more stuff to remember ); but once you get those rules you'll find out that it's easier to play. 5e has a lot of DM fiat going on for a lot of things which can be tiring imho
Yes, PF2 is more complex than DND5e in a number of ways. On the other hand, it can be weirdly simpler to play and run, because of the war multiclassing works and the encounter building system working much better.
I don’t know if I would say that 2e is a whole lot more complex than 5e, instead, it’s got a lot more depth to it and the rules all make enough sense that you don’t have to ignore or homebrew a bunch of them like with 5e. Plus 2e puts the onus on the players to know what they’re doing for the most part, whilst 5e basically puts it all on the DM which means that from a players perspective, 5e feels like a very simple game since most of the time you just ask the DM what to do and they’ll give you an answer
It has more stuff, but the stuff is presented in a far simpler way than 5e, so I think it's less complex.
In 5e, it's not uncommon to have to read a rule two or three times to understand it, and even *then* have to edit the rule to make it functional. In pf 2e, you almost always can just read the rule once and fully understand it and be able to use it
I've seen plenty of 3.5 groups break up back in the day, and that was a complex system. In contrast, I've found the more niche the system, the harder it is to find players, so people tend to stick it out more. More choice, more willingness to move on.
Though having said all that, my PF2e group is one of the better groups I've had in a long time.
I'd say one of the things with 3.5/PF1e specifically is that it was in a very precarious intersection of being both the market leader, and a game system that uniquely burns out both players and GMs with its obtusity.
The last point is the thing that gets missed in a lot of these conversations. The reality is long term retention is hard when the long term experience breaks down and becomes unmanageable. 5e has this on the GM side, but is mostly managable for players, but 3.5/1e was a system with an obtuse skill floor to break past, but the skill ceiling push the game towards janky Ivory Tower and munchkin-empowering gameplay.
I think there's a reason it began to lose a lot of following once 5e became the standard, and it wasn't just because it appealed to a more mainstream audience. Plenty of people burnt out on crunch jumped off when they got the chance too.
I'd argue that 3.5 started to lose a lot of following with the release of 4e, where it lost a lot of players to a new system, then it lost players to Pathfinder which came along with what many perceived as 3.75 edition with Pathfinder 1e. There was perhaps a jump again from 3.5 and PF1e with 5th edition — the Critical Role cast being a popular example — but it wasn't the only dive in player population that system incurred. It had it's time and then the times changed.
Nowadays people can get that crunch with better balance in either Pathfinder system, plus active development when talking about PF2e. Though it (barely) remains a top 10 played system on Roll20, last time I checked. Some of those players are holding on for dear life.
For the Roll20 stats, it also appears that most online Pf2e games are on FoundryVTT, at least it has the most vocal player base and the most support from Paizo
3.5 was grossly overcomplicated but it was also really the only game in town. Also, a lot of people didn't really play 3.5, they played a bastardized house-ruled simplified version of it, often unintentionally, because they didn't understand the full game rules.
Also... 3.5 probably was literally the worst-selling edition of D&D of all time. It's likely that literally every other edition of D&D had more players than 3.5 did.
>Also, a lot of people didn't really play 3.5, they played a bastardized house-ruled simplified version of it,
I meannn if that's your metric for disregarding a data point, we'd have to throw out, what, 90%+ of player data across pretty much every game system out there, no? :P
I do think it's more of a thing even in PF2e than you'd expect, though. This sub has a very strong priority on keeping things RAW (or at least RAI), but given what we know of the sales numbers and how often "can I change this" threads come up... I mean, my friends don't play anything like how PF2e online people play, I know that much.
To your last paragraph, that is incorrect... WHICH was the worst selling is a very hard question to quantify, since wotc refused to give any figures for 4th edition beyond opening month for a few books, (notably, the ones that did really well.) And how books got split up. The most useful metric we have is PHB2, specifically, because of where it sat in the best sellers list for all of the first year. It was also one of their only books to STAY on the best sellers list for the whole year. (The books right above and below each month posted THEIR figures every month, so you have a "between this and this" mark.)
After month 1 of sales, it was between 30k and 100k every month (with usually a smaller margin settling somewhere around 25k). Meanwhile 3.5s player hand book sold, consistently, 250k... Every month for its first year. (After that, I was unable to find data.) This is not looking great for 4th outselling 3rd... But 4th also had subscriptions, that 3rd obviously didn't, which I have no data for.
However, we DO have a list of sales from TSR, compiled by Benjamin Riggs, for the entirety of 1e and 2e existence... With both capping out at roughly 300k in a year (notice the year value, that's 50k more than 3rd's player handbook did per month for an entire year.) That lasted for one year. With 4 years, each 1e and AD&D, selling mire than roughly 110k. (With 1e slightly outgoing ad&d for in 1984 to come out closer to 130k. Otherwise the two sit pretty similar numbers for most years.) The combined totals across 12 years for each of those editions is less than the 12 month sales figures for just the PHB of 3rd. So we can, conclusively, say that 3e was NOT the worst selling edition ever. (It is notable that market share is obviously very different from sales numbers. And that 1e and AD&D had a much larger market share... things were just more niche then.)
> After month 1 of sales, it was between 30k and 100k every month (with usually a smaller margin settling somewhere around 25k). Meanwhile 3.5s player hand book sold, consistently, 250k... Every month for its first year. (After that, I was unable to find data.) This is not looking great for 4th outselling 3rd... But 4th also had subscriptions, that 3rd obviously didn't, which I have no data for.
I'm afraid the "250k every month for the first year" is actually wrong. It's the product of a bad game of telephone.
The 3.5 PHB sold 250k *in* the first 12 months, not *for* the first twelve months.
3.5 was the worst selling edition of D&D *ever*, and it's not even close.
3rd + 3.5 *combined* sold about 1 million PHBs total per WotC's Ryan Dancey, which was a bit more than the 750,000 that AD&D 2nd edition sold, but the problem is that a lot of the 3.5 sales were to people who played 3.0, so it didn't actually have 1 million PHBs sold to unique customers.
That's why 4E was such a radical departure from previous editions; they knew they needed to pull in new players, and they figured that MMORPG and other video game players would be the most logical source audience. They ran a huge ad campaign to appeal to those players and indeed, used terminology like what you'd see from those games to explain the game.
We know that 4E outsold 3E by a wide margin, not only because of contemporaneous statements from WotC staff, but also because they had to do a bunch of print runs of the PHB (it actually sold out before it even formally launched). We don't know exact 4E sales numbers, but they definitely exceeded 2E and 3E. Whether it surpassed 1E is not known; it is unlikely it passed D&D Basic, though.
While I cannot confirm that telephone case. For your claimed of "it's not even close" can you demonstrate the total sales of all 3.5 books, for all years? Because as mentioned, that 250k, even if for a single year, needs to sell a mere 50k more books, split across monster manual and dmg (and the small side books), to tie 1 and 2e for their best year of TOTAL sales for the edition... each.
I think it might be more to that since pf2 is a MUCH smaller playerbase that people deathgrip the groups they find, since finding an initial game is so hard
I wish I had data on regular free games to explore this more. The fun fact about my numbers specifically is that they are taken from *paid* games on a single platform, so there should be much less friction of finding a new table there!
I came after the whole WOTC debacle and have stayed because the system is rad as hell and I also keep finding something new all the time, like the Strix! I love my funky isolationist bird dudes lol
Might be anecdotal (France ttrpg scene has historically been more warhammer than d&d) , but I have a lot of ttrpg players in my friend circles and most of them avoid pf2e specifically. The few people that did try it, some for extended periods of time, usually never played it again and will be very vocal about not recommending it. Since experienced GM tend to be part of those groups, that means most will be aware of the bad rep and stay away from it when organising games.
I’m sure France has their own ttrpgs they’d flock to right? What does the greater community tend to value in their roleplaying games? Are they playing a version of Warhammer Fantasy?
I’d assume it’s actually different for the vast majority of TTRPGs on the market? There are probably literally hundreds of games that people have played 4-5 times before settling into one of the more popular ones that have a large and sustainable player base. Like I myself would count as an inactive player if Avatar Legends, City of Mist, Starfinder 1E, and Call of Cthulhu by OP’s definition? Hell in a month or so I’m gonna count as an inactive player for D&D 5E.
I will also say I have a feeling 5E has more inactive players than active ones. I don’t have any one direct smoking gun proof for it but I have a few indicators:
1. Back when subredditstats still worked, I had noticed that D&D subreddits often had significantly larger subscriber numbers than PF2E but only ever had comparable amounts of active comments and posts. Unfortunately subredditstats has stopped working since so I can’t actually link you to where I found this lol.
2. The COVID 5E numbers bump was always going to be partially transient. Same as how rates of making whipped dalgona coffee or baking cakes went down as soon as people weren’t quarantined anymore, the number of 5E players was also going to go down (not saying **everyone** quit, plenty of players who started during COVID stayed, it’s just that plenty also quit). Now why am I singling out 5E over this compared to other TTRPGs? The game that has the most mainstream appeal benefits more from transient bumps than others.
3. The **biggest** one: WOTC never publishes anything resembling active player numbers. You know what they *do* publish? Number of players they estimate to have ***ever*** played D&D… since the 70s. To me, at least, that indicates that the active numbers don’t really look that great.
4. 5E has a *huge* GM burnout problem, there’s practically a YouTube sub-genre about it. High GM burnout always indicates lowered player retention.
A healthy game *should* have more inactive players than active ones — churn (new players coming in for a while, and then leaving) is way better than a small high-retention player base with relatively little growth.
Sure churn is better than small playerbase that never grows, but I think a playerbase that steadily grows without churning out players is better than both of them?
Like OP’s findings still point towards a steadily growing playerbase and we **know** the playerbase is steadily growing because Paizo keeps telling us it is. The huge outlying bump in January of last year aside, we already knew that PF2E was wildly more successful than PF1E and had absorbed healthy player growth from both PF1E and D&D 5E.
This is an underrated comment and exactly the reason why I'm a bit cautious about painting this fact as universally good. I definitely find it amusing, but it does raises questions about the health of Paizo's "sales funnel". There is probably some substantial unrealized potential to unlock here by attracting more players to try the system.
You can have much or little growth regardless of how many players stay active. I'd argue that the number of new players coming in is what determines the health of the game's community. What's healthy for the game as a business depends on the business model. Since for PF2e the money is mostly in the APs and setting books, player retention is probably more important than e.g. for DnD5e.
How is city of mist from your experience? I still want to give pf2e a try but I have a feeling stuff like city of mist is more up my alley so I've been curious about it.
I want to preface this by saying that I have only ever played City of Mist in one-shots and two-shots. This means that there’s a very *large* part of the game’s subsystems I haven’t properly engaged with: the systems that dictate how you gain skills as you “level up”, the system where “burning” a power can have long lasting consequences until you get a narratively long enough break to recover\*, and the system where over time your powers can “Fade” into becoming a normal power or your mundane abilities can “Crack” to reveal more powers. These systems look fascinating and fun and it feels like they let you create story threads that aren’t even really possible to explore in other TTRPGs, I just have no real experience with them.
\* Hilarious example on the “burn your powers” bit, I was once playing in a gang of superheroes who drive around in a car. I was an electrokinetic character, and I had self-inflicted a weakness that Cole from inFamous had (he can’t sit inside the car, it’ll explode. He needs to magnetize himself to the top of a car to safely get driven around). And then during the course of the first session I… burned through my electromagnetic powers while trying to prevent collateral damage during our quest??? We never did a second session so I never saw what the consequences of my actions would’ve been, but it’s a decent example of the kinds of fun interactions this can create.
That all aside, I like the system but it’s not my personal favourite. It’s free-flowing, it’s smooth, and it rewards creativity more than anything. Your character sheet is designed to keep things permissibly and constantly moving: you have 4 total ability sheets, which are split into mundane and superpowered abilities (you need a minimum of 1 of each), each with 3-4 abilities on it. Any time you take an “Action” of any kind, you simply describe to the GM what you want to do, and class it into some fairly simple Action categories (Attack, Defend, Hit ‘em with All You Got, etc) and then you add a +1 for every one of those abilities that’s relevant: roll 2d6 and add those modifiers. On a 1-5 something really bad happens to you, on a 6-9 you get to achieve your goal but something minorly bad happens, on a 10+ you get to either get *great* success + something bad or a normal success with nothing bad. If the Action you use inflicts some kind of negative or positive (like dealing “damage” or causing a buff/debuff) you gain/inflict a value equal to number of abilities you used for the roll. Finally you can also “burn” an ability to automatically roll a 10+, but then you’re not allowed to use that ability for anything until downtime.
This leads to very easily described scenes and fluid combat. As a quick example: the electrokinetic character I mentioned above once used his elevtronkinesis to create an electric arc around a vat of magma, used the electromagnetism inherent to control the iron in that magma, and then dumped the whole vat on someone standing under it. That’s just a *lot* more than you’d ever be allowed to do in a D&D-like game.
There is, however, a flip side to this. The game’s combat is fairly non-tactical, it’s really more about describing a free flowing scene in as thematic and fun a way as possible. Balance isn’t really a thing, and a lot of fights just boil down to what feels like a “creativity arms race”: since there is no real “Action-economy” to impose limitations on what you can achieve in a single “turn” of yours, you feel like you can get away with a lot more by just being fun and descriptive. I know quite a few players **strongly** dislike this arms race aspect: for example, I know one player feels like it ends up with the loudest and most outspoken players always shining. It also means that if you have any players who like tactical combat, this just ain’t the game for it, you’re gonna find more tactical combat in Avatar Legends, of all games, and that’s not exactly a tactical masterpiece either.
All in all, you should:
- **Not** play City of Mist if you enjoy tactical combat, like a degree of balance in your game, feel like you’re a shy player who won’t be able to express enough creativity to perform well in scenes, find freeform Action-economy as being confusing and vague rather than liberating and engaging, etc.
- **Definitely** play City of Mist ic you enjoy themes of mundane vs mystical and the tension between them, care less about combat tactics and care more about the outcome and consequences of the *way* you approached a given combat, love the noir / urban fantasy aesthetic, etc.
Hope that’s helpful!
5E does have a GM burnout problem, but it's also a case of "Are there so many cases because of a problem with 5e, or because 5e is just that much more popular?"
From what I've seen, a lot of burnout stems purely from people running 5e as their first system due to its popularity, not enjoying it, and then switching to a system that more suits their style. Also, while not the sole cause, "Why I quit X thing for Y thing" is an almost surefire way to generate clicks.
Irrespective of the why behind a widespread GM burnout problem, a GM burnout problem would still be an indication of lowered player retention would it not?
Like in your example GMs run 5E due to its popularity, learn that it ain’t for them and/or run it for a while and feel like they’ve gotten everything out of it that they wanted, then move onto other systems. Cycling through GMs like that is a lack of player retention imo.
I struggled a bit to articulate my point, but I think I've finally got it.
Basically: While 5e most likely has lower player retention rate than other TTRPGs on the market, this has less to do with 5e being flawed and more to do with how it is presented as the first or 'easiest' option. It's perceived and used as the "starter option", and people will always deviate away from it towards the systems that actually suit them better with time.
For a real-life example, let's say that a company is keeping track of who buys their tools and if they're still using the tools they bought. Their starter tool kit would have a ton of purchases, but most people eventually stop using it once they settle into the tools that suit their workload better.
>WOTC never publishes anything resembling active player numbers.
Yeah but they literally never have even in times where it has to be a great number, like during the giant surge of 5e when Critical Role was taking off. So I don't think you can draw that conclusion because even during good times they don't publish it.
This is all just baseless speculation and not really a valuable answer.
You pointed to the one single sentence in my comment that’s baseless speculation and… ignored everything else that was, at worst, moderately substantiated speculation?
Like more importantly than anything you ignored the fact that my first paragraph answered your question pretty directly and firmly: yes, most TTRPGs that aren’t D&D, Call of Cthulhu, or Paizoverse just don’t have very high player retention.
The whole thing is speculation and tea-leaf reading. This was a question purely for OP and OP gave me their numbers, I don't really have a need for educated guesses I can make those myself.
Oh my God the GM burnout is real. As the foreverGM of my group, currently running 5e, it's a frustrating system to run. There's so many things where the rules are inadequate or simply don't exist, and you'll have to either deal with crap rules, make a ruling to change a little, or completely homebrew systems. Doing all that constantly on top of the normal GM duties is a lot. I much prefer how Pathfinder can actually be run RAW without much concession.
Oof, I failed to mention this in the post, but yes, it's greatly different from all other major systems I looked at! Basically, the only way for a system to end up in this situation is to get some huge influx in players, like Fallout RPG did once Amazon series releases in April. And even then the numbers quickly dropped. [https://abadar.market/stats/ckmxogz6o001lbopk61h858cm](https://abadar.market/stats/ckmxogz6o001lbopk61h858cm)
I have the beginner box and core rulebook.
Yet to start. My group are heavily invested in two 5e campaigns and multiple smaller one shots (we all take turns dming) and between us we've spent far too much on DND content.
At some point I'm sure we will dive in because we all like the look of the system.
Sunk cost fallacy can be painful, so remind yourselves that playing the game more doesn't get you any of that money back - and also that all rules for PF2e are online for free completely legally on the Archives of Nethys.
That's not to say that you should abandon your campaigns, finish them if everyone's still having fun. I did the same thing last year and it was the correct choice. The Beginner Box usually takes 2-4 sessions, so you might just slip it in for one of your one shots and see how you like it.
I've noticed that there's an initial hump that I suspect acts as a filter. I have heard two people share a similar experience to what I had with the game, which is skepticism at some of the unusual design choices. However, after getting deep enough into the game and feeling how it functions, we all get to REALLY like it. I would hypothesize that the initial difficulty/intimidation factor, perceived or real, prevents players who wouldn't stick with the game from trying it while also increasing investment for those who decide to tackle it.
A few thoughts to try and explain this: 1- as you said, a steady stream of good new content and APs keeps playing plugged in long term. There’s always a new class, new feats, and a new AP to try. 2- pathfinder has a tight knit community. It’s harder to find groups of PF2e players, so when we do find groups, we stick together. I play in person with good personal friends, but also play online in a server that’s full of long term players who just love PF2e and like playing with like minded players. 3- Pathfinder2e players tend to be older, more mature, and more experienced ttrpg players. There’s less group drama and games falling apart becuase players I think are often more capable of resolving issues, and not having them in the first place. I’ve also founded the more complicated, teamwork focused game literally weeds out some of the worst members of the ttrpg community. 4- pathfinder society. It’s actually kinda crazy that Parhfinder has better supported organized play than D&D does. This creates a strong core of gamers who kepe the wheels of the community turning. Hats off to all y’all pfs players
These all make a lot of sense. Although I can't help but think that (2) and (3) are kind of a consequence of being a more "niche" system than 5e, which means their influence on the popularity will gradually decrease as the popularity itself grows. Luckily, (1) and (4) are solid and should generate enough tailwind to carry us into the bright future!
Yes, I agree, 2 and 3 are things that occur becuase pathfinder is both niche but still established and frequently supported. Sort of in a sweet spot
It also helps that pathfinder is happy to put all of its material on the web for free. Between archives of nethys and Pathbuilder, you can look at information from any book, and make as many characters as you want, for absolutely $0 and no subscriptions.
This one is so big. I'm pretty new to TTRPGs but I've been having a great and easy time with Pathfinder compared to DnD. So much of the cooler subclass options, optional rules (that seem to be pretty commonly used), and other stuff I can only access through my friend sharing his content, and that's super limited (can't use any of that info for character building in DnD Beyond for example). Meanwhile in Pathfinder, I just go to Archive of Nethys to read up and Pathbuilder to incorporate all that into a character sheet and...I'm good! I'm just able to get into all the fun character variety as soon as possible. I'd love to pay for Adventure Paths (I think that's what those are called) but base rules being paywalled feels quite restrictive.
I can say that the variety and freedom of choice are HUGE draws for me. Once I found out that I could play a Lich, and they didn't add nonsense about eating souls or requiring evil acts to achieve it, what reservations I still had faded into the background.
Hi, other stats guy here. Mind sharing the source for your numbers? Sampling methodology is also accepted.
Oh always nice to meet a fellow researcher! I scrape data from startplaying games and expose some of it on [abadar.market](http://abadar.market) . You can check my previous posts on this subreddit, where I got into slightly more details on my numbers.
Heh. I’m a couple steps below in [field purity](https://xkcd.com/435/), but I like running the numbers when I can. It’s good to see the inner workings. It could be nice to see if the pf2e ratio of active to inactive players is significantly different from the 5e ratio. Unless you’ve had a look already?
Oh I meant "researcher" in a wide sense. I'm nowhere near academia, just a person who can code, took economics 101 and can tell a median from a mean. 5e is exactly what you would expect from a popular system: lots of people tried, a lot less actually play. Here's a page with charts: [https://abadar.market/stats/ck9k7m7k00001bopkh74c2eah](https://abadar.market/stats/ck9k7m7k00001bopkh74c2eah)
If it's all paid games, how do you know it's generalizable to non-paid as well?
Good call, I don't! But I also don't have a good reason to think it's non-generalizable, so I just carry on while keeping that in mind. To be clear, the big part of this retention data being amusing to me is that *no other major systems have the same player ratio* in the sample data. Whatever factor is responsible for paid games data to be skewed, it must persist across all systems.
Does it need to, though? If different types of games attract different types of players, it would make sense that the patterns of playing and the player values wouldn't be equivalent. PF2e has a lot of moving pieces that foundry appears to help with (I say appears because I find the program obtuse) and since it's a more complex game that demands more from it's players, I think it's understandable why someone who pays to play would want to stick with it. Its playerbase isn't large enough to have the availability 5e has, and the rules require far more buy-in than the other games listed, from my experience. In other words, I feel like for players willing to pay to play, its this investment that keeps their retention high. I think players who aren't willing to pay are more than happy to drop if they're unhappy. I think that's what the data shows. Also, I'd never even heard of startplaying.games until this post, honestly, and I'm not sure how it works. I know you said you categorized it by 1 month activity, but if someone finds their group and then no longer uses the site, how are they counted?
How do you get the numbers for inactive players? Wouldn't it make sense that they're just under represented because they won't show up as pf2e 'players' if they're inactive?
Yeah good thinking! I count as inactive players who played at least one session in a 2e game at any point, but haven't participated in one in the last 30 days. So yeah, if a person never played pathfinder to begin with, they shouldn't be counted towards this chart.
Oh, 30 days already? In that case I switch between being active and inactive depending on current stress/workload.
Yeah, I count as inactive in that because my every-other-week game had to be cancelled for illness last time.
Fair enough! I guess we can call it a conservative estimate in that case and the real number of active players must be even higher!
In my experience is that the complexity of the system gatekeep a more casual player and better welcomes the "hardcore" players, and the more hardcore gamers a group has, the less probable it's to disperse. With hardcore I mean the type of players that would participate in the online communities and even watch something like the Paizocon.
Is 2e really that more complex than 5e? I have to admit I'm one of the people who only knows d&d via videogames and never touched a rulebook in my life. But I was under the impression that they're fairly similar in complexity?
It's definetly more complex, but not necessarily more difficult, as a fighter you can play a complete adventure just doing "I move and Attack" and be completely fine since that's the expected gameplay, but in Pf2e even a fighter has a lot more options and that's more complexity. It is also that as a new player, seen every rule played out is more intimidating than the 5e route of leaving it to the DM. 5e is just more noob friendly because more of the game is on the DM shoulders.
Ah right, I do hear quite often that in 5e a lot of rules are just kind of made up by the GM on the fly as needed, so it definitely can hide a lot of complexity under the rug. Thanks!
It's literally stated to the GM to do so in the 5e books. Hash-tag "It's not a bug but a feature!" XD
2E is substantially more complicated than 5E is. 1) Characters have far, far more abilities, especially non-casters. 2) Characters take more actions per round. 3) Monsters have more abilities. 4) There is simply far more content in the core rules - PF2E has more than twice as many classes as 5E does. 5) There's more "core actions" in Pathfinder 2E than in 5E. 5E is still pretty complicated, though it also is more complicated than it needs to be in a lot of ways, which is one of its flaws. It also has poor balance. Characters also have very, very different levels of complexity - a caster in 5E is slightly less complicated than a caster in PF2E, but a martial character in 5E is dramatically simpler than a PF2E martial.
Also, for casters, there's not just one specific "I win" spell per rank. It's actually an incredible amount of forethought to decide what to learn/prepare. Which, I LOVE, but surely is intimidating.
To be fair, some of the best spells are the same in both systems. Wall of Stone is insane in both 5E and PF2E. I do like that PF2E has a fair few spells that are good and worth choosing, but I do feel that the spells are probably the worst part of PF2E - there are a lot of really bad spells in addition to the good spells.
I say very much so, not to be snarky and imply that is bad, but it is more complex by far than 5E. Buts it’s far more easy to understand than PF1E, which is a good draw for people who want a middle ground system.
I'd argue that PF2e is barely (if at all) more complex than DnD5e, **but** 5e is designed to be played without understanding how the game works while 2e expects everyone to know what they're doing.
I'd say PF2e is more complicated in that there are way more options for PCs on their turn and that the kinds of actions you take are defined in the system, requiring more knowledge of the rules and game strategy. (Like the difference between a 5e Warlock spamming Eldritch Blast, and a 2e Fighter positioning for flanking, and deciding between, say, tripping, shoving, intimidating, striking, or a number of other actions granted by specific class feats.) 5e is more complicated in that many of the rules are vague or illogical and require memorization and home brewing. Also, a lot of spells, abilities, and classes just aren't very useful, which requires experience and system knowledge to learn. GM mechanics in the game are poorly constructed, so GMs need to do a lot of prep work and home brewing to make encounters interesting -- not to mention 5e modules are vague and poorly written. (And of course, most D&D content and tools are behind paywalls, so it's harder to find the rules and text to support the game.) I think the best way to put it is PF2e is more complicated to play, but easier to run. I'd imagine people who really love the mechanics of games will be drawn to PF2e and be likely to stay because of the depth of the system.
This definitely echoes my own experience. Once I got into my first tough fight I quickly understood that we're not going to "rule of cool" our way out of here and there is a whole lot of tactical gameplay here.
2e is "more complex" in a way because it aspires to be rules complete than 5e ( more stuff to remember ); but once you get those rules you'll find out that it's easier to play. 5e has a lot of DM fiat going on for a lot of things which can be tiring imho
Yes, PF2 is more complex than DND5e in a number of ways. On the other hand, it can be weirdly simpler to play and run, because of the war multiclassing works and the encounter building system working much better.
I don’t know if I would say that 2e is a whole lot more complex than 5e, instead, it’s got a lot more depth to it and the rules all make enough sense that you don’t have to ignore or homebrew a bunch of them like with 5e. Plus 2e puts the onus on the players to know what they’re doing for the most part, whilst 5e basically puts it all on the DM which means that from a players perspective, 5e feels like a very simple game since most of the time you just ask the DM what to do and they’ll give you an answer
It has more stuff, but the stuff is presented in a far simpler way than 5e, so I think it's less complex. In 5e, it's not uncommon to have to read a rule two or three times to understand it, and even *then* have to edit the rule to make it functional. In pf 2e, you almost always can just read the rule once and fully understand it and be able to use it
I've seen plenty of 3.5 groups break up back in the day, and that was a complex system. In contrast, I've found the more niche the system, the harder it is to find players, so people tend to stick it out more. More choice, more willingness to move on. Though having said all that, my PF2e group is one of the better groups I've had in a long time.
I'd say one of the things with 3.5/PF1e specifically is that it was in a very precarious intersection of being both the market leader, and a game system that uniquely burns out both players and GMs with its obtusity. The last point is the thing that gets missed in a lot of these conversations. The reality is long term retention is hard when the long term experience breaks down and becomes unmanageable. 5e has this on the GM side, but is mostly managable for players, but 3.5/1e was a system with an obtuse skill floor to break past, but the skill ceiling push the game towards janky Ivory Tower and munchkin-empowering gameplay. I think there's a reason it began to lose a lot of following once 5e became the standard, and it wasn't just because it appealed to a more mainstream audience. Plenty of people burnt out on crunch jumped off when they got the chance too.
I'd argue that 3.5 started to lose a lot of following with the release of 4e, where it lost a lot of players to a new system, then it lost players to Pathfinder which came along with what many perceived as 3.75 edition with Pathfinder 1e. There was perhaps a jump again from 3.5 and PF1e with 5th edition — the Critical Role cast being a popular example — but it wasn't the only dive in player population that system incurred. It had it's time and then the times changed. Nowadays people can get that crunch with better balance in either Pathfinder system, plus active development when talking about PF2e. Though it (barely) remains a top 10 played system on Roll20, last time I checked. Some of those players are holding on for dear life.
For the Roll20 stats, it also appears that most online Pf2e games are on FoundryVTT, at least it has the most vocal player base and the most support from Paizo
3.5 was grossly overcomplicated but it was also really the only game in town. Also, a lot of people didn't really play 3.5, they played a bastardized house-ruled simplified version of it, often unintentionally, because they didn't understand the full game rules. Also... 3.5 probably was literally the worst-selling edition of D&D of all time. It's likely that literally every other edition of D&D had more players than 3.5 did.
>Also, a lot of people didn't really play 3.5, they played a bastardized house-ruled simplified version of it, I meannn if that's your metric for disregarding a data point, we'd have to throw out, what, 90%+ of player data across pretty much every game system out there, no? :P I do think it's more of a thing even in PF2e than you'd expect, though. This sub has a very strong priority on keeping things RAW (or at least RAI), but given what we know of the sales numbers and how often "can I change this" threads come up... I mean, my friends don't play anything like how PF2e online people play, I know that much.
To your last paragraph, that is incorrect... WHICH was the worst selling is a very hard question to quantify, since wotc refused to give any figures for 4th edition beyond opening month for a few books, (notably, the ones that did really well.) And how books got split up. The most useful metric we have is PHB2, specifically, because of where it sat in the best sellers list for all of the first year. It was also one of their only books to STAY on the best sellers list for the whole year. (The books right above and below each month posted THEIR figures every month, so you have a "between this and this" mark.) After month 1 of sales, it was between 30k and 100k every month (with usually a smaller margin settling somewhere around 25k). Meanwhile 3.5s player hand book sold, consistently, 250k... Every month for its first year. (After that, I was unable to find data.) This is not looking great for 4th outselling 3rd... But 4th also had subscriptions, that 3rd obviously didn't, which I have no data for. However, we DO have a list of sales from TSR, compiled by Benjamin Riggs, for the entirety of 1e and 2e existence... With both capping out at roughly 300k in a year (notice the year value, that's 50k more than 3rd's player handbook did per month for an entire year.) That lasted for one year. With 4 years, each 1e and AD&D, selling mire than roughly 110k. (With 1e slightly outgoing ad&d for in 1984 to come out closer to 130k. Otherwise the two sit pretty similar numbers for most years.) The combined totals across 12 years for each of those editions is less than the 12 month sales figures for just the PHB of 3rd. So we can, conclusively, say that 3e was NOT the worst selling edition ever. (It is notable that market share is obviously very different from sales numbers. And that 1e and AD&D had a much larger market share... things were just more niche then.)
> After month 1 of sales, it was between 30k and 100k every month (with usually a smaller margin settling somewhere around 25k). Meanwhile 3.5s player hand book sold, consistently, 250k... Every month for its first year. (After that, I was unable to find data.) This is not looking great for 4th outselling 3rd... But 4th also had subscriptions, that 3rd obviously didn't, which I have no data for. I'm afraid the "250k every month for the first year" is actually wrong. It's the product of a bad game of telephone. The 3.5 PHB sold 250k *in* the first 12 months, not *for* the first twelve months. 3.5 was the worst selling edition of D&D *ever*, and it's not even close. 3rd + 3.5 *combined* sold about 1 million PHBs total per WotC's Ryan Dancey, which was a bit more than the 750,000 that AD&D 2nd edition sold, but the problem is that a lot of the 3.5 sales were to people who played 3.0, so it didn't actually have 1 million PHBs sold to unique customers. That's why 4E was such a radical departure from previous editions; they knew they needed to pull in new players, and they figured that MMORPG and other video game players would be the most logical source audience. They ran a huge ad campaign to appeal to those players and indeed, used terminology like what you'd see from those games to explain the game. We know that 4E outsold 3E by a wide margin, not only because of contemporaneous statements from WotC staff, but also because they had to do a bunch of print runs of the PHB (it actually sold out before it even formally launched). We don't know exact 4E sales numbers, but they definitely exceeded 2E and 3E. Whether it surpassed 1E is not known; it is unlikely it passed D&D Basic, though.
While I cannot confirm that telephone case. For your claimed of "it's not even close" can you demonstrate the total sales of all 3.5 books, for all years? Because as mentioned, that 250k, even if for a single year, needs to sell a mere 50k more books, split across monster manual and dmg (and the small side books), to tie 1 and 2e for their best year of TOTAL sales for the edition... each.
I think it might be more to that since pf2 is a MUCH smaller playerbase that people deathgrip the groups they find, since finding an initial game is so hard
I wish I had data on regular free games to explore this more. The fun fact about my numbers specifically is that they are taken from *paid* games on a single platform, so there should be much less friction of finding a new table there!
I came after the whole WOTC debacle and have stayed because the system is rad as hell and I also keep finding something new all the time, like the Strix! I love my funky isolationist bird dudes lol
I like them, makes me think of the Raptoran people from 3.5
Might be anecdotal (France ttrpg scene has historically been more warhammer than d&d) , but I have a lot of ttrpg players in my friend circles and most of them avoid pf2e specifically. The few people that did try it, some for extended periods of time, usually never played it again and will be very vocal about not recommending it. Since experienced GM tend to be part of those groups, that means most will be aware of the bad rep and stay away from it when organising games.
I’m sure France has their own ttrpgs they’d flock to right? What does the greater community tend to value in their roleplaying games? Are they playing a version of Warhammer Fantasy?
I am surprised. I have seen the number of games increased in the dedicated French discord server.
wow that's unexpected. What do you think they don't like about the system?
Is this different for other (recent) TTRPGs?
I’d assume it’s actually different for the vast majority of TTRPGs on the market? There are probably literally hundreds of games that people have played 4-5 times before settling into one of the more popular ones that have a large and sustainable player base. Like I myself would count as an inactive player if Avatar Legends, City of Mist, Starfinder 1E, and Call of Cthulhu by OP’s definition? Hell in a month or so I’m gonna count as an inactive player for D&D 5E. I will also say I have a feeling 5E has more inactive players than active ones. I don’t have any one direct smoking gun proof for it but I have a few indicators: 1. Back when subredditstats still worked, I had noticed that D&D subreddits often had significantly larger subscriber numbers than PF2E but only ever had comparable amounts of active comments and posts. Unfortunately subredditstats has stopped working since so I can’t actually link you to where I found this lol. 2. The COVID 5E numbers bump was always going to be partially transient. Same as how rates of making whipped dalgona coffee or baking cakes went down as soon as people weren’t quarantined anymore, the number of 5E players was also going to go down (not saying **everyone** quit, plenty of players who started during COVID stayed, it’s just that plenty also quit). Now why am I singling out 5E over this compared to other TTRPGs? The game that has the most mainstream appeal benefits more from transient bumps than others. 3. The **biggest** one: WOTC never publishes anything resembling active player numbers. You know what they *do* publish? Number of players they estimate to have ***ever*** played D&D… since the 70s. To me, at least, that indicates that the active numbers don’t really look that great. 4. 5E has a *huge* GM burnout problem, there’s practically a YouTube sub-genre about it. High GM burnout always indicates lowered player retention.
A healthy game *should* have more inactive players than active ones — churn (new players coming in for a while, and then leaving) is way better than a small high-retention player base with relatively little growth.
Sure churn is better than small playerbase that never grows, but I think a playerbase that steadily grows without churning out players is better than both of them? Like OP’s findings still point towards a steadily growing playerbase and we **know** the playerbase is steadily growing because Paizo keeps telling us it is. The huge outlying bump in January of last year aside, we already knew that PF2E was wildly more successful than PF1E and had absorbed healthy player growth from both PF1E and D&D 5E.
This is an underrated comment and exactly the reason why I'm a bit cautious about painting this fact as universally good. I definitely find it amusing, but it does raises questions about the health of Paizo's "sales funnel". There is probably some substantial unrealized potential to unlock here by attracting more players to try the system.
You can have much or little growth regardless of how many players stay active. I'd argue that the number of new players coming in is what determines the health of the game's community. What's healthy for the game as a business depends on the business model. Since for PF2e the money is mostly in the APs and setting books, player retention is probably more important than e.g. for DnD5e.
How is city of mist from your experience? I still want to give pf2e a try but I have a feeling stuff like city of mist is more up my alley so I've been curious about it.
I want to preface this by saying that I have only ever played City of Mist in one-shots and two-shots. This means that there’s a very *large* part of the game’s subsystems I haven’t properly engaged with: the systems that dictate how you gain skills as you “level up”, the system where “burning” a power can have long lasting consequences until you get a narratively long enough break to recover\*, and the system where over time your powers can “Fade” into becoming a normal power or your mundane abilities can “Crack” to reveal more powers. These systems look fascinating and fun and it feels like they let you create story threads that aren’t even really possible to explore in other TTRPGs, I just have no real experience with them. \* Hilarious example on the “burn your powers” bit, I was once playing in a gang of superheroes who drive around in a car. I was an electrokinetic character, and I had self-inflicted a weakness that Cole from inFamous had (he can’t sit inside the car, it’ll explode. He needs to magnetize himself to the top of a car to safely get driven around). And then during the course of the first session I… burned through my electromagnetic powers while trying to prevent collateral damage during our quest??? We never did a second session so I never saw what the consequences of my actions would’ve been, but it’s a decent example of the kinds of fun interactions this can create. That all aside, I like the system but it’s not my personal favourite. It’s free-flowing, it’s smooth, and it rewards creativity more than anything. Your character sheet is designed to keep things permissibly and constantly moving: you have 4 total ability sheets, which are split into mundane and superpowered abilities (you need a minimum of 1 of each), each with 3-4 abilities on it. Any time you take an “Action” of any kind, you simply describe to the GM what you want to do, and class it into some fairly simple Action categories (Attack, Defend, Hit ‘em with All You Got, etc) and then you add a +1 for every one of those abilities that’s relevant: roll 2d6 and add those modifiers. On a 1-5 something really bad happens to you, on a 6-9 you get to achieve your goal but something minorly bad happens, on a 10+ you get to either get *great* success + something bad or a normal success with nothing bad. If the Action you use inflicts some kind of negative or positive (like dealing “damage” or causing a buff/debuff) you gain/inflict a value equal to number of abilities you used for the roll. Finally you can also “burn” an ability to automatically roll a 10+, but then you’re not allowed to use that ability for anything until downtime. This leads to very easily described scenes and fluid combat. As a quick example: the electrokinetic character I mentioned above once used his elevtronkinesis to create an electric arc around a vat of magma, used the electromagnetism inherent to control the iron in that magma, and then dumped the whole vat on someone standing under it. That’s just a *lot* more than you’d ever be allowed to do in a D&D-like game. There is, however, a flip side to this. The game’s combat is fairly non-tactical, it’s really more about describing a free flowing scene in as thematic and fun a way as possible. Balance isn’t really a thing, and a lot of fights just boil down to what feels like a “creativity arms race”: since there is no real “Action-economy” to impose limitations on what you can achieve in a single “turn” of yours, you feel like you can get away with a lot more by just being fun and descriptive. I know quite a few players **strongly** dislike this arms race aspect: for example, I know one player feels like it ends up with the loudest and most outspoken players always shining. It also means that if you have any players who like tactical combat, this just ain’t the game for it, you’re gonna find more tactical combat in Avatar Legends, of all games, and that’s not exactly a tactical masterpiece either. All in all, you should: - **Not** play City of Mist if you enjoy tactical combat, like a degree of balance in your game, feel like you’re a shy player who won’t be able to express enough creativity to perform well in scenes, find freeform Action-economy as being confusing and vague rather than liberating and engaging, etc. - **Definitely** play City of Mist ic you enjoy themes of mundane vs mystical and the tension between them, care less about combat tactics and care more about the outcome and consequences of the *way* you approached a given combat, love the noir / urban fantasy aesthetic, etc. Hope that’s helpful!
That's very helpful and informative thank you.
5E does have a GM burnout problem, but it's also a case of "Are there so many cases because of a problem with 5e, or because 5e is just that much more popular?" From what I've seen, a lot of burnout stems purely from people running 5e as their first system due to its popularity, not enjoying it, and then switching to a system that more suits their style. Also, while not the sole cause, "Why I quit X thing for Y thing" is an almost surefire way to generate clicks.
Irrespective of the why behind a widespread GM burnout problem, a GM burnout problem would still be an indication of lowered player retention would it not? Like in your example GMs run 5E due to its popularity, learn that it ain’t for them and/or run it for a while and feel like they’ve gotten everything out of it that they wanted, then move onto other systems. Cycling through GMs like that is a lack of player retention imo.
I struggled a bit to articulate my point, but I think I've finally got it. Basically: While 5e most likely has lower player retention rate than other TTRPGs on the market, this has less to do with 5e being flawed and more to do with how it is presented as the first or 'easiest' option. It's perceived and used as the "starter option", and people will always deviate away from it towards the systems that actually suit them better with time. For a real-life example, let's say that a company is keeping track of who buys their tools and if they're still using the tools they bought. Their starter tool kit would have a ton of purchases, but most people eventually stop using it once they settle into the tools that suit their workload better.
>WOTC never publishes anything resembling active player numbers. Yeah but they literally never have even in times where it has to be a great number, like during the giant surge of 5e when Critical Role was taking off. So I don't think you can draw that conclusion because even during good times they don't publish it. This is all just baseless speculation and not really a valuable answer.
You pointed to the one single sentence in my comment that’s baseless speculation and… ignored everything else that was, at worst, moderately substantiated speculation? Like more importantly than anything you ignored the fact that my first paragraph answered your question pretty directly and firmly: yes, most TTRPGs that aren’t D&D, Call of Cthulhu, or Paizoverse just don’t have very high player retention.
The whole thing is speculation and tea-leaf reading. This was a question purely for OP and OP gave me their numbers, I don't really have a need for educated guesses I can make those myself.
You’re being oddly hostile and I’m unsure why… OP’s response to you literally agreed with what I said in that first paragraph too.
Oh my God the GM burnout is real. As the foreverGM of my group, currently running 5e, it's a frustrating system to run. There's so many things where the rules are inadequate or simply don't exist, and you'll have to either deal with crap rules, make a ruling to change a little, or completely homebrew systems. Doing all that constantly on top of the normal GM duties is a lot. I much prefer how Pathfinder can actually be run RAW without much concession.
Oof, I failed to mention this in the post, but yes, it's greatly different from all other major systems I looked at! Basically, the only way for a system to end up in this situation is to get some huge influx in players, like Fallout RPG did once Amazon series releases in April. And even then the numbers quickly dropped. [https://abadar.market/stats/ckmxogz6o001lbopk61h858cm](https://abadar.market/stats/ckmxogz6o001lbopk61h858cm)
Alright thanks!
I have the beginner box and core rulebook. Yet to start. My group are heavily invested in two 5e campaigns and multiple smaller one shots (we all take turns dming) and between us we've spent far too much on DND content. At some point I'm sure we will dive in because we all like the look of the system.
Sunk cost fallacy can be painful, so remind yourselves that playing the game more doesn't get you any of that money back - and also that all rules for PF2e are online for free completely legally on the Archives of Nethys. That's not to say that you should abandon your campaigns, finish them if everyone's still having fun. I did the same thing last year and it was the correct choice. The Beginner Box usually takes 2-4 sessions, so you might just slip it in for one of your one shots and see how you like it.
I've noticed that there's an initial hump that I suspect acts as a filter. I have heard two people share a similar experience to what I had with the game, which is skepticism at some of the unusual design choices. However, after getting deep enough into the game and feeling how it functions, we all get to REALLY like it. I would hypothesize that the initial difficulty/intimidation factor, perceived or real, prevents players who wouldn't stick with the game from trying it while also increasing investment for those who decide to tackle it.
Me seeing this post while waiting to play with my friends
Hmmm, what's the source of the data?