Distribution of the Spring 2003 Profiling

[John Kim]

Hi,

Just out of curiousity, I decided to run the results of this through some stats to look at what the distribution of results were.  I have a web page with the results, up at

http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/theory/theforge/profiling.html

I find it pretty interesting.  

I had to edit a bunch of the entries -- i.e. so that games all used the same name version.  I went with listing by rules system, and adding in the setting, variant, etc. in a note.  With each entry is a list of who voted for that (by their Forge username).  If I accidentally mixed up an entry, let me know.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

I'd sure be interested to see what each of the Profiling threads so far look like in such an analysis. John, is doing this a pain in the butt? If not, that would be a wonderful thing.

People who haven't cruised John's website in general are really missing out.

Best,
Ron

[Jason Lee]

You rock my lame ass for doing this.

[Christopher Kubasik]

That's really cool.

A tiny note (which might not be easy to fix, but I think is worth fixing):

Depending on who posted, Hero Wars and Hero Quest got broken into two seperate games on the tally.  This was significant especially on the Want to Play, which had Hero Wars for 9 and Hero Quest for 4.  I'd offer that for most folks, the difference between the two edition in terms of desire to play is insignificant.

Christopher

[Paul Czege]

Hey John,

Just to clarify, that "most want to play" of mine was actually Kaybabe...essentially Trollbabe, but with the fantasy setting filed off in favor of an early 1900s where the player characters are female wrestlers and strongwomen working for a travelling circus. The idea was inspired by my discovery of http://www.fscclub.com/thoughts/borchihi2-e.shtml">this page.

Paul

[Lance D. Allen]

A few things I noticed:

Changeling and Changeling: the Dreaming are the same game. The latter is simply the full name.

You've got Vampire: the Masquerade listed in two different locations on the favorites section.

Very interesting list, though, but oddly not surprising. A lot of people have Sorcerer and TRoS listed as want-to-plays, but not a lot have TRoS as favorite games. This suggests to me that it isn't getting the exposure it should.

[Gordon C. Landis]

That's really cool.

A tiny note (which might not be easy to fix, but I think is worth fixing):

Depending on who posted, Hero Wars and Hero Quest got broken into two seperate games on the tally.  This was significant especially on the Want to Play, which had Hero Wars for 9 and Hero Quest for 4.  I'd offer that for most folks, the difference between the two edition in terms of desire to play is insignificant.

For me - yup, Christopher's right.  HeroWars/Quest, doesn't matter - I just want to try it.

Gordon

[John Kim]

Just to clarify, that "most want to play" of mine was actually Kaybabe...essentially Trollbabe, but with the fantasy setting filed off in favor of an early 1900s where the player characters are female wrestlers and strongwomen working for a travelling circus.

Hmmm, so should I list that as Trollbabe with the note of it being a variant in an alternate setting?

[Paul Czege]

Hmmm, so should I list that as Trollbabe with the note of it being a variant in an alternate setting?

Yep.

Paul

[Stuart DJ Purdie]

A lot of people have Sorcerer and TRoS listed as want-to-plays, but not a lot have TRoS as favorite games. This suggests to me that it isn't getting the exposure it should.

I'd disagree.  I'd say that its indicative that many people are aware of it (hence many want to play), but have not been able to rustle up a group yet.  Recall that Ron's wording on the thead:

What three role-playing games, out of ALL the ones you've EVER played, have you enjoyed the most?
What three role-playing games that you have NOT played would you most like to try at the moment?

Each group is mutually exclusive, and note that the first extends back in time indefinatly.  RoS is fairly new [0] and is competeing against a lot for one of those three top spots.  

With many people wanting to play it, the only barrier I can see is not finding the willing group.

I think all you can really draw from those numbers on RoS is that it will likely become favourite over time, unless it fails to deliver [1].

As to why people haven't played it yet; for another thread, I think.

[0] To find a game that's not at least twice as old (from date of being available to gamers) as RoS, you have to look down the list to 8th most popular.  RoS is 11th, one mention off 8th.

[1] Which is, I think, Not Bloody Likely.[/quote]

[John Kim]

I'd sure be interested to see what each of the Profiling threads so far look like in such an analysis. John, is doing this a pain in the butt? If not, that would be a wonderful thing.

People who haven't cruised John's website in general are really missing out.

First of all, thanks for the recommendation.  

As for doing it for the other threads, well, it would be somewhat laborious.  What I did to do this was: (1) Cut-and-pasted each of the entries into a single text file.  (2) Editted out irregularities, comments, and so forth.  Mispellings and differences in how the entries are written out are common (not to mention hard-to-interpret things like "Kaybabe").  (3) Run them through a quickly-written Perl script to calculate the distribution and make the HTML.  

I can run the same script on other stuff, but getting the hand-written entries into a regular format is the laborious part.  What the format is doesn't matter much.

[jdagna]

Maybe what we need for future profiling is to start with an HTML form fed to a PERL script, which could give us the results in some regular format.  Then, the only hand work required would be to fix irregularities in names and game variants.

It's definitely interesting being able to see the results summary.

[John Kim]

Hi, so I updated the Spring 2003 results, and I also added in the Fall 2002 responses.  Like I predicted, it took about 2 or 3 hours to regularize all the responses.  As Justin suggested I should prepare a CGI for the next profiling, if that's agreeable.  Ideally, it should post to a thread as well as collecting statistics, but I'm not sure if that can work.  

I have a link for the two profilings at:

http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/theory/theforge/

- John

[Ron Edwards]

Dag.

John, this is a great thing and a lot of work. Thanks.

Best,
Ron