Hi,

Once again I have collected together the statistics of the profiling thread, and I have posted it to my local Forge page.

I'm sort of curious about change over time for individuals. There were only 89 responses compared to 105 responses this past spring. If anyone has good suggestions about how to display that, I'd consider it.

- John

Just a couple things I noticed:
Riddle of Steel gets mentioned in two places in the Recently played listing. Also in that listing, there's Donjon and DonJon, which sounds like it was just a different spelling.

Thanks for compiling these - that looks like a lot of work, but it makes the results much easier to scan over.

Hey John,

There were only 89 responses compared to 105 responses this past spring.

Well...maybe the current thread hasn't completely run its course? It's only 15 days old, and we're only two days past the most recent post to it. The spring thread lasted 24 days (if you don't count the final post 9 days after the one immediately previous) with at least two separate 4-day gaps between posts.

Paul

I didn't know you compiled the stats--that makes me more interested in posting. Thanks for putting the time in, John.

--Em

There's also a Burning Wheel entry that's distinct from a The Burning Wheel entry.

The list is fantastic. I looked at the previous thread and noticed I did switch my list of 'favorite three' despite not having played any full actual games of anything. Nostalgia -- it makes it difficult to be accurate on stuff like that. :/

I wonder if it might not be better to ask about three games you think are the best, as opposed to (or in addition to) the three games you had the most fun with?

Many apologies, but it seems that my posts (and gaming habits) have gummed up the works a bit.

Vidi Aquam should be under Freeform (if there is such a category, can't recall) or Homebrew, not its own category.

The combined Riddle of Steel D&D game should be listed under Riddle of Steel, rather than D&D, as that's where I had the most fun with it.

The editorial comments (about being a Hutt, and such) could probably be deleted, but don't need to be.

There also seem to be many more "My Life With Master" categories than necessary.

John -

Thanks for all the work you put into those summaries!

Excellent stuff, John.

Minor fix in Most Enjoyed: PTA Imperium and Primetime Adventures are the same game.

OK, I have taken people's corrections into account and updated the profiling page (again, it's listed on my local Forge page).

I have no trouble regenerating it per se -- the work is in editting the entries to use the same prefixes and formatting. I collect the statistics with a Perl script. I have also included a link for a zip file with the code and text data files I collected, if anyone wants to do other statistics with the data.

(Editted to add: I can collect further responses in a week or so.)

Fascinating and surprising: D&D and homebrew are two favorite "favorites" so far. Wouldn't have predicted it.

--Em

Hi Em,

Not surprising to me. My claim is that "playing D&D" is a highly local and highly customized animal, through most of role-playing's history. And furthermore, although this is more speculative, many people in the survey may be referencing long-ago play, such that the joy of role-playing per se may have been discovered by them while playing D&D of one stripe or another.

Best,
Ron

Consider also the prevalence in volume of D&D play. Some of the posters who most enjoyed D&D may have had one spectacular session in memory, out of hundreds that were miserable failures. That doesn't mean that D&D is statistically good. It could simply mean that "the sun even shines on a dog's ass somedays."

To get a better statistical feel for enjoyment, we'd have to poll on how much each game had been played, and how often play was enjoyable. Also, to be fair, however, you'd have to consider the audiences biases. For example, you can't consider the proportion of "last played" Universalis to be indicative of it's play across all groups (I only wish), just here.

Mike

Emily Care wrote: Fascinating and surprising: D&D and homebrew are two favorite "favorites" so far. Wouldn't have predicted it.

Noticed something: Rokugan d20 is listed seperately from D&D, when it actually is a sourcebook (well, 2, really) for D&D3e.

It's also interesting that Nobilis is consistently in the top 5 of games people want to play, often for the same people. Is nobody running this game, or is nobody willing to fork over the $40 for the book?

Very few peopel are running the game.
I plan on running in #indierpgs after my fastlane playtesting is complete.

John Kim wrote: As for it being surprising -- well, D&D is an enormously popular game in general. I think this just shows that Forge-ites aren't totally separated from the general gaming community.

It doesn't surprise me at all that homebrewing is popular in a forum of game designers.

Jonathan Walton wrote: It's also interesting that Nobilis is consistently in the top 5 of games people want to play, often for the same people. Is nobody running this game, or is nobody willing to fork over the $40 for the book?

Just a notice that I have again updated the profiling stats to include the latest responses.

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

It might be interesting to do some studies on how these change over time. Do the "Want to Try" actually make their way into "Last Played"? I'd like to maybe do some study following people's choices over time. It looks like there are currently 43 people with responses for both spring and fall. It may be enough to be of some interest.

I just wandered into Actual Play because i was bored....

Nobilis is on my want to play list, and i have another person in my usual suspects list who also wants to play, but we're both afraid.

Despite that, i'm going to run a game of it soon, probably after Feng Shui (which is coming up in a couple of weeks).

Why did i not list it in my 3 Most Want to Play? Because i want to run the others more than i want to run Nobilis.