[The Tekwych]

This chart of the Top 5 Roleplaying Games (hobby channel) reflects sales in Spring 2015.  The charts are based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers

1 - Dungeons & Dragons - Wizards of the Coast
2 - Pathfinder - Paizo Publishing
3 - Star Wars - Fantasy Flight Games
4 - Shadowrun - Catalyst Game Labs
5 - Iron Kingdoms - Privateer Press.

Top 5 Roleplaying Games--Spring 2015

Really, no surprise for me. I have chosen to stay away from D&D but own all the others.

[Reaver]

D&D in the #1 spot makes sense with the release of DnD next. (No idea if it is good or not as I droped DnD after 4e for pathfinder)

And pathfinder in #2 makes sense too.... because of people like me that HATED DnD 4e.

#3..... is that the new star wars game with the miniatures? Or the PnP game? Hmmmmm

#4 Shadowrun.... yummy.

#5 ...... never heard of it. Is it any good?

[White_Ghost]

D&D in the #1 spot makes sense with the release of DnD next. (No idea if it is good or not as I droped DnD after 4e for pathfinder)

And pathfinder in #2 makes sense too.... because of people like me that HATED DnD 4e.

#3..... is that the new star wars game with the miniatures? Or the PnP game? Hmmmmm

#4 Shadowrun.... yummy.

#5 ...... never heard of it. Is it any good?

#3 is actually their line of PNPs for different eras in the cinimatic universe.

#5 is for a pnp based off of the Warmachine miniature war game. Steampunk Fantasy. I enjoy that one quite a bit.

[Reaver]

Ok. Seem the SW PnP books..... not sure if I like it or not. But that is just from reading and flipping through at my game store.... which is probably not enough time to make a judgement call.


Steampunk huh? Hmmmm that could be really good.... or really silly.

[The Tekwych]

Yes #3 is actually three table top RPGs with the same rule set and setting. The seeing is several months after a mysterious explosion in the Yavin system. The three different RPGs are:
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire - Play as Smugglers, Sum, Settlers and other fringe characters trying to survive in the corners of the universe that the Empire hasn't total control of.
 
Star Wars: Force and Destiny - Play as a Force Sensitive person who has hidden from the purge for the last 20 tears or as a young person with Force abilities that needs to hide / run from the Empire.
 
Star Wars: Age of Rebellion - Play as individuals that dislike, or even hate, the Empire and are looking for, or have found, the young rebel Alliance. Help bring down the Empire through direct attacks on their facilities.

They all stand alone or add together to allow for a complete SW experience. The three core books repeat a lot (over half) of rules and background. Things like history, gear, legal, and even some planets, are presented three times. The new races, roles, and advancements are the only requirements needing you to buy all three books.

[AJCarrington]

Iron Kingdoms (and Unleashed) is based in the "worlds" of Privateer Press' TT games Warmachine and Hordes. Great OTT fantasy steampunk goodness IMHO, but they've adopted a similar release style to FFG which I'm not too keen on.

[White_Ghost]

Iron Kingdoms (and Unleashed) is based in the "worlds" of Privateer Press' TT games Warmachine and Hordes. Great OTT fantasy steampunk goodness IMHO, but they've adopted a similar release style to FFG which I'm not too keen on.

Likewise, though the books are quite fat.

[Sendaz]

They are not fat, they are just big spined.

[Reaver]

SW:

That makes more sense now. I saw the 3 books and flipped through them and was like "Wtf? Why does this one have such crappy classes? No jedi/sith abilities? What the heck is this??"

But being spread over 3 books means it makes more sense, even if it is a bigger hit to the wallet.

[White_Ghost]

SW:

That makes more sense now. I saw the 3 books and flipped through them and was like "Wtf? Why does this one have such crappy classes? No jedi/sith abilities? What the heck is this??"

But being spread over 3 books means it makes more sense, even if it is a bigger hit to the wallet.

I believe they made the very important realization that having Jedi in the party tends to overshadow all the other characters, what with them being good at combat, social, stealth, and then throwing magic on top of that.

Splitting it into was a good idea to fix that problem and it allows three different types of 'settings' within the universe with their own themes. Also money of course. FF is good at that.

[The Tekwych]

Yes, Force and Destiny just came out, almost a year after the first and six months after the second. Our GM created a fringe world for to start and meat up on. After a few adventures we killed off three of five characters and the remains two were picked up by a rebel squad (three player characters, go fig) and we are now running some spy and sabotage missions for a rebel cell. We'll see what happens as these stories wind down and maybe we will find a Force sensitive kid on one of these backwaters before too long.

The GM has all the books and we help with the costs when we can. We each need to have the core book for our character class and can pick up whatever else we want. We also ask that each player buy at least on set of the custom dice that the FFG SW system uses for themselves.

[Kincaid]

I loved Iron Kingdoms back when it was a d20 system.  The setting is just amazing.  I haven't really gotten into its latest version, but maybe I'll give it another look.

[Reaver]

Ahh the D20 system before the implosion.

So many interesting ideas..... killed by the sudden glut of the market.

[Sipowitz]

icv2 is a hype machine.   They are the National Inquirer  of gaming.

[Critias]

I loved Iron Kingdoms back when it was a d20 system.  The setting is just amazing.  I haven't really gotten into its latest version, but maybe I'll give it another look.

We dabbled in it a little when it first came out.  It was a chance to dust off my minis and introduce new folks to the setting, so that was cool.  We enjoyed it, but when players started stumbling across some pretty broken combos, it became very clear that it was easy to greatly imbalance the game (just like many others, don't get me wrong) and a few players sort of lost interest as a result. 

It's a fun setting, though, inverting a lot of standard fantasy tropes, making giant stompy steam-powered robots work in fun ways, neat stuff.  I got my start freelancing for Warmachine, so it's possible I'm a little biased, but I always thought it was a cool world they'd created.