So it's been a week, and the survey has been a nice success!

I received a total of 164 answers. I only had to delete 2 initially (with edgy chud shit written in them), so that's nice, I thought there would be more.

I compiled the answers a bit because I edited one of the answers early on (changed "online with tools etc" to "online with or without tools etc" to make it more clear, and the end results counted that as two separate kinds of answers, so I merged a few things.

I had to parse some of the "what systems do you play: Others" answers to be more readable and transform stuff like "Well let me tell you I've played so many little things from my large collection like such and such" into "Such, Such".

I also realised I'm an idiot and didn't conditionally lock the questions behind the initial one (do you play tabletop yes/no), which means some people answered the others questions even though they answered "No" to the first one (?), so I sadly threw those answers out of the results (thankfully there were only a few like 4-5).

Next time I do something like this I'll also make sure to make questions mandatory to answer, because here there's a few gaps with some questions who were not answered by a few, those will be listed as N/A.

Let's go down the list of questions. Click the links to see the graph.

EDIT: here's a mega-scuffed paste of all the graphs together, if you prefer: super scuff

Do You Play Tabletop RPGs? (https://i.imgur.com/4lnD2yx.png)

Huge majority of Yes (regularly or occasionally) at 80.5% (132 people) 17.1% (28 people) say they don't, but would like to try (Help Them!) 2.4 (4 people) say No and not interested, which is a completely valid answer.

If Yes, What Systems Do You Play? (https://i.imgur.com/L0TsaVb.png)

Phew, this is a big one, so I recommend you look at that graph in detail. I can't list everything here but I'll talk about the highlights.

Unsurprisingly, the landslide majority of people who answered checked D&D 5e in their list, to a total of a 100 people. Next big systems are D&D 3.5e with 29, Call of Cthulhu (any edition) with 22, Shadowrun (any edition) and Star Wars (any edition) with 19 both, Pathfinder 1e with 18, Apocalypse World System and Pathfinder 2e with 16, and many many more.

The "Various Obscure Things" is a compilation of people who mentioned playing a lot of little obscure things without actually naming them, anything that named has its own entry.

There's obviously a few OSR & co people on here, and a bunch of really nice little indie/more obscure systems, some of which I'd never heard of.

Special mention to the three people who listed "Homemade Stuff", specifically one of those 3 who said "Simple Homemade Games for Kids" which made me realize the scope/framing of what "Tabletop" is can be a bit skewed to the big systems and ignore a lot of tabletop and roleplaying systems which don't fit into the traditional representation of the hobby. Whoever you are thank you for that answer!

Honestly this list is also nice as a list of things to check out.

Do You Mainly Play Online or Offline? (https://i.imgur.com/FWUMYk4.png)

This is probably heavily affected by the pandemic and I know those numbers would have been pretty different before 2020 (I know in my own case I had not really played online a lot before then).

Most people answered online with 50.8% (67 people), 29.5% (39) offline at their or a friend's house, 17.4% (23) do both equally, the 2 brave souls who play at open tables/game stores, and 1 person who didn't answer.

Are You More of a Player or a GM? (https://i.imgur.com/go48BiI.png)

We've got a surprisingly even split here, I was expecting a crushing majority of either players (there's always more players than there are GMs) or a skewed amount of GMs because those are over-represented in tabletop forums/communities (they hang around those places but their players don't).

We've got around 44,7% GMs (mostly or eternal, 58 people total), and around 43,2% players (mostly or eternal, 57 people total). With 12.9% (17 people) who are both without preference.

I honestly think that's pretty neat, and quite healthy for a community. There's also a lot of opportunities for ttrpg systems either without GMs or with a lot more collaborative play where the line between player and GM is very blurred, I think a lot of people here would probably enjoy those.

Are You Looking for Players to Play With? (https://i.imgur.com/BidzIxm.png)

It's pretty common I think for most people who are interested in and play tabletop to already have ways to play them, as is the majority here with 55.3% (73 people) who already have a regular group. But there's also difficulty finding people when you're new to the hobby, and playing online is (in my experience) even harder to do. Connecting with strangers over a nice game can already be a shaky affair, but doing it online adds a lot of obstacles.

So hey, we have 16 GMs looking for players, and 36 players looking for GMs. That's an average of 2.25 players per GM here, so what are we waiting for? I mean sure they might not play the same systems but maybe it's time to try them!

Would You Enjoy More Tabletop Posts On c/games, such as stories from people's sessions, homebrew content, system discussion? (https://i.imgur.com/34Gmymp.png)

I'm honestly not sure why I decided to make this one originally, and I initially thought that it would be completely useless since everyone was probably going to say yes (who would say no to more posting?).

BUT, 8 weirdos brave posters actually answered honestly and said that no, they are not interested in the content and would (logically) not really enjoy more of it. Now you would expect these 8 people to have answered "No" to the initial question, so "No I don't Play" -> "No I wouldn't enjoy this type of content", but no! 6/8 of those answers are people who occasionally play tabletop RPGs. Huh.

Anyway, I hope this was interesting and this can help gauge the tabletop community here. Personally I'm sad that so few people are playing Pathfinder 2e... but I'm not surprised (it's still new, etc).

To those who play mainly/only D&D 5e I'd encourage you to try out different, wild stuff, a good starting point for more free-form and simple story-telling systems are "one page systems" like roll for shoes, everyone is john, etc.. I'd also recommend the FATE system which is fantastic.

And to the many who listed their weird and obscure systems that I'd never heard of, keep playing those weird things, I love them and they have such an important influence and inspiration on the rest of the hobby.

What do you make of those results and are you surprised by any of it? I'm not sure how to exactly use this data yet, but Ii'm sure it can be useful to some.