what's the traction of fg up to date?

[tahl_liadon]

is there any data to analyze whether fg is gaining popularity/usage? are there more/less/steady sales? is there advertising/promotion feedback and the like to gauge activities? or is it too niche and limited in scope/budget to know?

reason i'm wondering is from the low posting for more or new campaign offerings (i.e. gms starting games and looking for players). i check often as a player and am seeing the same posts from (mostly) the same folks.

also, it's rare to see a campaign that begins or has slots open for higher level (beyond 5th :-P). what i've experienced is campaigns running out of steam before reaching 3rd level. (on one occasion, gm just stopped cold with no announcement or preamble). players were left confused.

anyone else experiencing same?

just curious...

[joshuha]

Whats happened in the past with me is that I either ran games with players I know (so don't post) or have posted on here and the campaign goes for a year or whatever so don't post on here again. If you see me posting on guild house a lot its because I am either scouting ideas or have had a campaign fizzle.

[joshuha]

Also the annual report for 2009 is on the Smiteworks site and does break out the license numbers. I would hope that in the last 2 years we might have almost doubled those but not sure.

https://www.smiteworks.com/press/AnnualReport2009.htm

[lachancery]

what i've experienced is campaigns running out of steam before reaching 3rd level. (on one occasion, gm just stopped cold with no announcement or preamble).

In my personal experience, the behavior you're observing online is not much different than what happened to most pen & paper game with friends.

It's a rare exception to have a campaign that keeps going. I think it's the mix of the variables; it's even more visible online as games require more preparation and there's less peer pressure/attachment from being with your friends in person.

[EugeneZ]

what i've experienced is campaigns running out of steam before reaching 3rd level. (on one occasion, gm just stopped cold with no announcement or preamble). players were left confused.

In my experience, this type of situation is not unique to online campaigns. It's very rare to hear about GMs who started at first level and actually finished the campaign at the level they intended to originally (be it 10th, 20th, or 30th level). In my entire "career" as a GM, I've finished exactly ONE 1-30 campaign. I abandoned a tabletop group because it fell apart when people started to move away. After that, I started an online group and abandoned it because I was more interested in running Burning Sky. I'm now running that game, and its on track to finish at level 30 (we're at 21). Another game that was planned to end at level 10 is on hiatus because I found two games was too much. But I have every intention of going back to that.

So, not counting one-shots, out of the five games I started in 4e (let's not talk about 2e or 3e), I finished one, plan to finish another two (but who knows) and abandoned two. And I'd say that overall, I'm more likely to finish a campaign than the average GM I know. So, it's just hard to find a good GM. Two years is a long, long commitment, for anyone.

[Emrak]

I think that FG is not similar to say, a generic RPG forum. The only gms posting games here are those who probably bought the ultimate license, and they are probably the minority.

Most non-ultimate FGers are probably like my group. Long distance buds who needed a way of keeping alive our gaming addiction. And we'd be unlikely to post for more.

All the above is just my rampant speculation, but it's probably close to the truth.