What are your Results when you Google 'RPG Forum'?

[Voros]

May be the result of Google knowing where I visit or Cookies but when I Google 'RPG forum' here are my results in order:

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. RPGMaker
6. ENWorld

Is this just me or is it similar for y'all?

 

[Bunch]

May be the result of Google knowing where I visit or Cookies but when I Google 'RPG forum' here are my results in order:

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. RPGMaker
6. ENWorld

Is this just me or is it similar for y'all?

Same

 

[Endless Flight]

Google’s an old friend of mine.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

1. RPGCodex
2. LitRPG Forum
3. Forum Roleplay
4. Forumotion
5. Toho Kingdom
6. RPG.net

The only ones of those I even know are codex and TBP, so no idea why it's so differen than everyone else's.

 

[Stan]

1. RPGCodex
2. LitRPG Forum
3. Forum Roleplay
4. Forumotion
5. Toho Kingdom
6. RPG.net

The only ones of those I even know are codex and TBP, so no idea why it's so differen than everyone else's.

probably where you live.

Top 4 the same as Voros.

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. Reddit
6. RPG Crossing

 

[thebigh]

I tried it with DuckDuckGo and this is what I got

1. RPGnet
2. RPGSite
3. RPG Maker Forums
4. RPGWatch Forums
5. RPGCodex
6. Roleplayer Guild
7. RPGPub

Of those, some seem to be about RPG video games. Still a bit disappointed to see the Pub so low.

 

[Agemegos]

I use Google through an anonymising service called "Startpage". When I search "RPG Forum" on Startpage I get three ads (one for VTT roleplaying tokens, one for I think some sort of online game, one for definitely an MMORPG) and then the first page results are:

1. RPGnet Forums
2. Tabletop Roleplaying Open | RPGnet Forums
3. RPG Pub
4. rpgcodex > Celebrating 20 Years
5. TheRPGSite – Index
6. Where are the good RPG forums? I want to branch our of just /r/rpg
7. The Gauntlet Forums - All things RPG and LARP
8. RPG Crossing
9. Forum list | EN World | Dungeons & Dragons - ENWorld.org
10. RPG Maker Forums
11. No signup needed Crypto Forum - Crypto Forum

When I search using Google itself I get:

1. RPGnet Forums
2. RPG PUB
3. rpgcodex > Celebrating 20 Years
4. TheRPGSite - Index
5. Where are the good RPG forums? I want to branch our of just …
6. RPG List - Forum Roleplay
7. The Gauntlet Forums - All things RPG and LARP
8. Forum list | EN World | Dungeons &Dragons - ENWorld.org

 

[Godfather Punk]

(location: Belgium)

1. TBP
2. Het Grote RPG Forum (a Dutch forum for storytelling shared fanfic I think)
3. The Pub
4. RPGCodex
5. RPG Maker Forums
6. RPG Foren (German)
7. Gathering of Tweakers (video games)
8. Top-50 RPG (looks like a French portal to textual fanfic again)
9. The Site

Bing also has TBP (#1) and the Site (#4) but then about half of the results are different language sites that may or may not have anything to do with our hobby. No Pub.

 

[Endless Flight]

Considering the Pub has been around for just five years, I’d say those are great results.

 

[Acmegamer]

May be the result of Google knowing where I visit or Cookies but when I Google 'RPG forum' here are my results in order:

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. RPGMaker
6. ENWorld

Is this just me or is it similar for y'all?

Exactly the same but for one thing.

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. ENWorld
6. Rpg Crossing.

Actually there is a Reddit thread between 5 and 6.

 

[spittingimage]

May be the result of Google knowing where I visit or Cookies but when I Google 'RPG forum' here are my results in order:

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. RPGMaker
6. ENWorld

Is this just me or is it similar for y'all?

Same. I use Google anonymously through DuckDuckGo, so it shouldn't be a personalised result.

 

[3rik]

location: Netherlands

1. RPGnet
2. Het Grote RPG Forum
3. RPGPub
4. rpgcodex
5. Forum - Quizlet.nl
6. Role-playing games - GoT - Gathering of Tweakers
7. RPG - WritingWorld
8. TheRPGSite
9. RPG Maker Forums

 

[Fenris-77]

The Pub is second when I search using Google, and sixth when I use DDG. Not bad at all.

 

[PolarBlues]

The term "Swo" is clearly pushing The Pub up Google search result ranking. Swo is SEO gold, among other things.

 

[Vile Traveller]

It's interesting that RPG.net is still up there, because actual TTRPG discussion is a minority of new posts over there these days. Media, politics, and video games sections are busier.

 

[bleys21]

It's interesting that RPG.net is still up there, because actual TTRPG discussion is a minority of new posts over there these days. Media, politics, and video games sections are busier.

I was thinking the same thing. They're obviously huge, and while I have no actual data, my eye test seems to show the same thing. Its like a slow and steady decline in the actual purpose of the site. Which is why I'm happy with the No Politics! rule here. No one wants to hear my political ramblings, and I don't want to hear anyone else's :-)

 

[Vile Traveller]

In terms of actual posting, ENWorld seems to be at the top. But it's 99% D&D.

 

[Isator Levi]

It's interesting that RPG.net is still up there, because actual TTRPG discussion is a minority of new posts over there these days. Media, politics, and video games sections are busier.

Hmm, interesting. I wonder how that breaks down.

Looking at the page covering new posts within the last day, the number of entries comes down assss...

Other Media: 33
Video Games Open: 18
Tangency Open: 32
All roleplaying related forums: 112

 

[Voros]

Exactly the same but for one thing.

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. ENWorld
6. Rpg Crossing.

Actually there is a Reddit thread between 5 and 6.

View attachment 53438

Yeah that old reddit thread is funny with some very dubious and ironic claims by the usual suspects.

Here it is for anyone who wants a good laugh:



PS. I hate reddit's UI, how did it ever become popular and why is it still popular?

 

[Stumpydave]

I got the following

RPGnet Forums​

RPG PUB​

rpgcodex > no scaling​

https://rpgcodex.net › forums

TheRPGSite - Index​

Forum list | EN World | Tabletop Roleplaying Games - ENWorld​

Where are the good RPG forums? I want to branch our of just ...​

https://www.reddit.com › rpg › comments › where_are...

Forums - BRP Central - The Chaosium forums​

The Gauntlet Forums - All things RPG and LARP​

 

[Lofgeornost]

Hmm, interesting. I wonder how that breaks down.

Looking at the page covering new posts within the last day, the number of entries comes down assss...

Other Media: 33
Video Games Open: 18
Tangency Open: 32
All roleplaying related forums: 112

My guess is that this varies from time to time, and that Dec. 23 was a rather slack period, if it had only ~195 posts in a day. I tried the same experiment there for today and found 99 posts in just under 4 1/2 hours. The breakdown was:

• Tabletop RPG Open: 16
• D&D/Fantasy D20: 10
• RPG Design: 1
• Roleplay by Post: 26
• Hype Machine (i.e. ads): 1
• Other Games Open: 2
• Video Games Open: 5
• Tangency Open: 18
• Tangency Groups: 1
• Other Media: 17
• Blogs & Columns: 2

So only about 27% of the posts in the 'RPGnet Roleplaying' section (i.e. the first three categories above). The Roleplay-by-Post section adds almost as many posts, but I assume those are largely of interest to people actually playing in those particular games. The Tangency section of the site (Open, Groups, and Other Media) constitutes 36 posts.

 

[Isator Levi]

The Roleplay-by-Post section adds almost as many posts, but I assume those are largely of interest to people actually playing in those particular games.

Does that not count as roleplaying central stuff on an RPG forum?

If this was a thing being done with academic rigor then at least one of us would probably be investing the effort to gather information across a longer span of time to create a more comprehensive data curve. All I can say as a person who is on that site every day is that the perspective that RPG discussion does not constitute a very large proportion of activity at the very least (and at the most is the largest typical generator of discussion across the site) is observably incorrect.

Well, I could also say that I have pages set to fifty threads at a time and the stuff on TRO is all updated more recently than the stuff on Tangency, generally has a higher turnover and greater frequency of new threads, or that "politics" as a euphemism for Tangency is somewhat misleading when some of its currently most posted in threads are things like people griping about work, reminiscing on what order they joined the site in, and sharing their struggles with cancer. But that's probably starting to slip down a rabbit hole into doing something that is kind of like being academic but is really just incredibly neurotic.

It's one thing for people to have perspectives on the relative quality of discussion (not least because some styles are just more suited to some people than others), but if one is looking to give some objectivity to that quality by making it a numbers game that's not ultimately going to work in this case.

 

[Bunch]

I suspect all of the RPG forums have a significant chunk of their traffic/posts in non RPG areas. Every single day there just isn't that much to discuss. Keeping community is actually as valuable as just on RPG topic posts. I don't think we(RPGPub) would hold up any better than RPG.net in a comparison of strictly RPG related posts. If you add PbP as strictly on topic I'd give RPG.net the edge. They have some very active PbP gamers there. I wish we still had that.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, more PbP would be cool. I love to get a nice juicy West-Marches style game of Mutant Year Zero going.

Edit: getting the built-in die roller back online would be sweet too.

 

[Toadmaster]

It's interesting that RPG.net is still up there, because actual TTRPG discussion is a minority of new posts over there these days. Media, politics, and video games sections are busier.

I doubt content has much to do with ranking, its all about the clicks. A soup recipe forum that included RPG in the title would probably push everything else to the bottom.

 

[Bunch]

Interesting thought. RPG.Net doesn't allow images in threads so all diverging commentary is done in an easily machine indexable manner. Lots of our off topic stuff is discussed through memes and images. It's possible we look even more RPG focused than RPG.net simply because it's easier to understand their off topic discussions for a machine.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Does that not count as roleplaying central stuff on an RPG forum?

It does, I suppose, but I also think that Play-by-Post activity is quite different from posts in subforums like TableTop Open (on RPG.net) or Roleplaying Games (here). I'd bet that, in general, far fewer people using the site pay attention to any Play-by-Post thread. In fact, maybe only the people actually playing in that campaign read such threads at all.

I did a quick experiment, which seems to bear out this conclusion. I took the top 25 threads from the first page of TableTop Open and from Roleplay by Post Play on RPG.net, and divided the number of views each thread had by the number of posts. For TTO, the average was 78.7, with a range of 17.7 to 188.0. For PbP, the average was 13.8, with a range of 8.7 to 23.9. Also, since the PbP threads tended to be considerably older than the TTO ones, they presumably had more 'views' that were actually bots rather than people.

It's a small sample, and I wouldn't put much weight on its precise outcome, but I think it shows the way the wind is blowing: Play-by-Post creates a good deal of activity of interest to relatively few participants, compared to more general forum posts.

If this was a thing being done with academic rigor then at least one of us would probably be investing the effort to gather information across a longer span of time to create a more comprehensive data curve. All I can say as a person who is on that site every day is that the perspective that RPG discussion does not constitute a very large proportion of activity at the very least (and at the most is the largest typical generator of discussion across the site) is observably incorrect.

Fair enough. I don't have the time or energy to put into the project. I suppose that if one had access to the actual databases, instead of their output, it would be easy to do an in-depth analysis. Knowing that the data is there, but inaccessible, makes recreating it from the 'published results' seem even more like a waste of time.

It's one thing for people to have perspectives on the relative quality of discussion (not least because some styles are just more suited to some people than others), but if one is looking to give some objectivity to that quality by making it a numbers game that's not ultimately going to work in this case.

I'd not dispute that there is a lot of discussion of RPGs on RPG.net, or that much of it is interesting or of high quality. I do think that, excluding Play-by-Post, it's a minority of the activity on the site, though determining just how small a minority would take more slogging through material than I'm willing to commit to. I'd guess somewhere between 25% and 40%, but that's just spit-balling, and no doubt it varies over time.

As Bunch pointed out, this is true of many RPG fora and its not a bad thing in itself. Personally, I'm just as likely to make non-RPG posts either here or on RPG.net as I am to post something game-related.

 

[WillPhillips]

Here's what came up for me:

 

[Brock Savage]

The 'Pub was #2 for me which I find impressive.

 

[Isator Levi]

I do think that, excluding Play-by-Post, it's a minority of the activity on the site, though determining just how small a minority would take more slogging through material than I'm willing to commit to. I'd guess somewhere between 25% and 40%, but that's just spit-balling, and no doubt it varies over time.

I'd also think that it's a subject that might also be evaluated not just in terms of quantity but distribution. It's possible that overall the roleplaying stuff is consistently less, but I observe that it's spread out over a much larger variety of threads. I did a count the other day and found that about 26 new threads had been started in about a week (40, if one wants to include the dedicated D&D subforum). As far as evaluating a roleplaying site goes, I'd say that's very different to something where, like, three tv shows or one ongoing trainwreck have a lot of active discussion.

It's also where you're a lot more likely to find people with smaller post counts taking part in the discussion, which I think says something about how much lurking goes on before somebody decides to drop in and have their say.

I can definitely say that at least one consequence of the search results is that it's the sort of thing that leads to people who have never posted in a forum before and probably never will again popping in to ask their question, and when they do they generally get a lot of answers.

its not a bad thing in itself.

Perhaps, but it can seem at times as though it would be framed like it is.

But as I've been saying, that framing seems to try to predicate itself on acting as though RPG discussion has been pushed out or something, which it surely has not.

 

[Vladar]

First pages, sans repeats:

duckduckgo:
1. RPGnet
2. TheRPGSite
3. RPGWatch
4. RPG Maker
5. rpgcodex
6. Rpg Pub
7. Roleplayer Guild

google:
1. RPGnet
2. Rpg Pub
3. rpgcodex
4. TheRPGSite
5. enworld
6. BRP Central
7. The Gauntlet

bing:
1. RPGnet
2. RPGWatch
3. TheRPGSite
4. rpgcodex
5. RPG Maker

 

[Vile Traveller]

It's also where you're a lot more likely to find people with smaller post counts taking part in the discussion, which I think says something about how much lurking goes on before somebody decides to drop in and have their say.

It's hard to build up post count between 30-day bans.

 

[chuckdee]

May be the result of Google knowing where I visit or Cookies but when I Google 'RPG forum' here are my results in order:

1. RPGnet
2. RPGPub
3. RPGCodex
4. RPGSite
5. RPGMaker
6. ENWorld

Is this just me or is it similar for y'all?

I don't google... I bing.

On the first page...

1. RPGnet
2. RPGsite
3. RPGMaker
4. RPGWatch
5. RPGateway
6. RPG Language
7. Roleplayer Guild
8. RPGPub
9. RPG | PC Gamer Forums

 

[Bunch]

What we've learned here is clearly Google is the better searches engine.

 

[chuckdee]

What we've learned here is clearly Google is the better searches engine.

All depends on which demon you want to sign a contract with...

 

[Voros]

I don't google... I bing.

On the first page...

1. RPGnet
2. RPGsite
3. RPGMaker
4. RPGWatch
5. RPGateway
6. RPG Language
7. Roleplayer Guild
8. RPGPub
9. RPG | PC Gamer Forums

So you're the person who uses Bing! Great to meet you...

 

[Fenris-77]

I feel like someone needs to write a Mob themed search engine called Badda-Bing.

 

[chuckdee]

So you're the person who uses Bing! Great to meet you...

I know tongue-in-cheek... but really thinking Bing is only used by a scant few is thinking that Edge is only used by a scant few...

 

[Bunch]

I know tongue-in-cheek... but really thinking Bing is only used by a scant few is thinking that Edge is only used by a scant few...

Edge is used by that many?!?!

 

[Brock Savage]

I know tongue-in-cheek... but really thinking Bing is only used by a scant few is thinking that Edge is only used by a scant few...

I thought people only used Bing for porn.