need information but can't find it.

[elanfanboy]

hello GitP, i require information of great importance for, surprisingly, school.
i am working on a project and need to know the number of people who participate in role-playing in the central time zone area of the united states of america.

[Lord Torath]

Well, if there was a Required Roleplayer Registry, that would be fairly simple. Unfortunately for your project, there is no such registry.

You could try looking into how many RPG rulebooks are sold by state, but you'd need to get it for each RPG publisher separately, as that does not sound like information that they would want to share. You may need to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements with each publisher, with the understanding that you can reveal the aggregate, but not the numbers for any individual publisher.

Then you need to determine how many people who buy rulebooks actually play. And how many people play without buying rulebooks. And how many players buy more than one rulebook.

The short answer is that this information is not readily available. If you are willing to invest lots of time and money, you'll probably be able to get a decent estimate.

Unfortunately, I can't help you more than that.

Edit: You could survey your school to find out how many of them roleplay, then extrapolate that to the general population of the CTZ in the US. But again, that's just a very rough approximation.

[JeenLeen]

As someone who has to contemplate means of collecting data both for school and work, this sounds essentially impossible. As stated above, with sufficient time and money, you could get a good estimate... but, wowza.

If this is for a class project, can you pick a different count or narrow it down? You might be able to get an estimate of the # of players who attend, say, Pathfinder Society or Adventure League in a given region during a certain time period. I don't know if those companies post any statistics, but it's possible you could get a rough estimate of # of players in a given region in some of their advertising.

Speaking of time period, what is the time period one should play in for them to count as a player? What if someone lives in one time zone but games in another (lives near state lines), or vice-versa? Just some nitpicks to your question to show how the count is not as obviously defined as one might think.

You could survey your school to find out how many of them roleplay, then extrapolate that to the general population of the CTZ in the US. But again, that's just a very rough approximation.

A valid, if indeed approximate, method for a statistical class project. But, as with most surveys, you'd run into problems of folk either not answering (leading to non-random sample of students, since probably those more familiar with RPGs would be more likely to answer) or lying (not real likely with this, but always an issue with self-reported stuff.)

[Bulhakov]

According to this study (it's quite old though):
http://www.theescapist.com/WotCsummary1.htm
about 6% of the US population have played tabletop RPGs, and 3% play regularly.

Some other sources that may help (though they don't provide exact numbers):
http://www.ijrp.subcultures.nl/wp-co...merilainen.pdf
http://homes.lmc.gatech.edu/~cpearce...0Knowledge.pdf
http://adamlab.gatech.edu/wp-content...replay2007.pdf

This paper is behind a paywall, but your library might be able to get it through some inter-library cooperation prorams: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1231906

I also recommend google scholar for searching for rpg-related research.

[2D8HP]

According to this study (it's quite old though):
http://www.theescapist.com/WotCsummary1.htm
about 6% of the US population have played tabletop RPGs, and 3% play regularly....

I was getting mighty irate in seeing that the study only surveyed 12 to 35 year-old's, and I thought I was excluded!

But then I saw the year of the survey, and I was between 12 and 35 back then.

Woo hoo, I mattered!!!

[Nifft]

Woo hoo, I mattered!!!

Such poignancy in that past-tense.

[snafuy]

You can't measure the gamers themselves, so you need to find a suitable proxy measurement that will let you compare central zone to some other US region. Number of local game stores? Number of game groups on meetup.com and other social sites? Then compare those numbers to relative population and you should be in the right ballpark.

[Vogie]

You can also reach out to your local game store, and ask about what they think about the number of people in their area are tabletop players, and the minimum amount of people they serve that would be required to stay open and in business. That way, you can just Google-Fu the number of local game stores in the targeted area, and extrapolate.

[EccentricCircle]

It should be easy enough to find out the answer for D&D, so long as you are an arcane spellcaster, capable of 5th level spells.
Simply cast scrying on Player's Handbooks, using your own as a sympathetic focus. The more familiar you are with the book the easier the spell will be, naturally. It might take a while to count up how many you detect, but by scrying at the sort of times when they are typically in use, you should be able to see how large the groups using them are. After all in a typical D&D group, someone will fail their will save!

If you're not a spellcaster then I recommend finding a few smaller sample areas, which you think will be representative of the USA as a whole, and using those to work out an estimate.

[elanfanboy]

Sorry it took me a while to reply, but i must thank you all as your responses have been very helpful. I do however loathe the requiref math needed to undertake such a feat. Thanks to all though!