Which game is No 1 in world?

[Edwardmaya3]

What is currently considered the number 1 game in the world? Can any of you suggest some games for me?

[Kloster]

In sales and number of players, DnD, by far.

White Wolf and Paizo should compete for 2nd rank.

P.S. Not that I am playing any of them, neither am I recommending one of them.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Kloster
add last line

[g33k]

When talking about "number 1" my inner geek notes that there is no "best" game, of course... it's not like we're doing a "Consumer Reports" rating, or anything.

Specific to this website (BRPC) and the games we're mostly about, I am pretty sure Call of Cthulhu is the most-popular.

 

As @Kloster says, D&D5e is the biggest seller on a worldwide basis... however:

There are specific locations where that isn't true -- it's Call of Cthulhu in Japan, for example; and (I believe) it's Drakar och Demoner in Sweden.
Similarly, within the USA -- mostly, it's D&D; but I've been into a couple of local game-stores that sell *MUCH* more Warhammer than they sell D&D, and the local clubs &c seemed to represent similarly, so I presume those small regions have an unusual concentration of WH fans (more than D&D); but it can be hard to tell, since Amazon sells so cheaply and so many buy there, the FLGS may not actually represent the region's buying habits!

Unlike Kloster, I'm gonna give Paizo's two 'finder games (Path-, Star-) a solid 2nd-place.
Although White Wolf's World of Darkness games were up there, for a while... I think they've lost market-share.
Shadowrun seems to be pretty big; lately (3ish years?) I think it's bigger than WoD.

Here's an interesting article (from a couple of years ago; things may have shifted since (but not likely a sea-change)):
https://www.dramadice.com/blog/the-most-played-tabletop-rpgs-in-2021/
 
There was a huge pushback against D&D with the WotC/Hasbro "OGLpocalypse" but I think (when they utterly caved & adopted the CC license) most of that blew over.