There can be no doubt that superheroes have become big business in recent years. We’ve had some incredible cinematic successes. What about for tabletop RPGs? Do we have the duopoly of publishers dominating the charts?
Thanks to DriveThruRPG, we can look back at 2019’s releases, filter those to include only those RPGs, accessories and supplements that their publishers tagged with ‘superhero’ and reveal the top ten.
Best selling superhero RPGs of 2019
The top ten best selling superhero RPGs, supplements or accessories published in 2019 at DriveThruRPG.
- Tiny Supers by Gallant Knight Games.
- City of Mist Core Bundle: Player’s Guide and MC Toolkit by Son of Oak Game Studio.
- Ready….Fight! An Unarmed Combat Supplement for Genesys by Fantasy Flight Games.
- SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City – Core Rules by Bloat Games.
- Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide by Green Ronin.
- ICONS Presents by Ad Infinitum Adventures.
- ICONS: Rogues by Ad Infinitum Adventures.
- Savage Tokusatsu: Kaiju, Mechs, and Heroes for Savage Worlds by BPB Games.
- ICRPG Vigilante City by Runehammer Games.
- Spectaculars Core Game by Scratchpad Publishing.
Vote for your favourite superhero RPG
The BAMFSIES are annual awards for the best in superhero gaming. The public poll for the 2019 BAMFSIES opened on Christmas Day.
You can vote for what you consider to be Best Superhero RPG Product in 2019. All of the DriveThruRPG top 10 are in the list, and you can add your own suggestions too. It’s easy to vote and have your click counted.
How much should you pay for a best selling superhero RPG?
The average price for a top ten selling superhero RPG is $15.03. That makes it one of the cheaper genres we’ve looked at. The relatively low cost is due to very few games exceeding $10, which is unusual.
We take the lowest price from DriveThruRPG, which is usually the PDF-only option, and we use the marked down (in red) price unless it’s part of a sale. Red means a discount, but publishers often use it to show the discount offered on the digital copy of the game compared to the physical one.
Movers and shakers
There’s only two companies that feature in the chart we did for superheroes RPGs in 2018 and this year. The first is Ad Infinitum Adventures, and the game was another offering for ICONS. Fantasy Flight Games is the second, last year qualifying as Genesys could be used to run a superhero game.
Therefore we can say that unlike with blockbuster movies there isn’t a small set of dominant publishers in the superhero RPG space. It’s all to play for.
Creative Commons credit: ArleTeam by Cristian AC.
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