I did this six months ago and it was met with mixed reaction (but no death threats!) so I'll do it again now that we've got over 6000 items with ratings. We are approaching our first year anniversary at RPG Geek and I'm doing some database dumps for a stats report I'm working on. I dumped the top 200 RPG Items and filtered on the D&D and AD&D 1e material and here is how it currently shakes out as of July 1, 2010:

#17 Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia
#28 I6: Ravenloft
#31 G1-3: Against the Giants
#36 B10: Night's Dark Terror
#37 B2: Keep on the Borderlands
#39 Dungeon Masters Guide (AD&D 1e)
#42 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Box Set - 1981)
#50 D1-2: Descent to the Depths of the Earth
#54 S1: Tomb of Horrors
#58 Players Handbook (AD&D 1e)
#68 Monster Manual (AD&D 1e)
#78 D3: Vault of the Drow
#81 X2: Castle Amber (Château d' Amberville)
#82 Dungeons & Dragons (Woodgrain Box & White Box Sets)
#86 Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set (Box Set - 1981)
#87 U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
#90 Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (Box Set)
#112 Dungeons & Dragons Set 2: Expert Rules (Box Set - 1983)
#113 World of Greyhawk (Second Edition)
#115 I3: Pharaoh
#121 S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
#145 T1: The Village of Hommlet
#148 Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits
#149 T1-4: The Temple Of Elemental Evil
#158 S2: White Plume Mountain
#162 B4: The Lost City
#173 I3-5: Desert of Desolation

According to the spectrum of patrons of RPG Geek (and take that with whatever salt you need) About 15% of the top 200 role-playing products of all-time are pre 1989 D&D. When you factor in AD&D 2e the percentage climbs to over 20% and no other product line even comes close to that mark.

-Dave

mbassoc2003 wrote:I am a great fan of websites like RPG Geek...

This is going up on our testimonials page!   

-Dave

I think if you post the testemonial "mbassoc2003 says, "I am a great fan of websites like RPG Geek..." it will be hilarious. I'm not exactly known for supporting the ignorant underclasses.      

gvaughn1 wrote:mbassoc2003: didn't your momma teach you to say nice things?  

No. My Mama taught me to tell the truth.  

gvaughn1 wrote:How do you rank these?  Do you base it on User ratings of each product?  Just curious.

We use the individual user ratings for each product. The ratings are on a 1-10 scale and our user guide has a recommended rating scale to try and make for some level of consistency. As with any rating endeavor, it's not perfect.  

A game with at least 5 ratings is eligible for a rank within our system (many D&D products have over 100 ratings). These ratings get averaged for the overall rank with a caveat. We use a Bayesian ranking scheme where a number of "dummy" (easy pickings for you mbassoc...!) ratings move a game's average towards the norm of 5.5 - making games with few votes but high ratings potentially have a lower rank than games with many more ratings but a lower average Rating. This is very similar to the scheme they use over on IMDB and other ranking websites to help smooth out boundary issues which tend to skew the rankings.

We also have a couple of shill-busting algorithms in place to prevent people with an agenda.  For example, people who come to the site, sign up and rate one or two products a 10 and nothing else ... ever. Or they come and rate one or two products a 1 and nothing else ... ever.  Very (and I mean VERY) few users who rate games will fall into the shill busting traps.

-Dave

wavemotion wrote:About 15% of the top 200 role-playing products of all-time are pre 1989 D&D. When you factor in AD&D 2e the percentage climbs to over 20% and no other product line even comes close to that mark.

I'm surprised its that low.

Cheers,
Malc

lawrenson wrote:I'm surprised its that low.

I had the opposite reaction. We've got about 1100 pre 1989 D&D products in the database out of 18000 total items (if you thought early-era TSR could pump out books... check out White Wolf or WotC). Based only on publication numbers, they lay claim to 5% of the total products listed on RPG Geek. So 15-20% of the top is a fairly high percentage, IMO.

-Dave

Kingofpain89 wrote:It's what one person likes versus another.

No. It's what one whole group of people like vs. another. It is the opinion of the group as a whole, and that group is a reflection of the demographic that populates the site. There may not be an 'economic' component to the website demographic that can be extrapolated from data, but there most certainly is a a social aspect to it, and a value system that is commonly shared by the majority of the website demographic. The same commonalities occur to some degree or other on all websites, and people have a tendancy to gravitate towards websites that they identify with.

I question to values of the website as a whole, the value ut places on accuracy and information, the desire it's users have in contributing, questioning and correcting that information, their ability to do so, and their ability to do it lucidly.

And of course I drew comparisons to other media models that seem to have the same demographic model.

I am currently working on a property for a guy who is what we in the UK might describe as 'rough as f"ck." The guy is a multi-millionaire many times over. There is no 'economic' component to his outlook on life, or to the way he deals with people, and there is certainly enough intelligence there to have made more money than I'm likely to see in my lifetime. That does not detract from the way perception he engenders in those he deals with on a daily basis, or the values he places on his 'roots'. You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think. I wonder where that quote came from?

And you're right. I shouldn't go through my posts trying to correct mistakes. F"ck it. It's a flashpan discussion thread on a forum, not a report.

I am currently working on a property for a guy who is what we in the UK might describe as 'rough as f"ck." The guy is a multi-millionaire many times over. There is no 'economic' component to his outlook on life, or to the way he deals with people, and there is certainly enough intelligence there to have made more money than I'm likely to see in my lifetime. That does not detract from the way perception he engenders in those he deals with on a daily basis, or the values he places on his 'roots'. You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think. I wonder where that quote came from?

What the heck does this have to do with the ranking of I6 on some other website? You seem to be obsessed with socioeconomic status for whatever reason (my guess would be that reason is a feeling of inadequacy), and repeatedly find ways to put people down on the basis of the apparent educational accomplishment. Like Kingofpain, I find this ironic since you clearly have spelling and grammar difficulties. Regardless of its (note, not "it's") relevance to the discussion at hand (none), the point of your quote above is a bit unclear. If it's meant to say that money doesn't buy you class, then, um, yeah, obviously. Maybe you ought to take a look in a mirror.

The list is certainly interesting. I6 rating is joke. So are several others including the so-called supermodules.

A couple other curious products that seem very over-rated: I3, I3-5, X2 and Q1. I think I3 is a good module, but I would put many ahead of it. X2 is probably one of the worst modules in the entire X series...No, I take that back...It is the worst module in the X series.

There are some that I think are valid, though. I would put the RC at the front. It is nice to see the Basic and Expert sets make the list.

Also, odd that no Judges Guild items made the top 200.