Musings on Poll Results (Part III)

I'm going to take a break from these weekly polls. While I have found them useful in getting a better sense of Grognardia's readership demographics, I've found the poll service I've been using somewhat limited in its capabilities. Many of the questions I'd like to ask would require a much more sophisticated set-up and I don't, at present, have access to that. I'll spend the next few weeks researching the matter to see if I can come up with a polling system more suited to what I desire. If you should have any suggestions or recommendations in this regard, I'd be grateful if you make them known to me in the comments.

The poll, "Was Your First Tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons?,"  yielded the results I more or less expected:

Since its first appearance in 1974, D&D has been the proverbial 800-lb. gorilla of the roleplaying hobby. That remains true even today, despite – or perhaps because of – the proliferation of RPGs. As you can see, the vast majority of my readers started with D&D, as I did too. It's pretty uncommon to meet someone who entered the hobby through another game, though I currently play with at least one person who did so. 

The poll, "Where Did You Buy Your First Tabletop RPG?," was a bit of a mess, if I'm honest. It was this poll that made it clear to me I needed a better means of collecting data. Even leaving aside the inadequacies of the poll itself – how did I not include "comic shop" as an option? – there are still some interesting results here.

Taken together, "game store/hobby shop" and "bookstore" accounted for nearly 60% of the responses. That's not really a surprise, since those are, in my opinion, the two most obvious places to purchase RPG. More interesting is the third most popular response: "I Didn't – It Was a Gift." Just shy of 20% of all respondents choose this option, which suggests that a significant number of people owe their involvement in the hobby to someone else. This is a case where I wish I could more easily follow up certain answers. I'd love, for example, to know who gave these gifts and also whether or not the gift was requested or an unexpected surprise – hence why I'm going to be looking for alternatives to Strawpoll in the coming days.