I spoke to a friend at Hasbro. He wouldn't say anything about actual numbers but said that the company was very excited about D&D sales and said that it really beat their estimates. He also mentioned that it took them some time to get their arms around what D&D really is. None of this was new news, but kinda cool to hear it from someone at the company itself.
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D&D 5E D&D 5e nearing 800,000 copies sold?
- Thread starter darjr
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Jester David
Hero
As [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] says, it was very possibly in that range. But TSR was notoriously bad with its figures, and so it's hard to say.
Very likely it's still below the peak of 1984, but it's close enough that in a year or two it could pass 1e...
I can't imagine anybody at Hasbro saying anything else.
I'm curious as to what "bad with its figures" means?
Jester David
Hero
Based on what I've heard and read (from Ryan Dancey, Stan! on the DragonTalk podcast, and various recollections from TSR employees at "Secrets of TSR" panels) their accounting and record keeping was not good, especially in the early days when they were being run by people learning the "game publishing business" as they went along.
I don’t know, but I’m sure they had fairly accurate sales figures in the 80s. They had later endemic problems, but I don’t know that keeping records of sales figures was one.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
The impression I've gotten from a variety of interviews with former TSR people and WOTC people is there was a time when TSR was counting "books printed" as "books sold" in some of their measurements, but not in others. Then they got massive returns, and distribution issues, and ended up with warehouses full of unsold stuff that had previously been accounted for as sold books by some of their metrics (and I suspect most were the ones the marketing department were using). They were writing down thousands and thousands of books, and then they were burning some of those books out at below cost in overstock book sources as well. So when they say they sold X books, it was kinda hard to know how accurate that really was. Had they distributed X books and then gotten 30% backs as returns? Had they sold 20% at below cost as a firesale write-off tactic? What went into the X number? It was kinda a mess to really know. One person at TSR could genuinely believe they had sold X while another person could genuinely believe they had sold 50% of X.
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Tony Vargas
Legend
Yeah, that was notoriously how TSR killed itself publishing novels at the end. Nothing to do with how the game had been selling at the height of the fad the decade before, though, is it..
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
I disagree. They said there was a warehouse full of AD&D 1e books, some of which dated back many years. I think it has a lot to do with how the game had been accounted for in earlier years.When you read the interviews it doesn't come across as an issue that existed only at the end of TSR. It comes across as years of difficulties growing from a small company into a medium sized company that didn't really have a proper set of controller checks built into the system for many of those years. I recall I think it was Ryan Dancey saying inventory control had entirely broken down. They might have been profitable earlier, but that doesn't mean they were not printing books that went unsold and got returned into overstock in a warehouse and then written off.
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Zardnaar
Legend
I watched a shoot interview with Stan! on youtube and he has been one of the sources I have referred to when I mention sales figures and things like that.
The unsold older material was not a major cause of TSR's downfall although I suppose they were paying to store it.
Stan!'s Al Qadim for example apparently made a slim amount of money, TSR was losing money on things like Planescape and probably Darksun. Lavish production values.
The novel thing was the straw that broke the camels back along with Dragondice. They ordered a million sets and sold 70k. Lorraine ordered that many to get the manufacturing price down.
And TSR records were so bad they do not actually know how much they sold, 1 million+ of the red box and 1.5 million for the 1E PHB usually get thrown around. It might sound silly but in 1995 for example the people in charge of selling the product did not know how much to charge and they were selling boxed sets at a loss because no one had told them how much the sets cost to produce.
There was a reason the 1st thing WotC did when they took over was cancel all the game worlds apart from FR.
People like to blame Lorraine but the problems predate her, TSR almost went under 3 times and it was the 3rd time that got them. The 1st time was in the 70's when the Blumes got involved and Garry ceded control of the company in effect and the 2nd time was when he brought in Lorraine and she and the Blumes pushed him out (Garry had that effect on people it seemed).
D&D had double figure growth between 81-83 and they assumed it would keep going. They hired around 300 people and assumed the gravy train would keep rolling and in 84 they had a 30% reduction in sales leading to almost going under in 85 and Lorraine coming on board. Dragonlance Adventures and UA saved them.
There is also stories of a fleet of cars, gold plated bathroom taps, cocaine and hookers being involved as well (it was the 80's) but IDK how reliable those stories are. Some of the grog sites are interesting anyway.
No one really knew what was going on from Lorraine on down.
The unsold older material was not a major cause of TSR's downfall although I suppose they were paying to store it.
Stan!'s Al Qadim for example apparently made a slim amount of money, TSR was losing money on things like Planescape and probably Darksun. Lavish production values.
The novel thing was the straw that broke the camels back along with Dragondice. They ordered a million sets and sold 70k. Lorraine ordered that many to get the manufacturing price down.
And TSR records were so bad they do not actually know how much they sold, 1 million+ of the red box and 1.5 million for the 1E PHB usually get thrown around. It might sound silly but in 1995 for example the people in charge of selling the product did not know how much to charge and they were selling boxed sets at a loss because no one had told them how much the sets cost to produce.
There was a reason the 1st thing WotC did when they took over was cancel all the game worlds apart from FR.
People like to blame Lorraine but the problems predate her, TSR almost went under 3 times and it was the 3rd time that got them. The 1st time was in the 70's when the Blumes got involved and Garry ceded control of the company in effect and the 2nd time was when he brought in Lorraine and she and the Blumes pushed him out (Garry had that effect on people it seemed).
D&D had double figure growth between 81-83 and they assumed it would keep going. They hired around 300 people and assumed the gravy train would keep rolling and in 84 they had a 30% reduction in sales leading to almost going under in 85 and Lorraine coming on board. Dragonlance Adventures and UA saved them.
There is also stories of a fleet of cars, gold plated bathroom taps, cocaine and hookers being involved as well (it was the 80's) but IDK how reliable those stories are. Some of the grog sites are interesting anyway.
No one really knew what was going on from Lorraine on down.
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