D&D 5E D&D 5e nearing 800,000 copies sold?

[nevin]

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.

It wasn't just Gygax or Lorraine.
It was a company riding the waves. It had no focus. It was really just a group of gamers that got lucky and were able to make money on the game they invented.

TSR had a terrible marketing department. The company was poorly organized, when sales dropped, they paid people to scan BBS boards and then the fledgling internet and spent money on lawyers, sending out cease and desist letters because they thought if they beat down the bad people posting stuff sales would come back. They turned a lot of players into enemies. It was a company that had no focus other than make stuff, sell stuff. I'm not even sure they knew who their most profitable customers were. Dragon lance destroyed TSR, It became so popular that nothing else mattered, (probably driven by the fact they were in thier 2nd or 3rd bankruptcy) and when everyone had played the game and the modules that followed the book they just stopped buying dragon lance and there was nothing else out there from TSR. The released a failed box set of Taladas, the other side of Krynn. Great boxed set by the way but it had nothing to bring back the Dragonlance fans.

Now WOTC didn't do much better for the first 4 years. They destroyed Gamma World by rushing the launch to beat Star Frontiers and it had so much errata and quality problems that people couldn't understand the rule and were pissed off they wasted their money. It had a 32 page erratta booklet that you had to send a letter in and wait 3 months in my case to get. I think the system in Gamma World 2nd edition was fantastic. But I doubt even 1 percent of the people that bought it ever ran even one game. The rules were nearly unusable without the erratta. WOTC also drove off the RPGA association because they couldn't control them. Even TSR realized that the RPGA association was doing what no one else was and teaching new DM's how to run games. WOTC wanted everyone out of thier little garden and they made a lot of enemies and a lot of money went to other companies. On top of that they decided that modules (remember this is before you could just buy them on the internet) were too much trouble and that they just wanted to sell books. Going to the local game shop went from browsing through dozens of modules to a see what the 3 they sent out this month were. Then just as the ecosystem was stabilizing and WOTC started to become a company selling stuff their players wanted Magic the gathering came out. It was so profitable that dnd became a secondary product. I remember some gameshops back then just stopped stocking anything but magic the gathering cards and a few sets of rule books from WOTC. MOTG is what killed 3rd edition it makes so much money WOTC just didn't care that DND 3rd edition wasn't selling as expected. Or if they did care they couldn't convince game stores to care about their lower profit books when they could make bank on small overpriced cards.

It's easy to forget taaht even in it's 5e incarnation dnd is an niche game. Everytime something really profitable, like Dragonlance, Matt Mercer, Magic the Gathering it overshadows the reality that the game is a large niche in gaming and unlikely to ever become any more than that. And being Niche anything big that touches it or lands near it has a disproportionate effect.

 

[nevin]

That's TSR. We have no idea how many Pathfinder core books have sold. Somehow I seriously doubt it's sold so many. Pathfinder never managed to capture that much of the market.

I don't know that I agree with that. Most pathfinder players I've known had played 3rd edition before and just joined a pathfinder game and used the DM's books. On top of that you can go to D20 and access all of it been able to for a long long time. I'd be really surprised if Pathfinder sold more than 3rd edition. If you know 3.5 rules then once you learn the conditions and get a character created you don't need any pathfinder books at all if your DM has them.

And I suspect if Pathfinder had sold more than a million books they'd be letting the entire world know that they'd beat 1e, 2e, 3e,and 4e dnd in sales.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't know that I agree with that. Most pathfinder players I've known had played 3rd edition before and just joined a pathfinder game and used the DM's books. On top of that you can go to D20 and access all of it been able to for a long long time. I'd be really surprised if Pathfinder sold more than 3rd edition. If you know 3.5 rules then once you learn the conditions and get a character created you don't need any pathfinder books at all if your DM has them.

And I suspect if Pathfinder had sold more than a million books they'd be letting the entire world know that they'd beat 1e, 2e, 3e,and 4e dnd in sales.

Numbers I saw thrown around a decade ago was PF sold less than all D&Ds except OD&D. 3.5 sold less than all the others except for OD&D as well. 4E numbers were unknown (less than 800k though apparently).

If those numbers were accurate (the pre 3E numbers were similar to various estimates previously mentioned) it's all been downhill since golden age until 4E or 5E depending on if you count 3.0/3.5 as separate editions or not.

 

[Mannahnin]

I don't know that I agree with that.

Bear in mind that the post you're replying to is from six years ago.