D&D General 40 Million People Have Played D&D [UPDATED!]

Morrus · Jul 10, 2019

According to WotC, talking to Bloomberg, 40 million people play D&D annually; 9 million watched D&D on Twitch in 2017; and sales increased by 41% in 2017 and 53% in 2018. UPDATE! WotC's PR agency has reached to note that Bloomberg's figure refers to the number of people who have played the game since 1974, not annually!

You can find this information and more in this article over on bloomberg.com, which is mainly about professional DMs.

Myzzrym · Jul 9, 2019

Some very interesting info in there! Numbers are always great to get since it's often super vague.

Sacrosanct · Jul 9, 2019

That last figure is the most important one to me because it's a better figure to analyze. Do 40 million individuals play annually, or are they counting people more than once by counting total convention attendees, etc? Did 9 million different people watch twitch, or did it have 9 million views? I.e., I'd really like to see the methodology. But the last figure, the sales %, that's much more clearer. And it's a great sign.

And I've always had people waiting in queue for me to DM games, obviously I should start charging money on it lol. $300 for 4 hours? Forget Lyft or Uber, that's a sweet deal

Zardnaar · Jul 9, 2019

pedr said:
I like the release of actual sales figures for the Starter Set. 126,000 in North America in 2014 (from the July release); 306,000 in North America in 2018. I wonder what we can extrapolate from that!

It's not red box figures but it's not to far off. Starter set has sold more than every edition except red box and 1E phb. And Keep on the Border Lands.

Depending on how many phb sold it's not quite peak D&D but it's close that depending on what metric they are using they could at least make that argument.

No one knows exact red box figures but if they can keep up sales they will hit lower estimates of the red box this year.

I still don't think they have hit 1983 numbers but technically that was two editions of D&D which is the Golden age so it's plausible 5E has outsold all the other D&D's. We would need phb numbers but they seem fairly close to B/X plus 1E numbers.

They're basically duplicating 81 to 83 or coming very close but without phb numbers can't really say 100%. I did adjust numbers for inflation and D&D in 1983 alone was still bigger than the entire rpg market 2018.

Population is a bit bigger as well so relatively speaking they have less market penetration. In dollar terms unadjusted for inflation they are beating 1983.

As I said depends what metric you use. They're doing very well though in D&D terms. There's only 3 items that gave outsold the starter set and in 2019 they might beat two of them.

darjr · Jul 9, 2019

As far as paid DMs Devon Chulick did a shirt AMA for our local group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/OmahaNebraskaDnD/permalink/2422235637797247?sfns=mo

darjr · Jul 9, 2019

These numbers are incredible, I wish camel camel camel was reporting sales rank again.

Parmandur · Jul 9, 2019

Zardnaar said:
It's not red box figures but it's not to far off. Starter set has sold more than every edition except red box and 1E phb. And Keep on the Border Lands.

Depending on how many phb sold it's not quite peak D&D but it's close that depending on what metric they are using they could at least make that argument.

No one knows exact red box figures but if they can keep up sales they will hit lower estimates of the red box this year.

I still don't think they have hit 1983 numbers but technically that was two editions of D&D which is the Golden age so it's plausible 5E has outsold all the other D&D's. We would need phb numbers but they seem fairly close to B/X plus 1E numbers.

They're basically duplicating 81 to 83 or coming very close but without phb numbers can't really say 100%. I did adjust numbers for inflation and D&D in 1983 alone was still bigger than the entire rpg market 2018.

Population is a bit bigger as well so relatively speaking they have less market penetration. In dollar terms unadjusted for inflation they are beating 1983.

As I said depends what metric you use. They're doing very well though in D&D terms. There's only 3 items that gave outsold the starter set and in 2019 they might beat two of them.

A few somewhat scattered points:

The sales numbers provided are for North America alone: anyone outside of NA that bought the Starter Set is in addition to these numbers.

Currently, the Starter Set is ranked #127 on the bestsellers list for Amazon, which is good: the PHB is currently #52 (these are current sale rates, not historical). So the PHB is selling better, at least on Amazon (the Starter Set will sell better at Target, for instance, which doesn't carry the books).

40 million worldwide playing versus less than a million Starter Sets sold *in North America* suggests somewhat the gap here. More than 40 people per set? Pretty plainly the tip of the iceberg in terms of their total sales.

One difference between 1981-3 and 2014-9: no Internet meant that anybody who wanted to play needed physical copies of the books: now, there are the Basic rules, Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and D&D Beyond (in addition to unfortunate dishonest routes). The numbers for those other platforms, or Amazon or Target, are not going to be part of the hobby shop reports to which you are referring.

We are in Peak D&D, though the peak is still climbing.