D&D 5E Settings played in D&D: cause or effect?

delericho · Dec 1, 2015

Hussar said:
See, here's the trick - what does "very well" actually mean?

Only WotC can define that. And, indeed, only WotC can truly know how well it actually did.

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] mentions 14 source books. I'd point out that I've got close to that for my Scarred Lands setting. Compare to how many books you have in 3e - novels, sourcebooks, whatnot - never minding the Neverwinter Nights video game, for Forgotten Realms.

Number of supplements really can't be used as a measure of success or failure, and certainly not by itself - are the "Lord of the Rings" films a failure because there are only three of them, compared with seven "Fast & Furious" films to date?

WotC published books covering all the major topics of the setting. From here, it certainly looks like they said everything they had to say in the setting. That doesn't say 'failure' to me - it says 'completion'.

Look, I love Eberron. I do. But, I think that it's a mistake to think that Eberron is even close to the same league as Forgotten Realms.

FR is always going to be a thing apart. The question is surely not "is this as big as FR", but rather "is this worth bothering with"? After all, one wouldn't declare the "Lord of the Rings" films a failure simply because the "Fast & Furious" series have made more money!

Hussar · Dec 1, 2015

delericho said:
FR is always going to be a thing apart. The question is surely not "is this as big as FR", but rather "is this worth bothering with"? After all, one wouldn't declare the "Lord of the Rings" films a failure simply because the "Fast & Furious" series have made more money!

True, but, if you are investing money, which one would you rather buy into? Seven F&F movies and counting, huge return on investment, now, apparently, a deal to make it a franchise, or three very successful movies from fifteen years ago. For a business that wants to stay in business, I know which one they should go with.

delericho · Dec 1, 2015

Hussar said:
True, but, if you are investing money, which one would you rather buy into?

Sure, I agree with you there. If WotC can only do one setting, it should be FR. If they can do more than one... they might well still be better off doubling up on FR.

It's only when you suggest Eberron failed to hit sales targets that I take issue - one can still be a success without beating FR.

Seven F&F movies and counting, huge return on investment, now, apparently, a deal to make it a franchise, or three very successful movies from fifteen years ago. For a business that wants to stay in business, I know which one they should go with.

Actually, I'm sceptical, to say the least, that this F&F franchise will do at all well - it sounds like good business, but my suspicion is that the team behind the 'main' series have managed to capture lightning in a bottle and that it won't be so easy to replicate. (In exactly the same way that the glut of sci-fi films post-Star Wars and the glut of fantasy films post-LotR amounted to very little.)

But the key reason for the deal is almost certainly the same as WotC's current heavy focus on the Realms - because of the resources involved in creation, those involved are looking to play the safe bet. I can't fault them for that, given that it is their money that's on the line.

Hussar · Dec 1, 2015

I pretty much agree with all that. I guess my point about sales targets was kinda unclear. Yes, it could hit the sales targets set for that setting in that edition, but, considering what the sales targets are in 5th edition (apparently somewhere over 100k sales/book) it could easily be nowhere near that. Sorry, yeah, different sales targets.

delericho · Dec 2, 2015

Hussar said:
I pretty much agree with all that. I guess my point about sales targets was kinda unclear. Yes, it could hit the sales targets set for that setting in that edition, but, considering what the sales targets are in 5th edition it could easily be nowhere near that. Sorry, yeah, different sales targets.

All true.

(apparently somewhere over 100k sales/book)

Yeah, that's a weird one. Given what we know about sales number of non-core books in previous editions (which I'll grant you isn't much), that 100k number looks to be really ambitious. Especially if they're then selling adventures and so immediately cutting out ~80% of their market (since it's mostly, though not exclusively, DMs that buy these things, and players vastly outnumber DMs). I don't, for a moment, believe that "Rise of Tiamat" in particular came close to that target.

But maybe that 100k figure wasn't a hard target, so much as Chris Perkins saying, "we want to make books that are really, really popular."

But, whether it's a hard number or just an aspiration, it is still true that they're more likely to hit get big numbers with fewer, bigger books - and if they can make every book an "event" (for example by using it to kick off a new storyline), so much the better.

Tony Vargas · Dec 3, 2015

delericho said:
Given what we know about sales number of non-core books in previous editions (which I'll grant you isn't much), that 100k number looks to be really ambitious.

Not really. When you're only doing 2 or 3 books a year, and the books sell for no more than 50 bucks, that's a sales goal of 10 or 15 million (though net would be lower because not all books sell at full price), down from 50-100 million, that's pretty reasonable. With the release of 5e last year, the TTRPG market by the one readily available measure we have (IcV2... yeah, I know) jumped by about that 10 million or so, which could very well have been mainly due to D&D, and that's just store sales, throw in discounted Amazon sales and you're easily looking at a lot of books.

Especially if they're then selling adventures and so immediately cutting out ~80% of their market (since it's mostly, though not exclusively, DMs that buy these things, and players vastly outnumber DMs).

Players vastly outnumber DMs but at least some of them hardly buy books at all, not even core books, while others are completists or would-be/mabye-someday DMs who pick up books even if they don't use them.

But, whether it's a hard number or just an aspiration, it is still true that they're more likely to hit get big numbers with fewer, bigger books - and if they can make every book an "event" (for example by using it to kick off a new storyline), so much the better.

Yes, with only a few books a year, the impetus to buy even if you get very little out of each of them can get pretty strong. Like the 2-year hiatus leading up to 5e, the slow pace of publication keeps the fanbase 'hungry' for new product of almost any kind.

delericho · Dec 4, 2015

Tony Vargas said:
Not really.

The evidence we have is that in the 3e era the very best selling supplements managed about 10% of the sales of the PHB - ~80k for the Psionics Handbook vs about ~800k for the PHB. WotC want to do that, or close to that, with every book? Yeah, that's ambitious.

(Note: that's 'ambitious', not 'impossible'. Though I don't believe "Rise of Tiamat", in particular, did those numbers. I stand ready to be corrected... but I don't expect WotC to release the sales numbers that would do that.)

Players vastly outnumber DMs but at least some of them hardly buy books at all, not even core books, while others are completists or would-be/mabye-someday DMs who pick up books even if they don't use them.

Only a subset of DMs buy more books, too. And only a subset of them buy pre-gen adventures. I would be surprised if there was any adventure* in all of 2nd Ed, 3e, or 4e that has sold 100k units.

* Adventures sold separately, of course. An adventure bundled in with a core rulebook doesn't count!

Hussar · Dec 4, 2015

delericho said:
The evidence we have is that in the 3e era the very best selling supplements managed about 10% of the sales of the PHB - ~80k for the Psionics Handbook vs about ~800k for the PHB. WotC want to do that, or close to that, with every book? Yeah, that's ambitious.

(Note: that's 'ambitious', not 'impossible'. Though I don't believe "Rise of Tiamat", in particular, did those numbers. I stand ready to be corrected... but I don't expect WotC to release the sales numbers that would do that.)

Only a subset of DMs buy more books, too. And only a subset of them buy pre-gen adventures. I would be surprised if there was any adventure* in all of 2nd Ed, 3e, or 4e that has sold 100k units.

* Adventures sold separately, of course. An adventure bundled in with a core rulebook doesn't count!

Well, I don't know if this counts as any sort of proof, but, considering that with just six products, 5e has managed to take the top spot on ICv2, I'd say that the three non-trinity books have to be doing something. Unless sales of the PHB-DMG-MM have simply remained so strong that on the shoulders of those alone, 5e D&D is holding top spot in sales, then the modules have to be doing something. The last ICv2 report only would have included Elemental Evil and the Tiamat modules (along with the core 3 of course), so, there may be something to those sales.

I mean, heck, Rise of Tiamat is a year old. I just checked and it's sitting in at #8128 in books. That's after a year. That's not bad at all. Hoard is sitting in at just over #9000 in books. To put it in perspective, Pathfinder's Advanced Class Guide, which is about the same age (September 2014 vs November for RoT) is sitting in at about #35000 in books. Now, how many books that actually means, I have no idea. But, I would say that even something like Rise of Tiamat isn't doing all that badly.

delericho · Dec 4, 2015

Hussar said:
Well, I don't know if this counts as any sort of proof, but, considering that with just six products, 5e has managed to take the top spot on ICv2, I'd say that the three non-trinity books have to be doing something.

I'm afraid it's not any kind of proof. I don't doubt 5e is doing exceptionally well, and indeed I don't doubt that the four adventures to date are doing significantly better than similar adventures in the past. But 100k copies sold such a large number for a non-core book that simply looking at a chart (that tracks relative sales without giving the underlying numbers) won't help.

I mean, heck, Rise of Tiamat is a year old. I just checked and it's sitting in at #8128 in books. That's after a year. That's not bad at all. Hoard is sitting in at just over #9000 in books. To put it in perspective, Pathfinder's Advanced Class Guide, which is about the same age (September 2014 vs November for RoT) is sitting in at about #35000 in books.

Again, I'm afraid that doesn't help. I don't for a second believe the "Advanced Class Guide" sold 100k units, either. Or, indeed, half of that. Given that it's a late-edition niche supplement, and given also that much of the material will be appearing online for free (legally, that is), I wouldn't be at all surprised if it sold fewer than 20k sales.

Please understand that I'm not trying to run 5e down here. As I said above, I fully acknowledge that it's doing exceptionally well, that it's "really on a tear", or whatever superlatives you wish to apply. And it's also a really good game. All I'm noting is that 100k units is a really big number, and also that "Rise of Tiamat" is likely to be the weakest-selling of the 5e books to date (being a higher-level adventure, being a sequel, and being the follow-up to the not-so-well-received HotDQ). So for that one particular book to have that level of success... sorry, I'd need to see the numbers.

pemerton · Dec 4, 2015

MechaPilot said:
what any Ravenloft book really needs is a small treatise on horror gaming that includes substantial advice to DMs for creating the right atmosphere both with rules and with the play environment.

Bu there's such a large variety of such books already available (I've got ICE's old Nightmares of Mine; I imagine that WotC tackled some of this stuff in Heroes of Horror, though I've never read that one). I doubt that WotC is going to put in the effort to write and publish another book to compete in this relatively niche space of GMing advice for horror RPGing.