D&D 5E Which are the most popular types of WOTC Adventures for 5e?

[Quickleaf]

Amazon sales data is not publicly available. You need to have a seller account and access your Seller Central Dashboard to get sales numbers for individual products.

What you can see publicly on Amazon is just a product's current sales ranking. For instance, currently Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is #7 in D&D Game while Curse of Strahd is #19 in D&D Game.

Best seller rank is determined by a number of factors including Current and historic sales, Product price changes and promotions, and Competitive products. So it's not just total overall sales since the product started being sold. There's an algorithm that tracks sales velocities (and many other things).

So, with that hefty grain of salt, here's what Amazon tells us today, Friday, November 27th...

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden #7 in D&D Game
Curse of Strahd #19 in D&D Game
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist #20 in D&D Game
Ghosts of Saltmarsh #22 in D&D Game
The Rise of Tiamat #23 in D&D Game
Tales from the Yawning Portal #25 in D&D Game
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus #26 in D&D Game
Tomb of Annihilation #27 in D&D Game
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage #28 in D&D Game
Out of the Abyss #32 in D&D Game
Storm King's Thunder #35 in D&D Game
Hoard of the Dragon Queen #39 in D&D Game
Princes of the Apocalypse #54 in D&D Game

 

[Mistwell]

Amazon sales data is not publicly available. You need to have a seller account and access your Seller Central Dashboard to get sales numbers for individual products.

What you can see publicly on Amazon is just a product's current sales ranking. For instance, currently Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is #7 in D&D Game while Curse of Strahd is #19 in D&D Game.

Best seller rank is determined by a number of factors including Current and historic sales, Product price changes and promotions, and Competitive products. So it's not just total overall sales since the product started being sold. There's an algorithm that tracks sales velocities (and many other things).

So, with that hefty grain of salt, here's what Amazon tells us today, Friday, November 27th...

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden #7 in D&D Game
Curse of Strahd #19 in D&D Game
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist #20 in D&D Game
Ghosts of Saltmarsh #22 in D&D Game
The Rise of Tiamat #23 in D&D Game
Tales from the Yawning Portal #25 in D&D Game
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus #26 in D&D Game
Tomb of Annihilation #27 in D&D Game
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage #28 in D&D Game
Out of the Abyss #32 in D&D Game
Storm King's Thunder #35 in D&D Game
Hoard of the Dragon Queen #39 in D&D Game
Princes of the Apocalypse #54 in D&D Game

You're right of course, we would need an aggregate tool which tracked sales rank over time since publication of each book and then scored it based on an estimated sales number matched with that daily rank. I was hoping someone had access to such tools (I know they are out there, and I know CamelCamelCamel used to be one but they changed their tracking tools about a year ago). JungleScan did but they are gone. I think DataHawk does it now?

 

[Charlaquin]

I think a common element of the most popular adventures is that they are more location-based than event-based. Curse of Strahd does have a plot, sort of, but it’s largely a sandbox in Barovia. Tales from the Yawning Portal and Dungeon of the Mad Mage are literally just dungeons. I haven’t read Frostmaiden yet because I might end up playing in it, but I’d wager it’s similar to CoS in that it has a plot, but is really more about exploring the 10-towns region and the plot facilitates doing that.

 

[Shiroiken]

Once the DM says "this adventure is a railrod but Im going to let you have choices", etc for me it seems counter productive. The DM should've given the players the illusion of having options while staying on the adventure path IMO. This way the players would have been none the wiser and felt like their decisions had consequences and results.

He didn't bring it up until about half-way through the campaign, as he was surprised how closely we followed to the rails, even though he gave us a lot of freedom. It wasn't the illusion of choice we had, it was simply us following the most logical path, which is what the adventure assumes. We could have spent a lot of time off the rails, but since we feel like we're on a time constraint (the longer we take the more people who'll die and be damned), we want to stay on track as much as reasonably possible. IMO we've just pulled off the rails a bit during our last two sessions, but it's possible that by taking this longer route, we may save time in the end.

Out of the Abyss (the Underdark Express) doesn't even grant the illusion of choice, or at least not the parts we slogged through before calling it quits. You have to figure out how to get from point A to point B, then point B to point C, etc. etc. with no real decision making process involved. This is the only other 5E AP I've experienced, and it was a nightmare.

 

[R_J_K75]

He didn't bring it up until about half-way through the campaign, as he was surprised how closely we followed to the rails, even though he gave us a lot of freedom. It wasn't the illusion of choice we had, it was simply us following the most logical path, which is what the adventure assumes. We could have spent a lot of time off the rails, but since we feel like we're on a time constraint (the longer we take the more people who'll die and be damned), we want to stay on track as much as reasonably possible. IMO we've just pulled off the rails a bit during our last two sessions, but it's possible that by taking this longer route, we may save time in the end.

Out of the Abyss (the Underdark Express) doesn't even grant the illusion of choice, or at least not the parts we slogged through before calling it quits. You have to figure out how to get from point A to point B, then point B to point C, etc. etc. with no real decision making process involved. This is the only other 5E AP I've experienced, and it was a nightmare.

For the record I havent played or DMed any WotC 5E adventures except for a bit of DotMM, which I didnt care for. If the adventure is that linear with a clear cut goal and only one way to complete it then I suppose it stands to reason that there wouldnt be many decision points outside of those for completing the quest. In LotR things probably would have turned out much different had Frodo and Sam decided that they didn't feel like going to Mount Doom to destroy the one ring.

 

[Retreater]

If I had to guess I would say Lost Mines of Phandelver and Curse of Strahd, both in fan reception and sales. On here when we did a popularity poll a year ago or so those came up at the top, with I think Tomb of Annihilation in third.
If that's the case, those are all sandboxes that include a "large" dungeon/site to explore (in the case of LMoP, the "large" dungeon is suitably scaled down to match the rest of the content).
The ones that ranked the lowest at the time we did the informal poll were DotMM and Dragon Heist. Having DMed both of them, I can say that is accurate.
DotMM was a bad dungeon crawl, even from the view of good dungeon design. Dragon Heist was a railroad that ended in one of the most anti-climactic ways I've seen in a professional adventure.

 

[Eltab]

I think a common element of the most popular adventures is that they are more location-based than event-based. Curse of Strahd does have a plot, sort of, but it’s largely a sandbox in Barovia. Tales from the Yawning Portal and Dungeon of the Mad Mage are literally just dungeons. I haven’t read Frostmaiden yet because I might end up playing in it, but I’d wager it’s similar to CoS in that it has a plot, but is really more about exploring the 10-towns region and the plot facilitates doing that.

No spoilers, so...

The early part of Frostmaiden does encourage you to get around, interact with people, learn about the Ten Towns / surrounding area, and do things that qualify for the Folk Hero background.

After one particular quest-resolving confrontation, you meet the NPC who shows you the Plot Path and invites you to come along.

The first part looks like it will be fun and rewarding to play through. The second part looks like "now you earn that 'adventurer' title".

 

[Charlaquin]

No spoilers, so...

The early part of Frostmaiden does encourage you to get around, interact with people, learn about the Ten Towns / surrounding area, and do things that qualify for the Folk Hero background.

After one particular quest-resolving confrontation, you meet the NPC who shows you the Plot Path and invites you to come along.

The first part looks like it will be fun and rewarding to play through. The second part looks like "now you earn that 'adventurer' title".

That sounds pretty cool! I’d love to run it at some point, but I still have a Dragon Heist game on hold, which may end up continuing into Dungeon of the Mad Mage. So I want to remain unspoiled on Frostmaiden, especially since my DM for Humblewood has expressed interest in running Frostmaiden after.