WotC WotC reported 50% growth over 2020!

[DarkCrisis]

OSR isn't on the shelf because it isn't very good and no one who isn't wearing rose tinted nostalgia glasses would want to play it.

Back in 1982 I realised Basic D&D wasn't very good, and moved on to AD&D. Then a year or two later I realised that wasn't much better and moved on to Traveller.

D&D didn't become good until 5e. It's no wonder it's the most successful edition.

Funny I’ve had a different experience. I played a bit of 2E (about a year before 3rd Ed). Really got rolling with 3rd and now played a ton of 5th.

I went back and played Basic and 1E (never had before) and again some 2E and find them to be a better experience. Heck, if I had my choice I’d be playing/running just Basic or 1E (once trim the fat a tad).

The “easy mode” of 5E is less appealing for some reason to me.

 

[darjr]

To be fair, I've seen Old School Essentials and Dungeon Crawl Classics on the shelf of my LGS.

Dungeons & Dragons is so popular because of its brand more than anything else, and because it's player base is already large. Popularity begets popularity.

I too have seen OSR games on shelves.

but please do remember 4e had the same benefits you state and it didn’t do near as well.

 

[Ibrandul]

So I wasn't able to parse the latest earnings report, but I can find information for the end of 2020. According to Forbes, Magic made $581.2 million in 2020. ICv2 notes that WotC made $816 million in sales in 2020. D&D would then be $234.8 million. I don't think there is anything else that comprises the WotC unit.

And for completeness, the segment is called WotC and Digital Gaming. Digital Gaming brought in $90.7 million. While this is not for this recent year, you'll soon be able to know how much each segment made in 2021 when they report the growth or loss compared to 2020.

That's mostly true now, but there is a tiny bit more in WotC's portfolio—and there used to be a little bit more still, through the first half or so of 2020.

WotC was still producing the Transformers TCG until summer 2020; the final expansion set was released in May 2020. And the Avalon Hill board game brand was still a WotC subsidiary until September 2020. (I can't tell whether the earnings report you mention excludes Avalon Hill from the WotC figures for the whole year.)

On top of that, WotC does actually still produce some tiny non–Avalon Hill, D&D-branded board games. Because D&D-branded games are currently also published by licensees like Gale Force Nine (Tyrants of th Underdark) and WizKids (Rock, Paper, Wizard) as well as by Hasbro's general board games division (The Adventure Begins), it's often overlooked that WotC publishes a few such games themselves, most recently Dungeon Mayhem (2019) and The Great Dalmuti (2020). Maybe it's fine to just lump these in with "D&D" anyway, though in the case of for example The Great Dalmuti, the D&D connection is so thin and pasted-on that I wonder whether it was applied only because someone at WotC wanted to reprint the game but had to abide by some new corporate policy that WotC could only publish D&D- or MTG-branded products.

All of these would presumably eat up some small fraction of that $234.8 million. D&D would still account for the vast majority of that, to be sure, even if not quite 100%—making this whole post, I suppose, a very unnecessary Comic Book Guy clarification. Thanks for listening.

 

[Bravesteel25]

OSR isn't on the shelf because it isn't very good and no one who isn't wearing rose tinted nostalgia glasses would want to play it.

Back in 1982 I realised Basic D&D wasn't very good, and moved on to AD&D. Then a year or two later I realised that wasn't much better and moved on to Traveller.

D&D didn't become good until 5e. It's no wonder it's the most successful edition.

As they say, "That's, like, your opinion man," and it's a valid one. There are plenty of people that do not enjoy the OSR style of game, but there are plenty of people who have never even given it a chance. Also, as Urriak Uruk stated, OSR doesn't necessarily mean exactly the way things were system-wise or presentation-wise.

I too have seen OSR games on shelves.

but please do remember 4e had the same benefits you state and it didn’t do near as well.

Then you both are privileged to have less. . . uh, cookie-cutter and distributor-dependant FLGSs than I do.

That's a completely fair point about 4E. I was not in my FLGS's scene when 4E was around and while I liked it my group did eventually go over to Pathfinder like many others.

 

[darjr]

@Bravesteel25 actually you may have a point about that distribution comment. Goodman Games stuff is in distribution so are most of the other OSR things I recall seeing.

Not all though.

interesting

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I too have seen OSR games on shelves.

but please do remember 4e had the same benefits you state and it didn’t do near as well.

I'm pretty sure in the 4E era, it was still the most popular TTRPG (I don't think Pathfinder ever surpassed it, though it may have come close).

There definitely wasn't an OSR revival then, as far as I know. I think that time was a dark time for TTRPGs in general.

 

[Bravesteel25]

@Bravesteel25 actually you may have a point about that distribution comment. Goodman Games stuff is in distribution so are most of the other OSR things I recall seeing.

Not all though.

interesting

My FLGS at least is very dependent on what is "in" at any particular point in time. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to having only so much capital that they can tie up in non-TCG games as they used to be almost entirely a card shop.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm pretty sure in the 4E era, it was still the most popular TTRPG (I don't think Pathfinder ever surpassed it, though it may have come close).

Pathfinder absolutely replaced 4E as the #1 RPG for a chunk of 4E's life. It's one of the big reasons 4E didn't last so long.

There definitely wasn't an OSR revival then, as far as I know. I think that time was a dark time for TTRPGs in general.

I actually don't know when the OSR properly started. Meaning retroclones of older editions. Had to have been after the OGL/SRD. I know a lot of people who simply stuck with AD&D instead of switching to 2E or any of the later editions, but that's not the same thing.

ETA: Wiki tells me 2004-2005.

 

[SuperTD]

Pathfinder absolutely replaced 4E as the #1 RPG for a chunk of 4E's life. It's one of the big reasons 4E didn't last so long.

I actually don't know when the OSR properly started. Meaning retroclones of older editions. Had to have been after the OGL/SRD. I know a lot of people who simply stuck with AD&D instead of switching to 2E or any of the later editions, but that's not the same thing.

ETA: Wiki tells me 2004-2005.

Didn't Pathfinder only actually overtake 4e at the end of 2012, when development had basically stopped?

 

[darjr]

Didn't Pathfinder only actually overtake 4e at the end of 2012, when development had basically stopped?

I thought that too. Actual development may have stopped by then but new 4e things were coming out when it took over. I think. Someone broke it down earlier in another thread