D&D General TSR D&D sales numbers compiled by Benjamin Riggs

D&D historian Ben Riggs--author of the upcoming Slaying the Dragon, which is a history of TSR-era (not that TSR, the real one) D&D--compiled some sales figures of AD&D 1st Edition's Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide from 1979-1990.

Behold! Some actual D&D sales numbers!

While working on my book #SlayingtheDragon I got a ton of primary source documents containing sales data for D&D. With the book coming out, I've been looking for a way to get that data out into the wide world. I'm going to start making charts, and simply posting them. If people want the raw data, I can post that too, but obviously, charts are prettier.

I'm starting with AD&D 1st ed Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. You'll notice a crash in the mid-80s, and then the sales peter out with the release of 2nd edition.

The sales point to a fact that I believe hasn't been given enough play in our hobby. Namely, TSR was in a tight spot when Lorraine Williams took over the company from Gary Gygax. If it weren't for Lorraine, D&D may have died in the mid-80s.

Just an idea for your consideration...

Oh, and if you haven't preordered my book on D&D history yet, I'll put a link in the comments.

Go get his book! It’s going to be interesting!

Slaying the Dragon - Macmillan

The secret and untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, then ...

read.macmillan.com

 

[Jer]

One point I'd note that I definitely remember, is that not every 1E player even switched to 2E. Some folks were content with their old rules and the house rules they'd adopted to make them work the way they wanted, and had no interest in re-buying a new edition from TSR.

I'll go one further - I know folks who were actively angry about how 2e turned out and got as mad about it as any edition warrior online ever has. Mostly I think it was the art direction changes, but they'd at least claim that different changes to the rules (that anyone looking at today would see as "minor tweaks") were nonsensical changes that didn't need to be made. I remember one guy I knew being absolutely incensed at the idea of priest spheres, of all things (though again - I suspect he was mostly mad about the art changes and the fact that he thought 2e was "too fluffy" and not "metal" like 1e was - and once you decide you don't like something everything will start bugging you about it).

Beyond him, though, I remember a few people who were really disappointed in how unambitious 2e was as far as game design and called it a cash grab. The few I kept in touch with were much happier with 3e when it came out.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

OP here! Thanks to dajr for reposting from Facebook!

FYI I have pretty much all the core books numbers for 1979 through 1999. For settings, I have flagship product numbers, but almost nothing else.
I have almost no novel numbers.

The great exception to this is Dark Sun. For Dark Sun, I have every product, and every novel's sales through '99.

With a book coming out on the 19th on TSR history, I'm planning on dropping a chart a day on D&D sales for the foreseeable future. There is no data I have that I'm planning on sitting on.

Is the data you are posting also in the book?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Another thing I remember vividly is that around 1990 or so, it was not uncommon to see 1e books with slashed discounts in stores. Greyhawk Adventures, for example, I picked up for $5, and that was a book under two years old at the time.

I don't think that was a big factor. In fact, it is kind of the opposite, 1e had already faded by the late '80s. 2e's popularity just took off from where 1e left off. There was definitely a bump in the beginning as everyone that was playing 1e 'upgraded'. After that people mostly played 2e, it really did displace 1e to a large extent as 'core rules', but in practice it was not a different enough game to attract a lot of new audiences when there were plenty of other high quality RPGs out there. I guess in a sense compatibility 'held it back' but it wasn't a matter of people just going on and playing with their 1e books still. There just wasn't that many people being added to the ranks. I mean, between 1975 and 1985 I must have introduced 100 people to D&D, and built a pretty solid core group of 30-40 players that I could count on to be interested in a game. There were other groups that mine overlapped with too.

From the mid 80s until mid 00s, my gaming group remained fairly static and small. Started with four people, eventually lost two, eventually gained two. Part of that was a combination of location, social circles, and social opprobrium. But in the mid-00s things started to change as nerd culture became popular culture.

After around 1986 or so things kind of just leveled off and became a lot more static. I mean, yes, I've acquired some additional players in various games in the last 35 years here and there, but its never been anything like the early days. Surely it seems like D&D itself really didn't start an upward trend again until the mid '00s. People came in, some left, there were a couple edition releases in there that created some stir, but not a ton. Somewhere around 3.5/4e it seemed like the whole industry had gotten enough bigger to support a bigger D&D, and its been growing again since then. Now, that isn't to say the whole hobby didn't grow from 1985 to 2005, just that D&D was not growing as much and the whole thing became a lot more spread out. If you were to look at product sales in the early to mid '80s I can pretty much guarantee, D&D was 95% of everything (in the US), which is not so much true now.

In the original chart, that certainly is a precipitous drop from 1983 to 1984! Interesting, considering 1984 was when the Dragonlance novels were released. I would've thought that would've counted for something.

From what I recall the D&D Basic line outsold 1e and 2e AD&D combined, which is saying something. In hindsight, I think it is the most elegantly and succinctly presented version of D&D out there. Even though I started with the red box Basic, when I recently picked up the Moldvay Basic rules, I was impressed by how they also provided a much more easily understood game than AD&D. I love AD&D and all, but in hindsight I consider BECMI to be the better-presented, more concise game.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So basically, all things that worked against 2e:

• existing fanbase upset about the game's direction to be more family friendly (removing demons, devils, assassins, half-orcs, art direction, etc)
• Rising popularity of Vampire/Werewolf (for those who didn't know, the 90s was all about goth and emo, from Interview with a Vampire to The Crow)
• This thing called Magic the Gathering took off like wildfire

 

[darjr]

Although those latter things came a few years after 2e was birthed.

Our groups just kept playing 1e and slowly morphed over to 2e. I didn’t like the art or style and so played 1e characters in 2e games for a while and ran 1e rules with players running 2e characters.

 

[Parmandur]

DMs tend to be more completist/have bigger collections, certainly. Some players purely borrow. Others pick up maybe one core book. IME really dedicated players who care about the rules do tend to get at least all the core books.

As a young player, even not really knowing how or being inclined to DM, I certainly wanted the 1E DMG because it had all the combat charts and saving throws in it! I couldn't actually make a character without it.

In my experience, even the PHB is mostly just bought by DMs.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

From what I recall the D&D Basic line outsold 1e and 2e AD&D combined, which is saying something. In hindsight, I think it is the most elegantly and succinctly presented version of D&D out there. Even though I started with the red box Basic, when I recently picked up the Moldvay Basic rules, I was impressed by how they also provided a much more easily understood game than AD&D. I love AD&D and all, but in hindsight I consider BECMI to be the better-presented, more concise game.

So on that ... you are correct regarding the insanely high sales of the Red Box. But we need to be careful about what that actually means.

Moldvay, and to an even greater extent, Mentzer, were ominpresent. You could not only get them at hobbyist store, or at B. Dalton/Waldenbooks, but they were selling them at toy stores and department stores. They were ... everywhere.

So they ended up being gifted all of the time. It was incredibly common to know people who had the set and didn't play. Or who had the set and were playing AD&D (they had enjoyed it and "moved on"). In fact, I can't think of a single AD&D player I knew that didn't also have a copy of the Red Box / Moldvay, either because they had bought it or because some well-meaning friend or relative heard that they were "into D&D" and bought it for them.

There were people that played B/X and BECMI exclusively. But the majority of support (from the books, to the modules, to Dragon Magazine) was geared to support AD&D, and IME, the majority of players either played AD&D or were playing a hybrid set of rules (like AD&D with some B/X modules).

 

[darjr]

In my experience, even the PHB is mostly just bought by DMs.

I have to say my recent experience is quite different. It’s rare that a player doesn’t have the PHB and most have quite a few books. But I run a lot of games in public. Though the few new player games I’ve run at home, mine and others, the trend was similar.

A lot of new players show up with a phb or one of the starter boxes and wanna learn.

 

[Parmandur]

I have to say my recent experience is quite different. It’s rare that a player doesn’t have the PHB and most have quite a few. But I run a lot of games in public. Though the few new player games I’ve run at home the trend was similar.

A lot of new players show up with a phb or one of the starter boxes and wanna learn.

That's the thing about anecdotes, it's true: but it doesn't surprise me that the 1E PHB and DMG sales track so closely. That suggests that maybe most groups had just one PHB, or 1.something on average.

 

[darjr]

That's the thing about anecdotes, it's true: but it doesn't surprise me that the 1E PHB and DMG sales track so closely. That suggests that maybe most groups had just one PHB, or 1.something on average.

I concur about 1e. It was absolutely true that most of the books were owned by the DM. In fact buying a new PHB to replace the one I gave out or the one that walked away was a common thing. It was also true through 2e and even during 3e and 4e, and I ran mostly public games throughout all those editions. 5e has been different.

Except at the beginning of 4e, everyone had books too, it seemed.