Basic D&D Was Selling 600,000+/Year At One Point

Recently Ben Riggs shared some sales figures of AD&D 1st Edition. Now he has shared figures for Basic D&D from 1979-1995, and during the early 80s is was selling 500-700K copies per year.

Ben Riggs' book, Slaying the Dragon, which is a history of TSR-era D&D, comes out soon, and you can pre-order your copy now.

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

You can compare these figures to those of AD&D 1E in the same period. Basic D&D sold higher than AD&D's PHB and DMG combined for 4 years running, again in the early 80s.

If you take a look at the overall sales from 1979-1995, here are the two beside each other (again, this is just PHB and DMG, so it doesn't include the Monster Manual, Unearthed Arcana, etc.)

More actual D&D sales numbers!

Below you will find the sales numbers of Basic D&D, and then two charts comparing those to the sales of AD&D 1st edition. For those who don’t know, early in its life, the tree of D&D was split in half. On the one side there was D&D, an RPG designed to bring beginners into the game. It was simpler, and didn’t try to have rules for everything.
On the other side there was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax’s attempt to throw a net around the world and then shove it into rulebooks. The game was so detailed that it provided rules on how Armor Class changed depending on what hand your PC held their shield in. (It may also have been an attempt to cut D&D co-creator Dave Arneson out of royalties…)

I am frankly shocked at how well Basic D&D sold. Having discovered AD&D 2nd edition in the 90s, I thought of “Dungeons & Dragons” as a sort of baby game of mashed peas and steamed potatoes. It was for people not ready for the full meal that was AD&D. (I have since learned how wrong I was to dismiss the beauty of what Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, Cook, et al created for us in those wondrous BECMI boxed sets…)

I figured that Basic D&D was just a series of intro products, but over its lifetime, it actually outsold AD&D 1st edition. (Partly because 1st edition was replaced by 2nd edition in 1989. I’ll start rolling out the 2nd ed numbers tomorrow FYI.) These numbers would explain why in a 1980 Dragon article Gygax spoke of AD&D not being “abandoned.”
Still, between 1980 and 1984, Basic outsold AD&D. The strong numbers for Basic D&D prompt a few questions. Where was the strength of the brand? Were these two lines of products in competition with each other? Was one “real” D&D? And why did TSR stop supporting Basic D&D in the 90s?

The only one of those questions I will hazard is the last one. A source told me that because TSR CEO Lorraine Williams did not want to generate royalties for Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson, Basic D&D was left to wither on the vine.

I will also say this: TSR will die in 1997 of a thousand cuts, but the one underlying all of them was a failure of the company to grow its customer base. TSR wanted its D&D players to migrate over to AD&D, but what if they didn’t? What if they wanted to keep playing D&D, and TSR simply stopped making the product they wanted to buy? What if TSR walked away from what may have been hundreds of thousands of customers because of a sort of personal vendetta?

Tomorrow, I’ll post numbers for 2nd edition AD&D, and comparisons for it with Basic and 1st edition.

And if you don’t know, I have a book of D&D history coming out in a couple weeks. If you find me interesting, you can preorder in the first comment below!

Also, I'll post raw sales numbers below for the interested.

 

[Parmandur]

That's also not what I said. I didn't claim they reached those heights again those two books were the money earners post slump.

After the games collapsed and went on life support, yes.

 

[Helldritch]

None of this really surprises me.

IIRC the Basic Set (and others later on) were cheaper than a single AD&D hardcover book. So, more kids (and their parents) could easily afford them, so their sales outstripped the higher-priced AD&D books (of which there were also many more to buy if you wanted them all).

I think that you put your finger on the right thing. The box was cheaper to buy and even if you went for the expert set, it was still cheaper than buying the PHB, DMG and MM. Even back then, most campaigns were ending around level 8-11. These two boxes would net you infinite play time if you were an average group of players.

I knew a lot that never felt the need to go higher than these two boxed set.

 

[Azzy]

Mentzer was released summer. Not sure exactly when.

The preface for the Mentzer Basic Set was written in February.

 

[Jer]

After the games collapsed and went on life support, yes.

Life support would be the "supplement treadmill" model - I'll be curious to see what the 2e sales numbers look like when they get posted.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I knew a lot that never felt the need to go higher than these two boxed set.

Out of the dozen or so kids I played D&D with growing up, I was the only one (as our typical DM) who owned the other sets past Expert, so I can (at least anecdotally) agree with that!

But, for AD&D (and as I grew up), others owned typically 3-5 books each. Again, as DM, I owned most of the typical non-setting books, so over a dozen or so.

 

[Zardnaar]

After the games collapsed and went on life support, yes.

Using that logic the games been on life support ever since.

2E sold 750k, the 1991 black box apparently hit 600k.

That's more than 3.0, 3.5 and probably 4E.

Hell it's almost more than 3.0 and 3.5 combined for 2E.

TSR defeated themselves through moronic decisions (3 times over last one was fatal).

 

[CleverNickName]

I think that you put your finger on the right thing. The box was cheaper to buy and even if you went for the expert set, it was still cheaper than buying the PHB, DMG and MM. Even back then, most campaigns were ending around level 8-11. These two boxes would net you infinite play time if you were an average group of players.

I knew a lot that never felt the need to go higher than these two boxed set.

We made it to the Campaign Set exactly once, my gang of high school buddies. When the characters hit level 15, we started CM1, Test of the Warlords, and we played our way all the way through that module, all the way through the Thayatian War (as we ended up calling it). Some of my best memories of D&D are from that era of my life, with that gaming group and the BECM modules.

But you're right: that was only once, in over 6 years of playing. Most campaigns made it to about 10th or 11th level and then stopped.

 

[Helldritch]

We made it to the Campaign Set exactly once, my gang of high school buddies. When the characters hit level 15, we started CM1, Test of the Warlords, and we played our way all the way through that module, all the way through the Thayatian War (as we ended up calling it). Some of my best memories of D&D are from that era of my life, with that gaming group and the BECM modules.

But you're right: that was only once, in over 6 years of playing. Most campaigns made it to about 10th or 11th level and then stopped.

Test of the Warlord... God was it great. I still remember how I played Ericall the king of Norworld and how my players were in awe in having me moving around and shaking hand and saying how proud "I" was that such heroes answered my call. These players were ready to let their character die for that king.

We played all the way to the Immortal set. Sometimes, my old players come back from their new staying area to see family members and they drop by, we have a few drinks and guess what, it is still one of the best campaign they ever had. Even better than many 1ed we have had.

 

[DND_Reborn]

We played all the way to the Immortal set.

Yeah, we made it to the Immortals set once, but most did stop in the Expert set prior to level 15...

 

[Von Ether]

I DMed Basic in high school but then went to Gamma World and TMNT and other games. While I played AD&D in college, I didn't run D&D game again until 3e.

I can see the allure of Basic as a OSR tabula rasa but I preferred Castle and Crusades until Worlds Without Number but that's just me.