Darksun TSR sales! From Benjamin Riggs.

[Parmandur]

I think Ed Greenwood’s presence is key not any changes to the setting. The Realms also suffered from terrible adventures, tonal changes and setting changes as bad as Greyhawk. Greenwood’s continuing presence on the author list assured them that it was all still legit (even when half the FR stinkers had his fingerprints on them)

Yeah, that what I'm saying: it provided continuity and lent a distinct personality to the the Setting.

 

[GreyLord]

Spelljammer sold the least and thats the setting WotC has gone with next.

Obviously after that Starfinder money.

I think it's a risk. They are in the experimental stage of the edition. Last experiment was to see what a re-release with reorganized information would go like (MotM). I'm not sure how that will be seen, and hope that the AE goes better (at least my opinion of how MotM has gone thus far).

This is an experiment with new formats, and testing the waters with presentation and promotion (at least as I see it) of what could be a relatively unknown (to most who play D&D) setting. There have been other lesser know settings put out, so that's not as risky, but...as we can see from the graphs, putting this out COULD be risky in how well it's accepted.

Note, they are also putting out Dragonlance, so it could be that it is hoped to be the counterbalance to Spelljammer if Spelljammer falls flat. I LOVE Dragonlance, but I'm not sure it's going to be a stellar success either (I hope it is, but...I don't know).

 

[overgeeked]

I think it's a risk. They are in the experimental stage of the edition. Last experiment was to see what a re-release with reorganized information would go like (MotM). I'm not sure how that will be seen, and hope that the AE goes better (at least my opinion of how MotM has gone thus far).

This is an experiment with new formats, and testing the waters with presentation and promotion (at least as I see it) of what could be a relatively unknown (to most who play D&D) setting. There have been other lesser know settings put out, so that's not as risky, but...as we can see from the graphs, putting this out COULD be risky in how well it's accepted.

Note, they are also putting out Dragonlance, so it could be that it is hoped to be the counterbalance to Spelljammer if Spelljammer falls flat. I LOVE Dragonlance, but I'm not sure it's going to be a stellar success either (I hope it is, but...I don't know).

It goes back to the idea of having something unique to offer from a setting. Spelljammer has a huge focus on ships and wild races. So the rules and merch for those are obvious. Dragonlance, as presented soon, will focus on mass combat. So rules and merch for those are obvious.

 

[John R Davis]

Spelljammer sold the least and thats the setting WotC has gone with next.

Obviously after that Starfinder money.

Well.
It is gawdy and bright and has wierd looking twee things so fits the tastes of young and new players.
I'm going buy it!

 

[Davies]

This continues to surprise, I honestly would have thought Dark Sun did much better than Ravenloft.

I think the moral of the story here is that releasing a revised edition of something when sales of the original start to flag is not a particularly sound strategy; it doesn't seem to EVER produce comparable results.

 

[Jer]

Because they primarily stopped publishing it. Can't sell stuff you're not...selling. They made a decision to support FR over it. That much we know. But we also know it was selling second only to FR before they stopped primary support for it.

They tried multiple times to sell it and the initial sales were lower each time they did. We don't have Wizards numbers for their 1998 attempt or their 2 3e releases but I suspect they were not good.

So there's that. But Realms books followed the same pattern. So as I said elsewhere I suspect the real reason the Realms is known and successful is due to non-ttrpg licensing- specifically the video games. I have to believe that Eye of the Beholder and the Gold Box games gave the setting more visibility so by the time Wizards tried to do anything with Greyhawk the benefits of doing so were outweighed by the costs. And also the massive push with novels that they did with FR that they tried with Greyhawk and abandoned.

So to me the real questions are why did they push FR so hard and just give up on Greyhawk. And I suspect it's because they owned The Realms through a signed contract with Ed Greenwood and their ownership of Greyhawk was more complicated and involved the potential of litigation with someone they forced out of the company. Combine that with the very real feeling that Greyhawk fans weren't interested in a Greyhawk without Gygax and it makes sense that TSR would push FR and leave Greyhawk fallow. By the time Wizards came along and tried to make Greyhawk a thing (including finally at least using it as a setting in a video game) there just wasn't enough interest for them to work with - even internally IIRC Erik Mona was the only one who really evangelized for Greyhawk.

 

[RuinousPowers]

Lots of Greyhawk fans seem to love how, unlike FR, every rock and tree wasn't mapped out and given a history. If they had continued to support it, I'm sure that aspect would certainly be lost.

 

[grimslade]

These numbers show that sales of D&D were slightly bigger than the 80's (post '84) but were spread across many many more products.
Greyhawk was supported into 3.x with LG. There was a crazy amount of content of wildly differing quality produced for the setting. The one thing Greyhawk never had was a successful expanding novel franchise. The Justicar and Gord novels were hardly blockbusters. Forgotten Realms dominated the fantasy space in bookstores and video games for a decade and a half. Dragonlance was more valuable as a fiction IP than a TTRPG. Greyhawk had the classic modules and the names.
The reason people clamor for Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft is that they are large departures from the traditional Western fantasy space. People didn't play a ton of the settings, but they referenced them a whole lot. Dark Sun halflings, nautiloids, and Dark taints all trickled into 'regular' games. And the ads. People might not have shelled out $25 for a box set but anytime they picked up a Dragon or Dungeon there were full-page ads with this phenomenal art. It was easily recognizable. Brom for DS. DiTerlizzi for Planescape. It resonates much farther than mechanics.
I think the scale that we see for these TSR sales is so far removed from where D&D is today. WotC titles are not seeing sub 60k sold for the life of the product. D&D 5e is so far removed from the tiny niche product of its history. We have Amazon sales charts to get a glimpse and I can guarantee there are no warehouses of moldering VRGtR hiding in Renton.
This doesn't mean that Spelljammer will be a success. It does mean that WotC can push boundaries a bit further and leverage that bit of nostalgia and the promise of 'Spelljammer Confirmed!' Wild beyond the Witch Light was a pretty big departure for WotC and it seems to be a very successful one. We will see what SJ does. I hope it does well and allows WotC to be less conservative with the game.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

They tried multiple times to sell it and the initial sales were lower each time they did. We don't have Wizards numbers for their 1998 attempt or their 2 3e releases but I suspect they were not good.

So there's that. But Realms books followed the same pattern. So as I said elsewhere I suspect the real reason the Realms is known and successful is due to non-ttrpg licensing- specifically the video games. I have to believe that Eye of the Beholder and the Gold Box games gave the setting more visibility so by the time Wizards tried to do anything with Greyhawk the benefits of doing so were outweighed by the costs. And also the massive push with novels that they did with FR that they tried with Greyhawk and abandoned.

So to me the real questions are why did they push FR so hard and just give up on Greyhawk. And I suspect it's because they owned The Realms through a signed contract with Ed Greenwood and their ownership of Greyhawk was more complicated and involved the potential of litigation with someone they forced out of the company. Combine that with the very real feeling that Greyhawk fans weren't interested in a Greyhawk without Gygax and it makes sense that TSR would push FR and leave Greyhawk fallow. By the time Wizards came along and tried to make Greyhawk a thing (including finally at least using it as a setting in a video game) there just wasn't enough interest for them to work with - even internally IIRC Erik Mona was the only one who really evangelized for Greyhawk.

Greyhawk had a lot of fans in the writers and owners - Peter Adkinson loved it, and that's why it was brought back once TSR was bought, not because it sold well.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

These numbers show that sales of D&D were slightly bigger than the 80's (post '84) but were spread across many many more products.
Greyhawk was supported into 3.x with LG. There was a crazy amount of content of wildly differing quality produced for the setting. The one thing Greyhawk never had was a successful expanding novel franchise. The Justicar and Gord novels were hardly blockbusters. Forgotten Realms dominated the fantasy space in bookstores and video games for a decade and a half. Dragonlance was more valuable as a fiction IP than a TTRPG. Greyhawk had the classic modules and the names.
The reason people clamor for Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft is that they are large departures from the traditional Western fantasy space. People didn't play a ton of the settings, but they referenced them a whole lot. Dark Sun halflings, nautiloids, and Dark taints all trickled into 'regular' games. And the ads. People might not have shelled out $25 for a box set but anytime they picked up a Dragon or Dungeon there were full-page ads with this phenomenal art. It was easily recognizable. Brom for DS. DiTerlizzi for Planescape. It resonates much farther than mechanics.
I think the scale that we see for these TSR sales is so far removed from where D&D is today. WotC titles are not seeing sub 60k sold for the life of the product. D&D 5e is so far removed from the tiny niche product of its history. We have Amazon sales charts to get a glimpse and I can guarantee there are no warehouses of moldering VRGtR hiding in Renton.
This doesn't mean that Spelljammer will be a success. It does mean that WotC can push boundaries a bit further and leverage that bit of nostalgia and the promise of 'Spelljammer Confirmed!' Wild beyond the Witch Light was a pretty big departure for WotC and it seems to be a very successful one. We will see what SJ does. I hope it does well and allows WotC to be less conservative with the game.

I think you've hit on something. TSR novels sold way better than their RPG books. (credit to Lowder and the rest of the fiction department). Dragonlance was basically a novel line with an intermittent RPG sideline from 2nd edition onwards. Forgotten Realms books (esp Drizzt) helped propel the line above Greyhawk.

Imagine a different world where the Drizzt books were set in Erelhu-Cinlu rather than Menzoberranzen...