D&D General Behold! A mega chart of AD&D 1st and 2nd ed monster products sales!

[Parmandur]

What made Monster Manual II so bangin'?

It collected stuff from various Adventure modules, mainly. A lot ofnweird stuff, but also some stuff that really stuck, like introducing Tabaxi.

 

[pemerton]

It collected stuff from various Adventure modules, mainly. A lot ofnweird stuff, but also some stuff that really stuck, like introducing Tabaxi.

Tabaxi are in the FF. You might be thinking of Tasloi, which are in the MM2.

 

[Parmandur]

Tabaxi are in the FF. You might be thinking of Tasloi, which are in the MM2.

Yup, probably!

 

[RuinousPowers]

That is not quite correct. By the time MM2 came out the MM1 had already sold about 700,000 copies and then sold another 200,000 the year MM2 came out and sold 300,000. After that they were pretty much the same. So the MM1 outsold the MM2 by about 600,000 units. If I am reading that chart correctly.

Yeah, I guess MM2 only really sold for 1 year, then dropped like a rock.

I was thinking these were more "lifetime" sales at first.

 

[Jer]

On thing that surprises me about these stats - if you compare them to the 1e DMG and the 1e PHB stats, the Monster Manual was the lowest selling of the three year-to-year. Except for 1980 where it outsold the DMG by fewer than 10K copies.

I'm actually surprised by that - I would have assumed that the MM would have sold more copies than the DMG did. If only because those of us who played B/X or BECMI could also get utility out of it. (But then again, I also owned a DMG and pulled stuff from it too, so maybe that says something...)

 

[Mezuka]

MMII: Modrons, I know some people love them, but I still think today they wasted too many pages on a very niche monster.

 

[Zardnaar]

On thing that surprises me about these stats - if you compare them to the 1e DMG and the 1e PHB stats, the Monster Manual was the lowest selling of the three year-to-year. Except for 1980 where it outsold the DMG by fewer than 10K copies.

I'm actually surprised by that - I would have assumed that the MM would have sold more copies than the DMG did. If only because those of us who played B/X or BECMI could also get utility out of it. (But then again, I also owned a DMG and pulled stuff from it too, so maybe that says something...)

Monster stats were often included in adventures so you didn't really need it unless you wrote your own stuff.

 

[Mezuka]

On thing that surprises me about these stats - if you compare them to the 1e DMG and the 1e PHB stats, the Monster Manual was the lowest selling of the three year-to-year. Except for 1980 where it outsold the DMG by fewer than 10K copies.

I'm actually surprised by that - I would have assumed that the MM would have sold more copies than the DMG did. If only because those of us who played B/X or BECMI could also get utility out of it. (But then again, I also owned a DMG and pulled stuff from it too, so maybe that says something...)

From my personal experience and from accounts I've read many people bought the MM and used it with B/X, Holmes or OD&D. It was a big mashup of rulesets, and it was fun.

Things changed when the PHB was published. Many made a choice. Stay with the old D&D mashup or go pure AD&D. We went 100% pure AD&D.

 

[JEB]

I wonder why MC 1 jumped in sales in 1992? (Whatever it was, it didn't do much for MC 2.)

Besides the Fiend Folio, disappointed we don't have stats for the other MC Annuals. Just MCA 1, and only for the third year of its lifespan.

 

[darjr]

Wow. In the Facebook post Alex, the owner of the Gameholecon who has a copy of almost everything TSR made, with many of them still in shrink, refused to buy the loose Monstrous Compendium and still refuses to collect it!