WotC WotC can, and probably should support multiple editions of D&D.

[Micah Sweet]

Micah has already expressed this is his preferred outcome.

Not for WotC 5e. They're already going in a design direction I don't care for. If you're a fan of what WotC doing with the game right now though, then sure, although all the 3pp nowadays makes that unnecessary to my mind.

 

[ECMO3]

Again, the bookscan numbers represent a fraction of 5E book sales

Sure ... 75% .... which is why I said "over" 4.5M.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In some cases, I've seen entire subsystems relegated to sourcebooks. The first one that comes to mind is the 4th edition of the Swedish game Eon, where there is no magic system or system for martial techniques, because those are in later sourcebooks (published about 5 years later). You also have a regional sourcebook which completely rewrites the system for prayers/religious magic.

Sure, and you buy those things if you want them. It doesn't have anything to do with buying the corebook, which is all you need to play the game.

 

[Parmandur]

The numbers for the 5E top 15 of Bookscan and 1E through 1999 come from a post by See earlier on this thread. Post 123.

The numbers for the 5E adventures comes from additional bookscan data I found online.

Here are all 3 links:

How D&D Sells and What It Means for the Hobby

How many copies do D&D's top products sell? We take a look at BookScan data and what it means for D&D and the hobby.

alphastream.org

D&D 5E’s Top-Selling Adventures and What It Means for the Hobby

D&D adventures historically don't sell well. 5E has tried several approaches. Let's take a look at 5E adventure sales in the BookScan data.

alphastream.org

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x4cdi3kcdcKG9bDXWyNu5QqwmNox0_kugC_ljJbqlj4/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Also check this out from the same source on the bookscan numbers:

"So, from both the PH reported sales and the Starter Sets on Forbes, we might estimate BookScan is between 23-34% of actual sales. This is, of course, a fallible estimate in the absence of more data."

Estimating D&D’s Revenue | Alphastream

The BookScan data gives us a potential window into estimating D&D’s overall revenue, especially when combined with previous clues. If we can estimate the percentage BookScan might be of D&#038…

alphastream.org

 

[Parmandur]

Sure ... 75% .... which is why I said "over" 4.5M.

Nope, thst us what BookScan normally represents for boosk, but missing out on the FLGS makes a huge difference here.

 

[Staffan]

Sure, and you buy those things if you want them. It doesn't have anything to do with buying the corebook, which is all you need to play the game.

But in that particular case, I can't play the game – only a limited version of it without mages.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I've never let the existence of a lot of supplements stop me from getting a corebook, and honestly have a hard time even understanding that point of view.

I did not know they were optional, it looked like to me that one need all those books to have the complete rules. I was put off by the wall of books.

 

[ECMO3]

Nope, that's what bookscan normally represents, but in the case of D&D they represent a far, far smaller chunk. @Alphastream did the math on it in his blog, and it seems these are closer to a third or fourth of the actual 5E total book dales (recall, book scan misses out on all FLGS), and Ray Winninger actually said on Twitter he was on the right track.

At a third it might approach 1E in sales ..... if you excluded Dragon magazine.

Until we have data on the 1E adventures and all the 1E hardcovers we won't really know though. The 1E Fiend Folio for example sold out its entire first printing in 6 months and that is not included in the data.

 

[Parmandur]

At a third it might approach 1E in sales ..... if you excluded Dragon magazine.

Until we have data on the 1E adventures and all the popular 1E hardcovers we won't really know though.

No reason to include the magazine...that was fan submission material, and the neatest cognate currently is Beyond and DMsGuild which are tricky comparisons at best. Even the millions of folks who might not buy anythong on Beyond (like myself) still will get freebies or read their articles at a rate much higher than TSR could have dreamed of in the 80s. (As an aside, out of curiosity I looked into it, it seems a circulation of 100,000 wouldn't have been that huge a number for a magazine at the time: even today, after the death of magazines, the top 100 magazines still in print in the US all have over 300,000)

Tripling or quadrupling all of those books is a pretty big leap past 1E. The modules, by all accounts, did nit sell gigantic numbers...and you triple or quadruple the 5E Adventure book numbers...that's a lot of books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But in that particular case, I can't play the game – only a limited version of it without mages.

Ok, then that game requires more outlay to play it the way you want.