D&D (2024) 2024 Player’s Handbook is ‘Fastest Selling D&D Book Ever’

It’s only officially been out for a week, but according to Wizards of the Coast, the new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook has already surpassed Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything to become the fastest selling D&D book ever—in the entire 50-year history of the game. It has sold three times as many copies as the 2014 version of the books did at launch.

Not only that, the 2024 Player’s Handbook was the biggest print run in D&D’s history.

In a press release today, WotC claims more than 85 million D&D fans worldwide, and says that D&D Beyond, the game’s official online platform, has over 18 million users.

 

[Alphastream]

I'm thankful to Glicker for his 2022 BookScan video, from which I worked up my own Excel figures and put together the blog series that has been mentioned here a few times (thanks, folks!). I am very much a nerd that enjoys trying to understand our industry. I think there are a few kinds of people related to this thread, including folks who have a strong desire to root for or against a game, folks who like pondering how the industry works, and folks who study how the industry works. So long as we are respectful, those can all be valid.

If you like studying how the industry works, I think this path is a hard one. It requires being able to draw a box around your preferences and suppositions and leaving those behind.

For example, there are editions/versions I like more than others. When I look at math, I try to check those preferences. I also have ideas on how the industry works based on what I see. I try to clean my mind of those, or at least be open to them being faulty. Time and time again I find my preconceptions have been wrong. Three quick examples:

• When I moved to Oregon and played Living Greyhawk, I was sure these were all of the active D&D players, and therefore the size of all D&D players in my area was about 50-100 players. When I organized D&D Encounters in stores, we had over 300 unique players in just one season of Encounters, and 3 of those players were people I had known from LG. This upended my worldview as I realized I knew absolutely nothing about the number of D&D players in my city and had vastly under-counted them. I should mention that my gaming store was one of 3-5 running at least one table of D&D Encounters, and many ran 3 or so tables.
• When I traveled the US for work, I would stop in at various gaming stores and join their LFR 4E and later 5E AL games, or start one. I was shocked to find that maybe 1 in 6 players was online in some capacity. For the vast majority of store players, they were not part of any online community and their worldview was the store's shelves. Their views were completely different than what I experienced online and their knowledge of D&D very different.
• Recently I have helped coordinate D&D games at large Seattle conventions. The number of brand new players who want to try D&D is staggeringly large and these new and also casual players are incredibly positive about D&D. While an online community might complain about various 2024 rules changes, these folks were absolutely excited for the new game. And when they tried it, they loved it. There are so many thousands of people who want to try their first game of D&D, just in Seattle, every year.

What's my point? If you really want to understand our industry, it's a wild ride and it will almost certainly upend what you think you know, time and time again.

 

[Parmandur]

I personally think that is only part of what they mean by "undermonetised". I think that they are also looking at things like the success of Baldur's Gate and thinking that they could leverage D&D brand recognition in other areas like video games and other formats like movies and tv.

Amd they ain't wrong!

 

[dragoner]

Think I'm gonna buy it, the local game store has a few copies, curiosity killed the cat, eh?

The Sage's Shoppe - D&D RPG: Rulebook - 2024 Player’s Handbook - Role Playing Games » Dungeons & Dragons Editions » Dungeons & Dragons RPG, 5th Edition

www.thesagesshoppe.com

 

[Morrus]

Ah, my apologies, I might be missing some part of the conversation.

The only use I see is as a lens for interpretation of WotC motivations. If they have nearly 70 million people who love D&D but haven't even signed up for a free account...it makes sense when they say tge brand is "undersmonetized".

The key word there is 'brand'. Note they didn't say 'TTRPG".

It's about leveraging the D&D 'brand'. The TTRPG yes, but also novels and toys and movies and plushies and stuff. Which is fine. But we should be clear what we're discussing. When they say the 'brand' is undermonetised they aren't saying DDB is undersubscribed, they're saying there are more mass market opportunities to monetise the brand. They're talking about lunchboxes and action figures and cartoons and novels and video games and colouring books and video games. I said video games twice. I said what I said.

Always distinguish between the words 'brand' and 'TTRPG'. They aren't the same words for a reason.

 

[Staffan]

a free account does not help all that much with monetization… if you want people that do not play D&D to buy D&D products, you need merchandise, video games, books, etc., those people will not buy much on DDB

Free accounts, I believe, mainly serve as incentives to those who have paid accounts. I don't recall the specific details and can't be hedgehogged to check at the moment, but I believe that if you have a campaign with anyone who has a Master account, everyone in that campaign gets access to everything anyone in that campaign has bought on DDB. So if I have a Master account, and my friend with a free account has Xanathar's Guide to Everything, we will both get access to the stuff from that book if we are in the same campaign.

It's basically a more efficient way of sharing a PHB around a table.

 

[Oofta]

Free accounts, I believe, mainly serve as incentives to those who have paid accounts. I don't recall the specific details and can't be hedgehogged to check at the moment, but I believe that if you have a campaign with anyone who has a Master account, everyone in that campaign gets access to everything anyone in that campaign has bought on DDB. So if I have a Master account, and my friend with a free account has Xanathar's Guide to Everything, we will both get access to the stuff from that book if we are in the same campaign.

It's basically a more efficient way of sharing a PHB around a table.

Yep. I have a master account and share it with several players across a couple of groups. Some of them have paid accounts themselves, some have a PHB, some just access everything through my account.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

The only use I see is as a lens for interpretation of WotC motivations. If they have nearly 70 million people who love D&D but haven't even signed up for a free account...it makes sense when they say tge brand is "undersmonetized".

"Undermonetized" is just one of those current buzzwords at the moment that you have to use in investor meetings and reports otherwise the investment community will turn on your company. Unlike "NFTs" and "Web 3.0" in the recent past or "A.I." in the present perhaps, I can't really fault investors for wanting to hear that your company is going to try to make more money for them.

I can't imagine a corporate executive going "Nah, you know what, we are making enough money and we are happy with where our brands are. We could making our own Marvel cinematic universe or more Baldur's Gate 3 type blockbuster, but really, we are just fine with with printing some books for game stores. That is what we have always done and we are good at it."

I am not quite sure why the community freaked out over the term "undermonetized." It is probably because of practices in the video game sphere, but I think some folks are watching way too many rage-bait YouTube videos. WotC may want to sell cosmetic gear for their VTT, but that shouldn't have an effect on anyone's home game and there are plenty of other VTTs out there.

 

[Morrus]

I am not quite sure why the community freaked out over the term "undermonetized." Probably because of practices in the video game sphere, but I think folks are watching way too many rage-bait YouTube videos.

So you are quite sure.

 

[Zardnaar]

Roll for Combat's update...

Saw that in my feed haven't got around to watching it yet. I can have a pretty good guess what they're going to say.

 

[darjr]

So a retailer friend of mine actually called Barns & Nobles stores and asked if they had the 2024 PHB and every single one of them had them.

He went to the stores web sites in Manhatten and it was there then he called them and they said they had plenty.