D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[darjr]

See, that's not entirely true.

D&D Beyond's order numbering system (both the current one, and the previous one) runs sequentially, so if you buy enough digital things from WotC it is possible to track order numbers by date and come up with an estimate of the number of orders placed over time. Obviously the number of transactions isn't the same as the dollar value of those purchases, but it also isn't no data. If I do that, I get the following graph:

View attachment 394470

Those are my estimated number of orders placed per day for each of those years, subtracting my first order number from the last and dividing by the number of days in between. In the first year, 2017 (which was really only 3.5 months because they started taking orders on 2017-08-15) there were ~380 orders placed per day. That grew year-on-year before peaking at ~9320 orders per day in 2022. In 2023 it dropped slightly, down to ~8310 orders per day.

It is important to note that WotC moved to a new ordering system at the end of April 2024, and it is quite possible that the drop is simply because their ordering system now works differently. As far as I can tell, it still seems to be issuing sequential order numbers, but I can't be sure. Also, if I look closely at the order numbers on the new system, there is a peculiar disjunct at the beginning of December. From May 2024 to the end of November 2024, there appear to have been ~580,000 orders placed, which is only ~2680 per day—a massive drop from the first few months of 2024. However, in the first three weeks of December 2024, the order numbers climbed at an average ~15800 per day, which seems to indicate something odd going on. I note that that doesn't seem to coincide with the availability of the core books, since those went on sale in June 2024, during the period where orders seem to have been abnormally slow. Given that, it would probably be prudent to take the 2024 number with a pinch of salt.

Does this include adjustment for when they stopped doing the micro sales?

Or did those not have order numbers?

Also I wonder if your other oddities are due to preorders

 

[darjr]

Interesting data for the order numbers! You can also look at the number of registered users online at any given moment via the DDB forums. Here's what that shows for 2024, by month:

View attachment 394474

And using the Internet Wayback Machine, you can see what the registered online users looks like by year. This data is a little rougher, but I'm confident enough in it to share the general shape of the curve. First data point is 2018. I'll clean this up when I have time, maybe later today:
View attachment 394475

I think there was a time where you could be on DnDBeyond but not necessarily in the forums. It’s been a while so I could be misremembering.

 

[mearls]

I think there was a time where you could be on DnDBeyond but not necessarily in the forums. It’s been a while so I could be misremembering.

Yeah, that's why I wouldn't take those numbers as anything more than something to look at along with other info.

 

[Echohawk]

Does this include adjustment for when they stopped doing the micro sales?

Or did those not have order numbers?

Also I wonder if your other oddities are due to preorders

It's order numbers, which I'm pretty sure includes everything sold via the site, including micro sales and digital dice. You could be right that the drop off was, in part, due to the termination of micro sales, but it seems unlikely (to me) that those were numerous enough to make much difference (I could be wrong). The order numbers definitely include pre-orders (mine were almost all pre-orders).

Here are graphs of just the order numbers over time, on the new and old sales platforms:

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the reason for the slowdown with 5.5 is pretty simple - does anyone have a clear idea of why someone playing 5e, or an earlier version of the game, should drop $150 on the new books?

Thinking back to D&D products that really grew the audience:

• AD&D 1st edition, at the time of its release, offered the first hardcover TTRPG books and unmatched art. It was also the first time that comprehensive rules for D&D were gathered in one place. It was a no brainer upgrade.
• Basic D&D ('77, '81, '83) offered a simple, concise set of rules built around dungeon crawling in a cheap, accessible package. It also had fantastic art and gameplay that beginners could pick up with ease.
• D&D 3e offered a unified game system, a contemporary vision for D&D art (even if you hated dungeon punk, it fit right in with Diablo and other hit fantasy games of the era), and unmatched freedom for DMs and players. Remember, half-orc paladins weren't a thing until 3e.
• D&D 5e made the game more accessible, sped up gameplay, and offered a completely free version of the game online. (I'm not counting the SRD - you could use it, but you had to already know what you were doing). It had a multiyear playtest that brought the community together.

In each case, the edition or product made a clear, easy to understand case that fired up the community and pulled in new people.

D&D editions that struggle usually have their root in offering an easy offramp for DMs. They don't offer enough of an upgrade.

• AD&D 2nd edition had better art and was much better organized, but the game didn't provide enough of a mechanical upgrade to make starting over worth it. The game also removed a variety of IP elements to make non-D&D fans happy.
• 3.5 lacked a clear vision for improving the game. It became the default, mainly because the D&D audience was shrinking as players who jumped back in with 3e bounced back out.
• D&D 4th edition tried to aim at MMO players, but in the process failed to make a game that the existing 3.5 audience was happy with.
• It remains to be seen how 5.5 will go, but the early signs point to something like 3.5, with the audience shrinking from a sharp rise of interest that the game failed to hold. It's also not clear that changes to the IP are winning more fans than they're alienating.

In today's gaming market, products that are OK or not demonstrably bad don't pull in an audience. Gaming is glutted with products, and if you can't stand out you end up fading into the background. I think that's where D&D is these days.

It's a mistake to assume that D&D's competition comes from Pathfinder or any other TTRPG. Its competition comes from the entirety of entertainment, plus the fact that a group can play D&D while ignoring WotC's product line. A D&D product needs to punch through a lot of static to stand out. When's the last time a D&D product did that?

I know it plays into my own thoughts on the matter, but I have to say I find this incredibly insightful, pretty much point for point.

 

[mearls]

Honest question: does it need to? I always understood the goal of 5e24 more than anything was to maintain the status quo, not to light a fire or shift landscapes. Isn't that really the whole point of changing so little?

That might be the goal, but the trick comes down to figuring out from a publisher's POV if they are doing that.

If they hit, it then means you need to figure out if you want to hitch your wagon to something that isn't growing. If it's not, IMO it's better to go with something of your own.

My experience with games is that a game that is holding steady is getting ready to shrink, unless you take specific steps to charge up growth with new features, content, etc. With 5.5, the rules are locked into place for the next several years. Why launch into a platform that's stuck in neutral?

In terms of supporting both versions, that's my biggest criticism of 5.5. It's not clear what that looks like or what fans expect. There's no clear, easy way to figure out what that actually means. The risk is that something that supports both either requires a lot more design overheard or it appeals to neither group.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is worth considering how much of the 3E product line-up came out for 3.5E onwards. The early years of 3E were very light on material - the firehose came after 3.5E was released. It wasn't as light as 5E, of course, but still...

Is that true? I see to recall a considerable amount of product for 3e prior to 3 5's release...

 

[Imaro]

A couple of links:

Roll20 Most Popular

Roll20 Hottest

5.5 is ahead on the hottest, which I believe looks at sales in a shorter time period, but still behind on the most popular list.

I interpret that to match my overall sense of 5.5 - it's doing fine, but it's not doing anything to fire up the audience or shift the TTRPG landscape.

That's an interesting way to interpret this but I have to ask how far back does Most Popular skew? If it's lifetime sales... why would we expect 5e '24 to be above it with an incomplete set of corebooks and the PHB only having been available for 4 months on Roll20. If anything the fact that it is topping hottest seems to suggest at least short term it's selling very well... or am I interpretting something incorrectly?

 

[Micah Sweet]

True... but then again I might suggest that the D&D doesn't necessarily care if established players buy the three new core books?

If 5E14 players stick with 5E14, that's not really a problem. Yes, WotC won't get $150 from those players... but those players are still D&D 5E players and thus a part of the market for a lot of their subsequent product releases. Any adventure path books, any setting books, any monster lore books... those will all be able to be used by 5E14 players, so it doesn't matter than they haven't gone 5E24. They are still part of the 5E market WotC is selling to.

This is a situation where I think veteran players are once again giving themselves too much credit. Players of 5E14 think that they are the primary purchasing force for Dungeons & Dragons 5E and that everything should really be catered to what they want to buy. But I do not believe (nor do I think WotC believes) that to be the case. WotC always seems to gear their product to NEW players. Opening up their market to the wider world, not constantly trying to just re-sell and re-sell and re-sell product to the same people over and over again. But yet veteran players around here often act and speak as though that if they don't buy what WotC is selling that WotC is going to be in trouble. But nothing could be further from the truth. WotC is fine with whatever those players choose to do.

If veteran 5E players feel like the messiness of 5E14 was becoming just irritating enough that they wanted to join the new players coming in through 5E24... WotC certainly wouldn't say No. But they also I don't think care if they do or don't. After all... veteran players are just as likely to move on to games like Level Up or Shadowdark or Tales of the Valiant as they are anything else (including 5E24) so what's the point in trying to grab onto them so tightly? If they move to a new product, they move. No big deal and not a WotC concern. There's always a large swathe of new players coming in to cater to instead.

I'm still not sure where all these completely new to RPGs itching to give $150 to WotC are coming from. Where were they before, and why did they just decide to buy three thick books for a type of game they've never before experienced? Because if they're learning from existing players, than I'm afraid the veterans you are discounting still matter.

 

[Scribe]

My experience with games is that a game that is holding steady is getting ready to shrink, unless you take specific steps to charge up growth with new features, content, etc. With 5.5, the rules are locked into place for the next several years. Why launch into a platform that's stuck in neutral?

The "dead game" phenomenon we see in online communities all the time. Its not REALLY dead, but if that perception takes root, it impacts things.

Word of mouth matters.