Exactly! When people talk about the weakness of the TTRPG business (only one person buys, DMs make up a lot of stuff) they are also describing its strengths.
D&D 5E According to the Hasbro Q1 earning call D&D sales are up substantially.
- Thread starter Henadic Theologian
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Alphastream
Hero
I wonder about this. I'm not sure. It could be. I think at various points in RPG history it felt like there were big communities of players for various games (Vampire being a clear one), but the reality was always that D&D was unfathomably big. The difference is probably even greater now. Even the biggest crowdfunders are small when compared to the sales of anything in the top 75 of official D&D 5E books.
Crowdfunding and online spaces make it easier to find a group, but it's still hard. No question that the Avatar RPG sees play. But it doesn't show great excitement at conventions, online, in stores, really anywhere. Nearly any top crowdfunded RPG is like that. Shadowdark is an exception, and Free League has done really well, but I am not seeing a sea change at this time. I have a great group with whom I can play all kinds of RPGs, but most folks still struggle to find a table of players for anything that isn't D&D and sales continue to reflect that, I think. There are many games that are light variants of D&D, but none of them come close to Shadowdark in community, awareness, or sales. Shadowdark appears to stand on its own.
Critical Role / Darrington Press have shown real promise for creating community, but we so far haven't seen that community around their RPG releases. It would be very cool to see Daggerheart create real energy and excitement. I like what the game is trying to do. It will be interesting to see if it can grow the way Shadowdark has grown.
MGibster
Legend
I feel like we've been in the age of D&D like games for just about the entirety of the last 25 years. At least since the Great d20 Glut of the early 2000s. In the 1990s I could walk into my FLGS and see AD&D side by side with GURPS, Cyberpunk 2020, Dark Conspiracy, Traveller, and a myriad of others games, but for many years in the 2000s it was mostly just D&D, d20 products, and Pathfinder.
I think the difference now is that prior to the current era, you had to make a big investment up front to get your game out there. You paid for art, design, management, printing, warehousing, and everything else, then figured out if you had a success. You could sell a fair number of books but still run out of cash.
Today, you can start small and build up an audience. Games like Shadowdark, Pirate Borg, and Mothership can build an audience online, run their business, and then branch out into retail.
That means if you have a D&D-like or any other game you want to publish, you can test the water first, build your audience, and then go into retail once you have built things up.
darjr
I crit!
It's a choice by the stores mostly, especially now. My favorite store has many games.
Still, even then, as now, the sales compared to D&D were probably tiny.
As far as the age? I think we are entering a strange era not unlike the one boardgames have existed in. D&D is like monopoly or catan, in every home, and the rest of the hobby booms but is still tiny in comparison. Which in proportion may not be much different than it's always been. That would also mean a huge bump to other RPGs.
I don't see D&D as a good measure of success. It's so huge that I don't think anyone entering the TTRPG business should use it as a yardstick. If anything, it can be a distraction.
What we do see now is a path for solo devs or smaller companies to establish a niche, connect with their players, and build a viable, ongoing business. In some ways it's like the D&D Next playtest but on a smaller, more focused scale.
IME, TTRPG publishing runs into trouble when it tries to act like a TCG or miniatures game, with monthly releases that must sell for the business to work.
occam
Hero
I don't believe these assumptions. First, let's talk about that confusing chart. While one's inclination might be to interpret it as a chart of increases comparing present to past in various categories (i.e. Tabletop increased by 37% compared to past Tabletop revenue), that interpretation makes the 46% overall increase nonsensical.
Instead, as @Umbran pointed out in another thread, what it probably means is that each category's bar is the portion of the overall bar accounted for by the category. IOW, Tabletop was responsible for ~37/46 of the overall increase. Using dollar figures: WotC revenue was up ~$146M from last year. So:
- Tabletop was up ~$117M (37/46 of $146M)
- Digital was up ~$3M (1/46 of $146M)
- Licensing was up ~$25M (8/46 of $146M)
- FX (whatever that is) was down ~$3M
- Tabletop was up $115.6M
- Digital was up $3-4M
- Licensing was up $26-27M
- Tabletop is Magic and D&D: cards, books, etc.
- Digital is MtG Arena, DDB, and other first-party digital offerings.
- Licensing is ancillary products (3PP accessories, clothing, etc.), and I think Monopoly Go, BG3, etc.
- Can anyone confirm that last bit? Is it possible they're part of Digital instead?
Oh wait, I just realized we do have a hint of something interesting, I think.
- Magic overall is up 46%. (cf. slide 27 of the earnings presentation)
- WotC Tabletop is up 51%. (ibid)
- Tabletop represents over 74% of WotC revenues (ibid), so it's definitely the big dog.
However, with Magic growing 46%, and D&D presumably doing well, I agree that the low growth in Digital is pretty mysterious if MtG Arena and DDB are big components, and if BG3, for example, isn't a part of it. It seems like something else in there must have decreased, but I don't know what that would be.
The Soloist
Hero
Savage Worlds made an impression starting in 2003. By 2012, it was the default non-D&D game for many groups in our area. It was discussed extensively on the local RPG forum. I loved the Cyberpunk setting book, of which I can't recall the title. GMed several short campaigns for two years around 2013-14.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Nor should they: yet both WoTC with their direct sales and retailers seem to have been doing well woth the books regardless.
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