D&D General Did 5e 2024 Not meet the economic goals set, and if not, why not?

[MonsterEnvy]

Bookscan sales, in comparsion to earlier adventures

Are D&D Sales Declining?

In all other RPGs and D&D editions, we see diminishing returns. Each follow-up supplement, adventure, or other product will sell fewer copies and have a shorter tail than the first ones. Is 5E D&D seeing declining sales?

alphastream.org

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You do know this doesn’t matter cause it doesn’t give the full details.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not sure what you mean?

The bolded "So I guess this particular DM didn't want to spend any extra money on the campaign." Bit comes off rather judgemental of the GM and completely overlooks the fact that it could apply equally to any of the players who have spent nothing but could have. Change it to almost anything else and it becomes stark just how bad the player entitlement carried by it is.

For example.... I have a very well stocked full bar on the wall and regularly make cocktails when hosting games at my place when I'm the gm and when im a player. I can't imagine anything but people staring at me with their jaws dropped if I went to a game at someone else's place and said something like "guess [bob] doesn't want to spend any extra money on the game for cocktails". It's always been common that the gm buys more books than their players, but that's been getting taken to the extreme in recent years. Now it's almost the expectation for many that the GM bankroll everyone's participation in a shared hobby as the default obligation of being the GM.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

The bolded "So I guess this particular DM didn't want to spend any extra money on the campaign." Bit comes off rather judgemental of the GM and completely overlooks the fact that it could apply equally to any of the players who have spent nothing but could have. Change it to almost anything else and it becomes stark just how bad the player entitlement carried by it is.

For example.... I have a very well stocked full bar on the wall and regularly make cocktails when hosting games at my place when I'm the gm and when im a player. I can't imagine anything but people staring at me with their jaws dropped if I went to a game at someone else's place and said something like "guess [bob] doesn't want to spend any extra money on the game for cocktails". It's always been common that the gm buys more books than their players, but that's been getting taken to the extreme in recent years. Now it's almost the expectation for many that the GM bankroll everyone's participation in a shared hobby as the default obligation of being the GM.

Aha. I was only giving my perspective on the situation, not saying it was good or bad, just what I think was happening.

 

[mamba]

If it did not make the goals that were set than those goals were unrealistic because, per WOTC, the new PHB sold better than any other D&D book had ever sold (over the same period of time).

I mean, that was the bare minimum expectation… it tells us basically nothing about whether it met actual expectations

Core books always sell the best, so if it had not managed that, 2024 would have been a flop

 

[mamba]

You do know this doesn’t matter cause it doesn’t give the full details.

not giving full details does not mean it does not matter. Whatever Bookscan captures is basically the same for every book, so it does not give you total number of copies sold, but it pretty accurately measures relative success. Which is what the charts show.

The one thing it does not account for is digital sales / direct sales, but unless they basically doubled or tripled between two releases (to account for the difference in sales) and otherwise stayed flat, the chart does show a decline in sales.

While digital is growing, it did not make that one big jump at one point in time

 

[aiouh]

not giving full details does not mean it does not matter. Whatever Bookscan captures is basically the same for every book, so it does not give you total number of copies sold, but it pretty accurately measures relative success. Which is what the charts show.

The one thing it does not account for is digital sales / direct sales, but unless they basically doubled or tripled between two releases, to account for the difference in sales, and otherwise stayed flat, the chart does show a decline in sales.

While digital is growing, it fid not make that one bug jump at one point in time

You would be normally correct that Bookscan could still serve as a proxy to compare comparable products, but I think DDB is special.

I think DND Beyond is a lot more essential to how Casual gamers interact with the game rather than just an electronic storefront for books. It's fair to say that the ratio would be a lot more different than say, Pathfinder, which has excellent 3rd party character builders (better than the licensed ones tbh), whereas 5e has that one incredibly jarring PDF of dubious legality and the very excellent DDB character manager.

Also I might add that pre-ordering the entire game digitally was extremely cheap.

 

[mamba]

You would be normally correct that Bookscan could still serve as a proxy to compare comparable products, but I think DDB is special.

I do not think it is special, it is growing, sure, but steadily while the sales showed a clear decline at one point that is not accounted for this way

Also I might add that pre-ordering the entire game digitally was extremely cheap.

not really, that was the same price they sell for digitally / physically afterwards, the only thing that was relatively cheap was preordering the digital + physical bundle, and that is only true because the books do not sell at a discount at Amazon these days

Also, the chart is not about the 2024 core books but about the various modules that came before them, so even if that were true it would not matter

 

[jayoungr]

A lot of people who have played it agree with it being an improvement.

That doesn't make it not a matter of perception.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A lot of people who have played it agree with it being an improvement.

The main complaint I've heard is the new grapple rules (because it's always the grapple rules) make PC grapplers non-viable

 

[the Jester]

Eberron and Forgotten Realms players books don’t strike me as weird. In fact they seem pretty base line and a good place to start. Yet I would say there is plenty of room to develop there.

Honestly our multiple groups have found 2024 to be a straight upgrade on 2014. I get why casual players that get the books out twice a year when mates visit would be reluctant. In my anecdotal experience everyone who regularly plays the game and isn’t mid campaign has been pretty happy to update.

I’m really struggling to see why I wouldn’t. Given the low cost-benefit calculation.

I'm a long time regular player and DM and I don't like the new stuff.

It's got some serious power creep, it fails to offer sufficient DM support- the lack of rules for making a new monster is a particularly egregious case in point- and quite a few of the decision made (e.g. what has happened with the Humanoid creature type and monsters that used to be and, IMHO, should still be Humanoids) are... let's just say not to my taste.

I have, and will, use some of the new monsters from the MM, but can't see myself updating my game to 2024 rules or even hybridizing much of the PH stuff into my game. I'm going to try it out in another DM's campaign, but the 2024 ruleset is not going in the direction I want to go in.