D&D 5E (2024) Is WOTC done publishing campaigns?

GreyLord said:

Many of those of this generation are not as avid in creating digital accounts (except for maybe facebook) on new platforms as younger generations...at least from how I have understood it from those who explained these things to me. So, you will find that those who are on things such as TikTok, reddit, Instagram and other social media in that line trend towards younger ages rather than older.

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I might agree with this if you are talking about extreme numbers, but I think these things are pretty ubiquitous across all age groups. So might be true that 99% of young people are on social media, where "only" 95% of people in their 40s are but I don't think the difference is significant for what we are talking about.

GreyLord said:

people who played back in the 80s and 90s and are too old and senile to really get into all these digital signups...

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GreyLord said:

We aren't talking about the guy who played D&D back in the 80s and hasn't thought about it in 40 years, tossed his books, and has no connection to it anymore, we are talking about those who are excited and enthusiastic when they see something with D&D...you know,,,fans.

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We weren't talking about a person that played in the 80s and doesn't play anymore. But we were also not talking about D&D fans in general. We were talking about consumers that buy D&D products now, RPG (adventure) books specifically. We don't care whether they actually play D&D or not. A FR fan that buys a FR adventure just to read it, but never actually plays D&D is just as valuable as someone that buys the same D&D book to play it... A fan that doesn't buy anything isn't relevant.

DDB accounts also do not equal current D&D customers, as folks I know have bought D&D books, but never have had a DDB account... I actually suspect that the majority of D&D players over the last decade don't have a DDB account.

But that's not important either. Someone argued that releasing more D&D adventures would be good for WotC/Hasbro, I disagree with that: the slightly increased sales would generate more revenue, but the cost of the additional product would reduce profit. WotC/Hasbro has been at this for almost 30 years, longer then TSR had been in business, they know what model works and doesn't. I think there's a good reason why 5e has had so relatively few physical products, and I also think that D&D has been doing better for WotC/Hasbro then ever (if we exclude the unnatural peak during the pandemic)...

HatWearingFool said:

...

To me D&D scene is way bigger than it was when I was kid playing in the late 80’s and 90’s. I struggled to find people to play with. Now every school in the city has clubs running multiple groups, all the community youth centres run games multiple nights, I’m in 3 games, and I know of a adult club in my small city with adults averages between 50-60 people.

All anecdotal I know, but now that I think about it the size of the player base in my small city is astounding… especially compared to how hard it was to find a game in my youth.

Truly living in a golden age.

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Quoted for Truth.

GreyLord said:

... If we go with low numbers (people who played back in the 80s and 90s and are too old and senile to really get into all these digital signups...

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Really?

I'd bet (in a friendly way) I have a larger digital presence than you think.

And I'm not senile yet... (62)...

Reynard said:

As an aside: I did not know Amazon was selling keys to Beyond content. That's interesting.

Is Tyranny as bad as some folks say? That's a good price for a big fat module.

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I'm playing it now. I'm having fun.

GreyLord said:

And there will be people on these forums that will type it out with a straight face...that yes...that D&D is bigger and more popular than any of those (Playstation, Nintendo, Baseball...etc).

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To quote myself...and to those who are not the hardcore fans who somehow stumble across this thread...

I present the last few pages of this thread as evidence of the exact thing I stated would happen.

GreyLord said:

To quote myself...and to those who are not the hardcore fans who somehow stumble across this thread...

I present the last few pages of this thread as evidence of the exact thing I stated would happen.

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Except that no one has said that D&D is more popular than any of those things. They've argued against your speculated numbers, (and other claims) which are, frankly baffling.

SkidAce said:

I'd like to see such numbers expressed as percentage of population. How much has that number grown?

Just selling MORE copies wont tell the entire story.

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The US population in 1980 was 226m
The US population in 2026 is 341m

That's about a 50% increase in population. So a 50% increase in sales would be matching sales.

Previous "best guess" estimates (I believe based on figures from Ben Riggs, who is a legitimate researcher and author) on how many copies the 2014 1E PHB sold is about 6m copies between 2014 and 2024. This does not appear to include digital sales nor does it include the 2024 edition (AFAICT).

The 1E PHB sold 1.5m copies (also I believe Ben Riggs figures) between 1979 and 1990 (it was replaced by the 2E PHB in 1989).

So accounting for population in the US (and we can assume that roughly even outs worldwide), it still looks like the 5E PHB sold about 3x as well as the 1E PHB.

There are complicating factors, of course, like the sales of other versions of D&D in the 1980s, but those are at least matched by the complications of things like 5E having both multiple starter sets and completely free versions available online.

GreyLord said:

To quote myself...and to those who are not the hardcore fans who somehow stumble across this thread...

I present the last few pages of this thread as evidence of the exact thing I stated would happen.

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Care to quote anyone actually saying that? Because otherwise "Facts not in evidence", as they say, and you're in trouble with the judge.