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So to be clear: You started planning for the new PHB in late 2020. You built a four year product plan covering 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and parts of 2025. All this back in 2020. It was built with such precision that you had printer slots covered and were buying paper stock. The playtest started...

There's a lot to unpack here. You left Wizards in October of 2022. Are you saying that the entire plan for the new edition was laid down and locked in, to the point that you were sourcing the book's manufacture? You had print windows and everything set up, to the point you were sourcing...

With the caveat that it is a work in progress and might change as I go: I'm in a position where I want to play more TTRPGs and D&D, but right now I don't have a lot of time. I think I am not alone. In fact, I think a huge number of people played a lot of TTRPGs during the pandemic, but since...

Tell that to my deadlines! But it's nice to be back here and on X/Twitter/Bluesky/the alley behind the local 7-11.

That doesn't make any sense to me. If you had a huge order, you'd just split it out across multiple vendors. The more I think about it, the more I'd worry about the business side of things. Hasbro is in massive debt and needs profitability over everything else. Between tariffs and printing in...

It's funny, because it feels like I worked there 30 years ago. I spend more time these days working on games than ever, and it's fun to just talk games and RPGs without the shadow of Hasbro looming over everything.

Wow, and printed in Belgium, too. That's wild. I'll have to check to see what printing costs are like there, but I think the are on the expensive end.

That's wild! And a huge blow to the bottom line. I wonder if the product was so far behind schedule that they had to scatter printing across the world to get stuff out on time. That might be where the idea of multiple print runs come in.

Was it? Why were they printed in the US? That's far more expensive than printing elsewhere, with the savings in shipping nowhere near enough to offset more expensive printing in the states. Plus, the price remained at $50 despite inflation. Roughly speaking, they are selling the book at a 24%...

So did the 4e PHB.

And to throw another thing into the discussion: I am incredibly bullish on TTRPGs. Magic and Warhammer continue to hit record highs after the pandemic. I think they are fundamentally following a very different strategy compared to D&D, and the D&D strategy is a deeply flawed one.

I think there might be a disconnect behind why I'd pull this data and even look into the topic. I, and publishers I work with, need to make informed decisions behind how we spend our time and money. Researching 5.5's relative sales is a critical part of that assessment. Basically, when WotC...

No. The initial print run for any product is based on its project sales. You want to print as many as possible to get the cheapest printing cost per copy and the best deal on shipping. In terms of comparisons, the 5 month run is what WotC is comparing to the first 36 months of 5e. My point is...

This quote had been running circles in my head for the past couple hours, and I think have tracked down why. I have a source that has the actual quote on this topic: "the English language version of the 2024 Players Handbook 'reached more players hands in four months' than the 2014 edition...

I wonder if it has anything to do with how they stock new accounts. I created a dummy account, and it has access to five different sources. Their system could be treating that as 5 separate transactions to attach those to an account. It's about a 5x shift, so I wonder if that's it. They also...

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...

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

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: And using the Internet Wayback Machine, you can see what the registered online users looks like by year. This...