D&D 5E According to the Hasbro Q1 earning call D&D sales are up substantially.

[Alphastream]

I'm going to summon @Alphastream as someone on his Discord loves to do the "break out D&D" math

Thanks! I haven't looked at this Q1 yet (but will this weekend, in time for our Mastering Dungeons recording next week). The quick look I had says that this is indeed a great quarter for both Magic and D&D. It's also the first time in a few quarters that D&D has been mentioned during the main call, so that's a nice indicator.

Friend of the show Scipio is an expert at reading these reports and does 90% of the work when he and I look at the numbers. He mentions on our Discord he feels this all suggests very strong growth. They did not give us any math for BG3, which is what we would need to again estimate D&D's size within reasonable accuracy. But, we will try to make an estimate within a few million on this week's show. Either way, D&D is doing well. Historically, this has been great for our entire hobby.

Sales have always surged when D&D had a new edition, though this time it is even better for D&D since sales have shifted to more often be direct sales with a far higher profit margin. It is a great sign that Q1 is strong, showing continued 2024 success. In future quarters we get to see how the edition endures. The only RPG to ever show continued growth is 5E 2014 (Shadowdark may also pull off this trick, though it's early yet in its lifecycle). This growth came not from fans behaving very differently (many still came, bought a few things, left), but from the incredible sustained number of new fans coming in to replace those that left at ever-increasing numbers (until around just after 2020). Replicating 2014's success is a tall order, especially when none of us can ever pin down why it happened (we can all list reasons, but none of us know for sure which ones were the key or if maybe all of them were). Bottom line, D&D 2024 is doing really well and D&D as a segment is far bigger than ever before and continues to vastly outperform all other RPG companies.

 

[Scribe]

Shadowdark may also pull off this trick

 

[Alphastream]

D&D is the master in the TTRPG industry, but it a dwarf if we compare the money earned by Hasbro thanks Monopoly-Go. I would bet Hasbro dreams a franchise style Pokemon.

I want to correct this statement. The revenue for Monopoly Go is ludicrously large. But the revenue that Hasbro gets from that license is a fraction of the billions. When you take licensed revenue portions from BG3 + Monopoly Go, D&D (paper and digital) are about twice that total. I would argue that, business wise, D&D is also far more stable. Licensed revenue is exciting, and worth pursuing, but D&D is more dependable and important currently. (It just isn't exciting in investor calls). We review Hasbro Q4 and the various segment size in this episode.
BG3 and Monopoly Go total in 2024: $148M (higher than 2023)
D&D total in 2024: $284.7M (estimated by Scipo and Mastering Dungeons/Teos Abadia, using quarterly earning reports and investor calls)

 

[Alphastream]

Heh. Yeah, what Kelsey mentioned at GaryCon is really off the charts for any indie RPG. The idea that you sell through your already huge Kickstarter and then order even more books? And have to order more again? That's just not something RPG history has shown to us.

We need to keep Shadowdark's sales in perspective, which are huge compared to any remotely similar RPG but tiny compared to D&D. And, it's still early in the game. We couldn't see what 2014 5E was doing until 3-5 years had gone by. Shadowdark has already broken records for the type of game/company it is, and I hope it keeps doing so.

 

[bedir than]

We need to keep Shadowdark's sales in perspective, which are huge compared to any remotely similar RPG but tiny compared to D&D. And, it's still early in the game. We couldn't see what 2014 5E was doing until 3-5 years had gone by. Shadowdark has already broken records for the type of game/company it is, and I hope it keeps doing so.

deleted my distraction from the main topic

 

[mearls]

It's been really interesting tracking things over the past few months. A few things I have observed:

• D&D Beyond usage is up. If you look at the forums, you can see how many people are online and how many of them have accounts. The number of active users online has been consistently high over Q1, and the number of characters created is up, too. Each PC you create is assigned an ID number, and you can estimate how many characters have been created using that.
• At Gary Con, every publisher I talked to who worked with D&D Beyond had nothing but good things to say about interacting with the platform, its management, and their sales. No one can give exact numbers, but the top question I hear from folks working on D&D compatible stuff is, "How can I get on D&D Beyond?"
• Meanwhile, we've seen four - maybe five as of this writing - TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns break $1 million.

D&D and TTRPGs traditionally do well during economic downturns. I think at the end of last year, people still had confidence in the economy. They were spending money on trips, big ticket items, and so on. As 2025 rolled in and the outlook grew murkier, I think we're seeing people who played D&D and other TTRPGs during the pandemic come back to them. I think this is going to especially help D&D.

I also think I underestimated D&D Beyond's staying power. I realized while cleaning my office that while I use D&D Beyond daily, I hadn't touched my hardcover books since I bought them. I'm running two Shadowdark campaigns and a D&D 5.5. For the D&D game I use all the functionality. For SD, I've set my adventures up in Maps and run them online using that tool.

Bigger picture, the new SRD and the commitment to update it is fantastic for anyone making third party content. If the new starter set has direct digital integration, then I think we could see a big upswing in interest in the game.

 

[mearls]

So what does that all mean for the hobby? I think we're entering the age of D&D-likes, games that take one aspect of D&D and magnify it or specialize the rules set. The hobby is big enough now that there is a critical mass of people who want specialized versions of D&D. I think we're seeing that evolution play out right now.

 

[Scribe]

D&D and TTRPGs traditionally do well during economic downturns.

Pretty hard to beat the price point of 'buddy up to the DM, maybe bring a bag of chips' for days and days and days of entertainment.

 

[Alphastream]

• At Gary Con, every publisher I talked to who worked with D&D Beyond had nothing but good things to say about interacting with the platform, its management, and their sales. No one can give exact numbers, but the top question I hear from folks working on D&D compatible stuff is, "How can I get on D&D Beyond?"

It seems like a very good start is, just, you know, make $2M on your 5E-compatible Kickstarter!

I do worry that the DDB interface is already straining with the current number of 3rd party providers, and at some point the amount of 3rd party options will drive sales down, but I sure would like to see Forge of Foes on DDB. A kid can dream.

 

[darjr]

Anecdotally the local FLGS who brought in Shadowdark just a bit ago is already about to do a reorder, this photo was just the one store.