AD&D Settings Sales Comparison 79-98

I know there have been a lot of these threads, and I'm holding off on any kind of overarching summary/compilation article until they're all in, but this one in particular jumped out at me. Again, this is from Ben Riggs, author of Slaying the Dragon, a history of TSR-era D&D, going out next month.

Slaying the Dragon - Macmillan

The secret and untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, then ...

read.macmillan.com

This graph shows a number of legacy settings and the total sales of their core setting product. Forgotten Realms is, of course, the top one. Interestingly, the other two settings that WotC has revisited in 5E -- Ravenloft and Spelljammer -- are near the bottom of the chart.

Ben says he will be providing the remaining settings tomorrow, and I'll update this post with those when he does.

1. Forgotten Realms
2. Greyhawk
3. Dragonlance
4. Ravenloft
5. Dark Sun
6. Spelljammer

 

[Guest 7034872]

The variable is thst this is strictly comparing Core Setting products, so things like, say, Castle Ravenloft or the DL modules aren't included.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense now. The modules were pretty popular back in the 80s, but hardly anyone I knew was buying pure setting books.

 

[Cadence]

I wonder what the (# setting books sold in year x) / (#rule books sold in year x and x-1) are.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder what the (# setting books sold in year x) / (#rule books sold in year x and x-1) are.

I would guess anything besides the first module or two, adventures in the setting sold an order of magnitude fewer.

 

[Parmandur]

Okay, that makes a lot more sense now. The modules were pretty popular back in the 80s, but hardly anyone I knew was buying pure setting books.

Well, in this case, box sets, but yeah. Different animals. The audience for Setting box sets seemed to gravitate more towards Ye Oldde Tolkienian fantasy worlds...which WotC focused on when they revived the brand.

 

[Jer]

Yes, this please! Spelljammer, Dark Sun and Ravenloft were all release much later in the presented timeframe than the other settings. The data as presented is misleading and should have been normalized in some way.

It's not misleading - it's doing what it says its doing.

However if you want to see the other graphs they're scattered in the other threads. Morrus said he's going to wait until they're all done to compile them, but if you go look you can pretty clearly see that the low sales on these are coupled with lower "spikes" in initial sales during the first year of the setting materials as well. And that the low initial spikes in setting materials look like they are highly correlated with dropping sales in the core books over time. It basically looks very much like D&D was just losing steam as a game through the 90s and TSR didn't know how to do anything about it other than flail and release more product.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder what the (# setting books sold in year x) / (#rule books sold in year x and x-1) are.

@BenRiggs did put out the core rulebook numbers. The overal trend from 1980-1996 looks pretty similar...and it ugly.

 

[Jer]

Which came first: the chicken, or the egg...?

If you aren't getting new players into the game and you're losing older players, your new settings aren't going to have an audience no matter how good they are.

The graphs on the core book sales strongly suggest that the number of new players coming into the game was diminishing pretty badly from the late 80s on. We don't have any real way from these numbers to see how quickly older players were leaving the game, but the numbers do at least support a hypothesis that the game was shedding actively purchasing players faster than it was gaining new ones.

 

[darjr]

However combining the sales was part of TSRs justification for them, I think it’s been stated.
Ultimately though developing an extensive new setting and dividing the fans played a part in TSRs problems.

 

[Mezuka]

If it was a capstone it would have come out AFTER DL and Dark Sun.

Depends what they do with these settings. They might be somewhere hard to reach outside Spelljammer navigation.

 

[grimslade]

I like Ravenloft. Played a campaign or two, but there was no shortage of horror RPGs in the 90s. Gothic D&D horror is a pretty specific niche. I understand why the sales reflect that. The majority of the 90's was a recovery period economically too. Planescape Torment succeeded because it built off of the success of Baldurs Gate I and II. I wouldn't say that the Planescape setting was the selling point rather than a Bioware CRPG. Fantastic game. Loved it. I never played or purchased any Planescape tabletop product. Anecdata, I know.
I think the appeal and cries for republishing these old niche settings are because they have such an original and definitive style. One of the biggest complaints of FR is that it is a kitchen sink setting. Everything is there. But I think the real problem people have with FR is that it feels like a setting by committee. People loved the grey box FR setting because it still was predominantly Ed Greenwood's setting and not hundreds of authors' works. These smaller settings have a stamp of vision, ironically, even though both Spelljammer and Planescape were created to be the ultimate kitchen sink settings tying everything D&D together. They are their own definitive things and people want to experience it.