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 ...

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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

 

[RuinousPowers]

Given the trends in core book sales I suspect it has more correlation with year of release than anything about the product specifically. Sales overall decrease pretty precipitously from the late 80s through to the bankruptcy.

This is a snapshot of 7 years, not one particular year.

Given the trends in core book sales I suspect it has more correlation with year of release than anything about the product specifically. Sales overall decrease pretty precipitously from the late 80s through to the bankruptcy.

What happened from 1995-1999 that hurt its sales so much when 1995 marked 5 consecutive years of economic growth?

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Including the core boxes/books would be too apples to oranges, I think. Those are primarily rules sets, even though Expert gave the basic intro to The Known World, which became Mystara.

I could certainly see putting Champions of Mystara, Karameikos, Glantri, and Red Steel on a Mystara graph. Hollow World I think is a bit of a stretch because it's really a distinct campaign setting on the same planet, isn't it? Maztica was broken out separately from Forgotten Realms.

All of the rules sets included Mystara setting material. The Rules Cyclopedia had a whole chapter about Mystara.

Point taken about the Maztica / HW parallel.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Mystara numbers are coming. And the core books already have been.

Yeah, but to measure “setting awareness” / “number of sales impressions made by each D&D setting”, BD&D Mystara should be combined with AD&D Mystara. In the same way that the chart combines 1e FR and 2e FR.

The constrained conditions under which 2e Mystara was released is going to misportray and skew the setting as a “poor seller”, even though the setting had more sales than Forgotten Realms. Jeff Grubb quit TSR because of the dumb way that Mystara was presented in 2e (resulting in terrible sales) — he writes about that in his blog.

 

[MGibster]

My memory from the 90s was that Planescape was as hated as it was loved. Many people resented it for burying planar stuff in a weird cant and strange art.

I didn't purchase any Planescape material until a few years back when I wanted to use it for a 5E game I was running. Man, I feel like I missed something special in the 90s. The setting is great and I think the art is simply fantastic. But I had absolutely zero interest in the setting at time of release.

Fine. But dude, Ravenloft??? Really?? One of the best settings for one of the best adventure modules ever published, yet its sales are half those of Dragonlance?

While I don't have anything bad to say about Dragonlance, I don't remember playing a lot of games using that setting, but I absolutely loved Ravenloft. I'm not at all surprised that Dragonlance outsold Ravenloft given how popular the former was. Ravenloft was pretty big, the novels were selling very well, but Dragonlance was even bigger.

 

[MGibster]

What happened from 1995-1999 that hurt its sales so much when 1995 marked 5 consecutive years of economic growth?

I can't answer for anyone else, but these were the years I abandoned AD&D and even sold off my many books. I had grown frustrated with the rules, electing to move on to other games like Legend of the Five Rings and Deadlands. I don't think I was the only one who was simply burned out on AD&D.

 

[MGibster]

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.

These threads are great, keep 'em coming. Getting concrete numbers we can use to interpret the past is a lot of fun. I've certainly been surprised by what I've learned in these threads. What's most surprising is the steep, steep drop in sales from the year a setting is introduced to the next year. I would expect a drop, but I didn't expect it to be so steep and for sales to remain anemic for years afterward.

 

[Sergio Nemirovsky]

Given the trends in core book sales I suspect it has more correlation with year of release than anything about the product specifically. Sales overall decrease pretty precipitously from the late 80s through to the bankruptcy.

My thinking exactly. And it should also be controlled by amount of items in the category. There were many reboots of the different settings and FR had lots of different regions and other supplements. Dragonlance not as many as GH or FR, nor RL.

 

[Reynard]

My thinking exactly. And it should also be controlled by amount of items in the category. There were many reboots of the different settings and FR had lots of different regions and other supplements. Dragonlance not as many as GH or FR, nor RL.

Those numbers don't reflect supplemental materials.

 

[Sergio Nemirovsky]

Those numbers don't reflect supplemental materials.

Ah. Ok. But my question still applies to core products. From the ashes is not included? FR 1e or 2e? RL had 2 core boxes over the decade and one setting book. And it's still not controlled by time. Just saying maybe DS would fare better taking the confusor variables into account. I would love to have a look at the data.

 

[Reynard]

Ah. Ok. But my question still applies to core products. From the ashes is not included? FR 1e or 2e? RL had 2 core boxes over the decade and one setting book. And it's still not controlled by time. Just saying maybe DS would fare better taking the confusor variables into account. I would love to have a look at the data.

There are specific charts for each setting that breaks them down in other threads.