D&D 5E Amazon best and worst sellers for 5e so far

[overgeeked]

• The MTG settings are actually the worst sellers in each year (excepting 2021, where Strixhaven beat out Ravenloft). I would have thought crossover sales would have done more for them.

It's a common assumption that's always proven wrong. It's not D&D fans plus MtG fans that picks these up, it's the subset of people who are fans of both.

• Anthology-style adventures seem to sell better than other kinds of adventures.

Makes sense with easier portability and shorter adventures.

• I wonder what will happen to sales of Volo's and MTOF once Monsters of the Multiverse is out? Though their rankings are so strong even years after release that even a sharp drop might not be noticeable, at least for a while.

They will likely go out of print and drop like stones.

 

[JEB]

And for the heck of it, listing the last set of rankings by release month instead of year:

Month	Rankings
January	-
February	-
March	Wildemount, 2020 (#14) Candlekeep Mysteries, 2021 (#16) Curse of Strahd, 2016 (#23)
April	Tales from the Yawning Portal, 2017 (#17) Princes of the Apocalypse, 2015 (#35)
May	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, 2018 (#9) Ghosts of Saltmarsh, 2019 (#18) Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, 2021 (#19)
June	Acquisitions Inc., 2019 (#42)
July	Theros, 2020 (#29)
August	PHB, 2014 (#1) Hoard of the Dragon Queen, 2014 (#40)
September	MM, 2014 (#4) Essentials Kit, 2019 (general release) (#10) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, 2018 (#22) Tomb of Annihilation, 2017 (#24) Out of the Abyss, 2015 (#28) Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, 2019 (#32) Storm King's Thunder, 2016 (#34)
October	Fizban's, 2021 (#2)
November	Tasha's, 2020 (#3) Volo's, 2016 (#6) Xanathar's, 2017 (#7) Eberron, 2019 (#15) SCAG, 2015 (#21) Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, 2018 (#25) Ravnica, 2018 (#27) Rick and Morty starter set, 2019 (#78) Rise of Tiamat, 2014 (#152)
December	DMG, 2014 (#5) Strixhaven, 2021 (#20)

And consolidated by quarters:

Quarter	Rankings
Q1 (Jan-Feb-Mar)	Wildemount, 2020 (#14) Candlekeep Mysteries, 2021 (#16) Curse of Strahd, 2016 (#23)
Q2 (Apr-May-Jun)	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, 2018 (#9) Tales from the Yawning Portal, 2017 (#17) Ghosts of Saltmarsh, 2019 (#18) Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, 2021 (#19) Princes of the Apocalypse, 2015 (#35) Acquisitions Inc., 2019 (#42)
Q3 (Jul-Aug-Sep)	PHB, 2014 (#1) MM, 2014 (#4) Essentials Kit, 2019 (general release) (#10) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, 2018 (#22) Tomb of Annihilation, 2017 (#24) Out of the Abyss, 2015 (#28) Theros, 2020 (#29) Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, 2019 (#32) Storm King's Thunder, 2016 (#34) Hoard of the Dragon Queen, 2014 (#40)
Q4 (Oct-Nov-Dec)	Fizban's, 2021 (#2) Tasha's, 2020 (#3) DMG, 2014 (#5) Volo's, 2016 (#6) Xanathar's, 2017 (#7) Eberron, 2019 (#15) Strixhaven, 2021 (#20) SCAG, 2015 (#21) Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, 2018 (#25) Ravnica, 2018 (#27) Rick and Morty starter set, 2019 (#78) Rise of Tiamat, 2014 (#152)

While the monthly breakdown isn't far off from the yearly pattern, the quarterly one looks slightly different in Q4: MTG and original D&D settings seem much more competitive, though MTG still does worse in aggregate than D&D originals. (Of course, Strixhaven's ranking is also likely to drop in time.)

 

[TheSword]

Tell that to the OGL publishers who had put out 3E material.

Ok. Point them my way. 3.5 had minimal impact. You could run a 3.0 adventure with 3.5 rules with no changes (except damage reduction) and vice versa. Like no change at all. Your PCs wouldn’t even know the difference. Let’s no pretend this is like an edition change.

 

[Lyxen]

Ok. Point them my way. 3.5 had minimal impact. You could run a 3.0 adventure with 3.5 rules with no changes (except damage reduction) and vice versa. Like no change at all. Your PCs wouldn’t even know the difference. Let’s no pretend this is like an edition change.

It was such a significant change that quite a few people dropped 3e at that point and went back to 2e, you hear about them frequently. In particular, they felt scammed by the need to buy again all the core books, coupled with the frantic rate of publishing that rendered options more or less mandatory to keep up with players demands.

 

[TheSword]

It was such a significant change that quite a few people dropped 3e at that point and went back to 2e, you hear about them frequently. In particular, they felt scammed by the need to buy again all the core books, coupled with the frantic rate of publishing that rendered options more or less mandatory to keep up with players demands.

That isn’t an argument for the editions being different. It’s an argument for some people being nuts. There are some people who feel scammed by anything.

As for mandatory book purchases, I’ve never heard anything so daft. The rate of book releases was consistently large under 3e and pathfinder as much as 3.5.

 

[Lyxen]

That isn’t an argument for the editions being different. It’s an argument for some people being nuts. There are some people who feel scammed by anything.

Forcing you to buy a set of 3 core books after just a few years ? Really sounds like a scam.

Moreover, the list of change was not small and in particular the effect on the game, it really felt different, in particular with the changes in the buffs.

As for mandatory book purchases, I’ve never heard anything so daft. The rate of book releases was consistently large under 3e and pathfinder as much as 3.5.

And this is why I never invested in pathfinder after the problem with 3e. Once was enough, I was not ready to do it on something that again felt like a 3.8. Because it was exactly that.

 

[TheSword]

Forcing you to buy a set of 3 core books after just a few years ? Really sounds like a scam.

Moreover, the list of change was not small and in particular the effect on the game, it really felt different, in particular with the changes in the buffs.



And this is why I never invested in pathfinder after the problem with 3e. Once was enough, I was not ready to do it on something that again felt like a 3.8. Because it was exactly that.

Good for you. Freedom of choice not to play Pathfinder was yours to make. What did you want? Paizo to change the business model that made it more successful than WOC for a time.

The 3.5 list was long… the changes were small.

90% of It was a tinkering mainly with classes. Clerics being able to spontaneously cast cure mass light wounds , bards having 2 extra skill points , ambidexterity and two-weapon fighting being combined into one feat . Please tell me you’re not bothered by Polymorph being renamed Baleful Polymorph?

Give me a break. These are on par with the changes in Tasha’s. We’re you scammed by the new rules released in that book? It was roughly the same price as the 3.5 phb which contained 95% of the changes.

People were just throwing their toys out of their prams. I go back to my point about $0.5 per hour and it being the cheapest hobby going. I have no sympathy. If your group didn’t want to change nobody had to. You can play 3.5 adventures with 3.0 rules without any difficulty!

 

[Zardnaar]

Ok. Point them my way. 3.5 had minimal impact. You could run a 3.0 adventure with 3.5 rules with no changes (except damage reduction) and vice versa. Like no change at all. Your PCs wouldn’t even know the difference. Let’s no pretend this is like an edition change.

It was a pain in the ass to run 3.0 material with 3.5.

 

[Zardnaar]

Good for you. Freedom of choice not to play Pathfinder was yours to make. What did you want? Paizo to change the business model that made it more successful than WOC for a time.

The 3.5 list was long… the changes were small.

90% of It was a tinkering mainly with classes. Clerics being able to spontaneously cast cure mass light wounds , bards having 2 extra skill points , ambidexterity and two-weapon fighting being combined into one feat . Please tell me you’re not bothered by Polymorph being renamed Baleful Polymorph?

Give me a break. These are on par with the changes in Tasha’s. We’re you scammed by the new rules released in that book? It was roughly the same price as the 3.5 phb which contained 95% of the changes.

People were just throwing their toys out of their prams. I go back to my point about $0.5 per hour and it being the cheapest hobby going. I have no sympathy. If your group didn’t want to change nobody had to. You can play 3.5 adventures with 3.0 rules without any difficulty!

It's not that easy or cheap. I have piles of D&D stuff bought barely used.

There were a lot more changes between the two you mentioned. Monsters got overhauled as well, hit point bloat etc plus damage reduction, class and spell changes etc.

 

[Lyxen]

Good for you. Freedom of choice not to play Pathfinder was yours to make. What did you want? Paizo to change the business model that made it more successful than WOC for a time.

We played some of the Pathfinder AP which were good, but restricted ourselves to the core rules.

The 3.5 list was long… the changes were small.

And still, some noticeably changed the way the game was played, again in particular the buffs and some class changes.

And the problem, in an edition that was extremely technical and generated many debates, you could not do with the previous edition, you needed to have the changes.

90% of It was a tinkering mainly with classes. Clerics being able to spontaneously cast cure mass light wounds , bards having 2 extra skill points , ambidexterity and two-weapon fighting being combined into one feat . Please tell me you’re not bothered by Polymorph being renamed Baleful Polymorph?

And still, it changed the feel of the game, and honestly for what ? The game exploded relatively shortly after (I has been playing AD&D for 20 years and not switched to 2e except in rare cases), overgorged on its own production which made the game completely unsustainable and way too complex to manage.

And, by the way, thinking about it, were there that many more changes from 1e to 2e than from 3 to 3.5 ? We played a lot of planescape and spelljammer and dark sun with 1e without any trouble whatsoever... It was NOT the case with 3 to 3.5.

Give me a break. These are on par with the changes in Tasha’s.

Huh, no. Sorry. First, the changes in Tasha are totally optional, and we are not using most of them. It did not change the game.

We’re you scammed by the new rules released in that book? It was roughly the same price as the 3.5 phb which contained 95% of the changes.

First, it was still a NEW publication, not an old one with small changes all over the place. And it contained more than just changes.

People were just throwing their toys out of their prams. I go back to my point about $0.5 per hour and it being the cheapest hobby going. I have no sympathy. If your group didn’t want to change nobody had to. You can play 3.5 adventures with 3.0 rules without any difficulty!

You are awfully defensive about that, you know ? Why ? What's the subtext here ?