D&D 5E Amazon: D&D at the start of 2018

[Parmandur]

Yep.

In 1987 Gary Gygax estimated that a total of 10 million people worldwide had ever played an RPG (5 million worldwide actively playing).

A year ago the CEO of WotC estimated that there were 9.5 million active 5e players.

Beyond book sales, it is worth considering that they give out the rules for free: lots of people might play for a while before biting the bullet buying the books, now: very different from the 80's.

 

[darjr]

Hmmm, somewhere someone who was at TSR and WotC made a product, the Pokemon RPG. He said, at the time, he still had the record for either single fastest selling or most sold single rpg book ever at 800,000. That quote is floating around ENWorld somewhere.

Ah here it is.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?579618-D-amp-D-5e-nearing-800-000-copies-sold

And it was Stan!

Looks like his first thing he worked on at TSR was in 1996

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan!

 

[cmad1977]

Cue the peanut gallery swooping in to tell us that WotC is a total failure at business and they should be banging out books as fast as possible.

This edition is dying in the vine.
Wotc must cater to the ‘gamists’
More product on the shelves means more success because: reasons.

 

[Zardnaar]

Pretty sure the Gygax novels hit the best seller list. And while I don't know how many of these were sold, I know they all sold very strong initially (which was before the drop-off of TSR): Boot Hill, Gamma World, Indiana Jones, Marvel Super Heroes, Top Secret, and Star Frontiers. So did the Endless Quest books. So did the first Dragon lance books, which were 1984. The D&D cartoon was 1983.



Almost none of which spoke about the thing you're trying to claim they spoke about - D&D book sales. It's not a legitimate argument for you to be making - naming those names as if they back up your claim, when you know darn well none of that had anything to do with claims about book sales.



Yes, I know my TSR history quite well, thanks. You're again talking about all sorts of stuff that doesn't support your point. We know TSR got big...we don't know what PHB 1e book sales or D&D game book sales were.



Right...the novels were bigger than the game by then, but you want to pretend all the numbers you've ever heard (which were vague and TSR general numbers to begin with) were all or almost all D&D game book sales. It's nonsense.



Nobody is getting carried away. You're being defensive because you've said a lot about relative sales in the past, made predictions about sales fall-off that didn't come true, and now people are calling you on it. And I understand why you'd be defensive, but you can't flip it on people claiming they're the ones "getting carried away". The most extremist rhetoric at this point, on this issue, is coming from you. You'll concede a point (like 1 million 5e PHB sales) and then a few weeks later will imply the opposite. You'll haul out a list of TSR names as if it supports your claims about D&D 1e game book sales knowing it doesn't. That's much more "getting carried away" with your position than anyone else is doing anymore on this topic.



Yes, for TOTAL TSR SALES. Can you admit you don't have any idea what the actual D&D game book sales were? I can pull those old court docs if you like...you'll rapidly see they don't name D&D game book sales in them. You know what they do name? A huge list of products they sell, which includes a whole lot of things that were not D&D game books.



Claiming in the past people have gotten carried away with claims about prior editions doesn't actually support your claim either. It's a rhetorical trick. Logically, an edition can in fact be the best selling, even if people previously wrongly claimed prior editions were the best selling. What fans claimed about prior editions doesn't actually support anything about this topic. I say again, this time it would appear you're the guy getting carried away...mostly because you made a series of predictions that were blown.

I totally know how you feel. I predicted 4e would be HUGE. I know how it feels to make a blown prediction on these sorts of things. It's what you do once you know you blew it that really matters. Right now, you're still heavily on the defensive. It seems every time someone brings up this issue you feel the need to jump in and defend the position that D&D isn't doing as well as people think it is (even though all they are doing is expressing their happiness). As if that is about you. Which of course then makes it about you.

Except I don't recall making any predictions of 5Es success. I don't really care one way or another.

Some posters did extrapolate some of the high points of D&Ds sales over months. When people predict 3 million sales based on stuff like that I find it funny.

I like D&D I don't care about exalting one over the other I have a top 3 favorite list that 5E is on.