D&D 5E Amazon US book sales rank.

[AlViking]

Oh I'm sure they don't mean anything. Except that they made it to the top 10 of all books. Now I'm sure this will likely drop off shortly, but I was wondering how long it would take someone to say, "This doesn't mean anything!" I plan on looking at this every couple of weeks. I used to do it every now and then with the last edition and was astounded to see month after month, year after year, that the 5.0 PHB was ranked so highly. It told a story of how the game was doing, despite all the people hating on it.

I expect this to be a short-lived adventure for Daggerheart. It will be interesting to see how it works out. I do find it interesting to see that the 5.5PHB is a couple of hundred spots lower than where I usually saw the 5.0 PHB at, but this is Canada. Maybe it was never that high there, who knows? And we can no longer see sales in the US.

It's not nothing, it's just that considering CR's popularity I'm not surprised. Meanwhile I'm sort of annoyed that we can't see the numbers in the US either. I know it was only one outlet out of many but it was still an interesting indicator. On the other hand, how many Canooks actually read books during the 4 weeks of nice weather they get every year?

 

[AlViking]

didn't they change the category which made tracking harder? Also, there probably are a lot more direct sales now, and definitely more digital sales (50% or more by now), than there were during most of 5e's timeframe

The US sales now fall under games or some other category that doesn't provide sales rank. But a DDB subscription has got to be weakening sales of physical books pretty significantly as well as whole lot of other factors such as direct sales, lack of significant discounts and so on.

 

[SteveC]

didn't they change the category which made tracking harder? Also, there probably are a lot more direct sales now, and definitely more digital sales (50% or more by now), than there were during most of 5e's timeframe

If you go look at the listing under Amazon, you'll see that it's a book, but also called a "game manual." I was looking at the Canadian site, and they don't have that category. I noticed that the new Eberron book used to have a ranking and be listed as a book, but it is now also listed as a manual as well. Now I'm not here to put on a tinfoil hat, as I have heard a really good reason for this distinction (you can return books, but not other products), but it does give less information about sales.

Do I have a right to any of that knowledge? No, I do not.

 

[Imaro]

And I think anecdotally a lot of games being stated and/or tried.

This is another point that needs to be viewed with a grain of salt... The Avatar the Last Airbender ttrpg did gang busters in kickstarter sales and yet it's actual playerbase is nearly non existent. This is one of the issues with having a fandom that arent necessarily gamers or going to play your game but may just buy it to collect.

Im going to give the game a try with a short campaign for a couple months because im also curious how well it holds my players interest mechanically when playing longterm. For the few PbtA games we've played... this has always been a big sticking point.

 

[SteveC]

This is another point that needs to be viewed with a grain of salt... The Avatar the Last Airbender ttrpg did gang busters in kickstarter sales and yet it's actual playerbase is nearly non existent. This is one of the issues with having a fandom that arent necessarily gamers or going to play your game but may just buy it to collect.

This is such a good point. I have a friend who went all-in on the Avatar RPG. We played one session, and I really liked it. The problem was that no one else in our group, including the GM, did.

The issue they had was that they were expecting a game with super-cool bending moves where awesome conflict was the point. Instead, they got a game about conflicts within yourself and walking the line between holding true to your beliefs and doing what's needed of you. I found that was really cool, and in line with the show. It was not a game of cool bending moves. And I think that's why it failed.

Daggerheart does what it says it's going to do. It is a very narrative game, which a lot of people don't like, but you aren't going to stumble into it and not be aware of it. Or I should say, it's unlikely that a lot of people will.

 

[darjr]

This is another point that needs to be viewed with a grain of salt... The Avatar the Last Airbender ttrpg did gang busters in kickstarter sales and yet it's actual playerbase is nearly non existent. This is one of the issues with having a fandom that arent necessarily gamers or going to play your game but may just buy it to collect.

Im going to give the game a try with a short campaign for a couple months because im also curious how well it holds my players interest mechanically when playing longterm. For the few PbtA games we've played... this has always been a big sticking point.

I did say anecdotally. It was difficult to get Avatar players locally. Also it didn’t seem to sell well in the stores.

Daggerheart my first game I had nine eager players, and several that couldn’t make it. I’m getting asked to run it again and for different days of the week for folks that couldn’t make it or fit at the table and start a campaign from folks I’ve never met. Also it sold out in the stores, twice.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Im going to give the game a try with a short campaign for a couple months because im also curious how well it holds my players interest mechanically when playing longterm. For the few PbtA games we've played... this has always been a big sticking point.

Just to put this into perspective Apocalypse World was explicitly designed for short (12 session) campaigns and I find 10 feels better - but it's a very intense 10 sessions. Daggerheart is aimed at 25 and there's far more heft and choice to levelling up in Daggerheart than post level 3 5e

 

[darjr]

Oh also there were other public tables ran in stores around here. Avatar I was the only one I knew of running a public game, until more recently, but that table gave up quickly.

Anecdotal, yes.

 

[darjr]

Daggerheart is currently #112 out of all books on Amazon US.

 

[overgeeked]

Daggerheart is currently #112 out of all books on Amazon US.

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The highest I saw it was #75. Is there any way to check what it's rank was historically?