D&D General Behold! A mega chart of AD&D 1st and 2nd ed monster products sales!

[Jer]

Yeah, thanks for digging. I tried googling as well but hadn't found that list yet.

My memory must have been off, because I definitely had those monsters too. I must have bought both and then just consolidated them into the big MC1 binder.

I mostly remembered because one of the guys I knew at the time absolutely hated the 2e rollout and considered the entire thing a "cash grab" by TSR. One of the things that incensed him was the MC format and the fact that they were "charging twice" just to get the monsters that were in the 1e Monster Manual.

(We moved away in the early 90s and I didn't keep in touch. I do wonder what he'd think of the numbers that Ben Riggs posted - probably satisfied that he was right and it was a cash grab.)

 

[darjr]

The one thing from the 2e core I don’t have is the MC1 or the Monstrous Compendium (Manual?) hardback.

 

[Parmandur]

If I remember right, 1984 was a big year for the Satanic Panic. Big stories in California of abuse in schools. Summer of ’84 was the murder in New York. I think that’s when the Panic went from a kooky sideshow to parents burning books.

Yeah, these numbers all seem to suggest that TSR was absolutely hammered in 1984 by the Satanic Panic. Explains a lot.

 

[darjr]

Ben has an economist looking at all this. He said that while he didn’t have any conclusions yet it did look like D&D did well when the economy was doing bad. That it is such a good bargain for when times are tight. And when they are not people might spend more on things like actual vacations, but not D&D.

I dunno but it’s interesting to throw the idea into the mix.

What if the BiG downturns were out of TSRs hands, no matter if it was Gygax or Lorraine?

What if thier job should have been planning for that hiccup and getting ready to weather a storm.

 

[darjr]

Further, what if thier error wasn’t bad sales or bad market strategy or saturating the market but a failure to prepare for thin times?

 

[overgeeked]

Ben has an economist looking at all this. He said that while he didn’t have any conclusions yet it did look like D&D did well when the economy was doing bad. That it is such a good bargain for when times are tight. And when they are not people might spend more on things like actual vacations, but not D&D.

Makes sense. $20-30 for months or years of entertainment vs $100s for a week.

 

[Steampunkette]

I dunno if that shows Satanic Panic was a big problem...

So about 700,000 people bought the MM by 1984. There were about 3 million PHBs and DMGs in circulation by that point and another million would yet be sold before AD&D2e became the big boss on the block. It -looks- like the vast majority of players and DMs either borrowed an MM from a friend or made up their own monsters.

But in '84, almost half as many people who had bought an MM over the past 6 years bought the MM2 in a single year.

Then in '89, you get about the same situation. By that point almost 500,000 MM2s had been sold, and the MC1, 2, and 3 sell about 350,000. About half the previous offering between the three of them. The first of which almost hits the halfway point on it's own when the MC1 sells about 250,000 units itself.

Dragonlance does miserably, because it's the -fourth- Monster book in 6 months and related to a single setting.

1984 saw the last "Big Sales" of the MM1 and MM2, but really it's the start of a clear trend. The Monster Manual in Pink barely does 300,000 before it's discontinued over the course of -six years-. And in it's first year? Less than half as many sold as the MC1 in it's first year.

The Satanic Panic probably helped to exacerbate the speed at which the red and blue lines dropped, but it didn't stop them from being a commercial success, and shows the start of a fairly clear "Half as much as the last offering" trend.

 

[Jer]

Further, what if thier error wasn’t bad sales or bad market strategy or saturating the market but a failure to prepare for thin times?

I think that's exactly what their main problem was - they hit the lotto for a few years and thought it was going to be like that forever, and spent money accordingly.

They lost a lot of time during their prime years with infighting and backstabbing instead of planning for lean times, and when the lean times hit they moved heavily into the book market to try to stop the bleeding.

 

[dave2008]

MM2 outselling MM1? That just feels like sacrilege!

That is not quite correct. By the time MM2 came out the MM1 had already sold about 700,000 copies and then sold another 200,000 the year MM2 came out and sold 300,000. After that they were pretty much the same. So the MM1 outsold the MM2 by about 600,000 units. If I am reading that chart correctly.

 

[dave2008]

What made Monster Manual II so bangin'?

Better art in general?

 

[Parmandur]

What made Monster Manual II so bangin'?

It collected stuff from various Adventure modules, mainly. A lot ofnweird stuff, but also some stuff that really stuck, like introducing Tabaxi.

 

[pemerton]

It collected stuff from various Adventure modules, mainly. A lot ofnweird stuff, but also some stuff that really stuck, like introducing Tabaxi.

Tabaxi are in the FF. You might be thinking of Tasloi, which are in the MM2.

 

[Parmandur]

Tabaxi are in the FF. You might be thinking of Tasloi, which are in the MM2.

Yup, probably!

 

[RuinousPowers]

That is not quite correct. By the time MM2 came out the MM1 had already sold about 700,000 copies and then sold another 200,000 the year MM2 came out and sold 300,000. After that they were pretty much the same. So the MM1 outsold the MM2 by about 600,000 units. If I am reading that chart correctly.

Yeah, I guess MM2 only really sold for 1 year, then dropped like a rock.

I was thinking these were more "lifetime" sales at first.

 

[Jer]

On thing that surprises me about these stats - if you compare them to the 1e DMG and the 1e PHB stats, the Monster Manual was the lowest selling of the three year-to-year. Except for 1980 where it outsold the DMG by fewer than 10K copies.

I'm actually surprised by that - I would have assumed that the MM would have sold more copies than the DMG did. If only because those of us who played B/X or BECMI could also get utility out of it. (But then again, I also owned a DMG and pulled stuff from it too, so maybe that says something...)

 

[Mezuka]

MMII: Modrons, I know some people love them, but I still think today they wasted too many pages on a very niche monster.

 

[Zardnaar]

On thing that surprises me about these stats - if you compare them to the 1e DMG and the 1e PHB stats, the Monster Manual was the lowest selling of the three year-to-year. Except for 1980 where it outsold the DMG by fewer than 10K copies.

I'm actually surprised by that - I would have assumed that the MM would have sold more copies than the DMG did. If only because those of us who played B/X or BECMI could also get utility out of it. (But then again, I also owned a DMG and pulled stuff from it too, so maybe that says something...)

Monster stats were often included in adventures so you didn't really need it unless you wrote your own stuff.

 

[Mezuka]

On thing that surprises me about these stats - if you compare them to the 1e DMG and the 1e PHB stats, the Monster Manual was the lowest selling of the three year-to-year. Except for 1980 where it outsold the DMG by fewer than 10K copies.

I'm actually surprised by that - I would have assumed that the MM would have sold more copies than the DMG did. If only because those of us who played B/X or BECMI could also get utility out of it. (But then again, I also owned a DMG and pulled stuff from it too, so maybe that says something...)

From my personal experience and from accounts I've read many people bought the MM and used it with B/X, Holmes or OD&D. It was a big mashup of rulesets, and it was fun.

Things changed when the PHB was published. Many made a choice. Stay with the old D&D mashup or go pure AD&D. We went 100% pure AD&D.

 

[JEB]

I wonder why MC 1 jumped in sales in 1992? (Whatever it was, it didn't do much for MC 2.)

Besides the Fiend Folio, disappointed we don't have stats for the other MC Annuals. Just MCA 1, and only for the third year of its lifespan.

 

[darjr]

Wow. In the Facebook post Alex, the owner of the Gameholecon who has a copy of almost everything TSR made, with many of them still in shrink, refused to buy the loose Monstrous Compendium and still refuses to collect it!