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

[darjr]

Also someone chimed in with sales numbers from the Acaeum, which has the Fiend Folio selling 190,000 copies world wide.

There are other sales numbers and print runs there.

Print Run

www.acaeum.com

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don't know if it's been said yet, but IIRC (and it has been awhile) MC1 came with the binder, and MC2 did not. That would explain the difference in sales, as you HAD to have MC1 if you wanted the sweet Easly binder, but you didn't need MC2 unless you wanted it.

 

[JEB]

I don't know if it's been said yet, but IIRC (and it has been awhile) MC1 came with the binder, and MC2 did not. That would explain the difference in sales, as you HAD to have MC1 if you wanted the sweet Easly binder, but you didn't need MC2 unless you wanted it.

That makes sense. Though MC 4 also had a binder - it was the one I used for my MC collection back in the day, in fact - and it still underperformed MC 2 and MC 3. (I see it also had a slight spike in 1992, though, just like MC 1. Hmm.)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That makes sense. Though MC 4 also had a binder - it was the one I used for my MC collection back in the day, in fact - and it still underperformed MC 2 and MC 3. (I see it also had a slight spike in 1992, though, just like MC 1. Hmm.)

I think I had all of them. I was pretty into 2e, being the first edition that I bought for myself (I'm pretty sure I bought the 2e PHB the day it released!) It's been happy gaming ever since. (I played 1e before that, but not with my own books).

 

[pemerton]

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.

The original MM is pre-AD&D in its rules. It uses an intermediate alignment system (no LN, CN, NE or NG). It uses old spell tables (eg look at the spells for creatures with cleric levels like Lammasu (or Ki-Rin, or Shedu - one or more of those upper planes creatures). From memory, it doesn't use AC 10. Etc.

 

[delericho]

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

It's also more expensive that MC2 and 3, as it came with the second binder. So people only bought it if they really liked DL, they were collecting them all, or they really needed the extra space (and just had to have an 'official' binder).

 

[JEB]

The original MM is pre-AD&D in its rules. It uses an intermediate alignment system (no LN, CN, NE or NG). It uses old spell tables (eg look at the spells for creatures with cleric levels like Lammasu (or Ki-Rin, or Shedu - one or more of those upper planes creatures). From memory, it doesn't use AC 10. Etc.

No listed XP values either - you had to get that from the DMG, which came out two years later! (Or calculate it yourself from the OD&D rules.)

 

[JEB]

I think I had all of them. I was pretty into 2e, being the first edition that I bought for myself (I'm pretty sure I bought the 2e PHB the day it released!) It's been happy gaming ever since. (I played 1e before that, but not with my own books).

I picked up most of the looseleaf MCs while they were still on the shelves of random game stores in the mid-1990s, but I didn't get copies of MC 1, MC 2, the Outer Planes MC, the Fiend Folio MC, or the Al-Qadim MC until years later. Mind, I didn't need MC 1 or 2 at the time, since I already had the Monstrous Manual, the book that got me into playing D&D.

(Though technically my first monster book was the 1E Fiend Folio, bought at a yard sale when I was in elementary school. Along with a 1E PHB that was much less interesting at the time, because it wasn't full of monsters. I knew what I liked.)

 

[JEB]

So people only bought it if they really liked DL, they were collecting them all, or they really needed the extra space (and just had to have an 'official' binder).

I got it at the time because monsters, but having a binder for my looseleaf MCs was certainly a nice bonus. I think it was in the bargain bin by that point, so it was probably a lucky find.

 

[David Howery]

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.

having just finished up "Game Wizards".... yeah. 1984 was a bad year, and Satanic Panic likely had little to do with it. For various reasons, sales just plateaued and never got better. The years leading up to it showed that the people in charge of TSR really didn't know how to manage a business well....