D&D 5E D&D 5E’s Top-Selling Adventures and What It Means for the Hobby from Teos Abadia aka Alphastream.

[darjr]

@Alphastream has been going thru the sales data from both the Bookscan leak and Ben Riggs. Todays article he tackles what the bestselling adventures are for 5e and shares what he thinks it means for the hobby.

D&D 5E’s Top-Selling Adventures and What It Means for the Hobby

D&D adventures historically don't sell well. 5E has tried several approaches. Let's take a look at 5E adventure sales in the BookScan data.

alphastream.org

 

[Parmandur]

Very interesting breakdown. The lack of Critical Role sales is surprising, but I suspect that Critters may be even more likely than D&D players in general to go for a FLGS (or Beyond?) option when buying their book.

The context about 1E, 2E and 3E Aadvebture sales shows how success he 5E Adcebture line has been. Just in terms if sales, this past decade was the Adventure Golden Age?

 

[dave2008]

That sales data suggest to me why they are pushing settings more!

EDIT: Clearly I must be reading it wrong! After reading the article Alpha talks about how good 5e adventure sales are (in particular compared to historical numbers).

 

[dave2008]

spelljammer is interesting considering how much bad press it got, and yet it greatly outsells the original. However, comparing your sales to a data point that is 30 years old may not be the best approach!

 

[Kurotowa]

That sales data suggest to me why they are pushing settings more!

Or if not setting books in the old almanac style, books in the CoS style where it's a mix of setting and a mini-campaign. And while I personally miss the old style books, the new ones do seem to sell. At least, some of them do. The long term prospects of Spelljammer is still unknown.

I am a little worried by the notes at the end at Hasbro getting them to ramp up production. Market saturation and shovelware has been a constant bane of D&D across the editions. Certainly I've felt no compulsion to go out and buy the Fizban's Dragons or Bigby's Giants books.

 

[Parmandur]

spelljammer is interesting considering how much bad press it got, and yet it greatly outsells the original. However, comparing your sales to a data point that is 30 years old may not be the best approach!

Well, based on @Alphastream analysis here, it seems to be selling fairly well in comparison to 5E adventures?

 

[darjr]

The Spelljammer adventure is good, depending upon your style, and otherwise it has cool things to nab. For the almost 50% discount on Amazon it’s seems to be worth it for many.

 

[ersatzphil]

The Spelljammer adventure is good, depending upon your style, and otherwise it has cool things to nab. For the almost 50% discount on Amazon it’s seems to be worth it for many.

I'm digging around in my old posts for verification, but didn't the Bookscan data show Spelljammer had a huge initial spike in sales and a precipitous dropoff?

 

[Parmandur]

I'm digging around in my old posts for verification, but didn't the Bookscan data show Spelljammer had a huge initial spike in sales and a precipitous dropoff?

The Roll for C9mbat guys didn't do a really deep analysis. Those in this blog.post uses their data and graphs it. Turns out, no, Spelljammer is doing OK.

 

[dave2008]

Or if not setting books in the old almanac style, books in the CoS style where it's a mix of setting and a mini-campaign. And while I personally miss the old style books, the new ones do seem to sell. At least, some of them do. The long term prospects of Spelljammer is still unknown.

I am a little worried by the notes at the end at Hasbro getting them to ramp up production. Market saturation and shovelware has been a constant bane of D&D across the editions. Certainly I've felt no compulsion to go out and buy the Fizban's Dragons or Bigby's Giants books.

Fizban's was kind of meh to me - and I am dragon person through and through. However, Bigby's is one of better/best splatbooks IMO. The monster design work is the best WotC has done yet and there is lots of other interesting bits and pieces in there. I planned on not buying (not a giant person), but it was to good to pass up for me.