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

[cranberry]

I'd be interested in seeing the advertising $$ spent on each to get a sales to revenue ratio.

 

[Kurotowa]

Eating & harvesting monsters are a common concept in manga, manhua, etc. In a lot of those stories the best equipment is forged from mythic beast parts and eating their meat increases your strength

There's some precedent for it in western mythology. Some versions of the Siegfried myths come to mind, with him gaining power by eating a dragon's heart or bathing in its blood. But yes, it does seem to come up more in east Asian settings.

From China you have Daoist alchemists cooking up pills and elixirs from magical beast parts. From Japan you have stories of gaining immortality from eating mermaid flesh, or stuff like the Monster Hunter video games that are entirely about taking down aggressive megafauna and turning them into armor and weapons.

Or crossing the streams you have Delicious in Dungeon, a manga with an anime coming out early next year, that's an extremely familiar D&D dungeon crawl but the party are forced by circumstances to "live off the land" as it were. I highly recommend that one to anyone interested.

 

[occam]

A couple of surprises in that list, given how much negativity is heaped upon these products here and elsewhere:

• Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is the second-highest-selling 5e adventure of all, behind only Curse of Strahd. In fact, almost five years after its release, it's the second-highest-selling adventure of 2023(!), behind only the early 2023 release (Keys from the Golden Vault).
• Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is the sixth-highest-selling adventure, at a $70 nominal price point, less than a year after its release. In fact, it is by far the fastest-selling 5e adventure.

 

[Maxperson]

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!

A lot of that was preorder. I know I ran out and bought it without looking first. From what I've seen, sales dropped off precipitously after the first month. I think a lot of the rest of that can be chalked off to massively larger numbers of players. 2e had fewer players, more settings and far more support for each setting. Not everyone who even wanted to could afford to buy each setting.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Hmm. I really liked Fizban's, also being a dragon person. Maybe I'll look at Bigby's. I've sort of let buying books go as I become more disillusioned with 5.5e and the quality of settings being released.

 

[occam]

A lot of that was preorder. I know I ran out and bought it without looking first. From what I've seen, sales dropped off precipitously after the first month. I think a lot of the rest of that can be chalked off to massively larger numbers of players. 2e had fewer players, more settings and far more support for each setting. Not everyone who even wanted to could afford to buy each setting.

Spelljammer was still the third-best-selling adventure in the early part of this year. Look at the data; its success is not just preorders.

 

[payn]

I'd love to see a comparison to Paizo adventures, but those numbers are very hard to figure out since they are digital and producer to consumer direct in most cases.

 

[occam]

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is the sixth-highest-selling adventure, at a $70 nominal price point, less than a year after its release. In fact, it is by far the fastest-selling 5e adventure.

Following up: Any argument that WotC has "learned its lesson" given the presumably terrible response to the Spelljammer slipcase format should be taken with a few grains of salt.

 

[dave2008]

Following up: Any argument that WotC has "learned its lesson" given the presumably terrible response to the Spelljammer slipcase format should be taken with a few grains of salt.

Makes me wonder how planescape will do!

 

[Parmandur]

A couple of surprises in that list, given how much negativity is heaped upon these products here and elsewhere:

• Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is the second-highest-selling 5e adventure of all, behind only Curse of Strahd. In fact, almost five years after its release, it's the second-highest-selling adventure of 2023(!), behind only the early 2023 release (Keys from the Golden Vault).
• Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is the sixth-highest-selling adventure, at a $70 nominal price point, less than a year after its release. In fact, it is by far the fastest-selling 5e adventure.

Yeah, one of the interesting takeaways here is that all of the 5E Adventures have sold over a thousand copies this year, in 2023, just through the booksscan channels. Some well over 10,000 just in 2023!