Daggerheart Sold Out in Two Weeks, Has Three-Year Plan in Place

A recent interview with Business Insider revealed just how well Daggerheart did for Critical Role's Darrington Press when it first launched earlier this year. Ed Lopez, Critical Role's chief operating officer, revealed that Daggerheart sold out in two weeks. According to Lopez, Critical Role anticipated that their stock would last a year, but the game was forced to go into reprints in a hurry. "The amount of units that we ordered we thought was going to last us a year, and it lasted us literally two weeks," Lopez said. "It's a great problem, it's a Champagne problem, but it's now changing our view in terms of what this product can be."

Lopez also revealed that Darrington Press has a three-year plan in place for Daggerheart, which includes the already announced Hope & Fear expansion, which adds a new domain and several new classes and backgrounds to the game.

Lopez also spoke about the hires of Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, stating that the two would be working on both Daggerheart and D&D material for Darrington Press. "We really want their creative juices brought to the world of 'Daggerheart.' That being said, we're also doing a bunch of 'D&D' stuff, and who better to bring in than the guys who used to do it?" Lopez said.

 

[Neonchameleon]

However, the discussion over terminology made me think of this:

View attachment 426308

The irony of that particular XKCD is it mentions USB in the alt-text, but USB has pretty much standardised on USB-C (and USB-C is busy mopping up the charger market).

 

[Tigris]

I have no idea why this came up in this thread, but yes 5e had a very strong start:

D&D 3.x Thread '5E's Initial Raw Sales Numbers Stronger Than 3E's!'

Sep 3, 2014

It seems that the initial sales of D&D 5th Edition are very strong. Asked about how they compare to 3E and 4E, WotC's Mike Mearls says that "Raw numbers are stronger, but that's not the complete picture. end of year 1 is the key." The Player's Handbook has now topped the hardcover nonfiction sellers list at Publishers Weekly. As of right now, it's #1 in Fantasy Gaming at Amazon, and a week ago it was the #1 book on Amazon!

In other news, prompted by some discussion about the gaps between D&D edition releases, I whipped up this quick...

• Umbran
• Replies: 203
• Forum: D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants

But so did Daggerheart! Maybe that should be the focus of this thread.

And that was exsctly the kind of marketing I mesn "Mike mearls is saying" without actual numbers. In the mesntime we did get rough actual numbers of the sales of D&D over the years (which are linked in the post I linked). 2014 and 2015 had roughly the same revenue (29 vs 25) as 3.5 had st the end of its lifecycle. Which is weaker than initial years for 3E, 3.5 and 4E (gor ehich er sll know thst they had big drop in sales after first year).

This is exactly my point, people use statements made in interviews, which are made for marketing, at face value, even if actual data (later released) shows different.

Mike Mearls especially often was beagging about 5e to make him look good. Like in an interview saying that in 2013 the sales numbers of D&D were really down and than 2014 they went up a lot thanks to 5e.

Yes in 2013, the year which had no new D&D material was released (partially because of him). Doubling the sales compared to previous yesr sounds good. Doubling the sales in a year when a new edition (and a new D&D toyline) comes out and you celebrate 40 years D&D and have the first new releases since 2 years compared to a year which had 0 new D&D releases does not sound that great anymore.

Dont forget that in 2014 D&D was close to being killed (as said by Mearls and others, including stating that they could only afford a single person officially working on D&D for a while. And the other people working on D&D where officially working for MtG), because 4E did not reach the 100 million yearly sales Hasbro wanted from "core franchises". And then was considered a niche franchise. So WotC needed to build the narrative that 5E was a big success, else Hasbro would have killed D&D/ outsourced it from WotC. So this behaviour at the time is completly reasonable and understandable.


That is also why Wotc did for almost 2 years release no new D&D content before 5E. (2 years! With the whole 2013 with no D&D release. That never happened since D&D exists). And why 5e had originally small print runs (mitigate risk) which makes it easy to say "it sold out it went below our expectations".


Also 5e did not release in digital form, just book form, unlike 4E which is part of the "whole picture". All 5e sales where from physical sales, while all digitsl sales (which even in 2019 made a huge part of income) come from earlier editions released digitally.


So we should maybe not use vague posts from 2014 (from the guy profiting most drom the "its a huge success" narrative) as sources, when we have actual numbers from 2025.


And we should always be critical when a marketing person claims something which makes them look positively, whitout showing the actual numbers.

 

[Parmandur]

The irony of that particular XKCD is it mentions USB in the alt-text, but USB has pretty much standardised on USB-C (and USB-C is busy mopping up the charger market).

True, but that is due most to regulatory action.

 

[Reynard]

Before 2000?
Dunno about that

Yes. Actual Plays started out as text, and we're around since the beginning, but the term "AP" started on forums in the 90s.

 

[zakael19]

I certainly was confused as heck on forums seeing people referring to "playing APs" before realizing that was a Paizo thing.

 

[TerraDave]

And that was exsctly the kind of marketing I mesn "Mike mearls is saying" without actual numbers. In the mesntime we did get rough actual numbers of the sales of D&D over the years (which are linked in the post I linked). 2014 and 2015 had roughly the same revenue (29 vs 25) as 3.5 had st the end of its lifecycle. Which is weaker than initial years for 3E, 3.5 and 4E (gor ehich er sll know thst they had big drop in sales after first year).

This is exactly my point, people use statements made in interviews, which are made for marketing, at face value, even if actual data (later released) shows different.

Mike Mearls especially often was beagging about 5e to make him look good. Like in an interview saying that in 2013 the sales numbers of D&D were really down and than 2014 they went up a lot thanks to 5e.

Yes in 2013, the year which had no new D&D material was released (partially because of him). Doubling the sales compared to previous yesr sounds good. Doubling the sales in a year when a new edition (and a new D&D toyline) comes out and you celebrate 40 years D&D and have the first new releases since 2 years compared to a year which had 0 new D&D releases does not sound that great anymore.

Dont forget that in 2014 D&D was close to being killed (as said by Mearls and others, including stating that they could only afford a single person officially working on D&D for a while. And the other people working on D&D where officially working for MtG), because 4E did not reach the 100 million yearly sales Hasbro wanted from "core franchises". And then was considered a niche franchise. So WotC needed to build the narrative that 5E was a big success, else Hasbro would have killed D&D/ outsourced it from WotC. So this behaviour at the time is completly reasonable and understandable.


That is also why Wotc did for almost 2 years release no new D&D content before 5E. (2 years! With the whole 2013 with no D&D release. That never happened since D&D exists). And why 5e had originally small print runs (mitigate risk) which makes it easy to say "it sold out it went below our expectations".


Also 5e did not release in digital form, just book form, unlike 4E which is part of the "whole picture". All 5e sales where from physical sales, while all digitsl sales (which even in 2019 made a huge part of income) come from earlier editions released digitally.


So we should maybe not use vague posts from 2014 (from the guy profiting most drom the "its a huge success" narrative) as sources, when we have actual numbers from 2025.


And we should always be critical when a marketing person claims something which makes them look positively, whitout showing the actual numbers.

Vague posts? That was official ENWorld news! 1 seller on Amazon. 1 seller at Publication weekly. Thats third party data! And we kept tracking Amazon, the core books staid high for months and months. You will find nothing like this for 4e. Not even close.

Where are the revenue figures you keep citing from? Probably insiders (please feel free to link to the original source). And we don't know what is in them. Video games, novels, pre-painted minis (which where big until they weren't), other merchandising. Early 4e could have also benefited from ongoing 3e sales. Can you prove otherwise?

Also, The PHB and starter set did not get released until mid year 2014. MM in October, and DMG in December! The game was not fully out, and revenue more then doubled, according to your own figures. And kept growing and growing.

 

[Parmandur]

Vague posts? That was official ENWorld news! 1 seller on Amazon. 1 seller at Publication weekly. Thats third party data! And we kept tracking Amazon, the core books staid high for months and months. You will find nothing like this for 4e. Not even close.

Where are the revenue figures you keep citing from? Probably insiders (please feel free to link to the original source). And we don't know what is in them. Video games, novels, pre-painted minis (which where big until they weren't), other merchandising. Early 4e could have also benefited from ongoing 3e sales. Can you prove otherwise?

Also, The PHB and starter set did not get released until mid year 2014. MM in October, and DMG in December! The game was not fully out, and revenue more then doubled, according to your own figures. And kept growing and growing.

And there was not nothing released in 2013: there were a bunch of retro rules reprints going out.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Vague posts? That was official ENWorld news! 1 seller on Amazon. 1 seller at Publication weekly. Thats third party data! And we kept tracking Amazon, the core books staid high for months and months. You will find nothing like this for 4e. Not even close.

Nothing was kept indeed. But we did have one thing that I'm pretty sure made 4e significantly more profitable than early 5e. We actually had D&D Insider numbers; due to the way the now long dead Gleemax boards were run we could see how many people were subscribed to D&D Insider, and this was a revenue stream that was worth millions a year up to 2013 when they reorganised the boards. (There's a reason WotC paid $143 million to buy D&D Beyond).

Two things now I come to think of it. I used to refer to 5e as the "mothballs edition" (and I'm still convinced that was what was intended) because there were no supplements being released.

Also, The PHB and starter set did not get released until mid year 2014. MM in October, and DMG in December! The game was not fully out, and revenue more then doubled, according to your own figures. And kept growing and growing.

But most of the sales are expected to be at launch - or in time for Christmas. And for the PHB. This isn't the difference you think. That sales actually grew 2016 and sales shot up in 2017 (Stranger things being first broadcast in 2016) is a huge difference of course.

The one thing to do however is always assume that marketing statements are both true and making things as good as they can look. So when Mike Mearls says that "twice the sales of 2013" I believe him and also that 2013 was notably bad.

 

[FoolishFrost]

Just to be clear…

None of this has a single doggone thing to do with daggerheart, and has been rehashed to the point the popcorn is stale.

The idea that daggerheart sold out its whole stock in weeks that they expected to last years? Does not surprise me. CR is well known for misgauging its own reach by a factor of ten to twenty times. The Kickstarter for making an animated cartoon on the show is an excellent example.

Modestly is a virtue. They take it to a point of becoming a lack of self awareness. Perhaps it’s a branding thing? They underestimate demand to drive up sales? I can’t guess at the internal business thinking for their company, as I’m not a fly on the wall. I will say their success tells me that they will do fine with it.

I’m betting they are just waiting to focus on the system until they have a full set of books to support it. It would be dangerous to go all in on DH, while most of their viewer base is centered on d&d. Slowly shifting APs with small bursts to match new DH book releases to gauge interest is a safer bet.

Remember, daggerheart came out after a series of PR nightmares for wizards, combined with COVID. WHO knows how much effect that had on sales as well. It’s dangerous to assume CR could sustain the interest with enough inertia to push a product line with just one book. Especially one untested in the wilds.

CR is just being reserved and cautious. Just like they tend towards.

The above is opinions, not facts, as such. YMMV.

 

[TerraDave]

Nothing was kept indeed. But we did have one thing that I'm pretty sure made 4e significantly more profitable than early 5e. We actually had D&D Insider numbers; due to the way the now long dead Gleemax boards were run we could see how many people were subscribed to D&D Insider, and this was a revenue stream that was worth millions a year up to 2013 when they reorganised the boards. (There's a reason WotC paid $143 million to buy D&D Beyond).

Two things now I come to think of it. I used to refer to 5e as the "mothballs edition" (and I'm still convinced that was what was intended) because there were no supplements being released.

But most of the sales are expected to be at launch - or in time for Christmas. And for the PHB. This isn't the difference you think. That sales actually grew 2016 and sales shot up in 2017 (Stranger things being first broadcast in 2016) is a huge difference of course.

The one thing to do however is always assume that marketing statements are both true and making things as good as they can look. So when Mike Mearls says that "twice the sales of 2013" I believe him and also that 2013 was notably bad.

Nothing was kept? It did not happen, there was nothing to keep. 4e books sales where terrible compared to 5e from the start. The source that they were so great, WotC, no one else.

As for profitability? Almost certainly 5e, as it was done with a far smaller staff.