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.

 

[John R Davis]

Actual Play is the older use.

Before 2000?
Dunno about that

 

[Parmandur]

No it did not. I did provide a link where this is explained. Why repeat this wrong informarion when we know today that this is nor true? D&D only made 29 million in the first and second year of 5e release. Which is WAY weaker than 4e, 3e and 3.5E.


Again this is just people falling for marketing /limited reports of "we sold out". WotC did wanted to create the narrarive of 5E being strong (to make Hasbro not kill D&D which was a real chance at the time. Remember they officially only had a single employee working on D&D ).

5es sales where only strong compared to the sales of 2013, the year where literally no new D&D book released.


And exactly because people believe marketing speak over data it is so efficient to release such statements...

I read the information at all the links you provided, it does not say about 2014 sales what you seem to think it says.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes 5e continued to sell, thanks to critical roll and later stranger things. Which makes it so strange that the company which releases critical role does not use their one verry strong marketing tool for their own game.

Critical Role was part of the 5E wave, but only ever a part. Their highest streaming ratings a re a small fraction of D&D Beyond's user base.

 

[Mournblade94]

Actual Play is the older use.

But most gamers didn't know about it. AP seems usurped in the lexicon of gamers by shows.

 

[Parmandur]

Daggerheart's metric for very strong sales is obviously going to be different to D&D's "very strong" sales.

So far, the most interesting actual metric we have is that there have been a full million PCs created on Demilane as of a recent convention. Now we know D&D Beyond gets like 6 million or so new characters a year based on prior numbers provides, so that is a significant number for Daggerheart...and Demilane has not felt the need to mention the numbers for any other game on their platform.

 

[SkidAce]

First time I noticed a lot of use for AP as an acronym was Paizo's Adventure Paths.

 

[TerraDave]

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.

 

[darjr]

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.

I don’t know why people push the false narrative that 5e had lackluster early sales.

It’s demonstrably wrong.

The interesting thing to me is the parallel. The 2014 PHB sold out very fast, it surprised WotC and they had to scramble to get more printed.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don’t know why people push the false narrative that 5e had lackluster early sales.

It’s demonstrably wrong.

The interesting thing to me is the parallel. The 2014 PHB sold out very fast, it surprised WotC and they had to scramble to get more printed.

I think that there are two sources of this, there is the anti corporate crowd, I think what they envision for that post corporate world varies and then there are the people that do not like the current D&D and believe that somehow, in spite all the evidence of the past that the next version of D&D will be "the game" that supports all the things they like.
I believe that all of them will be disappointed in the event of their preferred scenario.

 

[Vael]

For me AP clearly means "All Purpose", like AP Flour ;-)

As for sales ... no one, not Pathfinder, not Daggerheart, are in DnD's league. That doesn't mean Daggerheart isn't doing shockingly well on its own terms.