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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8702392" data-attributes="member: 6796468">So... I think what this shows, more than anything, is a generational change in buying and playing strategies.Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms all did HUGE BUSINESS on the boxed sets. But they were also chock full of material that only one person at the table needs or even "Should" have.Think back to the 70s and 80s. Who DMed? Was it one person only or were multiple DMs more common? Did everyone feel the need to get the boxed set so they could run a game of their own? I feel like that was kind of the case. I remember in the early 90s there were a handful of DMs in the social circles I knew through the gaming shop, rather than everyone trying to be a DM on different days of the week or different months or whatever.I think what these numbers are showing is the Birth of the Forever DM™.So around 100,000 Dark Sun boxed sets were sold over the entire course of it's existence, right? Almost half of them in the first year, about 50,000. Plus another 19,000ish the following year, for 69,000ish (nice).<img src="https://www.enworld.org/attachments/07e1055b-ef29-400a-9bc6-5d9e2c06d44c-jpeg.253810/" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Take a look at how many Adventures sold in '92 for Dark Sun, too. <img src="https://www.enworld.org/attachments/0fac4cb4-e652-40c3-a14f-1fbc00e83da8-jpeg.254598/" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />50,000 boxes, 250,000 adventures. And there were 4 adventures released in 92. If every DM who had a boxed set of Dark Sun bought all four adventures (and the 69,000ish figure was spot on) they would've sold 276,000 adventures in 1992. So. Y'know. Less total number of adventures sold than four for each box set, but -pretty- close.Then 1993 saw 200,000ish adventures sold, interest waned and people probably also were trying out other settings released around the same time, but those 200,000ish adventures also includes adventures released in '92.In '94 one was released and 80,000 total units of adventures were sold. But at this point 90,000 or so boxed sets for Dark Sun had been sold. So that's -still- pretty good for saturation of DMs who bought the boxed set grabbing the adventure. And, yeah, obviously it eventually tapered off to a dribble, but still.One person buys the box, and the adventure, and shares it with everyone at the table. Instead of everyone buying the box and the adventure. compare to FR just a few years earlier (and also alongside Dark Sun).<img src="https://www.enworld.org/attachments/42e39039-8568-4d69-b3d7-e7312d8dfe9f-jpeg.253672/" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Nearly 4 times as many lifetime sales!Don't get me wrong, FR is more popular than Dark Sun by far (for a variety of reasons)... but I'm beginning to wonder if this was a change in the playerbase that TSR didn't think to account for.</blockquote>

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