Darksun TSR sales! From Benjamin Riggs.

[vecna00]

I think it's very likely that if TSR had been carved up and sold piecemeal there might not be a D&D game in print today. Without Peter Adkinson really liking D&D and thinking that the brand had intrinsic value that TSR had squandered it might just be locked up in someone's IP vault somewhere, broken out every once in a while to make another video game. I can't think of what other tabletop gaming company in 1996 would have had the money to bail TSR out of the financial hole they'd created, but I can think of a few computer gaming studios that might have.

I'm sure that a company on the level of Activision or EA could have done that just for the IP alone.

And they probably would be sitting on it right now.

 

[teitan]

Most of those sales were early 80's. Dragonlance then FR surpassed it.

Dragonlance never surpassed it. Plus Lorraine Williams intentionally tanked it. This is very well know. They released a string of intentionally satirical and awful products in order to bury Greyhawk. Dragonlance never surpassed Greyhawk just looking at the sales numbers along and FR barely beat it in its lifetime sales when you consider that it’s a lifetime run and Forgotten Realms had not 2 boxed sets but three and the well received FR Adventures and counting the revised 2e box on there. The Greyhawk stats have the original supplement, the Greyhawk box, not the folio, the pretty awful Greyhawk Adventures book that previewed 2e and some articles, and From The Ashes. Not the GH98 material at all, ending with the FtA set. GH did that without supplemental support received by FR. GH did not have the FR series of supplements that followed on, the budget that FR had, it did what it did with adventures and when it was finally given the “FR” treatment it was already obvious that management was intentionally burying it and it was on life support. No novels outside of Gygax’s original Gord novels (and he was gone) and the Jean Rabe novels, no video games, no comic books (DC had two FR series, a Dragonlance and a Spelljammer comic coming out), the adventures still in print and being reprinted that were GH related weren’t given GH trade dress like ToEE and Queen of the Spiders. Greyhawk was popular in spite of not having all the things that Dragonlance and the Realms had to prop it up.

 

[Zardnaar]

Dragonlance never surpassed it. Plus Lorraine Williams intentionally tanked it. This is very well know. They released a string of intentionally satirical and awful products in order to bury Greyhawk. Dragonlance never surpassed Greyhawk just looking at the sales numbers along and FR barely beat it in its lifetime sales when you consider that it’s a lifetime run and Forgotten Realms had not 2 boxed sets but three and the well received FR Adventures and counting the revised 2e box on there. The Greyhawk stats have the original supplement, the Greyhawk box, not the folio, the pretty awful Greyhawk Adventures book that previewed 2e and some articles, and From The Ashes. Not the GH98 material at all, ending with the FtA set. GH did that without supplemental support received by FR. GH did not have the FR series of supplements that followed on, the budget that FR had, it did what it did with adventures and when it was finally given the “FR” treatment it was already obvious that management was intentionally burying it and it was on life support. No novels outside of Gygax’s original Gord novels (and he was gone) and the Jean Rabe novels, no video games, no comic books (DC had two FR series, a Dragonlance and a Spelljammer comic coming out), the adventures still in print and being reprinted that were GH related weren’t given GH trade dress like ToEE and Queen of the Spiders. Greyhawk was popular in spite of not having all the things that Dragonlance and the Realms had to prop it up.

Not claiming lifetime sales it surpassed it at the time it was on sale.

2E didn't outsell 1E but it did in 89 on release vs 88 1E numbers.

Dragonlance also had those novels as well so there's that as well.

Novels eventually surpassed the game sale.

 

[Reynard]

Novels eventually surpassed the game sale.

Eventually? I bet in the first couple months.

 

[Zardnaar]

Eventually? I bet in the first couple months.

Shrugs. Common story was when TSR went under novels were worth more.

When that happened or if it's true idk.