From Forgotten Realms to Red Steel: Here's That Full D&D Setting Sales Chart

Whether this will end a thousand internet arguments or fuel another thousand, Ben Riggs, author of Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons, has finally published the combined chart of cumulative sales for every AD&D setting from 1979 to 1999.

Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Oriental Adventures, and Dragonlance lead the pack. The least selling setting was Red Steel in 1994. There was a clear decline in sales of all settings from 1989 onwards, so that's not necessary a comment on quality. Planescape, certainly a cult favourite, sold surprisingly few copies.

Slaying the Dragon - Macmillan

The secret and untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, then ...

read.macmillan.com

In order, the best-selling settings were:

1. Forgotten Realms
2. Greyhawk
3. Oriental Adventures
4. Dragonlance
5. Ravenloft
6. Dark Sun
7. Spelljammer
8. Lankhmar
9. Al-Qadim
10. Planescape
11. Birthright
12. Maztica
13. Karameikos
14. Red Steel

These stats were compiled as part of his research into his book, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons, which you should totally buy.

Slaying the Dragon - Macmillan

The secret and untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, then ...

read.macmillan.com

Let's dive into some individual sales charts! Note, these are for the primary setting product, not for additional adventures, supplements, etc.

 

[vecna00]

This has been a very fun and informative ride, and I'm sad that it's going to be over soon.

Seeing all of these numbers really put a lot of things into perspective for me about the history of our hobby. Comparing these numbers to the setting survey results could produce some interesting results. We may not have numbers for that settings survey, comparing sales numbers to the tiers would still be interesting!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I suspect it benefitted from hitting at just the right time, in the wake of Shogun, the American Ninja series, and Sho Kosugi, not to mention the lingering effects of 70s wuxia flicks. The trend continued well past OA's release date with Big Trouble in Little China, videogames like Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, and so on. Ninjas were big in the 80s:

I suspect the only way we'll see an OA-style product would be as a Magic the Gathering 5e setting book.

Interesting! I didn't expect Oriental Adventures to be the third best-selling setting, beating Dragonlance.
Not that I expect WotC to bring the setting back, but still a nice bit of D&D history.

That is a fascinating list. The top 5 all make sense to me, but never in a million years would I have put Lankhmar ahead of Planescape for sales.

In order, the best-selling settings were:

1. Forgotten Realms
2. Greyhawk
3. Oriental Adventures
4. Dragonlance
5. Ravenloft
6. Dark Sun
7. Spelljammer
8. Lankhmar
9. Al-Qadim
10. Planescape
11. Birthright
12. Maztica
13. Karameikos
14. Red Steel

 

[Bedrockgames]

Generally speaking, older people are more set in their ways (this isn't always true, of course) so you can probably expect some resistance to the kind of changes you need to update old settings. Exhibit A: the poopstorm following the Ravenloft book release. I fully expect one following the Spelljammer release, too. The farther apart the "old" and "new" customers are, the less likely you can make a product that appeals to both, and there's a certain point where the benefits of appealing to the old at all just disappears.

Some of it is just in how you do it. I think a lot of media these days almost intentionally splits the fanbase. You can be modern and still attract older gamers. But I think if one or the other feels disrespected or dismissed by the direction, you risk losing them. That is true, not just of generational demographics but of demographics around taste and play style too (as we saw with the splits in fandom before with D&D).

 

[Von Ether]

LOL! Out on the socials, there's a bit envy/competition. "Well, we don't know the whole story about setting X, if only they had included (modules, setting guides, etc.), we'd get the true story about my (obvious pet setting.)"

 

[Reynard]

LOL! Out on the socials, there's a bit envy/competition. "Well, we don't know the whole story about setting X, if only they had included (modules, setting guides, etc.), we'd get the true story about my (obvious pet setting.)"

I would loved to see detailed breakdowns of every line, just out of pure curiosity.

 

[Von Ether]

I would loved to see detailed breakdowns of every line, just out of pure curiosity.

No doubt, but you can tell that for some, the numbers ruffled some feathers.

 

[timbannock]

The other question is whether there is a market for a 5E megadungeon of that scope, beyond being a historical curiosity. 5E isn't really designed for that kind of play.

If the effort was made to make Castle Greyhawk a really solid puzzle dungeon, I could see it working. That's my biggest wish, and also something that I think is fairly unique and has a lot of fertile ground, especially with WOTC's resources. They didn't do anything "new" with the castle part of Castle Ravenloft with CoS, so it'd be easy to make it feel different.

But...

Was there a less well liked and successful 5E adventure than DotMM?

Also, you need more than a couple procedures to make 5E work with old school style megadungeon exploration.

This is why I doubt anything truly great will be done with Castle Greyhawk anytime soon. For all of the good things WOTC has done with their adventures, dungeon-crawling simply isn't one of their strengths. And puzzles, too. They are great at self-referential stories, epic scope campaigns, and, on occasion, they do a decent job of making certain set-piece locations really wild and out there. But they never seem to maximize that, and they certainly don't capitalize on it.

Castle Ravenloft: almost a word-for-word reprint of the actual physical parts of the castle; very few puzzles, just moody rooms.

Avernus: the whole "Mad Max in Hell" idea was great, but there was almost no purpose to it in the arc of the adventure.

Out of the Abyss: Gravenhollow was just a "poke around the library" scene, and the big rumble with the demon lords was entirely handwaved as far as locations.

Storm King's Thunder: Mostly just larger dungeon rooms; very few unique layouts. Absolutely zero terrain/battle map info in the open world sandbox portion of the adventure. I don't recall a single puzzle in the whole adventure, just a mystery of who killed who (and it wasn't even that important).

And I could go on. There's a lot I like about the adventures despite all the complaining, but...I don't see them ever using Castle Greyhawk for anything interesting.

 

[Von Ether]

Also, grognards often have more disposable income for gaming. I'm not saying, you should target only grognards (even though there's a market for that, too, IMO), but trying to also make the people who stayed with your brand for a long time happen once in a while is probably not a bad move.

It's a double edged sword. Yeah, they keep a game on life support but not necessarly alive.

In watching Battletech, I've seen demo games go totally awry because the demo guys is so desperate to run a huge battle with tons of lore and two hours of prep that he overwhelm/bores the newbies when a much simpler set up would have done the job much better.

And long before that, I had two BT groups that insisted I read three or four books before they'd deign to let me and play (They didn't have the patience to play "simple" games so I could learn.) Or how a lot of the art design didn't age well but there seemed to be some tug of war between updating those designs in fear of upsetting the grognards. (And I am not talking about the Unseen- that's a whole other issue.)

BT has come back, but it was a combination of new video games (which updated the look of the older mechs and was a huge exposure to a new audience), 3D printing (to get those mechs designs on the table and even in different scales) and a miniatures game rule set (Alpha Strike which helped some grognards use more of their their figs in a faster game that fit into their busy lives).

The latest news is that it seems some disaffected 40K fans are now giving BT a try, or at least love all the compliments on their paint jobs.

So overall grognards seem to me to be a life preserver that slowly becomes a lead weight that holds back ways to innovate.

The only exception to that seems to be the OSR, but that movement may be in spite of grognards, not because of them.

 

[teitan]

So did OA. It was a setting that has new class and race rules. Exactly like Dragonlance.

It was a much shorter section and not the focus of the book. Dragonlance adventures was designed to sell a setting. OA was a rules supplement with an example setting but it’s included so TSR considered it a setting book.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Idk man, have you SEEN the number of comments about how WotC changing the Phlogiston and Crystal Spheres into things that functionally work the same way but have different names is ABSOLUTELY RUINING THE SETTING HOW DARE YOU?

Your understating how fundlemental the charges to the setting are, it now blurs the line between Spelljammer and Planescape to nearly none existent. I like the change, but mostly because I hate trying to spell Phligizon, blasted word, Astral Plane I can spell just fine.