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 ...

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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.

 

[Sacrosanct]

OA isn't that surprising. It was the 80s and Japanese (and related) stuff was HOT.

This. Ninjas to the left of me. Ninjas to the right. Everywhere I look, ninjas!

 

[Reynard]

So was Dragonlance then as well

I assume that's satire.

 

[Morrus]

I would be interested to see sales on DMsGuild on these books now they are being resold in PDF and POD. I would think that sales are only in the 1000s rather than these charts show for the time period.

I assume you could get a rough idea by looking at the medals.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I assume that's satire.

No, I'm serious. The Dragonlance book was the same as OA, content-wise. They both had setting material and a lot of character option material. People bought OA to play a ninja or samurai, and people bought DL to use the Knights and Mage classes.

 

[RuinousPowers]

I would not have guessed Spelljammer outsold Planescape.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Glad for this research. Yet calling these simply “settings” feels a bit misleading. Maybe “selected campaign setting products” would be more accurate.

If 2e Karameikos boxed set counts as a “setting”, then why not also include the sales of GAZ1 Karameikos? And the 2e Glantri boxed set and the BECMI Glantri Gazetteer? And all the Gazetteers?

What about the Hollow World boxed set?

 

[Hussar]

What is the point of nit-picking the information here? It is what it is. A comparison of the core setting material for each setting. Full stop. There is no "misleading". People keep trying to make this far more than it is. It's just a comparison of the main setting set. Maybe a setting did better in later splats? I don't know. That information is probably in the book. If you want more information, wouldn't the best thing be to go actually buy the book and look it up?

There's no real conclusions to be drawn here other than the main one that about a very short time after release, virtually every print product cratered in sales. It does explain the constant book churn out business model and also explains why we had (depending on how you count) several editions and different game lines. So long as each book starts with that fairly high sales number, that's good enough to keep the boat afloat, but, you're constantly trying to patch the holes in your boat and it will eventually sink, giving rise to a new edition.

 

[Reynard]

No, I'm serious. The Dragonlance book was the same as OA, content-wise. They both had setting material and a lot of character option material. People bought OA to play a ninja or samurai, and people bought DL to use the Knights and Mage classes.

That is absolutely silly.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

What is the point of nit-picking the information here? It is what it is. A comparison of the core setting material for each setting. Full stop.

I appreciate the research. But research is open to comments, suggestions, and enquiry. That's not just "nit-picking."

Okay, then what is the "core setting material" for Mystara? The AD&D Karameikos boxed set? (!) A product which arrived at the very, very end of a 15-year product run, spanning hundreds of campaign setting books? It's cool to see the Karameikos boxed set numbers. But still.

Other "core setting material" not on the chart (yet): Hollow World, Champions of Mystara (Voyage of the Princess Ark), Time of the Dragon (Taladas), Hordelands. All boxed sets. Also the original Ravenloft module and the GAZetteer series were "core setting material".

That information is probably in the book. If you want more information, wouldn't the best thing be to go actually buy the book and look it up?

What are you, the book agent? How do you know what's in the book?

Anyway, Ben's doing great work.

 

[Jer]

That's why the OA numbers are so high. The AD&D OA rule book was sold before 1E started to seriously decline in sales.

Yes I think that's correct.

A more accurate measure on all of these would be simply the one, single core box set (and folio, in the case of Greyhawk) through it's various editions. After all, which books and boxes were considered "core" for these purposes?

If you view these all as separate products rather than aggregating them into a single number across settings, what you see is after about 1989 an almost linear relationship between the year the product was released and the number of lifetime sales it achieved. There are outliers of course (Maztica is very low for its year, and 1992 overall was a bad year according to these numbers), but you can track the reduction in sales over time along that line.

What is the point of nit-picking the information here? It is what it is. A comparison of the core setting material for each setting. Full stop. There is no "misleading". People keep trying to make this far more than it is.

People seem to want this to be some kind of indication of setting popularity or quality or something. Or potential monetary value of these properties to Wizards. But all it actually seems to be is a visible metric of late era TSR's floundering to do anything to stop the decline of their company.