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

teitan · Jul 19, 2022

Morrus said:
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:

Forgotten Realms

Greyhawk

Oriental Adventures

Dragonlance

Ravenloft

Dark Sun

Spelljammer

Lankhmar

Al-Qadim

Planescape

Birthright

Maztica

Karameikos

Red Steel

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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.

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There goes that whole no one likes Greyhawk argument people love to throw out there. Second most popular.

teitan · Jul 19, 2022

Sacrosanct said:
So was Dragonlance then as well

I admit I had Red Steel. I also admit I only skimmed it and never used it.

No Dragonlance was a setting with rules for its specific classics and priests. It set up 2e priest prototypes though.

Reynard · Jul 19, 2022

teitan said:
There goes that whole no one likes Greyhawk argument people love to throw out there. Second most popular.

I wonder how it compared in the 3E era (the last time it was published). That would probably be of much greater interest to WotC now, as to whether to lean into Greyhawk.

MGibster · Jul 19, 2022

Ath-kethin said:
Really the most surprising thing on that chart is that Planescape didn't sell better. I guess I wasn't the only one left wholly unimpressed by it (aside from DiTerlizzi's exquisite art, anyway).

I missed out on Planescape in the 1990s. What kept me away was the weird looking art and I had no interested in the planes. But when I looked at Planescape a few years ago, I realized just how beautiful the art really was and what a great place Sigil was to adventure.

teitan · Jul 19, 2022

Dungeonosophy said:
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".

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

Anyway, Ben's doing great work.

It’s obvious it is AD&D settings.

MGibster · Jul 19, 2022

schneeland said:
nteresting! 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.

I didn't expect OA to be #3 either. Back in 1985, OA was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews, and despite the problems I can see with the book now, I still think it's one of the best 1st edition AD&D books ever published. While I'm not surprised the book sold well, I didn't think it'd make it so high on the list. I thought for sure Dragonlance would have beaten it.

teitan · Jul 19, 2022

Reynard said:
I wonder how it compared in the 3E era (the last time it was published). That would probably be of much greater interest to WotC now, as to whether to lean into Greyhawk.

The 3e era saw 2 products, the D&D Gazeteer and the LGG. Both were OOP by the time 3.5 rolled around and essentially rendered as useless as Song & Silence or Tome & Blood. The Living Greyhawk campaign was very popular until the end of the 3.x era. The real gauge for WOTC is Saltmarsh in the same way that CoS was for Ravenloft. If Saltmarsh was huge (and it seems to have been) then they may carry that over to a setting book (and they probably are for the anniversary).

The surprise is more that people love to dump on Greyhawk as being “not popular” when it really seems to have actually been… it was Gary’s baby when you look at this data. By the time Carl’s work came out it was dying off for sure but they’d emphasized the Realms and pushed out intentionally bad GH products like their Castle Greyhawk and was it “Puppets” or something? So bad.

These sales numbers just show that it was more popular, than some of the popularly believed to be more successful settings like Dark Sun or Ravenloft. It was more successful than Dragonlance. Very surprising to see.

teitan · Jul 19, 2022

Pauper said:
Not sure why this would be a priority, when Legend of the Five Rings exists.

As unimpressed as I am personally with Spelljammer as a setting, seeing how popular it was in its original release, plus that there is very little out there, even today, that resembles it (maybe Space: 1899?) goes a long way to explaining why WotC would bring the setting back.

--
Pauper

The initial release was popular but it ranked fast. It was not around long at all. I think it was 15 months or something between the boxed set and the final product coming out. It was very quickly shelved.

Reynard · Jul 19, 2022

teitan said:
The real gauge for WOTC is Saltmarsh in the same way that CoS was for Ravenloft.

I don't know about that. Saltmarsh is an adventure anthology, not an AP, and it's connections to Greyhawk are tenuous and easily ignored. Ovbiously that is not the case with CoS.

teitan · Jul 19, 2022

Hussar said:
I would think that the primary reason that spelljammer is getting the nod is because unlike other settings, there doesn’t seem to be this group of gate keeping super fans who will scream from the mountaintops about how every little change is ruining the setting, DnD is dead and anyone who disagrees isn’t really a fan

In other words SJmmer doesn’t have this mass of toxic fans.

That’s because Newjammer looks infinitely better than the I’ll conceived concepts of Oldjammer. I’m actually enticed by Newjammer and I’m a huge Starfinder fan and didn’t see a real need for Newjammer.