Grognard view of One D&D?

[haakon1]

gro·gnard | \ (ˌ)grō¦nyär \
plural -s
Definition of grognard
1: an old soldier
2 often capitalized : a soldier of the original imperial guard that was created by Napoleon I in 1804 and that made the final French charge at Waterloo

So, yeah technically it's more like GROWN-yar. I say we get to mispronounce it as GRAWG-nard because the original definition was stolen and applied to a particular niche of people in the gaming community and it sounds more appropriately insulting.

I knew the original meaning, and my wargamer buddy told me it’s literally old grumbler and probably from Napoleonic wargaming. So older than Chainmai, circa the first GenCon.

It’s a proud tradition.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I knew the original meaning, and my wargamer buddy told me it’s literally old grumbler and probably from Napoleonic wargaming. So older than Chainmai, circa the first GenCon.

It’s a proud tradition.

Get off my lawn...

 

[teitan]

This is simply not true. Each edition of D&D has outsold previous editions, and D&D has seen upwards growth since 1974. The current edition, 5th, has seen explosive growth like never before.

A new "edition", a 5.5E if you will, is not going to hurt the growth of D&D or book sales.

Say what? Demonstrably not true. 2e, in it's entire run, did not outsell 1e in it's first 3 years. Or even first year. 2e chugged along because it was a band aid through poor business decisions and bad communication between departments. Ben Riggs lays it out in his book. Initial sales were high but not like 1e sales and then tanked. Products would sell for a couple months and then bottom out.

4e only outsold 3e in initial pre-orders and while it was still a success it wasn't a Hasbro level success and was dead within 3 years of release.

3.5 lost gas after about 3 years on the market because the OSR was born and started the market split and the release of 4e caused an open wound in the market that Pathfinder bandaged up by being the new edition that 3.x players were wanting when 4e came out.

That 5e has been the massive success it has been is a shock. They had essentially no budget, no team and very little backing from WOTC/Hasbro when it came out. The D&D team was on fumes compared to the past. Mearls, Crawford and Perkins caught lightning in a bottle and synergized, unknowingly, with an unsuspecting pop culture thanks to Stranger Things referencing D&D so much in season 1, Critical Role becoming a massive success, none of that was expected to happen and contribute to D&D business in a big way.

So no, each successive edition did not outsell the previous edition. 3.x didn't even outsell 1e or basic, it's measure of success was 2e that's how successful 1e and the original Basic set actually were.

 

[teitan]

I decided I won't be buying much beyond the PHB, we decided in my group to just play DCC. I haven't really liked the playtest as it seems to be adding to the complexity as opposed to just having a core and then optional complexity like 5e. That was what was great about 5e was a solid core game with optional rules that could complicate it however you liked but the playtest seems to be making those optional rules part of that core game which is a barrier to teaching the game to new people.

 

[payn]

Say what? Demonstrably not true. 2e, in it's entire run, did not outsell 1e in it's first 3 years. Or even first year. 2e chugged along because it was a band aid through poor business decisions and bad communication between departments. Ben Riggs lays it out in his book. Initial sales were high but not like 1e sales and then tanked. Products would sell for a couple months and then bottom out.

4e only outsold 3e in initial pre-orders and while it was still a success it wasn't a Hasbro level success and was dead within 3 years of release.

3.5 lost gas after about 3 years on the market because the OSR was born and started the market split and the release of 4e caused an open wound in the market that Pathfinder bandaged up by being the new edition that 3.x players were wanting when 4e came out.

That 5e has been the massive success it has been is a shock. They had essentially no budget, no team and very little backing from WOTC/Hasbro when it came out. The D&D team was on fumes compared to the past. Mearls, Crawford and Perkins caught lightning in a bottle and synergized, unknowingly, with an unsuspecting pop culture thanks to Stranger Things referencing D&D so much in season 1, Critical Role becoming a massive success, none of that was expected to happen and contribute to D&D business in a big way.

So no, each successive edition did not outsell the previous edition. 3.x didn't even outsell 1e or basic, it's measure of success was 2e that's how successful 1e and the original Basic set actually were.

A question, you may or may not know, what exactly do people mean when they say "each edition outsold the last"? Are they talking about launch day printings of the core rulebooks?

 

[Grogg of the North]

I am struggling to find primary sources regarding sales numbers. (Maybe my google-fu is weak?) Most of what I've found is either people on reddit or game forums claiming that WotC employees have stated things. So let's spread so more questionable assertions!

• Mike Mearls on Twitter in August 2016 said that hardcopies of the 5e D&D Player's Handbook had outsold the lifetime PHB sales of 4e, and 3.5e, and 3e. Note that that was individually, not more than all three of the latter combined.
  
  
• In October 2007, WotC's Ryan Dancey claimed on a forum that:
  Total lifetime sales of the 1E PHB over 10 years were roughly 1.5 million units.
  Total lifetime sales of the 2E/2ER PHB over 10 years were roughly .75 million units.
  Total lifetime sales of the 3E/3.5E PHB over 5 years were 1 million units.
  On release, the 2E PHB sold ~250K units in 12 months. The 3E PHB sold ~300K units in 30 days.
  
  
• However, back in 2011 TSR's Tim Kask pointed out that if you're only looking at PHBs while in search of the all-time champ, you're looking at the wrong spot:
  
  

  So, I went to Jim Ward, who certainly was in a position to know, and he concurs with my assertion. Consider this, and I am paraphrasing Jim a bit: Frank's Red Box set was selling 100K copies per quarter, just in the US. Both the German and the Japanese editions of the Red Box matched those numbers for several years, plus the other 8 or 9 language editions were also being sold at that time. ...
  
  So, if we assume those numbers for just three years, that means 1.2 million US, 1.2 million Japan and Germany, and then all of the rest will probably account for another 500 or 600K. That makes roughly 3 million just for those three years.

So is 5E the highest selling edition? Who knows! I saw earlier a table from roll20 saying that 61% of the games on their platform are 5E. Of course now that I am looking for it again, it has vanished into the ether.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am struggling to find primary sources regarding sales numbers. (Maybe my google-fu is weak?) Most of what I've found is either people on reddit or game forums claiming that WotC employees have stated things. So let's spread so more questionable assertions!

Its extremely hard to find solid sales numbers on almost any RPG products, and when you do it involves taking the company involved at its word. That's why you see so many attempts to use secondary metrics to determine popularity so often.

 

[haakon1]

Benjamin Riggs is the expert on TSR era sales, and actually had access to primary sources. I look forward to a sequel, but sales data after the Hasbro acquisition I assume will never be released, unless the brand is owned by gamers again.

Anyhow, we don’t need sales data to see it’s not been from strength to strength with new editions.

1e is the edition that was a cultural phenomenon.

2e the edition when TSR went bankrupt and stopped printing. DOWN.

3e was a literal renaissance (rebirth, after bankruptcy). UP.

4e split the brand with PF taking a substantial part of the audience. DOWN.

5e has been during a cultural renaissance for D&D, where it became nearly pop culture. UP.

What will happen with 5.5/6/One is unknown, but the chances look 50/50 on up or down to me.

 

[CleverNickName]

So it seems that the even-numbered editions didn't fare as well as odd-numbered ones.

 

[Haplo781]

So it seems that the even-numbered editions didn't fare as well as odd-numbered ones.

But half editions do great.