Critical Role Here's The Cover Of The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount; Plus It's #15 In Amazon Bestsellers!

While Amazon may have revealed the title and description of The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount earlier, it had no cover art. Barnes & Noble, on the other hand, has the cover but at the time of writing no title or description. Here it is!

The official announcement should be coming later today. In the meantime, the book - which has not yet been announced! - is already #15 in the bestsellers chart for all books on Amazon, based only on pre-orders. That's pretty astonishing for a book which 'officially' doesn't even exist yet (although the announcement is expected later today).

 

[Bardic Dave]

Not “currently popular”. Consistently popular, for years. Their stream has a million viewers per week. Their kickstarter for their cartoon was the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever, raising 11.4 million dollars and leading to two pre-ordered seasons on Amazon Prime. This book has a very good chance of being the best-selling thing WotC releases in 2020.

Correction: Critical Role is the most successful TV show Kickstarter. The most successful Kickstarter overall remains the Pebble Time at over $20 million, which incidentally was launched by a guy I was friends with in high school (fell out of touch; only see him once every several years now because we still have a few mutual friends).

That aside, you're right; Critical Role is insanely popular and this book is going to crush.

 

[DragonBelow]

Currently popular? I never heard of it before now. Why would anyone possibly think this would sell? How many players or DMs actually watch critical role as compared to the whole playerbase? Of those, how many are in the hunt for a new vanilla campaign setting? Popular amongst fans of critical role is not going to result in a significant number of sales. That could have devoted the resources to creating a book describing the varieties of Faerunian navel lint and it would probably sell more copies.

my whole group watches it, I think their average age is in 20s, it's cool, you got to cater to the next gen.

 

[dave2008]

Currently popular? I never heard of it before now. Why would anyone possibly think this would sell? How many players or DMs actually watch critical role as compared to the whole playerbase? Of those, how many are in the hunt for a new vanilla campaign setting? Popular amongst fans of critical role is not going to result in a significant number of sales. That could have devoted the resources to creating a book describing the varieties of Faerunian navel lint and it would probably sell more copies.

The book was at #15 on Amazon (all books) and #1 D&D before it was officially announced just because Amazon leaked the title a little early. It looks like it is still popular and WotC made the right choice (at least for their business).

EDIT: #14 in books now.

 

[Parmandur]

Currently popular? I never heard of it before now. Why would anyone possibly think this would sell? How many players or DMs actually watch critical role as compared to the whole playerbase? Of those, how many are in the hunt for a new vanilla campaign setting? Popular amongst fans of critical role is not going to result in a significant number of sales. That could have devoted the resources to creating a book describing the varieties of Faerunian navel lint and it would probably sell more copies.

This is hilariously wrong.

 

[GameOgre]

Love Critical Role and will be preordering the book. Not bad for a neckbeard grognard!

They have even converted some of us old Greyhawk and Mystara fans!

 

[Celebrim]

I've long understood that the books that would sell to me are not books anyone else would pay for, which is why I end up having to create all my own content.

I'm not interested in this at all, but despite the fact that I haven't been this disinterested in D&D since the middle of the 2e run, they do seem to be finding a target audience and keeping the brand healthy.

 

[Birmy]

This is hilariously wrong.

I know! Even for a RPG comment thread, this is an amazingly wrongheaded post. I thought it was sarcasm for the first couple of sentences.

 

[dave2008]

I've long understood that the books that would sell to me are not books anyone else would pay for, which is why I end up having to create all my own content.

I'm not interested in this at all, but despite the fact that I haven't been this disinterested in D&D since the middle of the 2e run, they do seem to be finding a target audience and keeping the brand healthy.

Are you disinterested in D&D or disinterested in what WotC is publishing? Those are, IMO, very different things. I have never been overly interested in what is being published past the core books (and whatever scant immortal / epic content was created), but I have always been interested in D&D since I fell for it 30+ years ago.

 

[3catcircus]

Not “currently popular”. Consistently popular, for years. Their stream has a million viewers per week. Their kickstarter for their cartoon was the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever, raising 11.4 million dollars and leading to two pre-ordered seasons on Amazon Prime. This book has a very good chance of being the best-selling thing WotC releases in 2020.

Their stream is free. That doesn't translate into book sales 1:1.

I know! Even for a RPG comment thread, this is an amazingly wrongheaded post. I thought it was sarcasm for the first couple of sentences.

Mark my words.

Free views on twitch and YouTube don't translate into book sales. This will come out, sell for a few weeks, and then disappear.

20-somethings may be the target audience. They also have no attention span to speak of. 50 and 60 year olds have been the glue holding the hobby together and have continued to buy product for decades. If they aren't interested in this book, it'll be long forgotten while fatbeards continue buying PDF versions of the original Greyhawk Folio for the next 10 years.

 

[Bardic Dave]

Their stream is free. That doesn't translate into book sales 1:1.


Mark my words.

Free views on twitch and YouTube don't translate into book sales. This will come out, sell for a few weeks, and then disappear.

20-somethings may be the target audience. They also have no attention span to speak of. 50 and 60 year olds have been the glue holding the hobby together and have continued to buy product for decades. If they aren't interested in this book, it'll be long forgotten while fatbeards continue buying PDF versions of the original Greyhawk Folio for the next 10 years.

Hey kids! Get off my lawn! Back in my day, a penny would buy you a whole moon pie, and you'd still have enough leftover to buy a whistle!