D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

[Voadam]

Keep in mind many of those spells were setting-specific and thus not open to all, and were called out as such by a symbol next to the write-ups.

While the compendium noted some spells with setting icons, they do not specify that these are only available in those settings. There is nothing to indicate that say something marked with the Al-Qadim Arabian Setting symbol would not be appropriate for a fantasy Arabian Baklunish deity in Greyhawk. When they describe the setting icons (volume 1 page 9) they only discuss the general themes of the settings, so how elemental magic varies in Al-Qadim versus Kara Tur or how in Birthright bloodline abilities augment magic. This seems more to explain the context of say a wood elemental spell from Kara Tur versus saying only Kara Tur priests may cast such spells. Restrictions by source seem up to individual DMs with some suggested categories for differing from the default rule of open access.

 

[Lanefan]

While the compendium noted some spells with setting icons, they do not specify that these are only available in those settings. There is nothing to indicate that say something marked with the Al-Qadim Arabian Setting symbol would not be appropriate for a fantasy Arabian Baklunish deity in Greyhawk.

It's a while since I looked at them but I thought there was a disclaimer saying setting-flagged spells were specific to that setting only unless the DM decided otherwise.

 

[Jaeger]

Yes, it's pretty clear that they did (the whole core brands thing). But they also had some other issues to maintain - brand strength, loyalty, and market position. And 4e was delivering negatives there.

Being outsold by a clone of the previous edition was an unacceptable situation - even though they were only getting outsold by a little bit.

D&D outsells its nearest competitors by orders of magnitude. It is not a first among equals RPG IP.

 

[Voadam]

It's a while since I looked at them but I thought there was a disclaimer saying setting-flagged spells were specific to that setting only unless the DM decided otherwise.

Its possible, but looking I did not find such an explicit restriction reference. The Wizard compendium has them too and the same context descriptions of the various settings. They seem more like theme descriptors (Fantasy Arabian spells, Fantasy Savage Land spells, etc.) and historical notes for D&D trivia (this is one of the few Red Steel origin spells) or for those DMs who want to tie stuff to different settings if they are running a multisetting spelljammer or planescape game.

Page 3 of Priest compendium 1:

"Spells associated with specific campaign worlds (other than the Forgotten Realms or World of Greyhawk settings) are marked with a special symbol so they can be easily recognized. See page 9 for a summary of these symbols. Spells associated with a specific monster or nonhuman race (dragons, elves, and so on) are noted, the race name is separated from the spell name by a dash. Specialized priests with unique spell lists, such as the NPC savant-cleric, from DRAGON Magazine are also specially noted."

 

[Emerikol]

according to wotc (and I don't care if you believe them or not) 3e out sold 2e, 3.5 out sold 3e. 4e outsold 3.5, and 5e out sold 4e by such an order of magnitude it isn't even funny... now maybe 1e outsold 2e (I don't know) but 3e didn't out sell 4e and 4e didn't out sell 5e.

Do you have a place that verifies what you are saying? I definitely did not think 4e outsold 3e/3.5e. Pathfinder rose during the 4e time and actually went ahead in sales for a while. There is a reason there was such a strong kneejerk reaction. Now that might have just been bad feedback but I'd like to see the sales figures somewhere if what you say is correct. I am not claiming to know for certain myself.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Do you have a place that verifies what you are saying? I definitely did not think 4e outsold 3e/3.5e. Pathfinder rose during the 4e time and actually went ahead in sales for a while. There is a reason there was such a strong kneejerk reaction. Now that might have just been bad feedback but I'd like to see the sales figures somewhere if what you say is correct. I am not claiming to know for certain myself.

okay, 1 pathfinder did do amazing, but it never caught or over took 4e. 2 I am starting to comple resources to dispell these myths... here is what I have so far.

I still need to find teh orginal mike merls quote about each one overtaking the one before BUT I think they are only talking core books and 4e does muddy that

obody has hard oh so outside data with small windows compared to


and before you say it...5e was out this wasn't 4e propaganda

DDI Subscribers and Revenue | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight

There's a page on the WotC site that lists all the current DDI subscribers. Someone on ENWorld tested it to make sure that if you unsubscribe, you're taking off the list. You are. There are ~81k current subscribers. At the *cheapest* subscription rate, that's $486,000 dollars a month. That...

forum.rpg.net

Mar 14, 2013
#1
There's a page on the WotC site that lists all the current DDI subscribers. Someone on ENWorld tested it to make sure that if you unsubscribe, you're taking off the list. You are.

There are ~81k current subscribers. At the cheapest subscription rate, that's $486,000 dollars a month.

That means the DDI alone, not counting books and minis and whatnot, is generating about half a million dollars a month for D&D.

How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?

Amusing myself with old posts and new data: Dragon Magazine Subscribers Issue Date Subs Total Paid 12 9/30/77 1164 7381 22 9/26/78 1144 7859 33 10/1/79 1951 10,885 44 10/31/80 4558 20,155 55 9/30/81 11,531 48,119 67 9/30/82 19,029 60,387 91 9/12/84...

www.enworld.org

D&D 3E/3.5 - 4E vs 3E Sales Figures: The Facts

Interesting numbers here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html Basically, it looks like the print run for 4e was half again as much as 3.5E and it's already sold out. Back to the printers you go! Not sure how it would compare to 3E's first print run, to be honest. Edit: The sales...

www.enworld.org

ICV2 only reflects a portion of the sales, game stores. It doesn’t look at offerings in the period it examines either and how that impacts sales rankings. Paizo had multiples releases a month and Wizards went months without new D&D product and a string of product cancellations before Pathfinder took the number 1 spot and then took up residence during the edition neutral release schedule aside from the release months. You can look at the release schedule for D&D during that time period and leading up to 5e launching to correlate with ICV2 data very easily and see how the months that WOtC released Heroes of Shadow for example corresponded to D&D being number 1 on ICV2 again and the next month it was Pathfinder with no new releases for D&D of significance. It’s like when Vampire was topping D&D during the TSR bankruptcy and TSR couldn’t get their books distributed by Random House or from the printer due to owing money. Would Vampire have been top dog in those months? It would have been pretty close but TSR was greatly weakened by poor business practices and a crumbling fanbase.


Four people who would know

 

[Zardnaar]

okay, 1 pathfinder did do amazing, but it never caught or over took 4e. 2 I am starting to comple resources to dispell these myths... here is what I have so far.

I still need to find teh orginal mike merls quote about each one overtaking the one before BUT I think they are only talking core books and 4e does muddy that

obody has hard oh so outside data with small windows compared to


and before you say it...5e was out this wasn't 4e propaganda

DDI Subscribers and Revenue | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight

There's a page on the WotC site that lists all the current DDI subscribers. Someone on ENWorld tested it to make sure that if you unsubscribe, you're taking off the list. You are. There are ~81k current subscribers. At the *cheapest* subscription rate, that's $486,000 dollars a month. That...

forum.rpg.net

Mar 14, 2013
#1
There's a page on the WotC site that lists all the current DDI subscribers. Someone on ENWorld tested it to make sure that if you unsubscribe, you're taking off the list. You are.

There are ~81k current subscribers. At the cheapest subscription rate, that's $486,000 dollars a month.

That means the DDI alone, not counting books and minis and whatnot, is generating about half a million dollars a month for D&D.

How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?

Amusing myself with old posts and new data: Dragon Magazine Subscribers Issue Date Subs Total Paid 12 9/30/77 1164 7381 22 9/26/78 1144 7859 33 10/1/79 1951 10,885 44 10/31/80 4558 20,155 55 9/30/81 11,531 48,119 67 9/30/82 19,029 60,387 91 9/12/84...

www.enworld.org

D&D 3E/3.5 - 4E vs 3E Sales Figures: The Facts

Interesting numbers here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html Basically, it looks like the print run for 4e was half again as much as 3.5E and it's already sold out. Back to the printers you go! Not sure how it would compare to 3E's first print run, to be honest. Edit: The sales...

www.enworld.org

ICV2 only reflects a portion of the sales, game stores. It doesn’t look at offerings in the period it examines either and how that impacts sales rankings. Paizo had multiples releases a month and Wizards went months without new D&D product and a string of product cancellations before Pathfinder took the number 1 spot and then took up residence during the edition neutral release schedule aside from the release months. You can look at the release schedule for D&D during that time period and leading up to 5e launching to correlate with ICV2 data very easily and see how the months that WOtC released Heroes of Shadow for example corresponded to D&D being number 1 on ICV2 again and the next month it was Pathfinder with no new releases for D&D of significance. It’s like when Vampire was topping D&D during the TSR bankruptcy and TSR couldn’t get their books distributed by Random House or from the printer due to owing money. Would Vampire have been top dog in those months? It would have been pretty close but TSR was greatly weakened by poor business practices and a crumbling fanbase.


Four people who would know

Just to be clear I don't think Paizo themselves claimed Pathfinder oursold 4E in total.

They did say something like by late 2010 it's likely they were outselling 4E and it became official 2011.

So all statements could be true. We know 4E sold more near launch then fell off a cliff later being outsold by Pathfinder.

So lifetime sales 4E cod still win based on that early surge.

We also know now 3.5 didn't do that well so early 4E sales could beat it.

We don't have 4E figures and it's been a while since some 3E ones were floated and can't verify them now (from memory 250k Pathfinder Circa 2013, 3.0 500k, 3.5 250-350k).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Just to be clear I don't think Paizo themselves claimed Pathfinder oursold 4E in total.

right, but the problem is the numbers are not a 1-1 4e sells 3 books in 4 months and PF sells 5 books in the same 4 months and do you compare 5 books each sell 200 copies to 4 books that each sold 250 copies and say both sold 1,000?

it gets worse near the end when 4e put out 1 book per quarter and some months PF put out 2 or 3 books... do you count 12 books selling 5k each as 60,000 sales compared to 1 book selling 30k and say "PF outsells 4e 2 to 1" or do you say each 4e book out sells PF books 6 to 1...

and with this we are back to Samuel clemins there types of lies "Lies damn lie and statistics" (and I am a math guy that can make number say different things when I want.

The

They did say something like by late 2010 it's likely they were outselling 4E and it became official 2011.

yeah but they are partial numbers at best... no one that has a connection to both or even either Piazo or WotC ever said PF was beating 4e, just that it came closer as 2nd as anyone else (maybe since White wolf but that is debated too)

So all statements could be true. We know 4E sold more near launch then fell off a cliff later being outsold by Pathfinder.

except we DON'T really know 4e fell off any cliff. We ONLY know that it didn't hit the (maybe pre pandemic unhittable) number Hasbro wanted.

In my day job I see this all the time. "We want to sell a billion of this item" turning into "We only sold 900 million of them, so it failed" and I have to constantly run reports showing that 900 million is a huge profit and still should be 'good' not 'fail'

So lifetime sales 4E cod still win based on that early surge.

Tbh I don't see anything that EVER looked like PF came close to a 1 to 1 sale with 4e book per book. They just got way closer then anyone else...

The big take away I can't believe that WotC DIDN'T take was that D&D is the only real competition to D&D... and they should have put out a PF Adventure and support both games, but instead they decided it was more important to 'win back' as many PF players as they could
(even though I have not seen even 1 2ePF book I have been told it takes a lot FROM 4e)

We also know now 3.5 didn't do that well so early 4E sales could beat it.

again early ( I want to say even before PHB2 marls said that 3e out sold 2e (not sure if he would even really know that) and that .3.5 out sold that and 4e out sold that, and now they claim 5e not only did that but out sold all of them added together.

We don't have 4E figures and it's been a while since some 3E ones were floated and can't verify them now (from memory 250k Pathfinder Circa 2013, 3.0 500k, 3.5 250-350k).

 

[Zardnaar]

right, but the problem is the numbers are not a 1-1 4e sells 3 books in 4 months and PF sells 5 books in the same 4 months and do you compare 5 books each sell 200 copies to 4 books that each sold 250 copies and say both sold 1,000?

it gets worse near the end when 4e put out 1 book per quarter and some months PF put out 2 or 3 books... do you count 12 books selling 5k each as 60,000 sales compared to 1 book selling 30k and say "PF outsells 4e 2 to 1" or do you say each 4e book out sells PF books 6 to 1...

and with this we are back to Samuel clemins there types of lies "Lies damn lie and statistics" (and I am a math guy that can make number say different things when I want.

The

yeah but they are partial numbers at best... no one that has a connection to both or even either Piazo or WotC ever said PF was beating 4e, just that it came closer as 2nd as anyone else (maybe since White wolf but that is debated too)

except we DON'T really know 4e fell off any cliff. We ONLY know that it didn't hit the (maybe pre pandemic unhittable) number Hasbro wanted.

In my day job I see this all the time. "We want to sell a billion of this item" turning into "We only sold 900 million of them, so it failed" and I have to constantly run reports showing that 900 million is a huge profit and still should be 'good' not 'fail'

Tbh I don't see anything that EVER looked like PF came close to a 1 to 1 sale with 4e book per book. They just got way closer then anyone else...

The big take away I can't believe that WotC DIDN'T take was that D&D is the only real competition to D&D... and they should have put out a PF Adventure and support both games, but instead they decided it was more important to 'win back' as many PF players as they could
(even though I have not seen even 1 2ePF book I have been told it takes a lot FROM 4e)

again early ( I want to say even before PHB2 marls said that 3e out sold 2e (not sure if he would even really know that) and that .3.5 out sold that and 4e out sold that, and now they claim 5e not only did that but out sold all of them added together.

If well we have sales figures for 2E confirmed now and they were in line with ones floated earlier.

If those 3E ones are accurate it outsold 3E.

The only claim Paizo actually made was PF outsold 4E at a certain point in time not lifetime sales.

Anythy beyond that is internet scuttlebutt. The claim is in Paizo retrospective that's was on their website.

 

[Emerikol]

okay, 1 pathfinder did do amazing, but it never caught or over took 4e. 2 I am starting to comple resources to dispell these myths... here is what I have so far.

I still need to find teh orginal mike merls quote about each one overtaking the one before BUT I think they are only talking core books and 4e does muddy that

obody has hard oh so outside data with small windows compared to


and before you say it...5e was out this wasn't 4e propaganda

DDI Subscribers and Revenue | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight

There's a page on the WotC site that lists all the current DDI subscribers. Someone on ENWorld tested it to make sure that if you unsubscribe, you're taking off the list. You are. There are ~81k current subscribers. At the *cheapest* subscription rate, that's $486,000 dollars a month. That...

forum.rpg.net

Mar 14, 2013
#1
There's a page on the WotC site that lists all the current DDI subscribers. Someone on ENWorld tested it to make sure that if you unsubscribe, you're taking off the list. You are.

There are ~81k current subscribers. At the cheapest subscription rate, that's $486,000 dollars a month.

That means the DDI alone, not counting books and minis and whatnot, is generating about half a million dollars a month for D&D.

How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?

Amusing myself with old posts and new data: Dragon Magazine Subscribers Issue Date Subs Total Paid 12 9/30/77 1164 7381 22 9/26/78 1144 7859 33 10/1/79 1951 10,885 44 10/31/80 4558 20,155 55 9/30/81 11,531 48,119 67 9/30/82 19,029 60,387 91 9/12/84...

www.enworld.org

D&D 3E/3.5 - 4E vs 3E Sales Figures: The Facts

Interesting numbers here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html Basically, it looks like the print run for 4e was half again as much as 3.5E and it's already sold out. Back to the printers you go! Not sure how it would compare to 3E's first print run, to be honest. Edit: The sales...

www.enworld.org

ICV2 only reflects a portion of the sales, game stores. It doesn’t look at offerings in the period it examines either and how that impacts sales rankings. Paizo had multiples releases a month and Wizards went months without new D&D product and a string of product cancellations before Pathfinder took the number 1 spot and then took up residence during the edition neutral release schedule aside from the release months. You can look at the release schedule for D&D during that time period and leading up to 5e launching to correlate with ICV2 data very easily and see how the months that WOtC released Heroes of Shadow for example corresponded to D&D being number 1 on ICV2 again and the next month it was Pathfinder with no new releases for D&D of significance. It’s like when Vampire was topping D&D during the TSR bankruptcy and TSR couldn’t get their books distributed by Random House or from the printer due to owing money. Would Vampire have been top dog in those months? It would have been pretty close but TSR was greatly weakened by poor business practices and a crumbling fanbase.


Four people who would know

When I said sales I meant sales of the core game. The three basic books. Pathfinder was ahead of 4e for sure at some point during 4e and prior to 5e. I am aware 5e did very very well. I did not dispute that at all.