Echohawk
Shirokinukatsukami fan
Over more than fifty years there have been a lot of D&D things created: hundreds of RPG products, novels, comics, and video games; thousands of miniatures; countless, ephemeral organised play adventures; translations of D&D products into dozens of languages; a vast quantity of licensed D&D clothes, toys, and other merchandise; and an ever-expanding amount of fan-published content on the Dungeon Masters Guild. It is no longer possible to collect or perhaps even to enumerate the total quantity of D&D “stuff”.
Counting D&D stuff is a little easier if we narrow “stuff” down a bit. We can calculate the number of D&D game products TSR and WotC released in stores. We can determine the number of pages of material in each book. We can even estimate the cost of being a D&D collector. This series of articles does that, in an attempt to answer the question: How much D&D stuff is there anyway?
Part 1: Products, Pages and Prices
In this first article in the series, we’re going to limit our investigation to D&D boxed sets, books and accessories sold in game stores. We’re ignoring novels, magazines, miniatures, organised play releases, licenced products and merchandising for now and focusing solely on table-top roleplaying game D&D products. For each main edition of the game, we’ll note the total number of products, add up the number of pages of new game material, and estimate how much it would have cost a hypothetical collector to buy everything as it was released.
Original D&D rules
There were only six core products in the original D&D line: the original D&D 3-Volume Set, Supplements I-IV and Swords & Spells. To those six, we’re going to add the 1977 Character Record Sheets, all of the sets of Dungeon and Outdoor Geomorphs, and the various Monster & Treasure Assortment sets. When the accessory sets were collected and reprinted in 1980 and 1981, those products were meant as much for Basic D&D as for Original D&D, but we’ll include them here.
Here are the charts for Original D&D:
Most of the content was released over three years, but the peak in the number of products came a year later, when a number of accessories with low page counts were released. By 1977, TSR’s attention had moved to Basic D&D, and we can’t draw many conclusions from this limited product line. You may notice that in the above charts, the 1980/1981 Dungeon Geomorph and Monster & Treasure collections show up on the products and price charts, but there are zero pages shown for 1980 and 1981.
That leads us into some counting conventions for this series of articles. D&D has a long history of reprinting and recycling older material. When a new product consists exclusively of material reprinted from earlier sources, we will count it as a new product, but we will not include those pages in the overall page count (because the pages aren’t unique).
The price is based on the original sales price for that product, and we are tracking the spending of a hypothetical D&D collector who has been voraciously collecting since the 70s. The collector typically buys one of each product, but skips products that only have a different cover. That means when we get to 5e, our hypothetical collector avoids spending $1,763.78 for a full set of thirty(!) alternative hobby shop covers.
The totals for Original D&D are as follows:
- Products: 16
- Pages: 518
- Cost: $68.41
Basic D&D
The 1977 Basic Set, the 1981 Basic and Expert Sets and the 1983 Basic Set and its Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal expansions are technically different editions of the Basic D&D ruleset. However, for the purpose of this article, we are going to treat them all as part of a single Basic D&D product line and count accordingly. There is a relatively clear end of the Basic D&D line in 1993 just before the Mystara setting transitioned to AD&D, but for this article we are going to count The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game from 1994 as the final Basic D&D item. It was reprinted with a classic red dragon cover in 1996, but the contents of the box are the same, so our hypothetical collector skipped that.
Here are the charts for the eighteen years that the Basic D&D product line ran:
Notable is the spike in both number of products and pages for 1987, corresponding with the launch of the first four products in the Gazetteer line, on top of a dozen other Basic D&D adventures and accessories. There is a second spike in the pages and price charts for 1991/1992. This reflects the launch of the 1991 black box version of the Dungeons & Dragons Game and the larger, more expensive Dragon’s Den, The Goblin’s Lair and The Haunted Tower boxed sets, as well the hefty Rules Cyclopedia.
The totals for Basic D&D are as follows:
The 1977 Basic Set, the 1981 Basic and Expert Sets and the 1983 Basic Set and its Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal expansions are technically different editions of the Basic D&D ruleset. However, for the purpose of this article, we are going to treat them all as part of a single Basic D&D product line and count accordingly. There is a relatively clear end of the Basic D&D line in 1993 just before the Mystara setting transitioned to AD&D, but for this article we are going to count The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game from 1994 as the final Basic D&D item. It was reprinted with a classic red dragon cover in 1996, but the contents of the box are the same, so our hypothetical collector skipped that.
Here are the charts for the eighteen years that the Basic D&D product line ran:
Notable is the spike in both number of products and pages for 1987, corresponding with the launch of the first four products in the Gazetteer line, on top of a dozen other Basic D&D adventures and accessories. There is a second spike in the pages and price charts for 1991/1992. This reflects the launch of the 1991 black box version of the Dungeons & Dragons Game and the larger, more expensive Dragon’s Den, The Goblin’s Lair and The Haunted Tower boxed sets, as well the hefty Rules Cyclopedia.
The totals for Basic D&D are as follows:
- Products: 129
- Pages: 7,624
- Cost: $1,176.19
AD&D
The (1e) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons product line spanned twelve years. It had competition from the Basic D&D line throughout this time, but still managed to average more than a product each month. The charts for AD&D look like this:
Evident here is the relatively low annual page count before 1983. This is because early AD&D was dominated by short adventures. Only in 1983 did the quantity of new AD&D content surge past 500 pages in one year for the first time. That surge had a corresponding increase in the cost-to-collect, particularly from 1985 onwards.
The totals for 1st Edition AD&D are as follows:
The (1e) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons product line spanned twelve years. It had competition from the Basic D&D line throughout this time, but still managed to average more than a product each month. The charts for AD&D look like this:
Evident here is the relatively low annual page count before 1983. This is because early AD&D was dominated by short adventures. Only in 1983 did the quantity of new AD&D content surge past 500 pages in one year for the first time. That surge had a corresponding increase in the cost-to-collect, particularly from 1985 onwards.
The totals for 1st Edition AD&D are as follows:
- Products: 146
- Pages: 7,396
- Cost: $1,136.94
AD&D 2e
It is easy to forget that AD&D 2e had a lifespan one year shorter than its AD&D predecessor, given the sheer quantity of material produced during this period. There was a clear ramp up from 1e, with more than three times as many 2e as 1e products, and nearly eight times as many pages of content published. The proliferation of settings was responsible for a lot of that content. Here are the 2e charts:
It is interesting how steadily products and pages per year (and how much our collector spent) all climbed until 1995, which was when D&D reached peak production. A staggering 8808 pages of D&D content appeared in 79 products that year. If you bought them all, you’d be $1,205.90 poorer. This was clearly unsustainable, and production was scaled back for 1996. That wasn’t enough to prevent TSR from collapsing, and no D&D products were released in 1997 until WotC took over the company.
In 1998, its first full year as the custodian of D&D, WotC continued production largely as TSR had planned, churning out nearly 50 products and close to 5000 pages of content, but in the last years of the century, a rapid culling of settings and product lines put D&D on the path towards a more sedate 3e release schedule.
The totals for 2nd Edition AD&D are as follows:
It is easy to forget that AD&D 2e had a lifespan one year shorter than its AD&D predecessor, given the sheer quantity of material produced during this period. There was a clear ramp up from 1e, with more than three times as many 2e as 1e products, and nearly eight times as many pages of content published. The proliferation of settings was responsible for a lot of that content. Here are the 2e charts:
It is interesting how steadily products and pages per year (and how much our collector spent) all climbed until 1995, which was when D&D reached peak production. A staggering 8808 pages of D&D content appeared in 79 products that year. If you bought them all, you’d be $1,205.90 poorer. This was clearly unsustainable, and production was scaled back for 1996. That wasn’t enough to prevent TSR from collapsing, and no D&D products were released in 1997 until WotC took over the company.
In 1998, its first full year as the custodian of D&D, WotC continued production largely as TSR had planned, churning out nearly 50 products and close to 5000 pages of content, but in the last years of the century, a rapid culling of settings and product lines put D&D on the path towards a more sedate 3e release schedule.
The totals for 2nd Edition AD&D are as follows:
- Products: 550
- Pages: 56,850
- Cost: $8,374.57
Fast-play products and the Silver Anniversary Collector’s Edition
In 1999, WotC experimented with a rules-light version of D&D known as Fast-Play. That year also saw the release of the Silver Anniversary Collector’s Edition, which was mostly reprints, but included the previously unreleased L3: Deep Dwarven Delve. These products don’t belong with any of the editions, but we’ll keep track of them here.
The totals for this miscellany are as follows:
In 1999, WotC experimented with a rules-light version of D&D known as Fast-Play. That year also saw the release of the Silver Anniversary Collector’s Edition, which was mostly reprints, but included the previously unreleased L3: Deep Dwarven Delve. These products don’t belong with any of the editions, but we’ll keep track of them here.
The totals for this miscellany are as follows:
- Products: 5
- Pages: 152
- Cost: $69.85
3rd Edition
The average output during 2e was roughly 50 products and 5000 pages per year, a level which was, in retrospect, excessive from both a production and consumption perspective. For 3e, the pace dropped to a more reasonable average of 20 products (and 3000 pages) per year. The beginning of the 3e era also marked a gradual move away from black and white products to only glossy, full-colour releases. Here are the charts for 3e:
There is a clear distinction in these charts between the 3.0 and 3.5 periods, with 2000-2003 characterised by few releases, and low page counts. By 2004, the pace had picked up, and there were more pages of D&D content being produced than at any time since the early 1990s. The shift to mostly full-colour hardcovers pushed up the average page count per product to 145 pages (compared to 105 pages in the 2e era) and average cost per page, which was 17c/page for 3e, compared to 15c/page since the 1980s.
The totals for 3rd Edition are as follows:
The average output during 2e was roughly 50 products and 5000 pages per year, a level which was, in retrospect, excessive from both a production and consumption perspective. For 3e, the pace dropped to a more reasonable average of 20 products (and 3000 pages) per year. The beginning of the 3e era also marked a gradual move away from black and white products to only glossy, full-colour releases. Here are the charts for 3e:
There is a clear distinction in these charts between the 3.0 and 3.5 periods, with 2000-2003 characterised by few releases, and low page counts. By 2004, the pace had picked up, and there were more pages of D&D content being produced than at any time since the early 1990s. The shift to mostly full-colour hardcovers pushed up the average page count per product to 145 pages (compared to 105 pages in the 2e era) and average cost per page, which was 17c/page for 3e, compared to 15c/page since the 1980s.
The totals for 3rd Edition are as follows:
- Products: 171
- Pages: 24,732
- Cost: $4,286.51
4th Edition
Compared to its predecessors, 4th Edition had a limited five-year lifespan, but the pace of production was similar to late 3e. There was a slight reduction (~10%) in the average number of pages produced each year, but a nearly 30% increase in the number of products. This is largely because of all the Power Cards that were produced for players—thirty different decks across 2009 and 2010. This was more than a third of the total number of products for those two years.
For sanity’s sake we’re going to completely ignore the five decks of Fortune Cards that were sold in sealed booster packs in 2011 and 2012. You’d need to buy a fair number of packs to be able to collect the full set of 80 cards in each set, but our hypothetical collector is able to resist that temptation (unlike the writer). Here are the 4e charts:
The annual page count for early 4e is similar to late 3e, with a slight dip during launch year. The annual cost of collecting was actually slightly lower than it was in late 3e, but only if you could resist collecting all of those different packs of cards. The sharp drop in production after 2010 marked the beginning of the end of one of the more revolutionary and controversial editions.
The totals for 4th Edition are as follows:
Compared to its predecessors, 4th Edition had a limited five-year lifespan, but the pace of production was similar to late 3e. There was a slight reduction (~10%) in the average number of pages produced each year, but a nearly 30% increase in the number of products. This is largely because of all the Power Cards that were produced for players—thirty different decks across 2009 and 2010. This was more than a third of the total number of products for those two years.
For sanity’s sake we’re going to completely ignore the five decks of Fortune Cards that were sold in sealed booster packs in 2011 and 2012. You’d need to buy a fair number of packs to be able to collect the full set of 80 cards in each set, but our hypothetical collector is able to resist that temptation (unlike the writer). Here are the 4e charts:
The annual page count for early 4e is similar to late 3e, with a slight dip during launch year. The annual cost of collecting was actually slightly lower than it was in late 3e, but only if you could resist collecting all of those different packs of cards. The sharp drop in production after 2010 marked the beginning of the end of one of the more revolutionary and controversial editions.
The totals for 4th Edition are as follows:
- Products: 135
- Pages: 13,458
- Cost: $2,874.61
Reprints and D&D Next
The production pause between 4th and 5th Edition was unusually long, and WotC filled the gap with a series of “premium” reprints of 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, 3.5 Edition books, finishing with a gorgeous wooden box reprint of the original 3-Volume Set (and Supplements). This period also saw the release of two printed D&D Next books, using a playtest version of what would become 5th Edition.
For the purposes of this article, we’re going to count all of these products separately from any edition. With the exception of the new adventure A0: Danger at Darkshelf Quarry in the Against the Slavelords collection and the two D&D Next adventures, these products don’t add anything to our cumulative page count, but since there wasn’t much else released over this period, we are going to assume that our hypothetical collector does buy copies of these reprints, and we’re adding them to the total cost.
The totals for this miscellany are as follows:
The production pause between 4th and 5th Edition was unusually long, and WotC filled the gap with a series of “premium” reprints of 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, 3.5 Edition books, finishing with a gorgeous wooden box reprint of the original 3-Volume Set (and Supplements). This period also saw the release of two printed D&D Next books, using a playtest version of what would become 5th Edition.
For the purposes of this article, we’re going to count all of these products separately from any edition. With the exception of the new adventure A0: Danger at Darkshelf Quarry in the Against the Slavelords collection and the two D&D Next adventures, these products don’t add anything to our cumulative page count, but since there wasn’t much else released over this period, we are going to assume that our hypothetical collector does buy copies of these reprints, and we’re adding them to the total cost.
The totals for this miscellany are as follows:
- Products: 17
- Pages: 216
- Cost: $874.19
5th Edition
By design, 5th Edition D&D took a very different approach to production, releasing only 13 products over its first three years. In 2017, clearly responding to the popularity of the new edition, the number of releases ratcheted up to a stable seven products per year, with additional accessories in a few years. In 2018 and 2019 there were three sets of dungeon tiles, four sets of dice and three sets of maps, and in 2022 two sets of Campaign Case accessories. The 2023 dip is because The Deck of Many Things was delayed to January 2024. Here are the 5e charts:
If you can ignore the temptation of alternative covers and the many licensed D&D products, 5e is the most cost effective edition to collect since 1e. To keep up with AD&D would have cost you an average of $95 per year. In comparison, 5e seems high at $335/year but it is easily eclipsed by 3e ($536/year), 4e ($575/year) and 2e (a whopping $751/year). None of those amounts have been adjusted for inflation, making the relative affordability of collecting 5e even more notable.
The totals for 5th Edition (up to the end of 2025) are as follows:
By design, 5th Edition D&D took a very different approach to production, releasing only 13 products over its first three years. In 2017, clearly responding to the popularity of the new edition, the number of releases ratcheted up to a stable seven products per year, with additional accessories in a few years. In 2018 and 2019 there were three sets of dungeon tiles, four sets of dice and three sets of maps, and in 2022 two sets of Campaign Case accessories. The 2023 dip is because The Deck of Many Things was delayed to January 2024. Here are the 5e charts:
If you can ignore the temptation of alternative covers and the many licensed D&D products, 5e is the most cost effective edition to collect since 1e. To keep up with AD&D would have cost you an average of $95 per year. In comparison, 5e seems high at $335/year but it is easily eclipsed by 3e ($536/year), 4e ($575/year) and 2e (a whopping $751/year). None of those amounts have been adjusted for inflation, making the relative affordability of collecting 5e even more notable.
The totals for 5th Edition (up to the end of 2025) are as follows:
- Products: 84
- Pages: 13,111
- Cost: $4,057.20
A complete(ish) collection
After fifty years, our hypothetical D&D collector has spent an estimated $22,918.47 and owns a complete(ish) collection of 1,253 D&D RPG products containing 124,057 pages of material to read. Piled up in a single stack, all those D&D boxes and books would be roughly as high as a six-story building, at least until the weight of the books crushed the boxed sets. At one page per minute (based on average word count and reading speed), it would take our collector three months of non-stop, sleepless reading to digest the entire collection.
We can visualise the whole collection in a few different ways. Above is a chart based on the type of product: boxed sets, hardcovers, softcovers and everything else. Peak boxed set production was in 1994, peak softcover in 1995, peak hardcover in 2007 and peak miscellaneous in 2009 (those 4e card sets). It’s an interesting visualisation of how the production of D&D has changed over the years.
Above is a view of the number pages of new content produced each year, coloured to show each edition’s relative contribution to D&D lore. Clearly, 2e dominates the page count, but even with its slow release schedule, 5e will overtake the total page count for 4e in early 2026. It will take until 2035 for 5e to overtake the page count for 3e, and assuming that 5e really is an evergreen edition, it will finally overtake 2e’s page count in about 2061.
Next, let’s visualise the relative contribution of each edition to D&D using pie charts. Here, the results depend on whether we are comparing the products, pages or total cost of collecting. In terms of the number of products, 2e has by far the most (45%), followed by 3e (14%), 1e (12%), 4e (11%), Basic (11%) and 5e at only 7%.
The higher page count for later products changes the picture a little if we look at the total number of pages. This boosts 3e (20% of the total) and 5e (11%) while shrinking the Basic (6%) and 1e slices (6%).
Finally, looking at the cost to collect everything for an edition tilts things further in the favour of more recent (and thus more expensive) editions. The largest cost is still to collect 2e (38%), but 5e now comes in third (17%) after 3e (20%). Interestingly, if you’d been collecting since the beginning, by now you’d have given WotC more money than TSR and you’d have spent almost exactly half of the total in each of the 20th and 21st centuries.
To wrap up this article, here are a few ranked lists of editions:
After fifty years, our hypothetical D&D collector has spent an estimated $22,918.47 and owns a complete(ish) collection of 1,253 D&D RPG products containing 124,057 pages of material to read. Piled up in a single stack, all those D&D boxes and books would be roughly as high as a six-story building, at least until the weight of the books crushed the boxed sets. At one page per minute (based on average word count and reading speed), it would take our collector three months of non-stop, sleepless reading to digest the entire collection.
We can visualise the whole collection in a few different ways. Above is a chart based on the type of product: boxed sets, hardcovers, softcovers and everything else. Peak boxed set production was in 1994, peak softcover in 1995, peak hardcover in 2007 and peak miscellaneous in 2009 (those 4e card sets). It’s an interesting visualisation of how the production of D&D has changed over the years.
Above is a view of the number pages of new content produced each year, coloured to show each edition’s relative contribution to D&D lore. Clearly, 2e dominates the page count, but even with its slow release schedule, 5e will overtake the total page count for 4e in early 2026. It will take until 2035 for 5e to overtake the page count for 3e, and assuming that 5e really is an evergreen edition, it will finally overtake 2e’s page count in about 2061.
Next, let’s visualise the relative contribution of each edition to D&D using pie charts. Here, the results depend on whether we are comparing the products, pages or total cost of collecting. In terms of the number of products, 2e has by far the most (45%), followed by 3e (14%), 1e (12%), 4e (11%), Basic (11%) and 5e at only 7%.
The higher page count for later products changes the picture a little if we look at the total number of pages. This boosts 3e (20% of the total) and 5e (11%) while shrinking the Basic (6%) and 1e slices (6%).
Finally, looking at the cost to collect everything for an edition tilts things further in the favour of more recent (and thus more expensive) editions. The largest cost is still to collect 2e (38%), but 5e now comes in third (17%) after 3e (20%). Interestingly, if you’d been collecting since the beginning, by now you’d have given WotC more money than TSR and you’d have spent almost exactly half of the total in each of the 20th and 21st centuries.
To wrap up this article, here are a few ranked lists of editions:
Average products per year | Average pages per year | Average cost to collect per year |
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Average number of pages per product | Average price of a product | Average cost per page |
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Unsurprisingly, 2e tops the rankings for most products, pages and cost-to-collect averaged over its lifetime. Also unsurprising is 5e atop the rankings for average pages and price per product given that D&D books have gotten thicker and more expensive over time. The final column—the average cost per page—is the only list which ends up in (reverse) chronological order. OD&D cost 11c/page; Basic, 1e and 2e all averaged 15c/page; 3e jumped to 17c/page; 4e cost 21c/page; and 5e comes in at 28c/page. We can conclude that D&D now costs nearly twice as much to buy per page as it did last century.
If you’ve stuck with this article all the way to the end, thank you for your attention. In the next article in this series, we’ll turn our attention to the various D&D campaign settings and how much material was produced for each of those.
