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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9656064" data-attributes="member: 7026594">I'm not entirely clear on what definitions you're using, and trying to put them together from your posts doesn't quite make sense to me.You can review the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/master-list-of-benn-riggs-d-d-charts-and-graphs.700406/" target="_blank">sales data</a> Ben Riggs shared around the release of Slaying the Dragon.  We don't have internal data on sales TARGETS for 2E, so it's not possible for us to judge definitively whether it failed to meet its targets.  We know it sold very well on release, with numbers in a similar ballpark to the 1E books, but seems to have had a faster falloff.  Of course, '79-'83 was the original fad boom period for D&D, so I don't think we can reasonably set the bar there.  In 1989 D&D was not the same kind of pop culture phenomenon. But it was still a tentpole product and sold millions of units of the core books.  The products which seem to have sold badly are the proliferation of settings.  Which competed against one another.I don't think it is normal to see Saving The Company as the bar for success of any product, unless the company is in imminent danger of demise and that's its actual goal.* TSR was no longer in imminent danger of demise by 1989, so 2E was not tasked with saving the company.  It was aimed at making a more palatable product which wouldn't offend Jim Ward's Angry Mothers from Heck, at making a more CLEAR and UNDERSTANDABLE product without opaque and near-unusable subsystems like 1E's initiative, psionics, and various unarmed combat systems, and at supporting Trad-style play in addition to legacy Classic/Gygaxian play.  It succeeded in those goals.  Obviously it also needed to sell well, as a tentpole product, but TSR was increasingly expanding the fiction and board game product lines and computer RPG licensing, and the company was not relying on AD&D to carry the entire company.4E we actually have data to support the argument that it didn't meet sales goals.  That it never met the then-goal of being a Franchise Brand hitting 50 million in revenue with a path to 100 million.  And that, at least once the publication schedule dropped off toward the end of its run, it opened the door for a competitor to tie and even pass them in sales.  Something unprecedented in the history of RPGs.*(Like, it might be reasonable to judge 1E's Unearthed Arcana by that metric, as it was literally an emergency cash grab.  Which makes it an interesting point of comparison.  From a sales perspective it obviously was a success.  Although from a rules perspective and as a physical book it's been widely decried and criticized.)</blockquote>

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