D&D 5E (2024) Is WOTC done publishing campaigns?

[Zardnaar]

you do not have hard number of players for 1e or 5e, you may have hard number of PHB sales for 1e, but that is about it

I am not sure why WotC is cagey outside of a ‘it is always better to have some wiggle room’ approach, I however doubt that 1e sales have anything to do with it

1E is the highest one we have hard numbers for. 5E has trounerd it even with low estimates.

 

[ECMO3]

The US population in 1980 was 226m
The US population in 2026 is 341m

That's about a 50% increase in population. So a 50% increase in sales would be matching sales.

D&D is much more of an international game than it was then, so I don't know that the U.S population is that relevant. 1E D&D had some traction in the UK and Canada, but it was not marketed and sold worldwide like 5E is.

I think 5E written books are printed in 6 languages? I have heard there were a few Spanish 1E PHBs from the first printing in the late 70s, but if they existed they were very rare and I don't think there are any other languages 1E was printed in.

 

[Cergorach]

D&D is much more of an international game than it was then, so I don't know that the U.S population is that relevant. 1E D&D had some traction in the UK and Canada, but it was not marketed and sold worldwide like 5E is.

I think 5E written books are printed in 6 languages? I have heard there were a few Spanish 1E PHBs from the first printing in the late 70s, but if they existed they were very rare and I don't think there are any other languages 1E was printed in.

I wonder... Are you an American or from somewhere else?

D&D was popular in the 80s across all of Europe that wasn't the Soviet Union, maybe not in the same way as it was in the US, but there were translations all over the place. But it had competition from other pnp RPGs games as well... Translations of the Basic D&D Red Box were done in many languages, I know of the German one and the Dutch one. Especially the Dutch one (which I still own) was a minor miracle, at the time there were not even 15 million Dutch citizens (but there were less then 6 million Flemish Belgians as well that would speak Dutch as their main language). And I seem to remember seeing some French D&D stuff as a child (when going there on vacation). And that's besides folks just preferring the English versions of the D&D books (like myself), over the native language products.

Some interesting German D&D history: The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it • Collecting General • The Acaeum

Back in the 80s there were international distributors that bought products in the US and sold them all over the place. And of course vice versa.

 

[mamba]

1E is the highest one we have hard numbers for. 5E has trounerd it even with low estimates.

the hard numbers are for 1e PHB sales, we do not have a hard numbers of players for any of them, and an estimate for 5e PHB sales with the lower end being well beyond the hard 1e sales, and most likely more than 1e to 4e combined

 

[mamba]

I think 5E written books are printed in 6 languages? I have heard there were a few Spanish 1E PHBs from the first printing in the late 70s, but if they existed they were very rare and I don't think there are any other languages 1E was printed in.

pretty sure I had a German version of 1e, in the 80s, 2e once that came out. Chances are there were other languages too

 

[Zardnaar]

the hard numbers are for 1e PHB sales, we do not have a hard numbers of players for any of them, and an estimate for 5e PHB sales with the lower end being well beyond the hard 1e sales, and most likely more than 1e to 4e combined

Yeah you probably have to throw in Basic line to balance out the numbers. And thats with 6 million used for 5E. Lower estimates are still higher than 1E.

Numbers of players estimates are wishy washy. Still not X10 or 100 for sales which was my main point. 5E could be lower perhaps but thats due to very high sakes on other 5E products eg starter sets, Xanathars Tashas, HotDQ and Strahd sold more than some editions.

Its funny ppl demanding sources. They dont have them either for their claims. Sales of 2E and Basic gave been known about for years. TSR sales used to be on the wotc website.

This was before Ben Riggs as well.

 

[ECMO3]

I wonder... Are you an American or from somewhere else?

D&D was popular in the 80s across all of Europe that wasn't the Soviet Union, maybe not in the same way as it was in the US, but there were translations all over the place.

I don't think it is on nearly the scope and scale it is now and TSR to my knowledge was not printing the 1E PHB, DMG and MM in German, French, Japanese etc. like WOTC is for the 5E material. I could be wrong about that. Further, half the population of Europe was behind the Iron curtain, so it is not just the Soviet Union that would not have had access, it was Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, Czecholslovakia, much of Germany ....

Moreover, even if they were heavily marketing and selling product in Europe and South America in the 80s, that still supports the relevant point; that the U.S. population is not the best metric to evaluate sales gains or losses against.

 

[SkidAce]

Also I just want to say that if you had told 90’s me that someone would sell out Madison Square Garden for people to watch a game of D&D I would have laughed in your face.

I can’t imagine someone not thinking D&D has a bigger base now than it did in 80’s and 90’s.

Edit: 80’s/90’s me would have also laughed at the concept of eSports, but here we are.

/quick tangent

80's me laughed at the computer store person who tried to sell me a mouse...

"Why would I want that to get in the way of me and the keyboard. Pffft..."

A friend offered me the chance to buy stock in some "Microsoft" company...but thats a much sadder story.

 

[GreyLord]

Care to quote anyone actually saying that? Because otherwise "Facts not in evidence", as they say, and you're in trouble with the judge.

I've pointed out the numbers. People are arguing that there are more fans than the population of the UK, of Nintendo in the 80s and early 90s, of Playstation during the late 90s and the 00s, etc when they argue that there are currently 80 million D&D fans.

Even now, they are arguing that. It's not hidden. That's why...all you have to do is read the thread and everyone who is arguing that it is...80 million current fans.

I've actually decreased my holdings in Hasbro, and most of the big investors don't believe that number in that way...because it's a fake number. (I should not though, that Hasbro itself is doing decently...it's next quarterly call is in around 4 days).

The small account holders may, which is why I'm going to point to this thread as evidence that the PR hype works.

Anyone who thinks that there are 80 million current fans of D&D (in relation to investments and money) has no idea how big a number that is and how that SHOULD normally translate to money in a company and investments.

Sure, it's not the biggest number, but I"m also no looking for D&D to be making 10s of Billions of dollars either. I am looking at it in how much of a realisitic investment into Hasbro one may consider, and those numbers people are spouting off about fans don't reflect the money I see Hasbro bringing in currently in that regards. If it were, D&D would be much bigger on their balance sheets (for example, I think they say they have 50 million MtG fans (meaninng those who have played it from 1993 until today) with 13 million digital accounts and only bring in around 1 billion a year with that.

MtG numbers at a glance

If people were arguing the same with D&D (50 million fans from when it began until now) I've already said I could accept that number possibly (with me even pointing out I was one of those who accounted to the 40 million and even 50 million could have been arrived at in one of my posts), but that's not what they are arguing. 80 million current fans doesn't just out strip Nintendo and Playstation in earlier years, it doesn't just outnumber the population of the UK, it llterally means there are more "fans" of it than there are of WotC's top brand...MtG!

 

[GreyLord]

I mean, for example - your crowing about how right you are seems really strange when you're arguing against people who are saying, "IDK - maybe WotC isn't lying that D&D has 85 million fans, or whatever, who knows?"

And you say that they are claiming that it's more popular than Baseball, when this thread also contains posts that say that Baseball appears to have 130 million fans.

85m is not greater than 130m.

And I don't think anyone has said that they are certain that the 85m idea is correct, just that it might be possible.

I don't think people are reading what I put down in an analytical way. Let's put it in an easier way for people to understand...

There were an average of over 30 million who watched each game of the world series. The maximum any game had of those who watched were 50 million.

An average of 15-16 million watched each game in the US.

In context, if there were 80 million D&D fans in relation to those numbers, it would mean if you walked down the street in any US city and asked each person you would have a 5x better chance of talking to someone who was a fan of D&D (Fan, not just someone who knows it exists) than you would of someone who watched the Baseball World series.

You go to the country in the US and the same thing would happen.

PS: and just so you know...I do not feel even Hasbro thinks there are 80 fans. It's a PR number phrased in such a way that people (such as in this thread, as I said, there are going to be those who argue that there are 80 million+ D&D fans with a straight face) that someone could read it to mean current fans, but that's not what it actually means. They don't want to get caught blatantly lying so they don't phrase it to mean that...but in a way so that people can interpret it that way to build hype, but the wording could mean fans through it's history, etc..etc..etc.

This thread is evidence of that idea, that yes, there are many out there who actually will not only believe there are 80 million fans despite the incredubility of it all, the evidence against it, but will actively argue that the idea of 80 million current fans is actually accurate!