RPG Sales From a Game Store's Perspective

We've had a lot of looks at how various games are ranking over the months and years. We looks at stats from the largest virtual tabletops, we look at levels of conversation, and we look at ICv2's quarterly surveys. They've all said pretty much the same thing. However, it's also possible to look at anecdotal information on an individual basis, and this short report from Black Diamond Games, a store in Concord, California, may help contextualize some of this aggregate data.

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Back Diamond Games posted a blog post yesterday in which it reported on what was selling well in their store. You can read the post itself, but here's a quick summary; bear in mind this is one store, not a worldwide survey:

• Pathfinder and D&D are neck-and-neck (with Pathfinder 2% higher than D&D).
• Pathfinder and D&D combined are about 70% of total sales.
• For third-party publishers, Pathfinder products sell far fewer copies than nearly identical 5E products. Pathfinder third-party stuff is largely ignored.
• D&D licensed stuff (like Gale Force 9) does well.
• Adventures never sell well.
• Star Wars (at 6%) sells as much as the entire "other" category.

UPDATED: These figures refer to dollars, not units or customers. Thanks to @brotherbaldric who asked them!

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For those who prefer lists to pie charts, here's it broken down:

Pathfinder	34%
Dungeons & Dragons	32%
Other	6%
Star Wars	6%
Iron Kingdoms	3%
Evil Hat	3%
Shadowrun	3%
Frog God Game (PF/D&D)	2%
Gale Force 9 (D&D Cards)	2%
Monte Cook Games	1%
Palladium Rifts	1%
Indy Press Revolution	1%
13th Age	1%
Open Design	1%
Green Ronin	1%
Eclipse Phase	0%*
Pure Steam Campaign (PF)	0%*
Goodman Games (D&D)	0%*
Giant in the Playground	0%*

*I assume this involves some rounding, and that the figures aren't actually zero.

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[Kramodlog]

I'd love to see an ICv2 questionnaire to see if they ask about dollars or unites when it comes to sells of a brand.

 

[Kramodlog]

D&D has barely been out a year, I predict their slice will grow considerably in the next 12-18 months, particularly with non-official OGL stuff being released now.

Conversely, you could say that after a year the hype of a new edition will go and sells will follow.

In the next few weeks (if not next week), we'll probably get the new ICv2 RPG ranking for the last trimester*. It will be interesting to see how D&D did with no new RPG books released during those four months.


*ICv2 has been doing trimesters instead of quarter reports since 2013.

 

[EthanSental]

I'm going with D&D still in first BUT I could see it slipping based on the reason you mention of the gap between PoA and RoD books.

 

[Koloth]

I think that the reason adventures sell less is that the potential market is approximately the ratio of GMs/(GMs + Players) for a given system. Further limited by if there are 2 lvl 3 adventures for sale, a given GM will likely only buy 1. I do think that ready to run adventures do help overall sales for a system since it gives potential new GMs an easier place to start.

Another reason PF sales seem to hold up well may be a perception by customers that the current version will be around for a while longer. WOTC has a history of version churn every 3-6 years. Except for the 3.5 version, each version of D&D was enough different from the previous version that most players felt the need to do a complete replacement of their books. A few years into a D&D release, the question becomes how long will my purchase be useful?

 

[darjr]

I agree about Pathfinders sustained viability. The firm foundation is, IMHO, supporting their sales.

Also Paizo sells things that support many other RPGs like their flipmats and initiative boards. I'd like to see a breakout of that.

 

[Nylanfs]

Interesting...

 

[sjard]

Would have loved to see their numbers for RPG products vs non RPG products. But I'd imagine it matches, fairly closely, with the continent wide (US/Canada) trend that RPG products only make up between 6-10% of overall tabletop gaming sales.

Unless of course, they're a pure RPG store (not many of those around these days).

 

[Monkey King]

I'm just delighted at Open Design--better known as Kobold Press---shows up as 1% of total RPG sales! That's great for a 3PP.

 

[Pauper]

Really curious about the third-party publisher info; that Pathfinder 3PPs are barely selling, but basically the same products by the same publishers sell for 5E.

For instance, on the Kobold Press site, all their Pathfinder products have been released for 5E as well. Be very interesting to see how the sales compare between those two sets of products.

 

[Monkey King]

Different Audiences Buy Their Games Differently

Well, I wouldn't say that ALL the Kobold Press releases have been released for 5E as well, but many have recently. Midgard Heroes, Southlands Heroes, Raven's Call, and the Tome of Beasts are the big ones.

It's certainly true that Pathfinder players have a much longer shelf of materials available--the PFRPG has been around for many more years (since 2009 or 2000, depending on how you take the "3.5 thrives" statement from Paizo). My suspicion is that Pathfinder players have a lot of the game materials they want; the hardcore players are still buying and are playing PFS, and plan to continue playing what they love.

With such an overwhelming variety of 1PP books and options, though, it seems less likely that a Pathfinder player will pick up a 3PP title unless he or she is looking for a real change of pace.

They're different audiences, in other words, and the 5E audience has less material to draw on.