D&D 5E Settings played in D&D: cause or effect?

[Remathilis]

The question is: If your local castle really is infested with Vampires, do you really care if there are a couple of Tieflings and Warforged in town?

All I am saying is that if you do not notice that there are Red Dragons camped out in Strahds Castle then you probably are not going to notice that John Smith is actually a 6' Goliath.

Dragon-Shaped Gargoyles in every reprinting (House of Strahd, Expedition).

 

[Shasarak]

Dragon-Shaped Gargoyles in every reprinting (House of Strahd, Expedition).

Pfft, reprints.

 

[Mephista]

Ravenloft is a setting that adheres to a genre trope: Gothic literature. It's evoking a series of tropes that were prevalent in that genre. To remove them is to turn Ravenloft from Gothic horror to Hammer horror. Dark Sun has a similar problem; pulp Sword and Sorcery is full of mostly-naked women, male power fantasy, the "noble savage" stereotype and disdain for civilization/authority. Guess that one is trash too.

You know, I wasn't even talking about offensive material. I'm talking about being updated. Gothic horror is not restricted to Victorian England, like Ravenloft is. The genre grows. Dark Sun can be portrayed as a post-Apocalyptic style setting without sexist tropes. The games need to updated, not just to modern sensibilites, but to be relevant to modern culture. If its not something that resonates with the audience, then it won't be used.

But, if we're going to talk about offensive tropes... D&D is moving towards a more inclusive audience. Which is a good thing, from both a social standpoint, and a business standpoint. Women and minority groups are a growing part of the D&D consumer base, and with the way things are going, WotC needs as many purchasers as well. There are plenty of people that won't support a company that puts out offensive material, which will hurt D&D's bottom line.

 

[delericho]

Oh, I totally get that and I agree. I'm just trying to find any data.

I'm not sure it's worth the effort. The thing is, as long as we stick with generalities, I think we're basically in agreement - 5e is doing exceptionally well. Once we get to a specific sales figure, though, the only people who have the actual data are WotC, and they're not for sharing (and I can't fault them for that). Plus, it's also worth noting that WotC haven't claimed they made those sales - they said they wanted to exceed that figure, which is a slightly different thing.

For example, to put things in perspective, the best selling Pathfinder books on Amazon right now are the Core book (#5000 ish) and the Beastiary 5 (7598). Bestiary 1 clocks in at about 14000. Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the worst selling D&D 5e product and clocks in at #7309.

Again, I'm afraid that's a relative measure. There are only two Pathfinder books that I would expect have beaten 100k: the Core Rulebook and the first Bestiary. (I may, of course, be wrong about that - in either direction.)

When a year old module is selling better than the newest supplement for a similar game (and monster manuals tend to be the best sellers)

Second monster manuals, certainly. I doubt anyone would claim MM5 as one of the top sellers for D&D 3e, or Bestiary 5 for Pathfinder. I'm sure they do well enough... but in the low tens rather than the low hundreds of thousands.

Of course, when all three 5e core books are still in the top 1000, and the PHB and DMG are in the top 500 of books, even after a year of release, that's a truckload of books.

Sure. Again, I don't doubt 5e is doing exceptionally well. Indeed, I wouldn't have any great trouble believing that they'd sold a million PHBs by now. It's the other end of the scale I'm sceptical of - their weakest selling book has really sold more copies than just about any supplement since the 80s?

 

[delericho]

That was with books, both WotC & 3pp, coming out every month.

Yes, it was. It's still true, though, that the number of non-Core Rulebooks to hit 100k sales, ever, is tiny. Prior to 5e and since the fad in the 80s ended, that list may well have zero entries. If it's non-zero, it's very short.

And now, with 5e, WotC hope to his 100k sales with every book? Are you seriously saying that's not an ambitious target?

OTOH, 1e adventures may well have

True. That's why I didn't include 1st Ed in my list. "Tomb of Horrors" is thought to have sold ~250k copies, "White Plume Mountain" ~175k. The biggest seller is "Keep on the Borderlands", at around a million copies, but that was bundled with the Basic rules, so is a special case.

But even amongst 1st Ed adventures, these appear to be special cases - even then, it doesn't look like too many hit 100k. For 5e to do that with every book would be quite something.

 

[Remathilis]

You know, I wasn't even talking about offensive material. I'm talking about being updated. Gothic horror is not restricted to Victorian England, like Ravenloft is. The genre grows. Dark Sun can be portrayed as a post-Apocalyptic style setting without sexist tropes. The games need to updated, not just to modern sensibilites, but to be relevant to modern culture. If its not something that resonates with the audience, then it won't be used.

I was responding to your "Vistani as gypsy stereotype" comment. As to Ravenloft being like Victorian England, there are domains (mainly islands, but definitely there) that are not. A few examples of non-European domains include Al-Kathos (Arabian), Ha'akir (Egypt), Rokushima Taiyoo (Japan), Souragne (Carribiean), Sri Raji (India), I'Cath (China), Vorostokov (Siberia), and the Wildlands (Savannah Africa). That is only counting the ones that have a human culture work at all, of course (Blutspur, the Shadow Rift).

But, if we're going to talk about offensive tropes... D&D is moving towards a more inclusive audience. Which is a good thing, from both a social standpoint, and a business standpoint. Women and minority groups are a growing part of the D&D consumer base, and with the way things are going, WotC needs as many purchasers as well. There are plenty of people that won't support a company that puts out offensive material, which will hurt D&D's bottom line.

I don't see anything in Ravenloft that's inherently uninclusive. There are plenty of women domain lords who rule by both strength and cunning, the domains very as far as cultures and settings, and there is no restrictions on character except for things obviously nonhuman (which 3e handled via outcast ratings ranging from 1-5) were often treated as freaks and outsiders. The Vistani are based around the "wandering gypsy" stereotype, but they are also the most powerful and important group in the whole demiplane. (Later updates to the Vistani in 3e and 4e made them more of cultural group than a racial one, even allowing for halfling Vistani!)

Likewise, I don't see the factions as a barrier to Planescape. Each faction was based around a real world philosophy once or currently believed and extrapoliated to a fantasy world setting. They were literally crash courses in philosophy disguised as a game! PCs didn't need to belong to a faction (never did), and factions could be used as antagonists as well as "hero support groups" (The Harmonium and Doomguard were especially good in this antagonist role, especially to good-aligned, free-thinking hero types). Just because our 21st century mindset has moved on from some of them doesn't mean they are baggage to the setting: if that was true we would probably need to remove all the kingdoms from across D&D!

Say what you want about some of those settings, but I fail to see them as "antiquated" or "uninclusvie". However, I don't feel like dragging this discussion into a debate of PC in D&D and its worlds any further than it has, so that is my last thoughts on it.

 

[sunshadow21]

When a year old module is selling better than the newest supplement for a similar game (and monster manuals tend to be the best sellers), I'd say it's not doing too badly. Maybe there is something to this 100k thing.

To be fair, comparing it to Pathfinder on a true scale is very difficult because Paizo has their own website as well, where I suspect most of their online business occurs. Amazon numbers don't mean a whole lot to me for that reason alone. I'm not saying this to knock 5E, but rather to point out that the comparison is not at strong as you seem to think it is. They may be similar game, but due to different distribution methods, direct comparisons are difficult at best, impossible at worst.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yes, it was. It's still true, though, that the number of non-Core Rulebooks to hit 100k sales, ever, is tiny. Prior to 5e and since the fad in the 80s ended, that list may well have zero entries. If it's non-zero, it's very short.

And now, with 5e, WotC hope to his 100k sales with every book? Are you seriously saying that's not an ambitious target?

In terms of sales, not really, not compared to past targets. For a $50 book, 100k units is $5 million. They're only doing a few books a year, and they aren't all $50 nor nearly all selling at full price. So we're looking at an annual sales target in the ballpark of 10 million. That's not unreasonable or ambitious for a product line that regularly takes the lion share of it's market, now that that market is back up to around $25 million. Maybe it's a little ambitious to do so with so few books, but, if you look at it as what fans are willing to spend on their hobby, maybe it's not that unreasonable nor even ambitious to try to get 100k of the 800k or million or two folks who play the game to buy two or three books /a year/.

True. That's why I didn't include 1st Ed in my list. "Tomb of Horrors" is thought to have sold ~250k copies, "White Plume Mountain" ~175k. The biggest seller is "Keep on the Borderlands", at around a million copies...

So adventures did sell more than 100k, sometimes a lot more, back when there weren't six official settings being hawked simultaneously and splatbooks weren't a monthly occurrence.

While, admittedly, D&D hasn't returned to fad-years levels of popularity, it has returned to a publication model that's closer to what it was when modules were moving a lot of units. There are still differences - the modern modules are called 'adventures' and published in a hardbound format, they cost more but represent much longer campaigns - but, the slower pace of publication means that there's less official D&D material competing for the fanbase's gaming budget.

Maybe existing competition from Pathfinder or a hypotheticall 5e 3pp will step into that void and spoil the strategy, or maybe not.

For 5e to do that with every book would be quite something.

Not when it's only a few books a year. If it were a book a month, yes, each book selling 100k units would be amazing - and D&D would finally be pulling in close to the kind of revenue they pitched to Hasbro in 2007. That would be extreme ambitious, to the point of being totally unrealistic, but 5e isn't trying to nor expected to do that in order to be considered an unqualified success.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I know I'm running "Forgotten Realms" because I'm 41 with an adult job and don't have the time or inclination to homebrew a good campaign anymore.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but the way that you phrased this made me reflect--I've picked up and looked at FR products (like Rise of Tiamat) several times for exactly this reason. And I've never run FR at the table because it always just seems like too much work to take FR and make it into a good campaign. Rather than tweaking FR until there is a reason for the PCs to exist, it's honestly easier to just make my own campaign world up while I'm driving to and from work. If I need a powerful wizard, now there's a wizard, and he's the only one on the planet. I don't have to uninvent a hundred other powerful wizards and relationships between them.

So, my motivations are similar to yours, but I somehow come to the exact opposite conclusion. Probably we are looking for different things in a "good" campaign world. I have strong simulationist tendencies so there's that...

 

[delericho]

In terms of sales, not really, not compared to past targets. For a $50 book, 100k units is $5 million. They're only doing a few books a year, and they aren't all $50 nor nearly all selling at full price. So we're looking at an annual sales target in the ballpark of 10 million.

You can't simply divide up that overall sales target between the books like that. The vast majority of sales will be PHBs, same as always.

So adventures did sell more than 100k, sometimes a lot more, back when there weren't six official settings being hawked simultaneously and splatbooks weren't a monthly occurrence.

Yes, a small handful of adventures out of dozens.

And, with all due respect, none of the 5e adventures is a "Tomb of Horrors" or "White Plume Mountain".