D&D 5E State of D&D

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

There have been several surveys given by WotC. When they put out a new survey, they give the results of the previous survey. These should give you a good notion of their internal thoughts on the state of the product. They have not released any sales data, nor do I suspect they will at any point. They've been playing things close to the vest in order to avoid feeding the internet trolls (which of course, said trolls have taken as food anyway).

As for the "lack of support," this is in response to the customers desires. We (as a whole) have requested fewer products per year, and much less crunch than previous editions, just as we have shown that we (again, as a whole) prefer Adventure Paths to shorter adventures. If this doesn't match the overall feel on the forums, realize that they/we are a bad sample, as we represent the more extreme ends of the spectrum.

I guess it depends on what kind of products you are interested in.
Personaly I have totaly no intrest in published adventures and the release scedual feals slow to me, becouse for me there are only 4 products out so far that i am interested in PHB,DMG,MM and forgotten realms players guide.

 

[Shasarak]

Kickstarter is another great place to start looking as well.

I would agree with that - I have been backing a ton of great products this year with my spare DnD money. It really is the Silver age of publishing at the moment.

 

[Nemio]

I visit www.reddit.com/r/DnD a lot and that place has seen a massive growth which can be seen on http://redditmetrics.com/r/DnD
From 50k subscribers last year August to 107k today.

Daily there are about 100 new joiners which is about double the number from before the 5e launch.

I'd say it's pretty popular

 

[BryonD]

There is a difference in investment and production of splat. That investment could be in the form of spending more to bring in folks like the creator of adventure time and more time in longer more in depth play testing than in churning out books.

If production of splat was making the return WotC wanted, they would be producing more splat.

They are not "investing" much in anything.

I'm not saying they are bad guys or even making bad choices. They are allocating their resources into things which best benefit them. I wish that aligned with my preferences better, but what I desire and simply calling it like it is are two different things.

 

[BryonD]

For those looking for more material, there are over a hundred modules already and at least two complete settings out there. Check out the publishers forum here at En World and use the 5E tag and you'll soon see there is a ton of material out there.

Kickstarter is another great place to start looking as well.

I've got more material than I'll ever use in my lifetime on my shelves.

There is a difference between looking for material and cultivating a thriving marketbase. And, again, the current large and stable market is a great credit to the quality of the core game. But Less than 18 months in a "large and stable" maketplace is not remotely proof of thriving or long term.

 

[hejtmane]

Hey All,

I'm new to posting on these forums. Long time member on the D&D forums at Wizards, so guess i'm finally coming onboard with the rest of the refugees. Anyhow, forgive me if this has been discussed, but does anyone have any statistics to direct me to or article that tell us how D&D5 is doing? Sales wise, most prominently, I guess. Is it doing well? Is it in trouble? Is it popular? I know the books appearing to be doing well on Amazon, but how is the community as a whole? Are we healthy or dying? I'm hoping we, that is D&D is flourishing. As a long time player, I'm really happy with what they've done, for the most part anyway. Been running a game for a while now (actually, a couple of groups I know have been running game pretty much since 5e hit the floor).

But, I do have to express great disappointment in the anemic rate of support for the game. For all the crap that most folks seem to agree 4e was, 5e is a outstanding product, I just wish it would receive more support. Yes, 4e way overdid it, but that was all part of their marketing strategy with their "modular" system. But when you remove all the "core expansions" (ie: PHB2 and 3, DMG 2, etc.) or the class books (like Marital Power) and books like that, what is left over is a nice collection of splat books, monster manuals and adventure sites. I just think it's a shame that version of the game got so much love, the 5e doesn't. I'd love to see more adventure sites (like Gloomgrought, Hammerfast and Vor Rukoth) or settings books, like the Manual of the Plane, and Shadowfell or adventure sources like Threats to Nentire Vale. Or fluff books like Open Grave. Seems like 4e had it covered, but I would love to see some of that done for 5e, but it's apparently, they have no intention on this.

Maybe it's because they don't want to force books out there that some buyers might think they've bought already? I really don't know. The modules that are out do seem cool (though we've yet to run one). By the supporting books beyond those are just almost non-existent (though I think the Sword Coast book might be a step in the right direction).

I'm still picking up some of the 4e stuff just for some of the ideas and inspiration and some fluff, but I have to rework every mechanical element of all things 4e. I'd just like to see more support for 5 (especially some more monster and NPC sources).

So, any thoughts on that? Is the game doing well, or not, and is the lack of support reflective of the success of the product?

I do love 5e and want to see it succeed. Happy gaming!

Just to let you understand where I am coming from. The majority of my D&D played in the early years was literally D&D and then AD&D 1.0 Unearthed Arcana is still my all time favorite book and I did own Oriental Adventures. I also played quite a bit of 2.0 and did a little of 3.5 because my son found my old books and wanted to play then with next coming out we paused and moved best move ever. One simple reason do not get caught up in all the combat dragging out stuff until your eyes bleeds.

What has happen since I started DMing for my son he has a group that comes over and plays about 6 boys all teenagers most of them jocks yes I know funny. Since then they just started a D&D club at school which grew big enough to break into two groups. All I know is D&D next helped me start a next generation of players. The versatility of 5E and not getting bogged down in over zealous combat rules shifting the power back to the DM is allowing us more fun at the table then again I allow unusual things that is how we played when I was growing up made for supper fun times.

You want to pick up that unconscious teammate in full plate and use him as a battling ram go right ahead (yes that one happened to me bastages)

That is from a personal experience of 5e the sales on Amazon is a good sign since they are one of the top sellers in the US

 

[Laznabog]

I really wish they had some more Crunch Guys on board. Sean Reynolds and Mike Brock are two I can think of from my pathfinder days that I think could help the company a lot. It would be great to have more official crunch and to have people that would accurately explain and defend that crunch in more than two sentences on Twitter.

That being said, weak internet presence of the Devs also means you don't see sanctimonious and belligerent trolls, like some other workers from Paizo.

It seems like there would be a way to get the good without the bad here.

 

[TerraDave]

...
There is a difference between looking for material and cultivating a thriving marketbase. And, again, the current large and stable market is a great credit to the quality of the core game. But Less than 18 months in a "large and stable" maketplace is not remotely proof of thriving or long term.

Are we back to this? And I wonder what would be evidence of thriving?

We know perfectly well that the 5E core rule books have done much better over the last 18 months then 3.5 or 4E ones did. (we don't have enough data to compare to the legendary 1E or 3.0 PHBs and their vaunted sales).

Right now, on amazon the PHB is 222 in overall sales. That is high for a book released over 15 months ago. No game book has ever done anything like that, not even remotely close, at least not in the last 15 years. D&D almost totally dominates the fantasy gaming category, as it has for the last year and a half. (The exception is that Zelda book, which has been hanging around all this time). This was not the case before. Even the MM or DMG having sales in the 400-500 range is amazing this far out.

 

[TerraDave]

For some more context, this what 4E sales looked like 5 months after its release...

The following data is taken from Amazon.com on Oct 28, 2008. It probably doesn't mean that much. I was having fun collecting it.

#1,085: Adventurer's Vault
#1,449: D&D 4E Gift Set
#2,734: 4E Player's Handbook
#2,863: Forgotten Realms Player's Guide
#4,949: 4E DM's Screen
#5,507: 3.5E Player's Handbook
#6,954: Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
#9,337: 3.5E Dungeon Master's Guide
#12,849: 4E Dungeon Master's Guide
#15,558: H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth
#17,234: H3 Pyramid of Shadows
#19,494: 4E Monster Manual
#23,004: Scepter Tower of Spellgard
#24,656: 3.5E Monster Manual
#25,771: H1 Keep on the Shadowfell
#30,914: 4E D&D Starter Set
#445,483: The Sunless Citadel (3e adventure)
#448,647: Pathfinder #1: Burnt Offerings
#561,780: Pathfinder #14: Children of the Void
#747,380: Pathfinder #13: Shadow in the Sky
#948,303: DL1 Dragons of Despair (1e adventure from 1984)
#1,025,107: WG7 Castle Greyhawk (terrible 1e adventure from 1988)
#1,652,435: Pathfinder #15: The Armageddon Echo

Cheers!

From:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?243902-Amazon-Sales-Rankings-amazing-data!#ixzz3uyxz1PjD

My favorite on in here is the 4E starter set at ~30,000 in sales ranks, vs. 928 for the current one. Which of course puts it higher then everything up there.

 

[darjr]

Thanks for that. It does seem like every few weeks this comes up. The interesting thing the staying power.