D&D General The most played D&D Adventure of all time

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think we played Queen of the Demonweb Pits maybe two or three times. The first part, wandering around passages in, effectively, the void is pretty boring. The alternate worlds are interesting enough, but there's not a real compelling reason to spend time there. Nowadays, quest items would be stuck there, to make it worth engaging with those alternate worlds. In my experience, groups just wanted to figure out where Lolth was and race to her.

In contrast, we played White Plume Mountain a lot, because everyone wanted a shot at those weapons. ("We're supposed to be returning these? Sure, let them come and take Blackrazor from me.")

 

[steeldragons]

On #6, I would think D3 - Vault would be more played that Queen of the Demonweb, unless you meant to include it with Descent. For #10, I'd probably put Ravenloft. Other than that, I would agree with your list.

I was, indeed, intending it as included with Descent. But you are, technically, correct ("the best kind of correct" hahaha) that Vault would have originally been/should be listed as its own separate thing.

 

[Stormonu]

I think we played Queen of the Demonweb Pits maybe two or three times. The first part, wandering around passages in, effectively, the void is pretty boring. The alternate worlds are interesting enough, but there's not a real compelling reason to spend time there. Nowadays, quest items would be stuck there, to make it worth engaging with those alternate worlds. In my experience, groups just wanted to figure out where Lolth was and race to her.

Om contrast, we played White Plume Mountain a lot, because everyone wanted a shot at those weapons. ("We're supposed to be returning these? Sure, let them come and take Blackrazor from me.")

Agreed. The alternate worlds were too unfleshed out to be used without a lot of time and energy from the DM, with little relation back to the primary quest. I dare say more of that module was spent on spells that don't work in the webway than on actual encounters.

White Plume is fun, but as noted not getting to keep the three items is a big letdown. However, with 5E's inflated hit points I recently got to see how obscene Black Razor is in action in 5E.

 

[Mistwell]

I think we know the top two. Ravenloft, if CoS is treated as a version of I6, has to pretty much be number 3.

I don't think Sunless is 4. 3e was pretty popular, but not B/X or AD&D popular. And it had some serious competition, lots of good adventures for 3e thanks to the OGL.

So for #4...Those old modules were huge sellers and like B2 also converted into other editions. G1/2/3 has straight 4e and 5e conversions. As does ToH, but I don't think its been played as much. Its more infamous, so maybe talked about more, but played less.

T1, by itself and with the Temple probably sold more pre-5e. But the giants have received more attention since.

Top six is probably:

LMoP
KotB
CR/CoS
AtG
VoH/ToEE
SC

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when we have a thread with sales data going back to TSR.

 

[Mistwell]

Looks like Sunless Citadel sold 172,562 units in the first two years of sales (2000-2001). Data does not include beyond that date or Tales from the Yawning Portal sales.

Also looks like the sales of Moldvay boxed set alone makes those numbers look like a rounding error. In fact, the sales of the editions which had B2 do look like they exceed the sales of the 5e Box Set which had Lost Mine of Phandelver.

 

[Parmandur]

Looks like Sunless Citadel sold 172,562 units in the first two years of sales (2000-2001). Data does not include beyond that date or Tales from the Yawning Portal sales.

Also looks like the sales of Moldvay boxed set alone makes those numbers look like a rounding error.

The more relevant question is, how many Basic sets would have included B2?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Looks like Sunless Citadel sold 172,562 units in the first two years of sales (2000-2001). Data does not include beyond that date or Tales from the Yawning Portal sales.

Also looks like the sales of Moldvay boxed set alone makes those numbers look like a rounding error.

I can tell you from having a store at the time Sunless Citadel came out (from memory, which could be flawed): All D&D products back then had a HUGE drop-off after their first couple of years and then went out-of-print. I doubt that we could get it much of the time after that, even assuming anyone wanted it. I remember having Forge of Fury in stock for quite awhile, though. Maybe I just brought in too many copies (they sold eventually, of course!)

At any rate, nothing like 5e's (nearly) "everything is still in print 10 years in" ever happened with D&D before. Tales from the Yawning Portal sales will certainly have dwarfed the original's by now. The difference is Amazon, and D&D's current popularity.

Edit to agree with your point: Sunless Citadel doesn't stand a chance compared to B2 or Lost Mines. They're not in the same league.

 

[Mistwell]

The more relevant question is, how many Basic sets would have included B2?

All the Moldvay ones did I believe. Merric said earlier:

"It first come out in 1980. It then shipped with the Moldvay set (1981-2). It was not in the Red Box (Mentzer) Basic set of 1983. It went out of print in the mid-1980s."

Looking at the charts, that's a metric crapload of units sold. For reference the one datapoint I could find on the 5e starter set is also below:

By my back of the envelope read of this the sales of B2 look pretty close to the sales of the Lost Mines boxed set sales. I'm not really sure which sold more, but it's not by a multiple.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I can tell you from having a store at the time Sunless Citadel came out (from memory, which could be flawed): All D&D products back then had a HUGE drop-off after their first couple of years and then went out-of-print. I doubt that we could get it much of the time after that, even assuming anyone wanted it. I remember having Forge of Fury in stock for quite awhile, though. Maybe I just brought in too many copies (they sold eventually, of course!)

At any rate, nothing like 5e's (nearly) "everything is still in print 10 years in" ever happened with D&D before. Tales from the Yawning Portal sales will certainly have dwarfed the original's by now. The difference is Amazon, and D&D's current popularity.

Edit to agree with your point: Sunless Citadel doesn't stand a chance compared to B2 or Lost Mines. They're not in the same league.

Yeah, I remember that even here at ENWorld, the online heart of 3E fandom at the time, the first two adventure path modules had much more enthusiasm than later entries. It dropped off steeply after the Forge of Fury.

Lord of the Iron Fortress and Bastion of Broken Souls, the last two, with cool planar locations, got a spike up in enthusiasm and discussion, but mostly in a theorycrafting way, rather than a "here's how my group tackled the Iron Fortress" way.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

All the Moldvay ones did I believe. Merric said earlier:

"It first come out in 1980. It then shipped with the Moldvay set (1981-2). It was not in the Red Box (Mentzer) Basic set of 1983. It went out of print in the mid-1980s."

Looking at the charts, that's a metric crapload of units sold. For reference the one datapoint I could find on the 5e starter set is also below:

By my back of the envelope read of this the sales of B2 look pretty close to the sales of the Lost Mines boxed set sales. I'm not really sure which sold more, but it's not by a multiple.

Interesting that Icespire Peak outsold Strahd, which I would not have guessed.