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

[Mistwell]

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

Well Strahd had another edition after that I believe so it's not the full picture on that.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

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

Icespire Peak is a $25 "Starter" product. Curse of Strahd is a $50 Hardcover. They were never in the same playing field.

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.

At the time, I didn't even like Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury (both have grown on me) but we generally thought that WotC-produced 3e Adventures were garbage, and that you had to look to 3pp for anything worth running. (At the store, I wasn't on ENWorld yet myself).

 

[MockingBird]

One adventure that sadly gets overlooked due to being in the middle of Next and 5e is Scourge of the Sword Coast. The structure is similar to LMoP. I bet, with a bit of cleanup and update, a reprint would sell well.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

One adventure that sadly gets overlooked due to being in the middle of Next and 5e is Scourge of the Sword Coast. The structure is similar to LMoP. I bet, with a bit of cleanup and update, a reprint would sell well.

I agree. I think that it was a mistake to print Dead In Thay in Tales from the Yawning Portal. A remix of Scourge of the Sword Coast & Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, with Dead in Thay for its higher-level conclusion, would be a well-reviewed book, I'd bet. (Personally, I feel that Dead In Thay is BY FAR the weakest of the three, and yet, it's the one that got reprinted!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well Strahd had another edition after that I believe so it's not the full picture on that.

I wonder how many of the people who picked that version up were just upgrading from a previous version. It was a pretty high price point for a casual fan.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

Reprints in 5E books are just one of several adventures so probably not played as much as the book sales would indicate.

 

[Zardnaar]

I wonder how many of the people who picked that version up were just upgrading from a previous version. It was a pretty high price point for a casual fan.

That's the one one of my players bought.

It's a lot nicer than my copy. Came in coffin box, player hand outs etc.

 

[Mistwell]

I agree. I think that it was a mistake to print Dead In Thay in Tales from the Yawning Portal. A remix of Scourge of the Sword Coast & Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, with Dead in Thay for its higher-level conclusion, would be a well-reviewed book, I'd bet. (Personally, I feel that Dead In Thay is BY FAR the weakest of the three, and yet, it's the one that got reprinted!

Dead in Thay is just so BIG, and a lot of repetitive battles. Though it did take our party a while to figure out we didn't need to clear the dungeon, just enough of the locations to get what was needed for the end. The end is pretty epic.

 

[MerricB]

Dead in Thay is just so BIG, and a lot of repetitive battles. Though it did take our party a while to figure out we didn't need to clear the dungeon, just enough of the locations to get what was needed for the end. The end is pretty epic.

It was designed for four groups to be playing it simultaneously. It works like that.

As a dungeon for a single group? Not so much.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Parmandur]

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.

For thwt napkin math, what percentage of total sales of the Starter Set are you assuming these numbers represent? @Alphastream estimated it represents 25-33% of total sales, particularly using the Star Set details we have from other sources to conclude that.

And Lost Mines was a freebie on Beyond For a couple years, too.