D&D 5E The Printers Can't Handle WotC's One D&D Print Runs!

One of the reasons why the three new core rulebooks next year will not be released together is because D&D is such a juggernaut that the printers can't actually handle the size of the print runs!

Jeremy Crawford told Polygon "Our print runs are pretty darn big and printers are telling us you can’t give us these three books at the same time.” And Chris Perkins added that "The print runs we’re talking about are massive. That’s been not only true of the core books, but also Tasha’s Cauldron. It’s what we call a high-end problem."

 

[R_Chance]

So you are assuming limited supply and lots of demand. I guess that is possible, but I think part of the point of a staggered release date is avoid a lack of supply. So scalping seems unlikely under that scenario to me.

Agreed. I think the whole point of staggering the release dates is to have enough supply to meet (projected) demand. Releasing everything at once with insufficient supply would be a problem. The other option would be to print over time, warehouse them, and release later, but that has it's own issues and costs.

 

[Parmandur]

Conspiracy theories about this? Really? wow.

There is nothing in the world that can't be subject to an old fashioned conspiracy theory.

 

[humble minion]

From unofficial sources, Tasha's initial print run for ONE of WotC's distributors was larger than the full print numbers for all of 4e combined.

Honestly, if Tasha's did sell that well, I'm genuine surprised that WotC hasn't released more general 'of Everything' sourcebooks. I know they've got a deliberate strategy of keeping the number of subclasses, feats etc under control to try to avoid the 3e trap of option paralysis and broken optimisation builds, but the sort of money represented must have been reeeeal tempting.

 

[Zaukrie]

Conspiracy theories about this? Really? wow.

It is unreal

 

[humble minion]

There is nothing in the world that can't be subject to an old fashioned conspiracy theory.

That's just what THEY want you to think!!!1!

 

[mamba]

I mean, TSR and WotC have staggerd the core books for juat about every Edition.

was there scalping for past editions?

 

[EpicureanDM]

Possibly, though I doubt it saves them any face or that they really care about that.

They are trying to save face internally, not with the fans.

They did the same thing, staggered core books release dates, in 2014 and didn’t blame it on printer issues. I don’t think your hypothesis holds much water really.

Right, so why is the current D&D team trying to blame the printers more than a year in advance? Their second justification in the Polygon article is more consistent with their PR messaging: these editions are interchangeable, so it's no big deal if the releases are staggered. That's all you need to say to the fans. This Polygon article - a story fed to Charlie Hall by the D&D team - is effectively a soft, backhanded, slightly contrite way of announcing a staggered release. If they had a good story for why the release is staggered, they could have framed it that way. The second justification is a good story in theory if not fact.

The first justification, the one that the D&D team leads with, is about logistics. That's the one that they feel is strongest internally and probably the one they sold to Dan Rawson. They're just weren't clever enough to remove it from the public-facing story.

 

[Azzy]

Yeah, they confirmed some time ago that those would come later, because they don't have the print infrastructure for all three at once. There will be a gift set eventually.

Probably right around Christmas.

setting expectations?

Setting expectations? Well, we're expecting Planescape later this year, but I expect the Forgotten Realms will get a setting book not too much after the core books release.

 

[GrahamWills]

This is pretty much it. It is astonishing that a 50 year old game that is pretty arcane in it rules has seen such growth.

Have you ever watched cricket?

 

[Azzy]

Have you ever watched cricket?

No. But in my defense, I'm from the US.