D&D General TSR D&D sales numbers compiled by Benjamin Riggs

D&D historian Ben Riggs--author of the upcoming Slaying the Dragon, which is a history of TSR-era (not that TSR, the real one) D&D--compiled some sales figures of AD&D 1st Edition's Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide from 1979-1990.

Behold! Some actual D&D sales numbers!

While working on my book #SlayingtheDragon I got a ton of primary source documents containing sales data for D&D. With the book coming out, I've been looking for a way to get that data out into the wide world. I'm going to start making charts, and simply posting them. If people want the raw data, I can post that too, but obviously, charts are prettier.

I'm starting with AD&D 1st ed Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. You'll notice a crash in the mid-80s, and then the sales peter out with the release of 2nd edition.

The sales point to a fact that I believe hasn't been given enough play in our hobby. Namely, TSR was in a tight spot when Lorraine Williams took over the company from Gary Gygax. If it weren't for Lorraine, D&D may have died in the mid-80s.

Just an idea for your consideration...

Oh, and if you haven't preordered my book on D&D history yet, I'll put a link in the comments.

Go get his book! It’s going to be interesting!

Slaying the Dragon - Macmillan

The secret and untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, then ...

read.macmillan.com

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So on that ... you are correct regarding the insanely high sales of the Red Box. But we need to be careful about what that actually means.

Moldvay, and to an even greater extent, Mentzer, were ominpresent. You could not only get them at hobbyist store, or at B. Dalton/Waldenbooks, but they were selling them at toy stores and department stores. They were ... everywhere.

So they ended up being gifted all of the time. It was incredibly common to know people who had the set and didn't play. Or who had the set and were playing AD&D (they had enjoyed it and "moved on"). In fact, I can't think of a single AD&D player I knew that didn't also have a copy of the Red Box / Moldvay, either because they had bought it or because some well-meaning friend or relative heard that they were "into D&D" and bought it for them.

There were people that played B/X and BECMI exclusively. But the majority of support (from the books, to the modules, to Dragon Magazine) was geared to support AD&D, and IME, the majority of players either played AD&D or were playing a hybrid set of rules (like AD&D with some B/X modules).

Yeah, its funny, back then we didn't even account Basic in its various forms as a game that people actually PLAYED. I bought a copy of Holmes when it came out, because you couldn't even find copies of the LBBs (it was always sold out) and that was the only way to get some rules that we could run our own games with. However, as soon as the MM and PHB came out, we just grafted it onto our existing play of Holmes (which we freely mixed with original D&D stuff as well). I mean, you could play a Basic module or even drag a Basic character into AD&D and it just 'kinda worked'. I think MOST people that got started with Red Box ended up playing at least some AD&D, and there seemed to be little perception in the early '80s of those being really different games. B/X was mostly seen as an improved starter set vs Holmes (which I think was out of print by then) and it wasn't until BECMI came out that I recall people starting to think of them as really separate games.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's the thing about anecdotes, it's true: but it doesn't surprise me that the 1E PHB and DMG sales track so closely. That suggests that maybe most groups had just one PHB, or 1.something on average.

I certainly wouldn't claim to know, but IME most people had either all three core AD&D 1e books, or none. There were a FEW people that bought a PHB and then never got the other books, but it seemed like in our groups we had a LOT of books! Like if there were 6 or 7 people at the table, we'd have AT LEAST 4 copies of each book. Of course I was in a LARGE club for a while with a lot of hardcore gamers, and then in college people tended to have a lot of stuff too. I'm sure if you were in High School or 8th Grade in 1983 it was probably different...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean ... sorta?

Look, all of TSR-era D&D is mostly compatible. From outer space, OD&D, 1e, 2e, B/X, and BECMI are all the same game. You can take an OD&D module (like B1) and run it with 2e characters without much fuss.

But ... they are also different. Pre-UA 1e is incredibly different than, say, kit-level 2e. Sure, a lot of the basic mechanics are the same, in the same way that RC-era Basic is essentially the same as playing 1e with OA rules, but ... also different.

And while you had your experience, mine was very different. Sometimes it's the small differences that cause the biggest problems. The schism between the 1e/2e players, while seemingly minor now, was a pretty big deal for people in my neck of the woods then.

Those small distinctions can be vicious.

Meh, obviously you could find people that were exercised about most anything, but its hard IMHO to make a case that there was much of a partisan divide between editions or Basic/AD&D either. It was all just 'stuff to use', grist for the mill. I mean, one of the major campaigns I played in during the '80s was a fusion of 1e, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Fight in The Skies, Car Wars, and various other games. Nobody was concerned about a 1 point AC mismatch between a Basic Fighter and a 1e or 2e Fighter. 1e vs 2e was an ESPECIALLY minor difference, as a 1e Fighter for example is literally 100% 2e compatible (unless you used certain options from UA or certain flavors of NWPs, then you might have to make some adjustments, assuming anyone actually cared). Even classes that got some changes to them, like Rangers, your 1e Ranger would STILL WORK FINE in 2e! I mean, to the level of every number works out perfectly well, etc. You have a few spells the 2e version won't give you, and a few options that 1e lacks which you probably would have chosen, and your special abilities are a tiny bit different.

Even 'kit level' 2e is not actually 1e incompatible. I would say if you backported one of those PCs to 1e, then they would likely be overpowered, as 1e really assumes PCs have pretty minor and restricted special abilities, but some of the kits go a bit overboard. Even 1e has that problem with itself though, as UA and OA add some stuff that is a LOT stronger than bog standard PHB 1e (martial arts for example are TOTALLY broken if you min/max them vs any 1e PC).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Meh, obviously you could find people that were exercised about most anything, but its hard IMHO to make a case that there was much of a partisan divide between editions or Basic/AD&D either. It was all just 'stuff to use', grist for the mill. I mean, one of the major campaigns I played in during the '80s was a fusion of 1e, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Fight in The Skies, Car Wars, and various other games. Nobody was concerned about a 1 point AC mismatch between a Basic Fighter and a 1e or 2e Fighter. 1e vs 2e was an ESPECIALLY minor difference, as a 1e Fighter for example is literally 100% 2e compatible (unless you used certain options from UA or certain flavors of NWPs, then you might have to make some adjustments, assuming anyone actually cared). Even classes that got some changes to them, like Rangers, your 1e Ranger would STILL WORK FINE in 2e! I mean, to the level of every number works out perfectly well, etc. You have a few spells the 2e version won't give you, and a few options that 1e lacks which you probably would have chosen, and your special abilities are a tiny bit different.

Even 'kit level' 2e is not actually 1e incompatible. I would say if you backported one of those PCs to 1e, then they would likely be overpowered, as 1e really assumes PCs have pretty minor and restricted special abilities, but some of the kits go a bit overboard. Even 1e has that problem with itself though, as UA and OA add some stuff that is a LOT stronger than bog standard PHB 1e (martial arts for example are TOTALLY broken if you min/max them vs any 1e PC).

Yeah, no. That wasn't it at all.

The reason 2e was roundly vilified by (some) players had a lot of reasons, including (but not limited to) the following:

1. It was the post-Gygax edition. Right out of the gate, that turned off a lot of people (especially because it wasn't generally known what happened). Remember that 2e was released shortly after WG7 ... so, yeah.

2. Caving into the Satanic Panic. 2e was the "cleaned up" edition, without devils and demons and half-orcs and the evocative line art. Again, this was a major point for some players.

3. "Dumbing it down." We laugh about Gygaxian purplish prose now, but one person's rules streamlining is another person's "dumbing it down."

4. Storygames and books and heroes, oh my. Finally, 2e was seen (rightly or wrongly) as the final step toward the Hickman model for D&D- settings and heroes as opposed to the older free-wheeling model.

So beyond the mechanical changes, there was a backlash to what 2e embodied. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, but it was every bit as vicious as any other edition war. There just wasn't a prominent internet to spread it around.

 

[darjr]

Yeah, no. That wasn't it at all.

The reason 2e was roundly vilified by (some) players had a lot of reasons, including (but not limited to) the following:

1. It was the post-Gygax edition. Right out of the gate, that turned off a lot of people (especially because it wasn't generally known what happened). Remember that 2e was released shortly after WG7 ... so, yeah.

2. Caving into the Satanic Panic. 2e was the "cleaned up" edition, without devils and demons and half-orcs and the evocative line art. Again, this was a major point for some players.

3. "Dumbing it down." We laugh about Gygaxian purplish prose now, but one person's rules streamlining is another person's "dumbing it down."

4. Storygames and books and heroes, oh my. Finally, 2e was seen (rightly or wrongly) as the final step toward the Hickman model for D&D- settings and heroes as opposed to the older free-wheeling model.

So beyond the mechanical changes, there was a backlash to what 2e embodied. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, but it was every bit as vicious as any other edition war. There just wasn't a prominent internet to spread it around.

Yea, sadly, a lot of this. Some of it still causes arguments among the crappy of the OSR folks to this day.

Happily most of the OSR folks I listen too/watch do not.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That is entirely possible. But lacking concrete data on play back then, sales remain (as far as I'm aware) the only metric we can use.

It's funny, even when I switched to AD&D, I was pretty much running it using a Basic engine. It's not like I was mixing and matching my BECMI and 1e books, but my understanding of how to play AD&D was still very much informed by what I had learned from Basic.

So on that ... you are correct regarding the insanely high sales of the Red Box. But we need to be careful about what that actually means.

Moldvay, and to an even greater extent, Mentzer, were ominpresent. You could not only get them at hobbyist store, or at B. Dalton/Waldenbooks, but they were selling them at toy stores and department stores. They were ... everywhere.

So they ended up being gifted all of the time. It was incredibly common to know people who had the set and didn't play. Or who had the set and were playing AD&D (they had enjoyed it and "moved on"). In fact, I can't think of a single AD&D player I knew that didn't also have a copy of the Red Box / Moldvay, either because they had bought it or because some well-meaning friend or relative heard that they were "into D&D" and bought it for them.

There were people that played B/X and BECMI exclusively. But the majority of support (from the books, to the modules, to Dragon Magazine) was geared to support AD&D, and IME, the majority of players either played AD&D or were playing a hybrid set of rules (like AD&D with some B/X modules).

 

[Jer]

There just wasn't a prominent internet to spread it around.

This needs to be underscored. Without the Internet every local gaming community was more detached from each other. If you weren't in an area where there was a vocal backlash to the new edition you might not realize people had a problem with it at all outside of some cranky letters in Dragon magazine or other gaming outlets. If your local gaming community included people who just wouldn't shut up about it you might think the reaction was bigger than it actually was too.

But in my local gaming community it was definitely the case that there were folks who either stuck with 1e or eventually transitioned to playing this awesome new Vampire game that was definitely not going to wimp out like D&D did because of the view that AD&D was becoming a kids game.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yea, sadly, a lot of this. Some of it still causes arguments among the crappy of the OSR folks to this day.

Happily most of the OSR folks I listen too/watch do not.

Oh, for sure. Just hang out at any OSR or old school D&D FB group. Anything not OD&D or 1e will inevitably have someone blast it. Even 2e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, no. That wasn't it at all.

The reason 2e was roundly vilified by (some) players had a lot of reasons, including (but not limited to) the following:

1. It was the post-Gygax edition. Right out of the gate, that turned off a lot of people (especially because it wasn't generally known what happened). Remember that 2e was released shortly after WG7 ... so, yeah.

2. Caving into the Satanic Panic. 2e was the "cleaned up" edition, without devils and demons and half-orcs and the evocative line art. Again, this was a major point for some players.

3. "Dumbing it down." We laugh about Gygaxian purplish prose now, but one person's rules streamlining is another person's "dumbing it down."

4. Storygames and books and heroes, oh my. Finally, 2e was seen (rightly or wrongly) as the final step toward the Hickman model for D&D- settings and heroes as opposed to the older free-wheeling model.

So beyond the mechanical changes, there was a backlash to what 2e embodied. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, but it was every bit as vicious as any other edition war. There just wasn't a prominent internet to spread it around.

Well, in our ordinary, fairly active, D&D player's lives all this was a big nothing, really. We rolled our eyes a bit at 'Baatezu' as a cheesy pretend renaming of 'Devil' and just kept calling them devils for instance. I liked Gygax's prose well enough, but by the time we got to 2e we were well past caring what any of the books said. That also kind of did for point 4, we couldn't care less basically what some guy named Jeff Grub or whomever told us about how we should DM! lol. I mean, I remember reading that part of the DMG and thinking that using 'circumstantial' or 'goal specific' XP was probably a good idea, as a general thought. OTOH by that point we were kind of starting to ditch XP as a formal mechanism anyway.

So, of course, different groups (like I say, younger ones perhaps who didn't have the long history of AD&D play behind them already) maybe were a little more exercised about this or that. Given that the Internet didn't exist yet in any real form, we just did our stuff, and even at the cons of that time which I remember attending there wasn't a lot of huff about it. I know there were a few people that got really excited and 'mad' about 2e, but it was basically IME like .1% of the community and we thought they were sillier than 'Baatezu'.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Well, in our ordinary, fairly active, D&D player's lives all this was a big nothing, really. We rolled our eyes a bit at 'Baatezu' as a cheesy pretend renaming of 'Devil' and just kept calling them devils for instance. I liked Gygax's prose well enough, but by the time we got to 2e we were well past caring what any of the books said. That also kind of did for point 4, we couldn't care less basically what some guy named Jeff Grub or whomever told us about how we should DM! lol. I mean, I remember reading that part of the DMG and thinking that using 'circumstantial' or 'goal specific' XP was probably a good idea, as a general thought. OTOH by that point we were kind of starting to ditch XP as a formal mechanism anyway.

So, of course, different groups (like I say, younger ones perhaps who didn't have the long history of AD&D play behind them already) maybe were a little more exercised about this or that. Given that the Internet didn't exist yet in any real form, we just did our stuff, and even at the cons of that time which I remember attending there wasn't a lot of huff about it. I know there were a few people that got really excited and 'mad' about 2e, but it was basically IME like .1% of the community and we thought they were sillier than 'Baatezu'.

I don't know what to say. I'm glad that was awesome for you. Heck, in my neck of the woods no one cared about the transition from 3e to 4e, so I guess that was no big deal either, right?

....all I can do is reiterate what I saw then, and what I continue to see today. There were a fair number of people that did not react well to 2e. Even today (EVEN TODAY!) there are people that still react against 2e.

I can keep telling you this. I can provide the reasons. Others can tell you. I'm glad you didn't notice. Doesn't mean it didn't happen.