Were the 80s really the Golden Age of D&D?

[rjdafoe]

What do you think? Were the 80s the Golden Age or a Golden Age?

It depends on what you mean by Golden Age, I suppose. Number of players, quality of material, etc.

I would say the Golden Age based upon the number of people playing. This in turn created an awarness of the product that let it become known and viable for the toy stores to carry it. I believe it also allowed great stuff to come out of the industry back then.

I really don't care about sales at this point. I can say, in my area, without a doubt the 80s where the Golden Age of D&D and RPGs in general. The cons in my area had more events than you could sign up for and more players than you could realistically count without seeing all the tickets. There were people everywhere, multiple floors and rooms throughout the colleges that hosted them.

These same cons are barely able to survive today. They have been in the same state for 10 years or more now. They are down to a single large room (school lunch room size with a balcony) for both dealers and games and have been for years.

 

[Erik Mona]

That would be my guess. I recall sales of the 3x core books surpassed those of all previous D&D editions.

Anyone who tells you that the third edition core rulebooks outsold the Mentzer "red box" basic set is lying to you.

--Erik

 

[diaglo]

Anyone who tells you that the third edition core rulebooks outsold the Mentzer "red box" basic set is lying to you.

--Erik

it did at my house.
i own at least 3 copies of the 2000ed core rulebooks and only 1 mentzer basic set.

i own more moldvay and holmes boxed sets than the 2000ed but i prefer them to mentzer

 

[ggroy]

Anyone who tells you that the third edition core rulebooks outsold the Mentzer "red box" basic set is lying to you.

--Erik

According to this,

Print Run

- over a million copies of Keep on the Borderlands B2 was published
- around a million copies of the D&D box set was sold in one year during 1989.

 

[Erik Mona]

Right, and The Isle of Dread/Expert Set box sold in similarly staggering numbers. I've seen the "real" numbers from a source much more reliable than the Acaeum (itself a _very_ reliable source), and there's just no truth to the idea that 3e outsold the basic rules at the height of the game's mass market popularity.

The oft-quoted Ryan Dancey thing about the warehouse stacked with books SPECIFICALLY mentions products from the 1990s and _late_ 80s, which means books right on the cusp of second edition. Now, clearly, TSR had tons of overprinted copies of things like the Wilderness Survival Guide, but I suspect Ryan is referring more to things like "Elminster's Ecologies 2" or "Masque of the Red Death," the likes of which we gave away in piles as prize support for the RPGA because it had been rescued from oblivion from the very same warehouse Ryan was writing about at the time. I did not note a preponderance of AD&D Player's Handbooks, Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Horrors, or even Unearthed Arcana at the time.

Another good comparison is the stated (by law) annual circulation of Dragon Magazine. In the mid-1980s they were selling more than 100,000 copies of every issue. By the end it wasn't even 2/3rds that number.

--Erik

 

[ExploderWizard]

The 80's for certain. PnP rpgs have never been as mainstream as they were at that time. The Moldvay basic set got screen time in E.T. There was a cartoon, and toys, and mainstream toy stores sold books and dice. Video games capture that mainstream attention today and CCG's did the same in the 90's.

It's the whole " back in my day, television was called books" syndrome. How many people read for pleasure compared to those who watch TV? Sure there are plenty of new young gamers who enjoy PnP games but as technology moves forward they become more of an exception rather than the rule.

 

[ggroy]

Right, and The Isle of Dread/Expert Set box sold in similarly staggering numbers. I've seen the "real" numbers from a source much more reliable than the Acaeum (itself a _very_ reliable source)

Back in the day, I remember seeing the basic and expert box sets in all kinds of places including department stores, bookstores, toy stores, etc ... (This is both the Moldvay and Mentzer ones).

What I didn't see as often were the other D&D box sets: companion, master, and immortals. These box sets I only really remember seeing at hobby type stores and FLGS.

 

[Deset Gled]

Anyone who tells you that the third edition core rulebooks outsold the Mentzer "red box" basic set is lying to you.

--Erik

Citation?

I don't want to say you're lying here, but this is contrary to pretty much everything I've read regarding D&D sales.

 

[Erik Mona]

Someone else posted a link. I'm afraid you're just going to have to take my word on this, as the sales info on which I am basing my assertion is not online.

As they say in the Princess Bride, anyone who tells you different is selling something.

--Erik

PS: Also, memory and logic ought to go a long way toward verifying my statement. The boxed sets were ubiquitous in the 1980s, in the Sears catalog, in KayBee, in Toys R Us, in movies, in just about every 12-year-old's house. Most modern gamers got their start with it, etc. The 3e books were very popular and sold in the hundreds of thousands, but the Basic and Expert sets sold in the MILLIONS of copies.

 

[Raven Crowking]

logic ought to go a long way

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