D&D 5E Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is the fastest-selling Dungeons & Dragons book of all time

[schnee]

It's really tempting to look at the acres of splatbooks that we bought in the early 2000's and infer too much.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Really? What are you basing that on?

I have used numerous 3pp modules, and I'm running Primeval Thule right now. I'm really not seeing the "bloody mess" that you're talking about. Many of the modules that i've looked have have been pretty spot on. Some are not to my taste, but, that's a different kettle of fish.

It's not 2001 anymore. People have been pumping out material for D&D for over a decade now. And with a system that is as robust as 5e, it's actually pretty hard to be too unbalanced.

Primeval Thule is a professional third party product. You really gonna try to tell me that there’s more stuff like that than there is unbalanced amateur stuff I’d have to balance at the table?

edit: Also, look at any book of character options from Kobold Press. The Clockwork Magic book is fun thematically, but is have to rework over half the spells in order to consider allowing them. Armored Shell is a strictly worse Mage Armor, as a quick example.

And those guys are pros!

 

[ad_hoc]

Not in any order, but huge Marvel comic book movie success, great new Dr. Who / Supernatural / etc. on TV, Oodles of Twitch and YouTube streams + Critical Role + Wil Wheaton + Felicia Day, fantasy fandom being bigger and more inclusive than ever, a thriving Cosplay / convention / fantasy scene, fantastically well-received Lord of the Rings + Harry Potter, ease of finding stuff on the Internet, etc. all add up to a much larger potential audience than before.

Hell, if you compare to the 80's, we've also added 80 million more people.

Yeah, I am sure there are a lot of factors that go into it. I guess my point is that with so many new players the money is in the PHB and keeping the game accessible.

Let's take boardgames as an example. Recently games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride have crossed the threshold of boardgame hobby games into mainstream games. They're in book stores. People who aren't into hobby games are playing them.

D&D 5e is doing the same. Crossing that threshold. Not to the same degree, it isn't that accessible, but it is doing it. If I were the WotC D&D team my focus would be on maintaining that accessibility.

 

[Wulffolk]

Not in any order, but huge Marvel comic book movie success, great new Dr. Who / Supernatural / etc. on TV, Oodles of Twitch and YouTube streams + Critical Role + Wil Wheaton + Felicia Day, fantasy fandom being bigger and more inclusive than ever, a thriving Cosplay / convention / fantasy scene, fantastically well-received Lord of the Rings + Harry Potter, ease of finding stuff on the Internet, etc. all add up to a much larger potential audience than before.

Hell, if you compare to the 80's, we've also added 80 million more people.

Add in The Big Bang Theory, and the general acceptance and growth of "nerd culture" amongst society in general, plus 5e is reaping the benefits of a rebound in popularity after fracturing the player-base with 4e.

All of that should be considered in counter-point to giving full credit for D&D's success to just the limited release schedule. There are just too many other more compelling reasons for 5e's success for me to believe that you need to limit the production of material to a bare minimum for it to survive.

WotC doesn't need to flood the market with a splat book for every single potential option in the game, but I still believe that modestly increasing the number of quality player options books would be a good thing for us players and for WotC. Two options books (SCAG and XGtE) since 5e first released is not adequate to reach 5e's potential.

Again, that is just my opinion. It won't change what WotC does. It does not need to be "corrected" or "disproved" in an attempt to justify having the opposite opinion. If you still believe that "less equals better", but can make no better case than "5e is doing good, so less books must be better", then we just won't ever reach a consensus on the matter. And that is OK.

 

[gyor]

Unless virtually every WOTC D&D exec is just outright lying, then this is false. Three execs (Crawford, Mearls, Perkins) have all confirmed 5e has made more money than 3.5 and 4e. In addition, "2017 has been D&D's most successful year in the 20 years I've been with Wizards" said Perkins just a couple days ago. We also have quarterly Hasbro report meetings, which are governed by FEC regulations for accuracy, which stated D&D is doing better than it had done in the 3.5 and 4e years.



Paizo is not keeping up any more. ICV2 releases retail sales numbers (which are combined for all book sales), and 5e is beating Pathfinder by a good margin. All the online play platforms like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds report 5e is being played a lot more than Pathfinder. And of course all the other sales metrics like New York Times bestseller list, the Amazon and Barnes and Nobel best seller lists, and the combined sellers lists out there, all show 5e is doing much MUCH better than Pathfinder.

Contrast that with literally zero evidence the combined Pathfinder sales are beating the combined 5e sales, and I am just not sure how anyone can continue to make that claim these days. It's a theory some floated before the hard evidence started to come in, but at this point, I think it's just not a tenable position to take any longer. In fact, given the 5e PHB remains in the top 100 of all book sales for the nation (for all types of books) nearly four years after it's release, and I think it's like the PHB alone has made more money than the entire Pathfinder line for the past several years.

Chris, Mike, Jeremy are middle management at best, they aren't executives, not high enough up the food chain.

 

[Hussar]

Not in any order, but huge Marvel comic book movie success, great new Dr. Who / Supernatural / etc. on TV, Oodles of Twitch and YouTube streams + Critical Role + Wil Wheaton + Felicia Day, fantasy fandom being bigger and more inclusive than ever, a thriving Cosplay / convention / fantasy scene, fantastically well-received Lord of the Rings + Harry Potter, ease of finding stuff on the Internet, etc. all add up to a much larger potential audience than before.

Hell, if you compare to the 80's, we've also added 80 million more people.

Why would all of this not have applied to 3e and 4e then as well? I mean, LotR is 15 years old now, as are the Harry Potter movies. Even the explosive growth of the Marvel movies was in the 2000's.

All of these factors equally apply to 3.5 and to 4e, yet, neither of those editions lasted as well as 5e has done. Remember, by 3 plus a bit years into every WotC edition, sales had dropped to the point where a new edition was on the horizon. None of the editions was coming anywhere near close to the success of 5e.

Is the slow release schedule the only factor? No, of course not. But, it is a pretty big shift from what was done in the past and it appears to be working extremely well.

It appears like they want a 10 year edition cycle. At least, that seems to be the goal. Every splat shortens the lifespan of an edition. I mean, good grief, we HAVE core plus 2 splats already. For most other RPG's, other than D&D, that's actually a pretty healthy release schedule. If you were getting into D&D today, you'd have enough material, on the market right now, to play for the next several years without any problems.

Then again, to be fair, this release schedule does suit me very, very well. I'm not a book collector anymore. Haven't been for many years. I didn't buy about 99% of the material for 3e, 3.5 and 4e. I bought maybe one book per year. Maybe.

So, really, this is tailored specifically for me, which makes me pretty darn happy. I can understand why those who want more books might be a bit peeved though. In any case, it's very hard to argue with success.

 

[Mistwell]

Chris, Mike, Jeremy are middle management at best, they aren't executives, not high enough up the food chain.

Are you saying they are lying, or not? It's a pretty simple question.

 

[Parmandur]

Are you saying they are lying, or not? It's a pretty simple question.

I recall them saying these past couple years have been the most profitable, but have they confirmed higher gross revenue?

 

[Hussar]

Who cares about gross revenue? It's net that's important.

 

[Parmandur]

Who cares about gross revenue? It's net that's important.

Well, true; but that does seem to be what the dude's argument was: 3E grossed more, so WotC is leave ng money on the table. When the business sense is, find the best balance for net.