# Darksun TSR sales! From Benjamin Riggs.



## darjr (Jul 14, 2022)

Actual! Dark Sun! Sales numbers!

Dark Sun follows the same pattern we’ve seen with so many other AD&D 2nd edition settings. The first release sells best, sales decline and then fall off a cliff. Follow-up releases fail to do as well as initial releases and then sputter out as well.

Here you will also find a chart comparing Dark Sun’s cumulative setting sales to the other AD&D settings we’ve already discussed. For those of you keeping score at home, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms are the only settings to sell more than 200,000 copies over their lifetimes.

Tomorrow, we will finish our discussion of settings sales with a grand sweep of the company’s remaining settings: Planescape, Al-Qadim, Birthright, Red Steel, Karameikos, etc.

Have you preordered my book on D&D history, Slaying the Dragon, yet? If you preorder now, you get a free Jeff Easley bookplate! This offer ends in a mere six days, so take advantage of it now! Link below!

Also, in comments below are snips of the actual data used to generate the charts.
		
	










Preorder here! Slaying the Dragon - Macmillan


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## el-remmen (Jul 14, 2022)

All these stats in the various threads on this have confirmed one thing for me: Our hobby has long been even more niche than I already imagined it was.


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## grimslade (Jul 14, 2022)

So Core Setting releases, do they contain the hardback setting books as well? Or just the box sets?
The Dark Sun nimbers feel about right. We played the heck out of DarkSun in my group but I was the only one to buy the box. Same with Spelljammer, but I knew of no other groups around me running SJ, at least DS had buzz.

Edit: Just saw the Fr and Spelljammer thread. The hardback is included along with the revised.


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

grimslade said:


> So Core Setting releases, do they contain the hardback setting books as well? Or just the box sets?
> The Dark Sun nimbers feel about right. We played the heck out of DarkSun in my group but I was the only one to buy the box. Same with Spelljammer, but I knew of no other groups around me running SJ, at least DS had buzz.
> 
> Edit: Just saw the Fr and Spelljammer thread. The hardback is included along with the revised.



These are combining core Setting products, whether box sets or the Adventures hardcovers.

While I think time has shown some flaws in Ryan Dancwy's analysis, his takeaway that TSR was cannibalizing their own products makes sense looking st this data. The harder TSR pushed Settings, the worse they all sold.


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## aco175 (Jul 15, 2022)

I still do not get the big push for Dark Sun and Spelljammer among players.  The numbers show it but there is still those 100% in for the new one to come out.  In 30 years I'd be interested to see the new numbers for the books coming out.  Hopefully I'm still around in 30 years.


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## Retreater (Jul 15, 2022)

aco175 said:


> I still do not get the big push for Dark Sun and Spelljammer among players.  The numbers show it but there is still those 100% in for the new one to come out.  In 30 years I'd be interested to see the new numbers for the books coming out.  Hopefully I'm still around in 30 years.



For me, it's because Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms/etc. are all pretty much played out. Even back in the 1990s I wasn't especially interested in basic fantasy worlds. The creativity of settings like Dark Sun were much more interesting to me.


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## Jer (Jul 15, 2022)

aco175 said:


> I still do not get the big push for Dark Sun and Spelljammer among players.  The numbers show it but there is still those 100% in for the new one to come out.  In 30 years I'd be interested to see the new numbers for the books coming out.  Hopefully I'm still around in 30 years.



For me it's kind of the same desire I get out of watching Marvel movies.  It's the same kind of taking of a niche idea that spoke to a small subset of nerds in my youth and figuring out how to make it work now. It's impressive and fun when they pull it off.

These numbers do expose why they're not too terribly afraid of making changes to old settings when they bring them back though. And why they weren't champing at the bit to re-release these settings for 3e or 4e. I'd love to know how many copies VRGtR has sold and how it compares to the lifetime sales of the 2e Ravenloft core products.


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## Malmuria (Jul 15, 2022)

aco175 said:


> I still do not get the big push for Dark Sun and Spelljammer among players.  The numbers show it but there is still those 100% in for the new one to come out.  In 30 years I'd be interested to see the new numbers for the books coming out.  Hopefully I'm still around in 30 years.



in 30 years we’ll be living _in_ Dark Sun


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

That’s wild. Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Al-Qadim, Ravenloft, and Mystara/Known World are my favorite D&D settings.


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## DarkCrisis (Jul 15, 2022)

Spelljammer sold the least and thats the setting WotC has gone with next.  

Obviously after that Starfinder money.


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## Mistwell (Jul 15, 2022)

I never thought they had done enough with Greyhawk. There was SO much more to be done with that setting. I still don't understand why it didn't continue like Forgotten Realms did. I can only assume there was some level of politics involved, given the sales were there.


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## darjr (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> I never thought they had done enough with Greyhawk. There was SO much more to be done with that setting. I still don't understand why it didn't continue like Forgotten Realms did. I can only assume there was some level of politics involved, given the sales were there.



I dint disagree. However it was the default setting for 3e and the setting for the living campaign for 3rd ed. Living Greyhawk.

I do wish they’d green light putting those adventures up on the DMsGuild. I’d even appreciate it if they said they had to be 5e.

Though putting them up as is would be fastest and maybe for the best.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

DarkCrisis said:


> Spelljammer sold the least and thats the setting WotC has gone with next.
> 
> Obviously after that Starfinder money.



Those settings have almost nothing in common.


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## Eltab (Jul 15, 2022)

If that chart were to be extended to 2020, would there be a noticeable bump in sales?  (I helped)


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## Zardnaar (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> I never thought they had done enough with Greyhawk. There was SO much more to be done with that setting. I still don't understand why it didn't continue like Forgotten Realms did. I can only assume there was some level of politics involved, given the sales were there.




 Most of those sales were early 80's. Dragonlance then FR surpassed it.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 15, 2022)

el-remmen said:


> All these stats in the various threads on this have confirmed one thing for me: Our hobby has long been even more niche than I already imagined it was.




 Broad numbers and trends have been known for decades. Hence FR default.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 15, 2022)

Retreater said:


> For me, it's because Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms/etc. are all pretty much played out. Even back in the 1990s I wasn't especially interested in basic fantasy worlds. The creativity of settings like Dark Sun were much more interesting to me.




 DL/FR/GH are vanilla or lager. 

 Darksun, Spelljamner etc more like craft beers subjectively better but won't put out the same numbers.


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## Mistwell (Jul 15, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> Most of those sales were early 80's. Dragonlance then FR surpassed it.



Because they primarily stopped publishing it. Can't sell stuff you're not...selling. They made a decision to support FR over it. That much we know. But we also know it was selling second only to FR before they stopped primary support for it.


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> I never thought they had done enough with Greyhawk. There was SO much more to be done with that setting. I still don't understand why it didn't continue like Forgotten Realms did. I can only assume there was some level of politics involved, given the sales were there.



They likely tried to split the difference. That’s why Greyhawk was the default setting for 3X but they produced tons of FR material. Take the top two sellers and push ahead.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> Because they primarily stopped publishing it. Can't sell stuff you're not...selling. They made a decision to support FR over it. That much we know. But we also know it was selling second only to FR before they stopped primary support for it.




 Well there was that From the Ashes Thing didn't go well. 

 Also TSR/politics and burying Gary shrugs.


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## darjr (Jul 15, 2022)

Question. Was the content in the next playtest Greyhawk or Greyhawk adjacent?


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> I never thought they had done enough with Greyhawk. There was SO much more to be done with that setting. I still don't understand why it didn't continue like Forgotten Realms did. I can only assume there was some level of politics involved, given the sales were there.



They threw it under the bus after Gygax left, whereas Greenwood stuck around and supported the fans to this very day.


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## TerraDave (Jul 15, 2022)

Retreater said:


> For me, it's because Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms/etc. are all pretty much played out. Even back in the 1990s I wasn't especially interested in basic fantasy worlds. The creativity of settings like Dark Sun were much more interesting to me.



But apparently not for a lot of other people.


_Join a game of classic D&D adventure!_


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> Because they primarily stopped publishing it. Can't sell stuff you're not...selling. They made a decision to support FR over it. That much we know. But we also know it was selling second only to FR before they stopped primary support for it.



Well, what we see in these charts is that Forgotten Realms stayed strong throughout 2E, while Greyhawk crashed and burned with From the Ashes. The revised FR Set did not crash and burn. Greenwoods continued involvement is probably a big part of thst: no reboots that went against the original flavor of the Setting.


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

TerraDave said:


> But apparently not for a lot of other people.



Yeah, generic Fantasy is Evergreen for a reason. What's the big breakout hit new Setting of recent years? Exandria from Critical Role, which is just as generic as fR and Greyhawk.


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> Yeah, generic Fantasy is Evergreen for a reason. What's the big breakout hit new Setting of recent years? Exandria from Critical Role, which is just as generic as fR and Greyhawk.



Hilariously, it’s quite literally 4E’s points-of-light with a modern anime-fantasy kitchen sink spin.


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Hilariously, it’s quite literally 4E’s points-of-light with a modern anime-fantasy kitchen sink spin.



I mean, the PoL Setting was meant to be a generic toolkits so working as designed.

I guess there are probably anime influences, but anime fantasy is derived from old Basic D&D, really, so that seems fairly legit.


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## QuentinGeorge (Jul 15, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> They threw it under the bus after Gygax left, whereas Greenwood stuck around and supported the fans to this very day.



Did they really though? It was continually published until 1993 with products almost every year (except 1991) and then came back in 1997. It only left for 4 years or so really and lasted all through 3e until 2007. It outlasted Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Planescape and many others.


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

QuentinGeorge said:


> Did they really though? It was continually published until 1993 with products almost every year (except 1991) and then came back in 1997. It only left for 4 years or so really and lasted all through 3e until 2007. It outlasted Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Planescape and many others.



They changed the Setting pretty radically, with stuff like the joke module Castle Greyhawk. I don't know if you saw the thread with the Greyhawk numbers, but From the Ashes was a total collapse in sales from the original box and Greyhawk Adventures. They were putting outnsome stuff, but without Gygax and Gygaxes friends being involved and going in weird directiona by all reports. And the sales tanked.

The Forgotten Realms on the other hand had Ed Greenwood intimately involved throughout, and there was no major tonal shift away from the creators intentions.


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## QuentinGeorge (Jul 15, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> They changed the Setting pretty radically, with stuff like the joke module Castle Greyhawk. I don't know if you saw the thread with the Greyhawk numbers, but From the Ashes was a total collapse in sales from the original box and Greyhawk Adventures. They were putting outnsome stuff, but without Gygax and Gygaxes friends being involved and going in weird directiona by all reports. And the sales tanked.
> 
> The Forgotten Realms on the other hand had Ed Greenwood intimately involved throughout, and there was no major tonal shift away from the creators intentions.



I think Ed Greenwood’s presence is key not any changes to the setting. The Realms also suffered from terrible adventures, tonal changes and setting changes as bad as Greyhawk. Greenwood’s continuing presence on the author list assured them that it was all still legit (even when half the FR stinkers had his fingerprints on them)


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

QuentinGeorge said:


> I think Ed Greenwood’s presence is key not any changes to the setting. The Realms also suffered from terrible adventures, tonal changes and setting changes as bad as Greyhawk. Greenwood’s continuing presence on the author list assured them that it was all still legit (even when half the FR stinkers had his fingerprints on them)



Yeah, that what I'm saying: it provided continuity and lent a distinct personality to the the Setting.


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## GreyLord (Jul 15, 2022)

DarkCrisis said:


> Spelljammer sold the least and thats the setting WotC has gone with next.
> 
> Obviously after that Starfinder money.




I think it's a risk.  They are in the experimental stage of the edition.  Last experiment was to see what a re-release with reorganized information would go like (MotM).  I'm not sure how that will be seen, and hope that the AE goes better (at least my opinion of how MotM has gone thus far).  

This is an experiment with new formats, and testing the waters with presentation and promotion (at least as I see it) of what could be a relatively unknown (to most who play D&D) setting.  There have been other lesser know settings put out, so that's not as risky, but...as we can see from the graphs, putting this out COULD be risky in how well it's accepted.  

Note, they are also putting out Dragonlance, so it could be that it is hoped to be the counterbalance to Spelljammer if Spelljammer falls flat.  I LOVE Dragonlance, but I'm not sure it's going to be a stellar success either (I hope it is, but...I don't know).


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

GreyLord said:


> I think it's a risk.  They are in the experimental stage of the edition.  Last experiment was to see what a re-release with reorganized information would go like (MotM).  I'm not sure how that will be seen, and hope that the AE goes better (at least my opinion of how MotM has gone thus far).
> 
> This is an experiment with new formats, and testing the waters with presentation and promotion (at least as I see it) of what could be a relatively unknown (to most who play D&D) setting.  There have been other lesser know settings put out, so that's not as risky, but...as we can see from the graphs, putting this out COULD be risky in how well it's accepted.
> 
> Note, they are also putting out Dragonlance, so it could be that it is hoped to be the counterbalance to Spelljammer if Spelljammer falls flat.  I LOVE Dragonlance, but I'm not sure it's going to be a stellar success either (I hope it is, but...I don't know).



It goes back to the idea of having something unique to offer from a setting. Spelljammer has a huge focus on ships and wild races. So the rules and merch for those are obvious. Dragonlance, as presented soon, will focus on mass combat. So rules and merch for those are obvious.


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## John R Davis (Jul 15, 2022)

DarkCrisis said:


> Spelljammer sold the least and thats the setting WotC has gone with next.
> 
> Obviously after that Starfinder money.



Well.
It is gawdy and bright and has wierd looking twee things so fits the tastes of young and new players.
I'm going buy it!


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## Davies (Jul 15, 2022)

This _continues_ to surprise, I honestly would have thought Dark Sun did much better than Ravenloft.

I think the moral of the story here is that releasing a revised edition of something when sales of the original start to flag is not a particularly sound strategy; it doesn't seem to EVER produce comparable results.


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## Jer (Jul 15, 2022)

Mistwell said:


> Because they primarily stopped publishing it. Can't sell stuff you're not...selling. They made a decision to support FR over it. That much we know. But we also know it was selling second only to FR before they stopped primary support for it.



They tried multiple times to sell it and the initial sales were lower each time they did. We don't have Wizards numbers for their 1998 attempt or their 2 3e releases but I suspect they were not good.

So there's that. But Realms books followed the same pattern. So as I said elsewhere I suspect the real reason the Realms is known and successful is due to non-ttrpg licensing- specifically the video games. I have to believe that Eye of the Beholder and the Gold Box games gave the setting more visibility so by the time Wizards tried to do anything with Greyhawk the benefits of doing so were outweighed by the costs. And also the massive push with novels that they did with FR that they tried with Greyhawk and abandoned.

So to me the real questions are why did they push FR so hard and just give up on Greyhawk. And I suspect it's because they owned The Realms through a signed contract with Ed Greenwood and their ownership of Greyhawk was more complicated and involved the potential of litigation with someone they forced out of the company. Combine that with the very real feeling that Greyhawk fans weren't interested in a Greyhawk without Gygax and it makes sense that TSR would push FR and leave Greyhawk fallow. By the time Wizards came along and tried to make Greyhawk a thing (including finally at least using it as a setting in a video game) there just wasn't enough interest for them to work with - even internally IIRC Erik Mona was the only one who really evangelized for Greyhawk.


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## RuinousPowers (Jul 15, 2022)

Lots of Greyhawk fans seem to love how, unlike FR, every rock and tree wasn't mapped out and given a history. If they had continued to support it, I'm sure that aspect would certainly be lost.


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## grimslade (Jul 15, 2022)

These numbers show that sales of D&D were slightly bigger than the 80's (post '84) but were spread across many many more products. 
Greyhawk was supported into 3.x with LG. There was a crazy amount of content of wildly differing quality produced for the setting. The one thing Greyhawk never had was a successful expanding novel franchise. The Justicar and Gord novels were hardly blockbusters. Forgotten Realms dominated the fantasy space in bookstores and video games for a decade and a half. Dragonlance was more valuable as a fiction IP than a TTRPG. Greyhawk had the classic modules and the names.
The reason people clamor for Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft is that they are large departures from the traditional Western fantasy space. People didn't play a ton of the settings, but they referenced them a whole lot. Dark Sun halflings, nautiloids, and Dark taints all trickled into 'regular' games. And the ads. People might not have shelled out $25 for a box set but anytime they picked up a Dragon or Dungeon there were full-page ads with this phenomenal art. It was easily recognizable. Brom for DS. DiTerlizzi for Planescape. It resonates much farther than mechanics. 
I think the scale that we see for these TSR sales is so far removed from where D&D is today. WotC titles are not seeing sub 60k sold for the life of the product. D&D 5e is so far removed from the tiny niche product of its history. We have Amazon sales charts to get a glimpse and I can guarantee there are no warehouses of moldering VRGtR hiding in Renton. 
This doesn't mean that Spelljammer will be a success. It does mean that WotC can push boundaries a bit further and leverage that bit of nostalgia and the promise of 'Spelljammer Confirmed!' Wild beyond the Witch Light was a pretty big departure for WotC and it seems to be a very successful one. We will see what SJ does. I hope it does well and allows WotC to be less conservative with the game.


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## QuentinGeorge (Jul 15, 2022)

Jer said:


> They tried multiple times to sell it and the initial sales were lower each time they did. We don't have Wizards numbers for their 1998 attempt or their 2 3e releases but I suspect they were not good.
> 
> So there's that. But Realms books followed the same pattern. So as I said elsewhere I suspect the real reason the Realms is known and successful is due to non-ttrpg licensing- specifically the video games. I have to believe that Eye of the Beholder and the Gold Box games gave the setting more visibility so by the time Wizards tried to do anything with Greyhawk the benefits of doing so were outweighed by the costs. And also the massive push with novels that they did with FR that they tried with Greyhawk and abandoned.
> 
> So to me the real questions are why did they push FR so hard and just give up on Greyhawk. And I suspect it's because they owned The Realms through a signed contract with Ed Greenwood and their ownership of Greyhawk was more complicated and involved the potential of litigation with someone they forced out of the company. Combine that with the very real feeling that Greyhawk fans weren't interested in a Greyhawk without Gygax and it makes sense that TSR would push FR and leave Greyhawk fallow. By the time Wizards came along and tried to make Greyhawk a thing (including finally at least using it as a setting in a video game) there just wasn't enough interest for them to work with - even internally IIRC Erik Mona was the only one who really evangelized for Greyhawk.



Greyhawk had a lot of fans in the writers and owners - Peter Adkinson loved it, and that's why it was brought back once TSR was bought, not because it sold well.


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## QuentinGeorge (Jul 15, 2022)

grimslade said:


> These numbers show that sales of D&D were slightly bigger than the 80's (post '84) but were spread across many many more products.
> Greyhawk was supported into 3.x with LG. There was a crazy amount of content of wildly differing quality produced for the setting. The one thing Greyhawk never had was a successful expanding novel franchise. The Justicar and Gord novels were hardly blockbusters. Forgotten Realms dominated the fantasy space in bookstores and video games for a decade and a half. Dragonlance was more valuable as a fiction IP than a TTRPG. Greyhawk had the classic modules and the names.
> The reason people clamor for Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft is that they are large departures from the traditional Western fantasy space. People didn't play a ton of the settings, but they referenced them a whole lot. Dark Sun halflings, nautiloids, and Dark taints all trickled into 'regular' games. And the ads. People might not have shelled out $25 for a box set but anytime they picked up a Dragon or Dungeon there were full-page ads with this phenomenal art. It was easily recognizable. Brom for DS. DiTerlizzi for Planescape. It resonates much farther than mechanics.
> I think the scale that we see for these TSR sales is so far removed from where D&D is today. WotC titles are not seeing sub 60k sold for the life of the product. D&D 5e is so far removed from the tiny niche product of its history. We have Amazon sales charts to get a glimpse and I can guarantee there are no warehouses of moldering VRGtR hiding in Renton.
> This doesn't mean that Spelljammer will be a success. It does mean that WotC can push boundaries a bit further and leverage that bit of nostalgia and the promise of 'Spelljammer Confirmed!' Wild beyond the Witch Light was a pretty big departure for WotC and it seems to be a very successful one. We will see what SJ does. I hope it does well and allows WotC to be less conservative with the game.



I think you've hit on something. TSR novels sold way better than their RPG books. (credit to Lowder and the rest of the fiction department). Dragonlance was basically a novel line with an intermittent RPG sideline from 2nd edition onwards. Forgotten Realms books (esp Drizzt) helped propel the line above Greyhawk.

Imagine a different world where the Drizzt books were set in Erelhu-Cinlu rather than Menzoberranzen...


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## DarkCrisis (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Those settings have almost nothing in common.



D&D in space.  They both are going for that same spot.  One just has space aliens and the other space elves. They both want that same $.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

DarkCrisis said:


> D&D in space.  They both are going for that same spot.  One just has space aliens and the other space elves. They both want that same $.



No they don't. Starfinder wants the Guardians of the Galaxy $$ while Spelljammer wants the Pirates of the Caribbean $$. Sci-fi and space tech are central to one while for the other they are just a veneer painted over nautical adventures.


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> No they don't. Starfinder wants the Guardians of the Galaxy $$ while Spelljammer wants the Pirates of the Caribbean $$. Sci-fi and space tech are central to one while for the other they are just a veneer painted over nautical adventures.



WotC seem to disagree with you. In most of the video interviews they keep talking about sci-fi and what flavors of sci-fi you can use in your Spelljammer game. They name dropped Star Trek a few times. They haven’t mentioned pirates or Pirates of the Caribbean. The aesthetic is clearly pirates in space. But they’re actively pushing sci-fi in the interviews.


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## Jer (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Starfinder wants the Guardians of the Galaxy $$ while Spelljammer wants the Pirates of the Caribbean $$.



I mean, I'm sure they'd both be happy with either GoG or PotC money  

The comparison is okay, but I'd say it's more like Starfinder is more Guardians of the Galaxy while Spelljammer is more Thor Love & Thunder.  Sure they're both ostensibly set in "space" - even ostensibly the same "space" - but in one you've got ships and physics that "make sense" and in the other you have a Viking longboat being pulled by giant goats through space.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> WotC seem to disagree with you. In most of the video interviews they keep talking about sci-fi and what flavors of sci-fi you can use in your Spelljammer game. They name dropped Star Trek a few times. They haven’t mentioned pirates or Pirates of the Caribbean. The aesthetic is clearly pirates in space. But they’re actively pushing sci-fi in the interviews.



I bet there is a zero percent chance equipment lists will include laser guns and forcefield belts and rocket boots.


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> I bet there is a zero percent chance equipment lists will include laser guns and forcefield belts and rocket boots.



You’ve seen the art where they have laser guns, right?


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> You’ve seen the art where they have laser guns, right?



I assume you mean the space clowns picture? That's the only one I can recall. Even granted that, it doesn't mean "laser pistol" is going to be on the equipment list.


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> I assume you mean the space clowns picture? That's the only one I can recall. Even granted that, it doesn't mean "laser pistol" is going to be on the equipment list.



And the alternate art for the Spelljammer actual play campaign. It’s popped up a few times. And again, they keep talking about using Spelljammer to add sci-fi to your games not pirates or nautical.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> And the alternate art for the Spelljammer actual play campaign. It’s popped up a few times. And again, they keep talking about using Spelljammer to add sci-fi to your games not pirates or nautical.



That would certainly be change from the 2E era, but I am not opposed to it. I would be pleasantly surprised, in fact, if that were the case. Everything I have seen has suggested more space nautica tho. Do you have a link to the art you are talking about?


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## darjr (Jul 15, 2022)

This looks pirates


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## South by Southwest (Jul 15, 2022)

Peg leg
Cutlass (No, no--not like the car; the sword)
Chipmunk Guinea pig _Hamster_
Tricorn
Superfly threads
Yep, pirate.


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## Parmandur (Jul 15, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> And the alternate art for the Spelljammer actual play campaign. It’s popped up a few times. And again, they keep talking about using Spelljammer to add sci-fi to your games not pirates or nautical.



Why not both..?


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## overgeeked (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> That would certainly be change from the 2E era, but I am not opposed to it. I would be pleasantly surprised, in fact, if that were the case. Everything I have seen has suggested more space nautica tho. Do you have a link to the art you are talking about?




Every other character here is flashing laser guns and sci-fi tech. That's official art from an official D&D live play. If they weren't doing sci-fi, they wouldn't allow laser guns in the art. Can't seem to find the laser gun totting space clowns art.


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## darjr (Jul 15, 2022)

I doubt there will be lazer guns in the equipment lists. I do agree they are showing a sci-fi angle however. Which I like. Still it's different from Starfinder. However I think they'll compliment each other. It's not the first time that there were suspiciously closely styled releases from both companies. Do remember that folks from both companies live close and some purportedly are in each others games too. Or have been.

I can't help but think it'll bump sales of Starfinder products. I for one intend upon looking closer at SF accessories, I think I started a thread on that topic.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Every other character here is flashing laser guns and sci-fi tech. That's official art from an official D&D live play. If they weren't doing sci-fi, they wouldn't allow laser guns in the art. Can't seem to find the laser gun totting space clowns art.



Thanks.

Here is the space clown art.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

Is anyone watching the Spelljammer live play? Are the characters armed with sci fi gear?


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## Voadam (Jul 15, 2022)

Laser guns are in the 5e core DMG.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

Voadam said:


> Laser guns are in the 5e core DMG.



So?


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## Voadam (Jul 15, 2022)

From the pre 3e era I had the 1e Greyhawk boxed set, the 1e/2e Greyhawk adventures hardcover, the 2e From the Ashes Boxed Set, and the WotC Greyhawk setting softcovers. For FR I had the 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover. For Dragonlance I had the 1e Hardcover Dragonlance Adventures, for Ravenloft I had the 2e original boxed set and the later hardcover. I also had the 1e Lankhmar setting and the 2e Jakandor setting books. Greyhawk and Ravenloft were what I ran the most.

I had friends with the Spelljammer and Dark Sun setting boxes but did not get them myself in that era, picking up the PDFs and getting a friend's Spelljammer box when he was divesting for a move. I didn't get Planescape until the PDFs came out in the 3e era.

Mystara had lots of regional setting sourcebooks but no core setting book.

I did pick up Dragon Kings during 2e for the 10th level spell stuff. And Dune Trader to check out the merchant stuff mechanics.


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## Voadam (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> So?



I would not find it odd to see them as something you can possibly buy from an expanded equipment list in a 5e spelljammer setting book where they are in a bunch of the art.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

Voadam said:


> I would not find it odd to see them as something you can buy from an expanded equipment list in a 5e spelljammer setting book where they are in a bunch of the art.



Sure, but their presence in the DMG doesn't actually say anything about how "sci-fi" this iteration of Spelljammer is going to be, which was my main question.


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## Jer (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Sure, but their presence in the DMG doesn't actually say anything about how "sci-fi" this iteration of Spelljammer is going to be, which was my main question.



Out of curiousity - if the laser guns are magic laser guns instead of science laser guns does that change things?  As in is it the trappings of sci-fi that are important or the grounding in actual science?

Because I'm pretty sure they're using guns powered by magic - or at most by some kind of Handwavium indistinguishable from magic -  and not by atomic batteries or something like that.


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## Reynard (Jul 15, 2022)

Jer said:


> Out of curiousity - if the laser guns are magic laser guns instead of science laser guns does that change things?  As in is it the trappings of sci-fi that are important or the grounding in actual science?
> 
> Because I'm pretty sure they're using guns powered by magic - or at most by some kind of Handwavium indistinguishable from magic -  and not by atomic batteries or something like that.



It does for me. If they are "magic laser guns" then we aren't talking about it being in the same genre as Starfinder (which was what prompted this line of discussion). There's nothing wrong with magic laser guns and I think they are pretty cool, but that is different than a setting that mixes high tech and the fantastic.


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## Stormonu (Jul 15, 2022)

The original Spelljammer had Giff with their wheellocks and bombards.  But not any sci-fi weaponry that I recall.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to magitek weapons in SJ, but I think this might just be one group's take.  The recently released adventure doesn't have sci-fi pistols - though it does have a Star Trek-like holodeck.


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## Voadam (Jul 15, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Sure, but their presence in the DMG doesn't actually say anything about how "sci-fi" this iteration of Spelljammer is going to be, which was my main question.



I think the existence of existing mechanics for laser guns means it is easier and therefore slightly more likely to be incorporated as a part of the setting than if there were none and they had to come up with new mechanics.

The original 2e Spelljammer incorporated the smoke powder and starwheel pistols and such that were introduced in the 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures and made it a big part of the Giff culture and a minor part of Spelljammer.

The art is the big predictor though for the direction of 5e Spelljammer.


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## jolt (Jul 15, 2022)

As the 80's were coming to a close, you started seeing a lot of metaplot driven games (Shadowrun, TORG, etc.).  It was a big "thing" going on at the time.  FR was the setting that was doing that.  Gary was already gone and, while Greyhawk was still around, it had been heavily marginalized.  When they tried introducing metaplot into Greyhawk, it really didn't work.  Most of the people who wanted metaplot had already switched to FR years before; there was no benefit to switching back to a setting that had been largely ignored for years at that point just because metaplot had been introduced to it.  The Greyhawk fans weren't particularly happy either though.  Many of them never wanted metaplot in the first place.

It also felt very weird to have TSR, who by that point had spent years showing nothing but disdain and scorn for all things Gygax, were now releasing a Greyhawk City boxed set.  City, Wars, and After the Ashes were all slick looking products, but the writing and characterizations were atrocious.  It's no surprise that AtA tanked.  The FR fans largely ignored Greyhawk and the Greyhawk fans had already been colossally let down years before.  Who was left to buy it?


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## QuentinGeorge (Jul 15, 2022)

jolt said:


> As the 80's were coming to a close, you started seeing a lot of metaplot driven games (Shadowrun, TORG, etc.).  It was a big "thing" going on at the time.  FR was the setting that was doing that.  Gary was already gone and, while Greyhawk was still around, it had been heavily marginalized.  When they tried introducing metaplot into Greyhawk, it really didn't work.  Most of the people who wanted metaplot had already switched to FR years before; there was no benefit to switching back to a setting that had been largely ignored for years at that point just because metaplot had been introduced to it.  The Greyhawk fans weren't particularly happy either though.  Many of them never wanted metaplot in the first place.
> 
> It also felt very weird to have TSR, who by that point had spent years showing nothing but disdain and scorn for all things Gygax, were now releasing a Greyhawk City boxed set.  City, Wars, and After the Ashes were all slick looking products, but the writing and characterizations were atrocious.  It's no surprise that AtA tanked.  The FR fans largely ignored Greyhawk and the Greyhawk fans had already been colossally let down years before.  Who was left to buy it?



Let me reiterate it was nothing to do with the writing quality.


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## darjr (Jul 15, 2022)

> Just you wait! Dark Sun is the only TSR setting for which I have ALL ThE NUMBERS! Every adventure! Every novel! The whole burrito!


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## Dungeonosophy (Jul 16, 2022)

_“For those of you keeping score at home, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms are the only settings to sell more than 200,000 copies over their lifetimes.”_

And Mystara. Which outsold them all.


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## QuentinGeorge (Jul 16, 2022)

Dungeonosophy said:


> _“For those of you keeping score at home, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms are the only settings to sell more than 200,000 copies over their lifetimes.”_
> 
> And Mystara. Which outsold them all.



And it’s entirely due to them being released in the 1st edition era rather than 2nd.


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## Reynard (Jul 16, 2022)

Dungeonosophy said:


> _“For those of you keeping score at home, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms are the only settings to sell more than 200,000 copies over their lifetimes.”_
> 
> And Mystara. Which outsold them all.



Are you just saying that because of 8 or whatever pages in the Expert Set? Because that's not really a fair comparison.


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## Voadam (Jul 16, 2022)

Dungeonosophy said:


> _“For those of you keeping score at home, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms are the only settings to sell more than 200,000 copies over their lifetimes.”_
> 
> And Mystara. Which outsold them all.



Mystara had tons of regional sourcebooks but no overall campaign setting book or boxed set. Hollow World was probably the biggest area one and the closest to a setting sourcebook. The almanacs kind of come close too, but they are a light update of each area in the setting to account for an in-world time advancement.


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## Ruin Explorer (Jul 17, 2022)

el-remmen said:


> All these stats in the various threads on this have confirmed one thing for me: Our hobby has long been even more niche than I already imagined it was.



Right?

It's actually amazing how much influence a lot of these settings had, and how well-known they are generally among nerds, gamers, game designers, etc. given the tiny sales. D&D's influence is completely outsize to its sales. It's like, I guess D&D accidentally targeted so many creative people who spread so many of the ideas, when then continued to spread that it had this wild influence.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Voadam said:


> Mystara had tons of regional sourcebooks but no overall campaign setting book or boxed set. Hollow World was probably the biggest area one and the closest to a setting sourcebook. The almanacs kind of come close too, but they are a light update of each area in the setting to account for an in-world time advancement.



Champions of Mystara is definitely a "real" setting book, as is the _Savage Coast Campaign Book_.  The _Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure, Glantri: Kingdom of Magic, _and _Dawn of the Emperors: Thyatis and Alphatia _boxed sets should definitely count for Mystara, as well as the fourteen Gazetteers.

That being said, I think Dungeonosophy is premising their statement on counting all the B/X and BECMI sets as Mystara, as well as the Rules Cyclopedia, which I don't think is reasonable.

The Expert sets had a couple of pages (map of The Known World, a page or so on Threshold) and the Isle of Dread module, but that's not much (and we're not including modules in any of these totals).  There's basically zero setting info in the Basic sets, very little in Companion, and nothing that I recall in Masters or Immortals.  The RC has a whole chapter on Mystara, apparently, which I think makes it a more reasonable inclusion if you're doing a Mystara total.  I don't know whether the 1991 or 1994 Basic revisions had any significant setting info, but I would presume probably not, as the prior Basic sets were all generic in that regard- intended for use with any setting or homebrew.


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## Voadam (Jul 18, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Champions of Mystara is definitely a "real" setting book, as is the _Savage Coast Campaign Book_. The _Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure, Glantri: Kingdom of Magic, _and _Dawn of the Emperors: Thyatis and Alphatia _boxed sets should definitely count for Mystara, as well as the fourteen Gazetteers.



Those all seem more analogous to Forgotten Realms regional sourcebooks or boxed sets than the Forgotten Realms campaign setting boxed sets and books. Spellbound for instance is huge with 232 pages of content covering three kingdoms, but I would call it a regional sourcebook with a smaller focus than the full FR campaign setting books, even the ones with smaller page counts.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Voadam said:


> Those all seem more analogous to Forgotten Realms regional sourcebooks or boxed sets than the Forgotten Realms campaign setting boxed sets and books. Spellbound for instance is huge with 232 pages of content covering three kingdoms, but I would call it a regional sourcebook with a smaller focus than the full FR campaign setting books, even the ones with smaller page counts.



Yeah, you have a point.  If we're counting all of those, then FR regional books would certainly count toward the Realms too.

I might suggest that perhaps the Karameikos, Glantri, and Dawn boxed sets might be more closely analogous to a "core" setting book/expansion like the FR boxed set, or Greyhawk folio.  The closest thing Mystara had to a single setting book is Champions of Mystara.  The design focus was deliberately on a smaller area with the boxed sets it got.


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## Reynard (Jul 18, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Yeah, you have a point.  If we're counting all of those, then FR regional books would certainly count toward the Realms too.
> 
> I might suggest that perhaps the Karameikos, Glantri, and Dawn boxed sets might be more closely analogous to a "core" setting book/expansion like the FR boxed set, or Greyhawk folio.  The closest thing Mystara had to a single setting book is Champions of Mystara.  The design focus was deliberately on a smaller area with the boxes sets it got.



Mystara just had a very different publication method than the other major settings -- up to and including never having a "Mystara" campaign setting supplement or boxed set.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Mystara just had a very different publication method than the other major settings -- up to and including never having a "Mystara" campaign setting supplement or boxed set.



Honestly, in retrospect I kind of like that.  When I was a kid I had Dragonlance Adventures, and the 1e FR boxed set, and then the 2nd ed Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover, but they were always kind of intimidating in scale.  Nowadays OSR products for hexcrawls and such seem to always focus on a smaller, more manageable area, rather than a whole world.


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## Reynard (Jul 18, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Honestly, in retrospect I kind of like that.  When I was a kid I had Dragonlance Adventures, and the 1e FR boxed set, and then the 2nd ed Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover, but they were always kind of intimidating in scale.  Nowadays OSR products for hexcrawls and such seem to always focus on a smaller, more manageable area, rather than a whole world.



Those Gazetteers were pure fire.


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## CleverNickName (Jul 18, 2022)

The D&D hobby as a whole was suffering as a whole in the 1990s.  All sales for all products take a massive hit in the 1990s because _the company itself_ was failing, and dragging everything down with it.  If TS&R could have held the line and managed this loss better, maybe all of these graphs for all campaign settings would be higher, and some might look more successful than others.  But that's not what happened.

I know that a lot of people want to hate Wizards of the Coast for various reasons, but for better or worse, WotC saved D&D.  It was in very real danger of fading away into obscurity in the late 90s, and they brought it back to the fore.  I understand that this research is focused primarily on TSR, but someday I'd love to see the sales graph stretched out to year 2020.  I'd wager that 3E outsold all of these, combined.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> The D&D hobby as a whole was suffering as a whole in the 1990s.  All sales for all products take a massive hit in the 1990s because _the company itself_ was failing, and dragging everything down with it.  If TS&R could have held the line and managed this loss better, maybe all of these graphs for all campaign settings would be higher, and some might look more successful than others.  But that's not what happened.



I think you've got the causal relationship a bit backwards here.  I think TSR sank in large part because demand for their products failed.  The most direct event that caused their bankruptcy was product returns and Random House demanding repayment, but the reason TSR couldn't repay them was that their revenue wasn't covering their costs, and they were papering it over with cash advances from Random House for books that gradually undersold.  Some of it was genuine mismanagement like selling boxed sets whose production costs were actually higher than the price TSR sold them to distributors at.  But fundamentally people just weren't buying TSR's stuff in sufficient quantities anymore; even products which were notably underpriced.



CleverNickName said:


> I know that a lot of people want to hate Wizards of the Coast for various reasons, but for better or worse, WotC saved D&D.  It was in very real danger of fading away into obscurity in the late 90s, and they brought it back to the fore.  I understand that this research is focused primarily on TSR, but someday I'd love to see the sales graph stretched out to year 2020.  I'd wager that 3E outsold all of these, combined.



No argument that WotC saved D&D.  I am curious about 3E, and I'm sure it sold well.  Those hardcovers packed with new content were mighty attractive, especially at that initial $20 price point!

But I'm less convinced that they really outsold the AD&D and D&D lines during the fad days. of '79-'84ish.  We still haven't even seen sales figures from outside North America, and during the fad period TSR UK Ltd. was a whole subsidiary, distributing books to Europe, and the first couple (at least) BECMI sets were translated into many languages and were the origin point of D&D for a lot of folks in other countries.


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## darjr (Jul 18, 2022)

wasn’t basic the reigning champion until maybe 5e?


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## CleverNickName (Jul 18, 2022)

darjr said:


> wasn’t basic the reigning champion until maybe 5e?



I'm not sure.  The folks at ICv2 ran an article back in 2002 about the 3E rulebooks having sold over a million copies by August of 2000.  If those numbers are correct,  3E D&D outsold all other editions to date, in just the first few months of its release.








						Over 1 Million D&D 3E Rulebooks Sold
					

LOTR Expands Interest in Fantasy Genre




					icv2.com


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## Jer (Jul 18, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> I'm not so sure.  The folks at ICv2 ran an article back in 2002 about the 3E rulebooks having sold over a million copies.  If those numbers are correct,  3E D&D outsold all other editions to date.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That's if you add together PHB, DMG and MM for 3e though - the article said that they were roughly 300K each at that point.  According to the numbers posted the lifetime sales on the 1e PHB was 1.5M by itself, the DMG was 1.3M, and the lifetime sales on the Basic set (admittedly across all iterations of the basic set) was 3.5M.  The 2e PHB combined sales (original and revised) was almost 1M for just the one book. So it would kind of depend on what the 3e and 3.5e sales were like from 2002 through the release of 4e in 2008 to see if they peaked over the 1e sales.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Jer said:


> That's if you add together PHB, DMG and MM for 3e though - the article said that they were roughly 300K each at that point.  According to the numbers posted the lifetime sales on the 1e PHB was 1.5M by itself, the DMG was 1.3M, and the lifetime sales on the Basic set (admittedly across all iterations of the basic set) was 3.5M.  The 2e PHB combined sales (original and revised) was almost 1M for just the one book. So it would kind of depend on what the 3e and 3.5e sales were like from 2002 through the release of 4e in 2008 to see if they peaked over the 1e sales.



Yup.  And Ben didn't count the original Monster Manual.


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## CleverNickName (Jul 18, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Yup.  And Ben didn't count the original Monster Manual.



He did count the Basic boxed set, however.  I was responding to @darjr 's comment about the Red Box Basic being the best-selling edition until 5E.  The red box set had all of the core books at the time (two books; there wasn't a such thing as a Monster Manual in Basic D&D.)

Fair point about 1E sales not including the MM.  I'm not sure how much it would skew the sales to add those values in, but my gut says it's somewhere between +30% and +50%.   (Full disclosure: my gut is a liar.)


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## Snarf Zagyg (Jul 18, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> He did count the Basic boxed set, however.  I was responding to @darjr 's comment about the Red Box Basic being the best-selling edition until 5E.  The red box set had all of the core books at the time (two books; there wasn't a such thing as a Monster Manual in Basic D&D.)




He didn't count sales outside of North America. Which, IIRC, would add a decent amount.


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## CleverNickName (Jul 18, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> He didn't count sales outside of North America. Which, IIRC, would add a decent amount.



Agreed; it's hard to find data that will compare apples to apples.  @Mannahnin points out that the number of books that are being counted don't exactly match.  You point out that the sales only include North America.  And from what I can tell, that "one million copies sold" article only includes sales through the month of August, which is just the first 8 months of its release. 

I couldn't find any data for the entire first year of 3E's run, but it's certainly going to be higher than a million.  Including the sales of the 1E MM would certainly give higher sales numbers too.  And including the sales outside of North America would also give higher numbers across the board.  I would love to see all of the data from all of the angles, but I doubt that will happen.

All I'm saying is, I have found at least some evidence to suggest that 3E was actually the best-selling edition of the game as of August 2000.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Jul 18, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> Agreed; it's hard to find data that will compare apples to apples.  @Mannahnin points out that the number of books that are being counted don't exactly match.  You point out that the sales only include North America.  And from what I can tell, that "one million copies sold" article only includes sales through the month of August, which is just the first 8 months of its release.
> 
> I couldn't find any data for the entire first year of 3E's run, but it's certainly going to be higher than a million.  Including the sales of the 1E MM would certainly give higher sales numbers too.  And including the sales outside of North America would also give higher numbers across the board.  I would love to see all of the data from all of the angles, but I doubt that will happen.
> 
> All I'm saying is, I have found at least some evidence to suggest that 3E was actually the best-selling edition of the game as of August 2000.




Well, maybe? Except the Monster Manual (1e) was being sold way back in 1977! And it was always a big seller.

...and we know that for most rules books, there is a peak the first year, and then a drop off after that.

I mean ... it's weird, right? That we still don't know so much about basic things like sales of the various editions? Even this article is, technically, just an announcement from Wizards- and for all we know, they are counting "sales" as  going into distribution, not the end-sale. Who knows?

Not to mention if we were really being picky, we'd have to recognize that America gained 60 million people between 1980 and 2000. So, like inflation, we'd have to adjust for that.

I'd love to have someone with all the figures doing a deep dive. My impression is that the "Golden Age" was 1980-1983, there was a second mini boom (a silver age?) when 3e was released, and we are now experiencing a long Platinum Age of sales.

But that's just a gut feeling- and my gut is often wrong too!


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## Jer (Jul 18, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I mean ... it's weird, right? That we still don't know so much about basic things like sales of the various editions? Even this article is, technically, just an announcement from Wizards- and for all we know, they are counting "sales" as  going into distribution, not the end-sale. Who knows?



I'm fairly certain that the numbers that Ben Riggs is posting are also distribution sales, not end-sale numbers.  What TSR would care about would be booking the sales they made direct to retailers, sales through their own Hobby Shop storefront, and to distributors.  I don't think TSR would have had any way of tracking sell-through at point of sale other than by looking at what stock was returned to them.


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## CleverNickName (Jul 18, 2022)

Sounds like a lot of us want to compare apples to apples, but we've only been given paperclips and ice cubes so far.


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## Reynard (Jul 18, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Well, maybe? Except the Monster Manual (1e) was being sold way back in 1977! And it was always a big seller.



I would not be at all surprised if the 1E MM didn't outsell the 1E PHB by a comfortable margin, since so many people used it with B/X as well.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Jul 18, 2022)

Reynard said:


> I would not be at all surprised if the 1E MM didn't outsell the 1E PHB by a comfortable margin, since so many people used it with B/X as well.




....I was going to say OD&D. But that, too.


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## darjr (Jul 18, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> ....I was going to say OD&D. But that, too.



With OD&D you’d have to figure in the shear tonnage of mimio graphed copies.


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## Jer (Jul 18, 2022)

Reynard said:


> I would not be at all surprised if the 1E MM didn't outsell the 1E PHB by a comfortable margin, since so many people used it with B/X as well.



Right - the various MMs were the easiest things to slot in and use in a B/X or BECMI game.  You just had to ignore some bits - very little needed to be changed.

The 1e MM was also sold as "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" without the context that "AD&D" meant a different game than the game that everyone was already playing.  Since it came out first it was just a big hardcover monster book for D&D and the "Advanced" on the title might just mean "more complex than D&D" - and since there were a bunch of new stats in the monster stat block it certainly was a more complex monster writeup than the ones seen in the OD&D pamphlets or the D&D Basic set.


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## CleverNickName (Jul 18, 2022)

darjr said:


> With OD&D you’d have to figure in the shear tonnage of mimio graphed copies.



Same for BECM.  I remember standing guard outside of the teacher's lounge while my buddy Dave made photocopies of my Basic Player's Handbook.  Took us all week to get enough copies for everyone in our gaming group.

(Sorry, TSR.  We tried to buy them legitimately, but nobody would sell them.  1986-87 Oklahoma wasn't exactly 'gamer friendly.')


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Jer said:


> Right - the various MMs were the easiest things to slot in and use in a B/X or BECMI game.  You just had to ignore some bits - very little needed to be changed.
> 
> The 1e MM was also sold as "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" without the context that "AD&D" meant a different game than the game that everyone was already playing.  Since it came out first it was just a big hardcover monster book for D&D and the "Advanced" on the title might just mean "more complex than D&D" - and since there were a bunch of new stats in the monster stat block it certainly was a more complex monster writeup than the ones seen in the OD&D pamphlets or the D&D Basic set.



Right.  When you look at stuff like damage caused by monsters in there, too, it's clear that a lot of that first MM was written with OD&D in mind.  And existing OD&D players were the immediate market.  

Monster stats were really minimal in the 1974 set, then supplements I and II patched and expanded them a bit, and between those and articles in The Strategic Review, monsters were really kind of a mess until the MM came out in 1977.  That book was pretty much a must-buy.  The PH didn't come out until the following year, and the DMG (which had the AD&D combat tables and saving throws!) until '79, so you couldn't even actually play AD&D as a game without OD&D until two years after the MM arrived.


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## Jer (Jul 18, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> The PH didn't come out until the following year, and the DMG (which had the AD&D combat tables and saving throws!) until '79, so you couldn't even actually play AD&D as a game without OD&D until two years after the MM arrived.



Not only did the PHB not have the combat tables or the saving throw tables, it didn't even contain the rules on how to roll for ability scores!  You either had to wait a year until the DMG came out or just assume that the way you'd been doing it for OD&D/Basic would work for AD&D because the rules weren't in the book.  

I remember that being one of the selling points for 2e - that all of the player facing rules would be in the player book.  Weird to think about how that wasn't the norm for an entire edition of D&D but it wasn't.


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## Parmandur (Jul 18, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> He did count the Basic boxed set, however.  I was responding to @darjr 's comment about the Red Box Basic being the best-selling edition until 5E.  The red box set had all of the core books at the time (two books; there wasn't a such thing as a Monster Manual in Basic D&D.)
> 
> Fair point about 1E sales not including the MM.  I'm not sure how much it would skew the sales to add those values in, but my gut says it's somewhere between +30% and +50%.   (Full disclosure: my gut is a liar.)



Given the near 1 to 1 sales for the DMG and PHB, the MM would probably add about 30% to 1E sales.


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## Ralif Redhammer (Jul 18, 2022)

I missed the worst of it, stepping away from the hobby in the mid 90s. When I came back, Wizards was the new owner. But between looking at Usenet archives and listening to the Plot Points podcast, it's easy to piece together a grim picture. Yes, people on the internet will always complain, but TSR's name really seemed like it was absolute mud back then.

One wonders what would've happened if Wizards' hadn't been there to pick up the ball. While some people like to fantasize about D&D having reverted to Gary Gygax or some small (the unsaid part adds "less woke" in a lot of those fantasies) company purchasing the rights, it was only ever going to be a choice between another large company buying it or the game fading away, considering how much those rights were going to sell for. People would've likely just kept playing using those old books for a long while, but one wonders what the world would be like without both D&D and the OGL.

Wizards has kept the torch burning and now burning brighter than ever.



CleverNickName said:


> The D&D hobby as a whole was suffering as a whole in the 1990s.  All sales for all products take a massive hit in the 1990s because _the company itself_ was failing, and dragging everything down with it.  If TS&R could have held the line and managed this loss better, maybe all of these graphs for all campaign settings would be higher, and some might look more successful than others.  But that's not what happened.
> 
> I know that a lot of people want to hate Wizards of the Coast for various reasons, but for better or worse, WotC saved D&D.  It was in very real danger of fading away into obscurity in the late 90s, and they brought it back to the fore.  I understand that this research is focused primarily on TSR, but someday I'd love to see the sales graph stretched out to year 2020.  I'd wager that 3E outsold all of these, combined.


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## vecna00 (Jul 18, 2022)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> I missed the worst of it, stepping away from the hobby in the mid 90s. When I came back, Wizards was the new owner. But between looking at Usenet archives and listening to the Plot Points podcast, it's easy to piece together a grim picture. Yes, people on the internet will always complain, but TSR's name really seemed like it was absolute mud back then.
> 
> One wonders what would've happened if Wizards' hadn't been there to pick up the ball. While some people like to fantasize about D&D having reverted to Gary Gygax or some small (the unsaid part adds "less woke" in a lot of those fantasies) company purchasing the rights, it was only ever going to be a choice between another large company buying it or the game fading away, considering how much those rights were going to sell for. People would've likely just kept playing using those old books for a long while, but one wonders what the world would be like without both D&D and the OGL.
> 
> Wizards has kept the torch burning and now burning brighter than ever.



I always find it a little weird (I don't know if that's the right word) when learning about the things that were happening to TSR as a company. Especially during the days that I was most actively gaming in high school. My group and I were just blissfully unaware of everything that was happening and just eagerly awaiting the next cool book.

I do wonder how I would have felt knowing what was going on at the time.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Yeah, from the outside, regular gamer's view, it was a shock.

Even if many of us had moved on to other RPGs and CCGs, TSR was still the originator of the hobby, a titanic publisher of hundreds (or even thousands, counting modules and novels and so forth?) of books, which were still filling the shelves of our local game shops and the licensed fiction area of the local book store's sci-fi and fantasy section.


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## Jer (Jul 18, 2022)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> One wonders what would've happened if Wizards' hadn't been there to pick up the ball. While some people like to fantasize about D&D having reverted to Gary Gygax or some small (the unsaid part adds "less woke" in a lot of those fantasies) company purchasing the rights, it was only ever going to be a choice between another large company buying it or the game fading away, considering how much those rights were going to sell for.



The other choice would have been to break up whatever IP assets that TSR had and sell them to different companies.  IIRC before Adkinson showed up with a checkbook to suggest buying all of the assets outright Williams was starting to look into doing just that. I'm not a bankruptcy lawyer but I suspect it's very possible that the Forgotten Realms novels and video games would have gone one direction, the D&D name and game another, and the rest of the properties into the hands of whoever thought they might be worth a video game license.

I also strongly suspect that might have been the end of TTRPG publishing as a viable business model.  At least for a while.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 18, 2022)

Jer said:


> The other choice would have been to break up whatever IP assets that TSR had and sell them to different companies.  IIRC before Adkinson showed up with a checkbook to suggest buying all of the assets outright Williams was starting to look into doing just that. I'm not a bankruptcy lawyer but I suspect it's very possible that the Forgotten Realms novels and video games would have gone one direction, the D&D name and game another, and the rest of the properties into the hands of whoever thought they might be worth a video game license.
> 
> I also strongly suspect that might have been the end of TTRPG publishing as a viable business model.  At least for a while.



Yup.  A big fear at the time was that TSR's IP assets would be split between various creditors and functionally locked away, having theoretical value but being owned by banks and such which wouldn't have sufficient incentive to actually publish anything with them or license them to an RPG publisher for a rate affordable to them (the only publisher rolling in cash at the time being WotC, thanks to Magic: tG).


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## darjr (Jul 18, 2022)

Birthright!




Behold, the sales for the last setting to be published by TSR before it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, Birthright!

Next, I will publish a comprehensive graph of TSR setting sales covering totals sold from ‘79 to ‘99.


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## darjr (Jul 18, 2022)

Ope! Wrong thread!


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## sterndisgust (Jul 18, 2022)

Yeah those numbers for Birthright are surprising in that they're a little bit higher than I expected. I guessed it would be barely 20k in the first year and a total flatline afterwards. I can't imagine the supplements sold well at all. Even in this age of older players bringing their favorite settings to younger tables, and evangelizing for them, there's really been very little of that about Birthright. Mostly Matt Colville (whose video about it is now gone, so not even him) and a really outdated (http!!!) forum.

In hindsight it's a neat setting marred by some really weird execution around the bloodlines, warfare system, and how ill-fitting a lot of the standard D&D ancestries feel next to the human societies. I've stolen tons of ideas from it for my own homebrew, so in that it's been fantastic.


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## vecna00 (Jul 19, 2022)

sterndisgust said:


> Yeah those numbers for Birthright are surprising in that they're a little bit higher than I expected. I guessed it would be barely 20k in the first year and a total flatline afterwards. I can't imagine the supplements sold well at all. Even in this age of older players bringing their favorite settings to younger tables, and evangelizing for them, there's really been very little of that about Birthright. Mostly Matt Colville (whose video about it is now gone, so not even him) and a really outdated (http!!!) forum.
> 
> In hindsight it's a neat setting marred by some really weird execution around the bloodlines, warfare system, and how ill-fitting a lot of the standard D&D ancestries feel next to the human societies. I've stolen tons of ideas from it for my own homebrew, so in that it's been fantastic.



It...it is gone!


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## Zardnaar (Jul 19, 2022)

CleverNickName said:


> Agreed; it's hard to find data that will compare apples to apples.  @Mannahnin points out that the number of books that are being counted don't exactly match.  You point out that the sales only include North America.  And from what I can tell, that "one million copies sold" article only includes sales through the month of August, which is just the first 8 months of its release.
> 
> I couldn't find any data for the entire first year of 3E's run, but it's certainly going to be higher than a million.  Including the sales of the 1E MM would certainly give higher sales numbers too.  And including the sales outside of North America would also give higher numbers across the board.  I would love to see all of the data from all of the angles, but I doubt that will happen.
> 
> All I'm saying is, I have found at least some evidence to suggest that 3E was actually the best-selling edition of the game as of August 2000.




 Dancey has said 3.0 phb has sold 300k+ year 1 iirc. 

 Lifetime sales I've only seen one figure via Paizo. It didn't outsell 2E apparently and Paizos 1E and 2E numbers seemed on point. 

  That number was 500k+ and 250-350 for 3.5.

 Basic and 1E are the biggest selling D&D's that we have numbers for. 5E? Might be biggest selling D&D but may not be peak D&D sales remember 1E and Basic were on sale same time both peaked same time.

 5E basic set (LMoP one) didn't sell same numbers as basic in a similar time frame. Lifetime sales may be higher by now though as the numbers we have are from 2018.


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## Parmandur (Jul 19, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> Dancey has said 3.0 phb has sold 300k+ year 1 iirc.
> 
> Lifetime sales I've only seen one figure via Paizo. It didn't outsell 2E apparently and Paizos 1E and 2E numbers seemed on point.
> 
> ...



It seems that 3E started strong, but went downhill really fast, hence the rushing of 3.5.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 19, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> It seems that 3E started strong, but went downhill really fast, hence the rushing of 3.5.




 Yeah that's been said before. It's sales were very front loaded similar to a lot of products here. 

 Without that 5-10 year tale off even reduced sales would have beefed up 3.0 numbers. In 8 years we got 3 phbs, star Wars d20 got 3 in 7 years.


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## Parmandur (Jul 19, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> Yeah that's been said before. It's sales were very front loaded similar to a lot of products here.
> 
> Without that 5-10 year tale off even reduced sales would have beefed up 3.0 numbers. In 8 years we got 3 phbs, star Wars d20 got 3 in 7 years.



Pretty astounding when you.consider thst we arr just coming up on the 8 year anniversary of the 5E PHB, and they are only starting to talk about replacing it in two years.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 19, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> Pretty astounding when you.consider thst we arr just coming up on the 8 year anniversary of the 5E PHB, and they are only starting to talk about replacing it in two years.




 More a retun to form. I get bored with an edition after about 5-6 years. 

 I've had 5 E 8 years active play is 6 due to Covid restrictions/life.


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## Von Ether (Jul 19, 2022)

Parmandur said:


> It seems that 3E started strong, but went downhill really fast, hence the rushing of 3.5.



3E could be a little bit of outlier due to the fact the first printings done in an economy of scale that made them dirt cheap to buy.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 19, 2022)

Von Ether said:


> 3E could be a little bit of outlier due to the fact the first printings done in an economy of scale that made them dirt cheap to buy.




 They probably hit saturation point fairly quickly.


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## Reynard (Jul 19, 2022)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> I missed the worst of it



While there is no doubt that both the industry and D&D were in abad spot in the mid to late 90s, i still think some of the best stuff was made for D&D in that era -- probably because the creatives were scrambling to find the thing that would turn things around. The Monstrous Arcana series were very cool, and we got stuff like the historical DM series of letherettes.


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## Maxperson (Jul 19, 2022)

Malmuria said:


> in 30 years we’ll be living _in_ Dark Sun



Not if MIT gets its way.






						MIT scientists think they’ve discovered how to fully reverse climate change
					

MIT scientists have proposed a new plan to reverse climate change that uses 'space bubbles' to shield the Earth from the Sun's radiation.




					bgr.com


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## darjr (Jul 19, 2022)

Darksun Novel sales








						D&D General - Darksun novel sales! From Ben Riggs.
					

I have my Darksun novels sitting in the bookshelf right next to me now. Just took them out again, may read them. Actual! Dark Sun novel! Sales numbers!  TSR alumni are cultural treasures and gaming icons. One point that a lot of TSR alumni have been making on my posts is that while setting sales...




					www.enworld.org


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## Ralif Redhammer (Jul 19, 2022)

Same. TSR seemed a monolith that would always stand when I was younger. My gaming group had no idea that it was a series of bad business decisions barely held together with inspiration, talent, chewing gum, and duct tape.



vecna00 said:


> I always find it a little weird (I don't know if that's the right word) when learning about the things that were happening to TSR as a company. Especially during the days that I was most actively gaming in high school. My group and I were just blissfully unaware of everything that was happening and just eagerly awaiting the next cool book.
> 
> I do wonder how I would have felt knowing what was going on at the time.




TSR could've been carved up, definitely. One wonders what D&D would look like today without the Forgotten Realms. Would we be complaining about why every adventure has to be set in the central Flanaess?

If TSR had completely fallen, that would've absolutely sent shockwaves through the gaming industry. 



Jer said:


> The other choice would have been to break up whatever IP assets that TSR had and sell them to different companies.  IIRC before Adkinson showed up with a checkbook to suggest buying all of the assets outright Williams was starting to look into doing just that. I'm not a bankruptcy lawyer but I suspect it's very possible that the Forgotten Realms novels and video games would have gone one direction, the D&D name and game another, and the rest of the properties into the hands of whoever thought they might be worth a video game license.
> 
> I also strongly suspect that might have been the end of TTRPG publishing as a viable business model.  At least for a while.




You make a point - it's unlikely that Planescape would've been the same had it not been created when it was, with a combination of creatives scrambling to keep the ship from sinking and business heads that just didn't care anymore.



Reynard said:


> While there is no doubt that both the industry and D&D were in abad spot in the mid to late 90s, i still think some of the best stuff was made for D&D in that era -- probably because the creatives were scrambling to find the thing that would turn things around. The Monstrous Arcana series were very cool, and we got stuff like the historical DM series of letherettes.


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## Jer (Jul 19, 2022)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> TSR could've been carved up, definitely. One wonders what D&D would look like today without the Forgotten Realms. Would we be complaining about why every adventure has to be set in the central Flanaess?
> 
> If TSR had completely fallen, that would've absolutely sent shockwaves through the gaming industry.



I think it's very likely that if TSR had been carved up and sold piecemeal there might not be a D&D game in print today.  Without Peter Adkinson really liking D&D and thinking that the brand had intrinsic value that TSR had squandered it might just be locked up in someone's IP vault somewhere, broken out every once in a while to make another video game. I can't think of what other tabletop gaming company in 1996 would have had the money to bail TSR out of the financial hole they'd created, but I can think of a few computer gaming studios that might have.


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## vecna00 (Jul 19, 2022)

Jer said:


> I think it's very likely that if TSR had been carved up and sold piecemeal there might not be a D&D game in print today.  Without Peter Adkinson really liking D&D and thinking that the brand had intrinsic value that TSR had squandered it might just be locked up in someone's IP vault somewhere, broken out every once in a while to make another video game. I can't think of what other tabletop gaming company in 1996 would have had the money to bail TSR out of the financial hole they'd created, but I can think of a few computer gaming studios that might have.



I'm sure that a company on the level of Activision or EA could have done that just for the IP alone.

And they probably would be sitting on it right now.


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## teitan (Jul 20, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> Most of those sales were early 80's. Dragonlance then FR surpassed it.



Dragonlance never surpassed it. Plus Lorraine Williams intentionally tanked it. This is very well know. They released a string of intentionally satirical and awful products in order to bury Greyhawk. Dragonlance never surpassed Greyhawk just looking at the sales numbers along and FR barely beat it in its lifetime sales when you consider that it’s a lifetime run and Forgotten Realms had not 2 boxed sets but three and the well received FR Adventures and counting the revised 2e box on there. The Greyhawk stats have the original supplement, the Greyhawk box, not the folio, the pretty awful Greyhawk Adventures book that previewed 2e and some articles, and From The Ashes. Not the GH98 material at all, ending with the FtA set. GH did that without supplemental support received by FR. GH did not have the FR series of supplements that followed on, the budget that FR had, it did what it did with adventures and when it was finally given the “FR” treatment it was already obvious that management was intentionally burying it and it was on life support. No novels outside of Gygax’s original Gord novels (and he was gone) and the Jean Rabe novels, no video games, no comic books (DC had two FR series, a Dragonlance and a Spelljammer comic coming out), the adventures still in print and being reprinted that were GH related weren’t given GH trade dress like ToEE and Queen of the Spiders. Greyhawk was popular in spite of not having all the things that Dragonlance and the Realms had to prop it up.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 20, 2022)

teitan said:


> Dragonlance never surpassed it. Plus Lorraine Williams intentionally tanked it. This is very well know. They released a string of intentionally satirical and awful products in order to bury Greyhawk. Dragonlance never surpassed Greyhawk just looking at the sales numbers along and FR barely beat it in its lifetime sales when you consider that it’s a lifetime run and Forgotten Realms had not 2 boxed sets but three and the well received FR Adventures and counting the revised 2e box on there. The Greyhawk stats have the original supplement, the Greyhawk box, not the folio, the pretty awful Greyhawk Adventures book that previewed 2e and some articles, and From The Ashes. Not the GH98 material at all, ending with the FtA set. GH did that without supplemental support received by FR. GH did not have the FR series of supplements that followed on, the budget that FR had, it did what it did with adventures and when it was finally given the “FR” treatment it was already obvious that management was intentionally burying it and it was on life support. No novels outside of Gygax’s original Gord novels (and he was gone) and the Jean Rabe novels, no video games, no comic books (DC had two FR series, a Dragonlance and a Spelljammer comic coming out), the adventures still in print and being reprinted that were GH related weren’t given GH trade dress like ToEE and Queen of the Spiders. Greyhawk was popular in spite of not having all the things that Dragonlance and the Realms had to prop it up.




 Not claiming lifetime sales it surpassed it at the time it was on sale. 

 2E didn't outsell 1E but it did in 89 on release vs 88 1E numbers. 

 Dragonlance also had those novels as well so there's that as well. 

 Novels eventually surpassed the game sale.


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## Reynard (Jul 20, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> Novels eventually surpassed the game sale.



Eventually? I bet in the first couple months.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 20, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Eventually? I bet in the first couple months.




 Shrugs. Common story was when TSR went under novels were worth more. 

 When that happened or if it's true idk.


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