Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Some people just have the mentality "change is bad" or "i already have the rules i like so why bother buying the new ones"
Some just have a hate on for "big corporate"
Some don't form their own opinions and just listen to what their friends say
Some just don't like the changes.
those are basically the reasons. I am not accusing anyone of being in any category, just stating the facts.
Reclassified how? If they have been reclassified to the point they no longer fit into a category that would register on those best seller lists why would they show up at all?
It never occurred to Mike Mearls he might be looking in the wrong place?
Where is the right place? In abstract statements with no numbers to support the claims made in them?
https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/32a267bf-241b-4541-91ab-7745ed17693d
From their Q4 and 2024 earnings call
"D&D released the first significant update to 5th Edition since 2014 and closed out the year strong with both the new Players Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide breaking records for the best-selling D&D books ever"
Visit Japan and marvel at the number of stores that still sell LPs and CDs because people here still buy and collect them. Despite the convenience of streaming services, etc.
There is one neighborhood in Tokyo with around 200 bookstores lining its streets. Many cities would not have not that many bookstores. This is one small neighborhood. And bookstores can be found here in every neighborhood. Japan is the world's largest consumer of physical books. And that has not changed despite the prevalence of smartphones or e-books or any tech.
Physical is alive and well and this can be seen if you just step away from a computer from time to time.
Mearls hasn't worked for WoTc in two years. He knows as much as we do.
'tangible? It's an abstract statement. If the numbers are there and are as impressive as you claim they are they would proudly share them.
Mearls' no longer being employed at Wizards is irrelevant.
I never said it wasnt alive and well. And yes books are still in print. but that is slowly going away. Though just because it can be found everywhere in one country doesn't speak to the heatlh of an industry as a whole.
I love physical media, I buy it all the time. in all my entertainment, but I also buy digital versions as well. But in time physical media will stop being produced large scale.
1. The new D&D Books were reclassified by places like Amazon into "Toys and Games" rather than books. That is a very, very, very different category than Books - and a much, much more competitive category, dominated by things like Lego, Pokemon, crayons, regular playing cards, etc. D&D is big - and making hundreds of millions is big even in the book selling world. But in the greater toy world, where there are billion dollar brands running about? Obviously their best selling ranking is going to be dwarfed by the juggernauts, in a way they were not dwarfed when they were competing with books.
2. He does have a reason to be biased. Conversely, the statement you are trying (badly) to disprove is made by two entities (Wizards and KPMG) where they are required by law to be accurate.
3. There are numbers to support these claims - we do not have access to these numbers, but KPMG did when they performed an independent audit and signed off on Wizards' quarterly reporting.
I get that you are trying to spin a narrative, for whatever reason. But this is a losing argument you are making. Your entire argument essentially boils down to "Please, ignore the fact a Big Four accounting firm (one of the best auditors in the world) looked at the hard data and verified this information - look at my own anecdotal evidence (much of which has been shown to be flawed), and listen to me, even though I am neither an auditor nor have sufficient hard data to support my claims."
You are, of course, free to share your own, personal reasons why you dislike 5.24 - though that might be long on a different thread, as this thread was really more curious about those who do like it. But you cross the line into conspiratorial and to tilting at windmills when you use bad data, lies, and poor reading of facts to try and pretend your anecdotal opinion reflects the majority. It is not really fair to those of us who do like 5.24 - those of us who made 5.24 the best selling set of books in the game's history - to have our opinions summarily dismissed by someone who is choosing their own narrative over the fact of our existence.
Then why assert you know better? I imagine he has greater insight into how things work and how well or unwell things are going than people on a forum where they respond to anything negative with 'nu uh.' Two years and things have gone through such a transformation he couldn't possibly know what he is talking about? The man is an expert in his field. He has been hired to be the Executive Producer at Chaosium.
What makes you think so? Why so confident with this prediction of yours?
It would be better for the environment? Because AI is infinitely worse for it.
Um... think before you speak? Corporations don't share financial information with ex-employees, so there's no reason someone released in 2023 would have sales data from 2024.
I'm pretty sure Amazon lists RPG books under both toys and books. Look up the PHB on Amazon. Narrowing your search down to books. The 2014 one will show up. There you will find a link to what it calls the '2024 edition.' Seems odd to put that there if that's not even a book but it is what it is. Click on it. Now look at the bar above. You are still in the books category. Someone on these forums some months ago posted a screen shot showing the new PHB wth Toys & Games displayed in the bar above. Like this were evidence it was no longer seen as a book internally at Amazon. But it's both apparently.
Can you say with 100 percent certainty that sales of the PHB on Amazon do not at all register as book sales at either Amazon or elsewhere? Can you back up saying such a thing with such certainty? I'm happy to admit to my being wrong. If I am.
Why would Mearls be biased? He loves D&D.
Because, as people keep pointing out, they said in their stockholder announcement that the 2024 PHB is their best selling book, and that is a detail that it's quite trivial for an audit team to fact-check. There's very clear trails both digitally for copies purchased on Beyond and physically from the entire supply and distribution chain. There's a reason a lot of the big frauds you're likely to have heard about involve intangibles like property or stock values- it's somewhere between really really hard and outright impossible to fake product sales so they'll hold up to an audit like this- particularly when you'd be making them up from whole-cloth. Sure, what's-his-name might be an expert in TTRPG development, but a big 4 accounting firm is going to have hundreds of experts at picking apart statements made by companies for their big official stockholder reports and firsthand access to the books. Oddly enough, given that I trust the latter's assessment of the sales over the former's prediction about them.
I never suggested he would have those numbers. I am saying it's not as if his no longer working there these past two years means all the insight and knowledge he obtained while there just disappeared the moment he walked out the door. I mean many are those here who have never been on their payroll who act as if they know the ins and outs of the company and its every motivation.
As has been pointed out by many who doubt that statement:
It likely includes duplicated hybrid (physical-digital) sales.
If every bundle is counted as two sales that skews figures.
They're technically not lying to say 100 copies of the PHB were sold when 50 customers bought bundles. They're making the money.
But to make it sound as if this means the book is selling twice as well as another not calculated in the same fashion is deceitful.
Here is the real question for you - why do you trust someone who has zero access to the relevant numbers and might hold a grudge against the company (even if he loves the game)… over the Big Four Auditing company that does have access to those numbers, doesn’t have any financial stake in the outcome of their audit (they get paid the same whether it is good or bad for Wizards), and would stand to loose tens of billions of dollars per year if they were caught falsifying data?
You are basically taking the word of someone who has nothing directly on point and cause to stir up trouble over someone who knows all the information and has every reason to remain unbiased.
You said you were willing to admit when you were in the wrong. Truly think about the source you are venerating and the source you are dismissing, and then answer whether you are placing your trust in the wrong entity.
And then, to get it back on the topic of the thread. once you acknowledge there is merit to the “best selling books of all time” take the next step. Place yourselves in the shoes of people who love 5.24 and who helped make it the best selling D&D book set. Surely you can see why folks would find that incredibly disheartening? You are basically choosing to believe a stranger to the financial reporting in an effort to justify ignoring our existence. That’s not really cool - and people like you make folks feel uncomfortable voicing their support for something they like.
Back when this whole idea first came up, I decided to do my own checking on Amazon. My first check was on the top sellers list in the category previous books had been in, and it wasn't there at all. Not being #1 was something I would have been willing to believe, but not being in the top 100 was not. So, I then did a top level search on Amazon and discovered that it had changed category.
I couldn't check every distributor because the people posting hadn't said what all the distributors were, and it's likely that some are still listing it as a book... but it doesn't take that many major distributors reporting zero to produce an illusion of direly bad sales. Which does not mean that it sold particularly well, it just told me that the YouTubers yapping about it were unable to do basic fact checking so I should ignore them.
Why do you trust an auditing company for whom its mere sales figures?
If you buy a digital-physical bundle have Wizards made more money (as well as sort of sold more copies) than if you had just bought the physical book? You bet they have.
But does it really mean the content is selling better than that of any other D&D book ever made? No. Far from it.
Saying it is their best selling book ever could be about how much money the title has earned them.
That's not the same thing as its selling more copies than any other D&D book. Not when 'copies' can be duplicated because one purchase of the digital and physical versions is counted as two.
This makes sense. Thanks.
On the subject of 'basic fact checking' however:
I already pointed out how someone used the fact Toys & Games was displayed at the top when on the item's page. Some 'basic fact checking' will show you if you search under books and find the book by way of the link from the 2014 edition you will have Books displayed at the top when on the item's page.
So what you say about those YouTubers can also be said for others. Because too many emotions are running hot for facts to really matter.
An interesting hypothetical, though one that assumes the auditors aren't capable of basic critical thinking or independent analysis. And, regardless, if the PHB has already come within half the sales that Tasha's has had over its 4 year life in about half a year, then it's still performing very well.