I’ve also been playing since ‘83, so yeah!! Twinning!! D&D is exponentially more popular now than it was then. That is not even arguable. It may have been infamous in the 80’s, but its notoriety came from people who didn’t know what they were talking about spouting off about the game. Not from people actually playing and enjoying it. The ignorant hate has largely gone away and now its fame stems from people actually playing and having a real, informed opinion.
Picking one tv show and suggesting that is an accurate representation of society is pretty absurd. It might show what the showrunner thinks, but that’s hardly universal. Ime, any cool kids who were playing back then were either trying to be edgy because of the satanic panic, or they hid the fact that they played because in the 80’s admitting you played D&D was a social death sentence.
But back to an earlier question: [citation needed]. There’s a lot of arguing about bookscan. Is that, indeed what you are using or are you just fabricating numbers entirely? It will be helpful to understand.
And to add a new question: Is there a point to this? I guess you prefer 1e.🤷♂️ If so, cool, go play it. It’s a fun game. But beyond that, so what? Why come here and hassle those of us who enjoy, or even prefer this version? Are you trying to convince those of us who like 5e that we shouldn’t? Or that we don’t actually like it? Or that other people don’t? What’s the end game here?
But I didn't just use that TV show as an example did I? I also shared my own experience. Of playing alongside those who 'did well at school' and kids who played in local bands. My personal experience even follows the trajectory of the mentioned character. And does so in more ways than one. I never fit the 'geek' mold. Neither did many others I played with at the time. Skaters. Heshers. And so on. We arrived at D&D because we loved fantasy and horror. Am I expected to believe kids who played Vampire in the '90s or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay by the '90s were all subject to this same stigma? Were all thought of as 'losers' and 'loners'? It's a stigma that died long before 5E came onto the scene. For all its merits people need to stop pretending anything and everything good about the hobby has come from it. That's not being realistic. It's being delusional.
The numbers come from a recent video dropped by Dungeon Craft. In which he gives sales figures for the PHB for almost every edition: 5e. AD&D (1e). AD&D (2e). [These 2e numbers seem to ignore the sales for the revised versions.] 3e. 4e. I'm sure we 'can't trust him' because his every video isn't about how 'anything and everything good about the hobby' has come from 5e.
Am I saying the sales for the 2014 PHB could not possibly be any more than 1.6 million? No.
I have even asked others to tell me how many more copies they suspect it might have sold. Realistically.
It has probably outsold every other PHB.
No one is this thread seems willing to estimate the book's actual sales beyond that 1.6M figure.
I don't play 1e. I play Basic/BECMI. Or an iteration thereof. I'd ask why it is you find it so hard to read or to listen to criticism that suggests your edition of choice might not be as popular as it is said to be. And ask whether you'd put your questions to those who trash earlier editions of the game. Something people do a lot around here. Or does your logic only apply in defense of the game you play? Because that would be illogical.
I don't care what edition people choose to play. People should play the game they enjoy. That doesn't mean people should lie to themselves about how the game they play is the 'best' game. Or exaggerate its popularity.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
Which one is more popular? What difference does that make? I mean what is the point of that debate or answer? Let's say you could quantify that 1st edition AD&D was more popular than 5e.... what do we do with that information? How does that impact anything? Are 5e players supposed to all of the sudden sell of their books and start play 1st edition? Is that the expectation?
I don't get the logic of the discussion. Are unicorns more popular than dinosaurs? Lets discuss!
As someone who has never measured the value of anything—books, music, movies, and games—based on its popularity alone I'd say you've missed the point.
I just want to see honesty. I bring it up because I find the claim that 'the new thing' is the most popular to be rooted more in people's personal biases for 'the new thing' than in reality. And because of how disingenuous it is to invoke rhetoric about something being 'the fastest selling' to suggest it is on the path to being the most popular and bestselling to come.
I agree with you that there is really no telling which is more popular. Book sales don't equate with the number of people actively playing. They never did. Not in a hobby where someone can own a PHB and run games for multiple groups for years to come.
Is it really 5e that has made playing TRPGs 'okay'? You really think that stigma lasted until as late as 2014?
It was gone by then. Just because 5e has gotten all the press it has gotten over the past decade does not mean that all this time we have been living in a world full of 'jocks' screaming about how only 'nerds' play D&D. You make it sound as if we have been living in some bad movie on repeat for three decades or more. get real.
Yes I'm grateful I now I live in a country where hobbyists are not and never have been a minority.
But it was years before I left Australia—least of all as late as 2014—when the embrace of video games and other once-'geeky hobbies had drained D&D and other tabletop games of any stigma.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
Which one is more popular? What difference does that make? I mean what is the point of that debate or answer? Let's say you could quantify that 1st edition AD&D was more popular than 5e.... what do we do with that information? How does that impact anything? Are 5e players supposed to all of the sudden sell of their books and start play 1st edition? Is that the expectation?
I don't get the logic of the discussion. Are unicorns more popular than dinosaurs? Lets discuss!
As someone who has never measured the value of anything—books, music, movies, and games—based on its popularity alone I'd say you've missed the point.
I just want to see honesty. I bring it up because I find the claim that 'the new thing' is the most popular to be rooted more in people's personal biases for 'the new thing' than in reality. And because of how disingenuous it is to invoke rhetoric about something being 'the fastest selling' to suggest it is on the path to being the most popular and bestselling to come.
I agree with you that there is really no telling which is more popular. Book sales don't equate with the number of people actively playing. They never did. Not in a hobby where someone can own a PHB and run games for multiple groups for years to come.
Is it really 5e that has made playing TRPGs 'okay'? You really think that stigma lasted until as late as 2014?
It was gone by then. Just because 5e has gotten all the press it has gotten over the past decade does not mean that all this time we have been living in a world full of 'jocks' screaming about how only 'nerds' play D&D. You make it sound as if we have been living in some bad movie on repeat for three decades or more. get real.
Yes I'm grateful I now I live in a country where hobbyists are not and never have been a minority.
But it was years before I left Australia—least of all as late as 2014—when the embrace of video games and other once-'geeky hobbies had drained D&D and other tabletop games of any stigma.
I get your point, but my point is what is popular is a matter of biased opinion, its not something that can be objectively true and even if you could make such a case, I'm not sure what difference it makes to someone who likes something different that its less popular by whatever arbitrary comparison you want to make.
The opinion is that 5e is the most popular version of D&D. I don't think its disingenuous to have that opinion or even claim that as an observation, its just something many people think.
Oh and yes.. I do think that in 2014 admitting you played D&D made you a nerd, it was not cool, accepted or normalized. Certainly better than it was in the 80's and 90's but it was a far cry from what it is today. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that 5e made playing D&D in the open a normal thing. Before 5e, this simply wasn't the case, at least not where I was living.
Which one is more popular? What difference does that make? I mean what is the point of that debate or answer? Let's say you could quantify that 1st edition AD&D was more popular than 5e.... what do we do with that information? How does that impact anything? Are 5e players supposed to all of the sudden sell of their books and start play 1st edition? Is that the expectation?
I don't get the logic of the discussion. Are unicorns more popular than dinosaurs? Lets discuss!
As someone who has never measured the value of anything—books, music, movies, and games—based on its popularity alone I'd say you've missed the point.
I just want to see honesty. I bring it up because I find the claim that 'the new thing' is the most popular to be rooted more in people's personal biases for 'the new thing' than in reality. And because of how disingenuous it is to invoke rhetoric about something being 'the fastest selling' to suggest it is on the path to being the most popular and bestselling to come.
I agree with you that there is really no telling which is more popular. Book sales don't equate with the number of people actively playing. They never did. Not in a hobby where someone can own a PHB and run games for multiple groups for years to come.
Is it really 5e that has made playing TRPGs 'okay'? You really think that stigma lasted until as late as 2014?
It was gone by then. Just because 5e has gotten all the press it has gotten over the past decade does not mean that all this time we have been living in a world full of 'jocks' screaming about how only 'nerds' play D&D. You make it sound as if we have been living in some bad movie on repeat for three decades or more. get real.
Yes I'm grateful I now I live in a country where hobbyists are not and never have been a minority.
But it was years before I left Australia—least of all as late as 2014—when the embrace of video games and other once-'geeky hobbies had drained D&D and other tabletop games of any stigma.
Let us first take a moment to recognize the moving goalposts on this thread. You started this thread by citing bad data - your sources are a completely unsourced blog (useless) and a data collection source that, as has been extensively pointed out, is not an effective tool for measuring D&D for many reasons. You have not edited this thread to rectify your bad data, which, again, calls into question your motivation in making this thread. It is very hard to believe your statement that you "just want to see honesty" when you have refused to retract objectively misleading information and even attempted to defend your bad data with increasingly improbable hypotheticals.
So, let us talk about honesty for a second. Wizards of the Coast is required by law to be honest in its financial statements. To ensure this, they have an extremely reputable third-party audit their books and verify any financial statements Wizards makes. Wizards has repeatedly said that 5e is the best selling and most played edition of D&D in the game's history and that they have seen year-after-year growth in the overall number of players, as well as released increasingly popular books generating increasingly more revenue. Those are all statements that show up repeatedly in audited, verified financial disclosures - we do not have the sales or other data Wizards relied upon, but the company that audited and signed off on this information did. Ultimately, when Wizards says in an official, audited capacity "this product was the best selling product in our history," that is very likely an honest statement - it might not be a transparent statement, but it is one whose truthfulness has been independently verified (which is more than can be said of your "facts" used to refute this).
It also should be noted, yes, there was a major boom in D&D that has happened recently - and has been consistently reported by multiple news sites. Here is a 2018 article in the Seattle Times interviewing then brand director for D&D talking about the rise in popularity that had happened recently. At the time of that article, they estimated a total of 12-15 million current, active players of D&D. And there was a 44% jump in sales growth between 2016 and 2017. Verified information has shown that sales figures (one of the few public sources of gauging popularity that exist) have continued to increase year after year since that point. Notably, this article predates COVID - and the widely reported TTRPG boom that occurred in the industry as folks were required to stay at home and find ways to entertain themselves.
You asked whether there was some kind of verifiable shift in the mid 2010s? There is some actual data showing that there was, in fact, a sizable change in how D&D was viewed during the 5e era. It is hardly surprising that 2016 saw such a shift in popularity for the franchise - 2016 is the year Stranger Things was released and the year Critical Role exploded in popularity (the interview notes some 50% of players who joined between 2014 and 2018 got into the game due to live streams).
Or maybe you want financial data. In a 2022 article published in Forbes, one of the best regarded journalistic sources on financial matters, it was estimated D&D made roughly $100-150 million dollars in annual revenue. TSR financial data is much harder to get a hold of - they were even more cagey about information than Wizards and their notoriously bad business practices ultimately killed the company. The best source I can find is a YouTube video which cites and provides a graphic from a July 7, 1983 Wall Street Journal article (which, while YouTube is not a great source, the WSJ is). That showed that TSR, across their entire platform (which went beyond just D&D) made approximately $22 million in revenue in 1982. Adjusted for inflation to 2022, the year of the prior financial figure, that comes out to $66,719,274.61 - TSR's overall income falling somewhere between 33% and 55% lower than the estimate for D&D alone. Considering after that point, TSR went into decline, started laying off staff, and their lack of sales and continued growth led to the company folding, that was likely at or around the peak of TSR's D&D sales.
Every legitimate piece of information points to 5e being more popular - and financially successful - than any other edition in the game's past. You can debate whether it is the best edition or not, but I do not think there is any legitimate argument to be made that 5e is less popular than other iterations of the game.
If when you say 5e rid D&D of any stigma what you really mean is it turned D&D into a lifestyle brand for those who really only play the game because of the name these are not the same thing. Any stigma that reduced players to 'loners,' 'losers,' etc. was gone long before 2014. A number of years prior to the release of 5e a podcast saw famous mainstream stars in one industry playing D&D. Or a version of it. It had already been making more and more appearances in other media. In popular cartoons and other popular TV shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer anyone? You can tell yourself that Critical Role and Stranger Things did these things first. They did not. They assuredly played a role in the sales performance we have seen from 5e. But by 2014 the game had not been broadly seen as 'That game for nerds and basement dwellers' in years. In the 2000s we saw this stigma attached more to players of WoW, etc. I played more in the '90s than at any other time other than the present and even by then in even a small rural town in which people could be cruel and would stigmatize those who dared to be different no one could care less whether or not someone played D&D. Most thought it no more a game for 'loners,' 'losers,' etc. than would be a board game. So much mythology surrounds the game and so many treat it as if it is more real than the lived experiences of people who have played since before some of them were even born.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
Let us first take a moment to recognize the moving goalposts on this thread.
Why don't we take a moment to instead observe how twice now in this thread alone you have conveniently dodged my having pointed out your dishonesty: Do you 'know' all that you have posted regarding BookScan or is this just you making things up like you made up what it says in the first edition DMG about grids and miniatures? Yeah. You invoke the word 'disingenuity' but you have shown a number of times on these forums you're more than capable of it ...
I have even said myself in this thread the 5e PHB would have outsold the PHBs of other editions. So why are you acting as if your producing a whole paragraph about that is some kind of victory?
As for 'popularity' others here have said it better than I can that sales tell us very little about the number of people actively playing. Many would get the impression that those who spend half their waking hours here don't find time enough to play at all.
they estimated a total of 12-15 million
How? How did they arrive at these numbers? Book sales? D&D Beyond subscriptions?
And no. My source was not a 'blog':
The numbers come from a recent video dropped by Dungeon Craft. In which he gives sales figures for the PHB for almost every edition: 5e. AD&D (1e). AD&D (2e). [These 2e numbers seem to ignore the sales for the revised versions.] 3e. 4e. I'm sure we 'can't trust him' because his every video isn't about how 'anything and everything good about the hobby' has come from 5e.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
The numbers come from a recent video dropped by Dungeon Craft. In which he gives sales figures for the PHB for almost every edition: 5e. AD&D (1e). AD&D (2e). [These 2e numbers seem to ignore the sales for the revised versions.] 3e. 4e. I'm sure we 'can't trust him' because his every video isn't about how 'anything and everything good about the hobby' has come from 5e.
I mean, the question then is where did Dungeon Craft get their numbers? They obviously didn't develop the numbers themselves, so they, too, must have a source for the data. It isn't about if Dungeon Craft can be trusted, but where they got their information and if they did their due diligence to see if those figures were reliable or not.
There's a lot of people who "do their own research" online who can find information without thinking critically about where the information comes from, how it was collected, or the context in which it exists.
Overall, I'm not entirely sure of the point here. You seem to be saying that 5e is not as popular as people say it is, because the sales are not dramatically different than 1e. When people push back against the likely source of your data, you both defend the likely source of your data (ignoring the clearly stated pitfalls of the collection method by citing personal examples of "TTRPG stores that only sell games and so would probably qualify as a BookScan retailer") and then state that sales themselves do not reflect the popularity of a game. But if sales don't reflect the popularity of a game, why are you arguing about sales figures so much?
I think several things are obvious. The first is that the numbers sold are likely higher than the BookScan cited figure of 1.56, as digital platforms will have a significant share of sales that weren't even a thing when 1e came out. Many people have purchased books through things like D&D Beyond and Roll 20, especially as 5e almost became more popular around the COVID-19 pandemic and online play was the primary way people were connecting at that point. And though you contend that some FLGS might qualify as a "bookseller" for BookScan, we are obviously still missing data from a large number of FLGS's that would not qualify, and those FLGS's that would qualify but don't care to pay to be a member to upload their sales data. On top of this is the fact that we just don't really have any concrete evidence of how books that are also categorized as "games" in the Amazon store are tracked and reported. Overall, finding true sales data in this environment is going to be close to impossible, but I think it must be clear that the number of PHB's sold must be higher than the stated 1.6 million figure, and probably dramatically so.
The second obvious thing is: none of this really matters. We all can go back and forth for pages and pages over vague sales figures and discussions on quality and popularity, but in the end who cares? There are criticisms to be made of 5e, both 2014 and 2024 for sure. But blanket statements stating "5e isn't as popular as you think it is!" just don't really do anything for anyone. In the end, it doesn't matter at all if the game is popular, if you have a group of friends that enjoy playing together. It doesn't matter if 50 million people play D&D 5e or if 5,000 people play D&D 5e, as long as you're having fun playing with friends. I picked up Candela Obscura and have ran several sessions with different groups, and I have one group begging me to put together more sessions for them. Is Candela Obscura popular? Almost certainly not. But we have fun playing it, and that is what matters.
If when you say 5e rid D&D of any stigma what you really mean is it turned D&D into a lifestyle brand for those who really only play the game because of the name these are not the same thing. Any stigma that reduced players to 'loners,' 'losers,' etc. was gone long before 2014. A number of years prior to the release of 5e a podcast saw famous mainstream stars in one industry playing D&D. Or a version of it. It had already been making more and more appearances in other media. In popular cartoons and other popular TV shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer anyone? You can tell yourself that Critical Role and Stranger Things did these things first. They did not. They assuredly played a role in the sales performance we have seen from 5e. But by 2014 the game had not been broadly seen as 'That game for nerds and basement dwellers' in years. In the 2000s we saw this stigma attached more to players of WoW, etc. I played more in the '90s than at any other time other than the present and even by then in even a small rural town in which people could be cruel and would stigmatize those who dared to be different no one could care less whether or not someone played D&D. Most thought it no more a game for 'loners,' 'losers,' etc. than would be a board game. So much mythology surrounds the game and so many treat it as if it is more real than the lived experiences of people who have played since before some of them were even born.
I understand your trying to make an argument here and I'm happy to debate it but when you start a sentence with "what you really mean" and continue to argue the invention of your own definition of what I said rather than simply understand what I said makes for a poor debate.
No, you very clearly don't understand "what I really mean", because I said what I really meant, it was quite clear, their is no secret code for you decipher.
I'm telling you, I lived through the 80's, 90's, 00's, 10's and Im still living in the 20's and in 2014, if you told anyone you played D&D the assumption was that you were some sort of closet nerd. Certainly some progress was made between 00's and 10's, there is no doubt that things where considerably less hostile, but my D&D books weren't proudly displayed in the library, they were still hidden under the bed. It was not normalized.
For the record, that is what I said, because that is what I meant.
Overall, I'm not entirely sure of the point here. You seem to be saying that 5e is not as popular as people say it is, because the sales are not dramatically different than 1e. When people push back against the likely source of your data, you both defend the likely source of your data (ignoring the clearly stated pitfalls of the collection method by citing personal examples of "TTRPG stores that only sell games and so would probably qualify as a BookScan retailer") and then state that sales themselves do not reflect the popularity of a game. But if sales don't reflect the popularity of a game, why are you arguing about sales figures so much?
Because it is others who see pretty much just sales figures as a sign of popularity. Who invoke them to 'argue' that official D&D must be the 'most played game.' I mean you can read what others are saying. Talking about the financial performance of the game to assert this.
I'd say the 2014 PHB sold more than 1.6 million copies. How many more? Ten times that? Really? Wizards would be openly bragging about it if they were reaching those sorts of numbers. Someone else said they have to be honest when reporting their performance. Yet as we are seeing they will say something was the 'fastest selling' but not give actual numbers to show it continues to sell well. And their quarterly reports avoid specific mention of D&D sales instead lumping these in with other products. I would not call it honest to willfully withhold information that could set the record straight.
It's a curious thing that no one has marveled at how many copies the PHB for 1e is said to have sold. When it existed before the internet. Like that's nothing. Those mired in biases cannot say a good word about older editions or hear or read a bad one about the latest without flying into a rage.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
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But I didn't just use that TV show as an example did I? I also shared my own experience. Of playing alongside those who 'did well at school' and kids who played in local bands. My personal experience even follows the trajectory of the mentioned character. And does so in more ways than one. I never fit the 'geek' mold. Neither did many others I played with at the time. Skaters. Heshers. And so on. We arrived at D&D because we loved fantasy and horror. Am I expected to believe kids who played Vampire in the '90s or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay by the '90s were all subject to this same stigma? Were all thought of as 'losers' and 'loners'? It's a stigma that died long before 5E came onto the scene. For all its merits people need to stop pretending anything and everything good about the hobby has come from it. That's not being realistic. It's being delusional.
The numbers come from a recent video dropped by Dungeon Craft. In which he gives sales figures for the PHB for almost every edition: 5e. AD&D (1e). AD&D (2e). [These 2e numbers seem to ignore the sales for the revised versions.] 3e. 4e. I'm sure we 'can't trust him' because his every video isn't about how 'anything and everything good about the hobby' has come from 5e.
Am I saying the sales for the 2014 PHB could not possibly be any more than 1.6 million? No.
I have even asked others to tell me how many more copies they suspect it might have sold. Realistically.
It has probably outsold every other PHB.
No one is this thread seems willing to estimate the book's actual sales beyond that 1.6M figure.
I don't play 1e. I play Basic/BECMI. Or an iteration thereof. I'd ask why it is you find it so hard to read or to listen to criticism that suggests your edition of choice might not be as popular as it is said to be. And ask whether you'd put your questions to those who trash earlier editions of the game. Something people do a lot around here. Or does your logic only apply in defense of the game you play? Because that would be illogical.
I don't care what edition people choose to play. People should play the game they enjoy. That doesn't mean people should lie to themselves about how the game they play is the 'best' game. Or exaggerate its popularity.
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
As someone who has never measured the value of anything—books, music, movies, and games—based on its popularity alone I'd say you've missed the point.
I just want to see honesty. I bring it up because I find the claim that 'the new thing' is the most popular to be rooted more in people's personal biases for 'the new thing' than in reality. And because of how disingenuous it is to invoke rhetoric about something being 'the fastest selling' to suggest it is on the path to being the most popular and bestselling to come.
I agree with you that there is really no telling which is more popular. Book sales don't equate with the number of people actively playing. They never did. Not in a hobby where someone can own a PHB and run games for multiple groups for years to come.
Is it really 5e that has made playing TRPGs 'okay'? You really think that stigma lasted until as late as 2014?
It was gone by then. Just because 5e has gotten all the press it has gotten over the past decade does not mean that all this time we have been living in a world full of 'jocks' screaming about how only 'nerds' play D&D. You make it sound as if we have been living in some bad movie on repeat for three decades or more. get real.
Yes I'm grateful I now I live in a country where hobbyists are not and never have been a minority.
But it was years before I left Australia—least of all as late as 2014—when the embrace of video games and other once-'geeky hobbies had drained D&D and other tabletop games of any stigma.
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
I get your point, but my point is what is popular is a matter of biased opinion, its not something that can be objectively true and even if you could make such a case, I'm not sure what difference it makes to someone who likes something different that its less popular by whatever arbitrary comparison you want to make.
The opinion is that 5e is the most popular version of D&D. I don't think its disingenuous to have that opinion or even claim that as an observation, its just something many people think.
Oh and yes.. I do think that in 2014 admitting you played D&D made you a nerd, it was not cool, accepted or normalized. Certainly better than it was in the 80's and 90's but it was a far cry from what it is today. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that 5e made playing D&D in the open a normal thing. Before 5e, this simply wasn't the case, at least not where I was living.
Let us first take a moment to recognize the moving goalposts on this thread. You started this thread by citing bad data - your sources are a completely unsourced blog (useless) and a data collection source that, as has been extensively pointed out, is not an effective tool for measuring D&D for many reasons. You have not edited this thread to rectify your bad data, which, again, calls into question your motivation in making this thread. It is very hard to believe your statement that you "just want to see honesty" when you have refused to retract objectively misleading information and even attempted to defend your bad data with increasingly improbable hypotheticals.
So, let us talk about honesty for a second. Wizards of the Coast is required by law to be honest in its financial statements. To ensure this, they have an extremely reputable third-party audit their books and verify any financial statements Wizards makes. Wizards has repeatedly said that 5e is the best selling and most played edition of D&D in the game's history and that they have seen year-after-year growth in the overall number of players, as well as released increasingly popular books generating increasingly more revenue. Those are all statements that show up repeatedly in audited, verified financial disclosures - we do not have the sales or other data Wizards relied upon, but the company that audited and signed off on this information did. Ultimately, when Wizards says in an official, audited capacity "this product was the best selling product in our history," that is very likely an honest statement - it might not be a transparent statement, but it is one whose truthfulness has been independently verified (which is more than can be said of your "facts" used to refute this).
It also should be noted, yes, there was a major boom in D&D that has happened recently - and has been consistently reported by multiple news sites. Here is a 2018 article in the Seattle Times interviewing then brand director for D&D talking about the rise in popularity that had happened recently. At the time of that article, they estimated a total of 12-15 million current, active players of D&D. And there was a 44% jump in sales growth between 2016 and 2017. Verified information has shown that sales figures (one of the few public sources of gauging popularity that exist) have continued to increase year after year since that point. Notably, this article predates COVID - and the widely reported TTRPG boom that occurred in the industry as folks were required to stay at home and find ways to entertain themselves.
You asked whether there was some kind of verifiable shift in the mid 2010s? There is some actual data showing that there was, in fact, a sizable change in how D&D was viewed during the 5e era. It is hardly surprising that 2016 saw such a shift in popularity for the franchise - 2016 is the year Stranger Things was released and the year Critical Role exploded in popularity (the interview notes some 50% of players who joined between 2014 and 2018 got into the game due to live streams).
Or maybe you want financial data. In a 2022 article published in Forbes, one of the best regarded journalistic sources on financial matters, it was estimated D&D made roughly $100-150 million dollars in annual revenue. TSR financial data is much harder to get a hold of - they were even more cagey about information than Wizards and their notoriously bad business practices ultimately killed the company. The best source I can find is a YouTube video which cites and provides a graphic from a July 7, 1983 Wall Street Journal article (which, while YouTube is not a great source, the WSJ is). That showed that TSR, across their entire platform (which went beyond just D&D) made approximately $22 million in revenue in 1982. Adjusted for inflation to 2022, the year of the prior financial figure, that comes out to $66,719,274.61 - TSR's overall income falling somewhere between 33% and 55% lower than the estimate for D&D alone. Considering after that point, TSR went into decline, started laying off staff, and their lack of sales and continued growth led to the company folding, that was likely at or around the peak of TSR's D&D sales.
Every legitimate piece of information points to 5e being more popular - and financially successful - than any other edition in the game's past. You can debate whether it is the best edition or not, but I do not think there is any legitimate argument to be made that 5e is less popular than other iterations of the game.
If when you say 5e rid D&D of any stigma what you really mean is it turned D&D into a lifestyle brand for those who really only play the game because of the name these are not the same thing. Any stigma that reduced players to 'loners,' 'losers,' etc. was gone long before 2014. A number of years prior to the release of 5e a podcast saw famous mainstream stars in one industry playing D&D. Or a version of it. It had already been making more and more appearances in other media. In popular cartoons and other popular TV shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer anyone? You can tell yourself that Critical Role and Stranger Things did these things first. They did not. They assuredly played a role in the sales performance we have seen from 5e. But by 2014 the game had not been broadly seen as 'That game for nerds and basement dwellers' in years. In the 2000s we saw this stigma attached more to players of WoW, etc. I played more in the '90s than at any other time other than the present and even by then in even a small rural town in which people could be cruel and would stigmatize those who dared to be different no one could care less whether or not someone played D&D. Most thought it no more a game for 'loners,' 'losers,' etc. than would be a board game. So much mythology surrounds the game and so many treat it as if it is more real than the lived experiences of people who have played since before some of them were even born.
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
Why don't we take a moment to instead observe how twice now in this thread alone you have conveniently dodged my having pointed out your dishonesty: Do you 'know' all that you have posted regarding BookScan or is this just you making things up like you made up what it says in the first edition DMG about grids and miniatures? Yeah. You invoke the word 'disingenuity' but you have shown a number of times on these forums you're more than capable of it ...
I have even said myself in this thread the 5e PHB would have outsold the PHBs of other editions. So why are you acting as if your producing a whole paragraph about that is some kind of victory?
As for 'popularity' others here have said it better than I can that sales tell us very little about the number of people actively playing. Many would get the impression that those who spend half their waking hours here don't find time enough to play at all.
they estimated a total of 12-15 million
How? How did they arrive at these numbers? Book sales? D&D Beyond subscriptions?
And no. My source was not a 'blog':
The numbers come from a recent video dropped by Dungeon Craft. In which he gives sales figures for the PHB for almost every edition: 5e. AD&D (1e). AD&D (2e). [These 2e numbers seem to ignore the sales for the revised versions.] 3e. 4e. I'm sure we 'can't trust him' because his every video isn't about how 'anything and everything good about the hobby' has come from 5e.
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.
I mean, the question then is where did Dungeon Craft get their numbers? They obviously didn't develop the numbers themselves, so they, too, must have a source for the data. It isn't about if Dungeon Craft can be trusted, but where they got their information and if they did their due diligence to see if those figures were reliable or not.
There's a lot of people who "do their own research" online who can find information without thinking critically about where the information comes from, how it was collected, or the context in which it exists.
Overall, I'm not entirely sure of the point here. You seem to be saying that 5e is not as popular as people say it is, because the sales are not dramatically different than 1e. When people push back against the likely source of your data, you both defend the likely source of your data (ignoring the clearly stated pitfalls of the collection method by citing personal examples of "TTRPG stores that only sell games and so would probably qualify as a BookScan retailer") and then state that sales themselves do not reflect the popularity of a game. But if sales don't reflect the popularity of a game, why are you arguing about sales figures so much?
I think several things are obvious. The first is that the numbers sold are likely higher than the BookScan cited figure of 1.56, as digital platforms will have a significant share of sales that weren't even a thing when 1e came out. Many people have purchased books through things like D&D Beyond and Roll 20, especially as 5e almost became more popular around the COVID-19 pandemic and online play was the primary way people were connecting at that point. And though you contend that some FLGS might qualify as a "bookseller" for BookScan, we are obviously still missing data from a large number of FLGS's that would not qualify, and those FLGS's that would qualify but don't care to pay to be a member to upload their sales data. On top of this is the fact that we just don't really have any concrete evidence of how books that are also categorized as "games" in the Amazon store are tracked and reported. Overall, finding true sales data in this environment is going to be close to impossible, but I think it must be clear that the number of PHB's sold must be higher than the stated 1.6 million figure, and probably dramatically so.
The second obvious thing is: none of this really matters. We all can go back and forth for pages and pages over vague sales figures and discussions on quality and popularity, but in the end who cares? There are criticisms to be made of 5e, both 2014 and 2024 for sure. But blanket statements stating "5e isn't as popular as you think it is!" just don't really do anything for anyone. In the end, it doesn't matter at all if the game is popular, if you have a group of friends that enjoy playing together. It doesn't matter if 50 million people play D&D 5e or if 5,000 people play D&D 5e, as long as you're having fun playing with friends. I picked up Candela Obscura and have ran several sessions with different groups, and I have one group begging me to put together more sessions for them. Is Candela Obscura popular? Almost certainly not. But we have fun playing it, and that is what matters.
I understand your trying to make an argument here and I'm happy to debate it but when you start a sentence with "what you really mean" and continue to argue the invention of your own definition of what I said rather than simply understand what I said makes for a poor debate.
No, you very clearly don't understand "what I really mean", because I said what I really meant, it was quite clear, their is no secret code for you decipher.
I'm telling you, I lived through the 80's, 90's, 00's, 10's and Im still living in the 20's and in 2014, if you told anyone you played D&D the assumption was that you were some sort of closet nerd. Certainly some progress was made between 00's and 10's, there is no doubt that things where considerably less hostile, but my D&D books weren't proudly displayed in the library, they were still hidden under the bed. It was not normalized.
For the record, that is what I said, because that is what I meant.
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Because it is others who see pretty much just sales figures as a sign of popularity. Who invoke them to 'argue' that official D&D must be the 'most played game.' I mean you can read what others are saying. Talking about the financial performance of the game to assert this.
I'd say the 2014 PHB sold more than 1.6 million copies. How many more? Ten times that? Really? Wizards would be openly bragging about it if they were reaching those sorts of numbers. Someone else said they have to be honest when reporting their performance. Yet as we are seeing they will say something was the 'fastest selling' but not give actual numbers to show it continues to sell well. And their quarterly reports avoid specific mention of D&D sales instead lumping these in with other products. I would not call it honest to willfully withhold information that could set the record straight.
It's a curious thing that no one has marveled at how many copies the PHB for 1e is said to have sold. When it existed before the internet. Like that's nothing. Those mired in biases cannot say a good word about older editions or hear or read a bad one about the latest without flying into a rage.
Run: Basic/BECMI clone of choice.
Play: 2014 D&D, 2024 D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade.
Have also run and/or played: Basic/BECMI, 1e (AD&D), 2e (AD&D), 3.x, Call of Cthulhu, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Cyberpunk 2020, Stormbringer/Elric!, Changeling: The Dreaming, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Legend of the Five Rings, Nobilis, The Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark Ages, Dark Heresy, Shadows of Esteren, Whitehack, Into the Odd, Symbaroum, and many, many others.