D&D General Mike Mearls sits down with Ben from Questing Beast

Hussar · Feb 28, 2025

Heh. I would point out that the sidebar about Magic encapsulates this whole thing in a nutshell. Someone doesn’t really follow things closely but hears enough bad news from various sources to conclude that Magic is doing badly.

Then we actually look at facts and Magic is not only not doing badly but is, in fact, quite healthy.

I’m seeing some pretty close parallels here.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Feb 28, 2025

dave2008 said:
Like I said, I don't know anyone who knows what CR is (minus my EnWorld peeps of course).

I've got Millennial coworkers who do. But I'm not sure either of our anec-data means much. As @overgeeked mentioned, they raised $11.3 million on Kickstarter. There are a lot of fans out there, whether or not they reveal themselves to you or me.

dave2008 · Feb 28, 2025

overgeeked said:
Yes, some was the design. Granted. Hence pre- and post-ST & CR. Success within the tiny bubble, design and pre-. Success outside the tiny bubble and dramatically expanding the tiny RPG bubble, 100% down to outside forces.

It depends on one's perspective on this, but while outside forces may have helped, the design still had impact in getting actual sales. I still think it is unlikely, actually impossible, that 100% of its success was outside forces. Were they a big part of it - sure. 100%, well almost nothing is 100% so no, not going to agree with that.

overgeeked said:
Quite a lot of people made the time prior to that. CR had the most successful Kickstarter back in early 2019. They were already able to get $11.3 million in funding prior to the pandemic.

Yes, that was with less than 90,000 backers. That is still extremely niche, even in D&D which was selling 100,000+ copies of every book they published. Critical Role was not, IMO, the pop culture force people around here think it was.

dave2008 · Feb 28, 2025

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I've got Millennial coworkers who do. But I'm not sure either of our anec-data means much. As @overgeeked mentioned, they raised $11.3 million on Kickstarter. There are a lot of fans out there, whether or not they reveal themselves to you or me.

As I just pointed out in my previous post, the 11.3m was from less than 90,000 backers - that is not a huge influence when you consider every D&D book WotC was publishing was selling over 100,000 copies.

overgeeked · Feb 28, 2025

dave2008 said:
That is still extremely niche, even in D&D which was selling 100,000+ copies of ever book they published.

Do we actually have that data?

dave2008 said:
Critical Role was not, IMO, the pop culture force people around here think it was.

Which is why I said Stranger Things & Critical Role. ST showed people what D&D was, or reminded them about it (80s nostalgia and all that). CR showed them how the new game is played. CR Campaign 1, Episode 1 has 24 million views on YouTube. Plus however many more on Twitch.

mamba · Feb 28, 2025

Hussar said:
Heh. I would point out that the sidebar about Magic encapsulates this whole thing in a nutshell. Someone doesn’t really follow things closely but hears enough bad news from various sources to conclude that Magic is doing badly.

Then we actually look at facts and Magic is not only not doing badly but is, in fact, quite healthy.

I’m seeing some pretty close parallels here.

I said their plan to generate ever more revenue is not working so well on the MtG side, and given that at best it is currently staying flat, I do not see a contradiction here. Not sure what parallels you imagine, but since your premise is not holding up, I'd say we can discard them anyway

Jaeger · Feb 28, 2025

mamba said:
I said their plan to generate ever more revenue is not working so well on the MtG side, and given that at best it is currently staying flat, I do not see a contradiction here. Not sure what parallels you imagine, but since your premise is not holding up, I'd say we can discard them anyway

And this is not a good thing...

Many a company has ruined a good thing by trying to squeeze every ounce of 'profit' from their customers that they can.

Oversaturation is a thing.
Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is a thing.

Just because MTG continues to do well in terms of revenue for now, doesn't mean that WotC is not engaging in potentially long term self-destructive behavior with the brand.

Hussar · Feb 28, 2025

mamba said:
I said their plan to generate ever more revenue is not working so well on the MtG side, and given that at best it is currently staying flat, I do not see a contradiction here. Not sure what parallels you imagine, but since your premise is not holding up, I'd say we can discard them anyway

What a shock. You get told that your facts are wrong by people who actually know and instead of backing down, you double down.

Yeah I’d say the parallels are pretty much spot on.

dave2008 · Feb 28, 2025

overgeeked said:
Do we actually have that data?

Yes, it was discussed on these forums quite a bit. IIRC, it was Ben Riggs you shared the info. It was either in his book or extra data he provided to hype his book. I could be conflating stories though. IIRC the 5e era sales data was based on bookscan sales information from big-box retailers (not FLGS, direct sales, and sometimes not Amazon). The weakest books were selling approx. 75K in a year per bookscan which is estimated to be 50% or less of the total book sales. So even the weakest 5e books likely sold more than 150K in the first year and they sold well enough to remain in print much longer than that.

overgeeked said:
Which is why I said Stranger Things & Critical Role. ST showed people what D&D was, or reminded them about it (80s nostalgia and all that). CR showed them how the new game is played. CR Campaign 1, Episode 1 has 24 million views on YouTube. Plus however many more on Twitch.

Those are still not the only reason for 5e's pop culture success IMO.

mamba · Feb 28, 2025

Hussar said:
What a shock. You get told that your facts are wrong by people who actually know and instead of backing down, you double down.

who actually knows and what did they provide? I did not double down, I attempted to correct your mistaken impression / representation of what I said, and now you double down on that…

Maybe you missed it, but here is Hasbro’s 2024 report

D&D General Mike Mearls sits down with Ben from Questing Beast

Hussar

Legend

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero

dave2008

Legend

dave2008

Legend

overgeeked

Dragonbane

mamba

Legend

Jaeger

That someone better

Hussar

Legend

dave2008

Legend

mamba

Legend

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