TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

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Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

Leperflesh posted:

I always thought it was funny because fantasy computer and console games over the last 30 years have generally owed a lot of their DNA to dungeons & dragons, to varying degrees. Certainly Diablo and WoW do. I'm sure there's exceptions, but they're rarer.

It is an interesting tension between the folks who want D&D to be improv-acting-with-some-dice and those who want D&D to be manually-computed-roguelike-with-funny-voices.

Both camps went off in their own directions, with the former making great games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark, and the latter making great games like Descent: Journeys in the Dark and HeroQuest, but the tension remains nonetheless in the D&D-centric parts of the gaming world

KingKalamari posted:

I think I've mentioned it before, but I feel like a big problem some people have wrapping their heads around the idea of quick, nonmagical healing in D&D is that they've internalized certain assumptions about how the game mechanics of healing and damage relate to their representation in the fiction.

Yeah, it's even called out in the 1st edition DMG that HP does not equal Meat Damage

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:14

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 17:02

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Toph Bei Fong posted:

Yeah, it's even called out in the 1st edition DMG that HP does not equal Meat Damage

Which makes the natural healing rules for that edition even more mindboggling.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:17

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Which makes the natural healing rules for that edition even more mindboggling.

Dungeons and Dragons is a land of very stupid contrasts.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:22

TheDiceMustRoll: Jul 23, 2018

Warthur posted:

Basically, if someone who's been personally backstabbed by old-TSR decided that Williams-TSR was worth doing business with, I give that much more weight than the opinions of grogs who didn't like seeing a woman in charge.

Its kind of sad that LW's reputation is that of an evil monster person while Gary is still in terms of mainstream development just a "guy who loved gaming and bringing people together".

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:38

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Lumbermouth posted:

This makes me hate Barker even more, holy poo poo.

Like regardless of whether you were only kidding writing your Nazi novel, motherfucker sold it to NATIONAL VANGUARD.

Never heard of National Vanguard, but that sounds very bad indeed.

Lol at defending someone who wrote a Turner Diaries-like.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:45

Lumbermouth: Mar 6, 2008; GREG IS BIG NOW

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

Its kind of sad that LW's reputation is that of an evil monster person while Gary is still in terms of mainstream development just a "guy who loved gaming and bringing people together".

All of the Gygax bullshit in Designers And Dragons was so infuriating.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:46

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Lumbermouth posted:

All of the Gygax bullshit in Designers And Dragons was so infuriating.

I'm going to hate the 80s volume, aren't I? :smith:

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:47

TheDiceMustRoll: Jul 23, 2018

Toph Bei Fong posted:

It is an interesting tension between the folks who want D&D to be improv-acting-with-some-dice and those who want D&D to be manually-computed-roguelike-with-funny-voices.

Both camps went off in their own directions, with the former making great games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark, and the latter making great games like Descent: Journeys in the Dark and HeroQuest,

He says, naming four trash games.

I'm just kidding of course, but I'm surprised you didn't name Gloomhaven or Warhammer Quest or that one cowboy cthulhu one Ive been told is basically Warhammer Quest

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:49

Lumbermouth: Mar 6, 2008; GREG IS BIG NOW

MonsieurChoc posted:

Never heard of National Vanguard, but that sounds very bad indeed.

Lol at defending someone who wrote a Turner Diaries-like.

National Vanguard is the company who published The Turner Diaries. They�re apparently also the people who were trying to make Prussian Blue a thing too!

# ? Mar 24, 2022 16:49

Toph Bei Fong: Feb 29, 2008

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

He says, naming four trash games.

I'm just kidding of course, but I'm surprised you didn't name Gloomhaven or Warhammer Quest or that one cowboy cthulhu one Ive been told is basically Warhammer Quest

Ah, you got me!

To my disappointment, I've never actually played Gloomhaven, though I've heard very positive things about it. Same with Warhammer Quest

# ? Mar 24, 2022 17:18

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Toph Bei Fong posted:

It is an interesting tension between the folks who want D&D to be improv-acting-with-some-dice and those who want D&D to be manually-computed-roguelike-with-funny-voices.

And then there's the problem who will insist til they're blue in the face they're doing the former while also insisting that means the game obviously needs to be run as the latter.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 17:19

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Lumbermouth posted:

National Vanguard is the company who published The Turner Diaries. They�re apparently also the people who were trying to make Prussian Blue a thing too!

Hahaha holy poo poo.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 18:33

Bruceski: Aug 21, 2007; The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Lumbermouth posted:

National Vanguard is the company who published The Turner Diaries. They�re apparently also the people who were trying to make Prussian Blue a thing too!

The pigment used for painting and treating Cesium poisoning?

# ? Mar 24, 2022 23:14

Warthur: May 2, 2004

Bruceski posted:

The pigment used for painting and treating Cesium poisoning?

No, the two little girls playing Nazi folk music, named because some Holocaust deniers claim there should be way more Prussian Blue residue in the gas chambers if Zyklon B was really used in them.

They denounced that whole scene after they grew up and moved away from their dirtbag parents.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 23:20

Vox Valentine: May 31, 2013; Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Bruceski posted:

The pigment used for painting and treating Cesium poisoning?

Prussian Blue was a musical duo of twin girls that performed for a period of time in the mid-2000s where the gimmick was the girls were just avowed white supremacists, Holocaust-deniers, pro-Nazi, genocide-supporting musicians but with a Hillary Duff-esque family-friendly Disney Channel Idol aesthetic where they'd go to hate rallies and just bust out down-home jams. And when I say girls I mean like teenagers, they were like 12 when they got the most attention, and that attention was entirely because their mom is a hateful Nazi piece of poo poo who turned her daughters into an artistic mouthpiece to help promote racism and you really shouldn't do that with children. They kind of just stopped being a band and apparently the girls have recanted their views but like also they're not really interested in discussing that part of their childhood and honestly who knows where they are with what they believe these days. Wikipedia says they've like renounced the white supremacy things but there's still some nuggets of Holocaust skepticism they've mentioned and basically as long as they're not a blonde, blue-eyed uberkid duo that a bunch of hateful fuckers can point to as being a shining example of white purity and white musical culture who don't need tattoos or The Hip Hop to make music, I personally don't really loving care what they're doing so long as they're not just still entrenched in American Nazism.

efb, whoops.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 23:24

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

That blog post would be pretty boring apologia if not for the hilarious White Dwarf comparison.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 23:29

Xiahou Dun: Jul 16, 2009; We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.

Hostile V posted:

Prussian Blue was a musical duo of twin girls that performed for a period of time in the mid-2000s where the gimmick was the girls were just avowed white supremacists, Holocaust-deniers, pro-Nazi, genocide-supporting musicians but with a Hillary Duff-esque family-friendly Disney Channel Idol aesthetic where they'd go to hate rallies and just bust out down-home jams. And when I say girls I mean like teenagers, they were like 12 when they got the most attention, and that attention was entirely because their mom is a hateful Nazi piece of poo poo who turned her daughters into an artistic mouthpiece to help promote racism and you really shouldn't do that with children. They kind of just stopped being a band and apparently the girls have recanted their views but like also they're not really interested in discussing that part of their childhood and honestly who knows where they are with what they believe these days. Wikipedia says they've like renounced the white supremacy things but there's still some nuggets of Holocaust skepticism they've mentioned and basically as long as they're not a blonde, blue-eyed uberkid duo that a bunch of hateful fuckers can point to as being a shining example of white purity and white musical culture who don't need tattoos or The Hip Hop to make music, I personally don't really loving care what they're doing so long as they're not just still entrenched in American Nazism.

efb, whoops.

I'm still pissed at them because one of their songs was just a straight-up normal lullaby my mom used to sing to me, but part of it was "white, white, white" in German so it's unintentional neo-Nazi catnip. It's literally just listing color names with associated professions, as in the color of their outfits ; white is what bakers wear, hunters wear green, chimneysweeps wear black and painters are multi-colored (add blue sailors or red butchers or whatever others you can think of until kid falls asleep).

Obviously quite minor in the scheme of neo-Nazi crimes, but go gently caress yourself for that too, you Nazi fucks.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 23:45

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

The good news is that Morris ~~has learned his lesson and grown~~shut down comments because they were making him look more and more desperate.

# ? Mar 24, 2022 23:47

Vanilla Bison: Mar 27, 2010

He was too sad that people would rush to assume the worst about someone just because they edited a Holocaust denial journal for over a decade. :allears:

The one comment that I hope sticks with them was the one asking why Morris is so convinced that HE was the one with secret insight into Barker's character and not the one being duped. That delusion afflicts a lot of people who carry water for Zak S types. "Dude's been good to me and I like their work, everyone else must be dumb!"

# ? Mar 25, 2022 01:39

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

theironjef posted:

Basically most of the new editions are written by new teams that genuinely just want to make a good playable D&D product that will make some money (stay tuned for 5e). The audience however, because D&D is some books you have to buy and some years you get to play(therefore they've already bought in and spent years and feel invested), will always have a significant portion that needs a reason to reject the new, so they can feel good about their investment in the old. They find these reasons by comparing D&D unfavorably to whatever popular thing is currently around (2e was written by craven cowards who removed all the cool evil and nasty stuff to appease the church, 3x was Diablo, 4e was WOW). These comparisons are generally just piss poor analogies that fall apart if you poke at them, but they have reach anyway, and it turns into neverending fights.

Don't forget Paizo starting a smear campaign that 4e wasn't going to be ~true D&D~ about five minutes after it was announced, well before they, or even the people making it, knew what the final product was going to look like.

Lord_Hambrose posted:

WoW really succeeded because the strong art direction. Even in tabletop RPGs, most people will reject books that look like trash.

It also had innovations like "following questlines (which were clearly marked) to level instead of standing in the same place for 8 hours killing crabs".

Vanilla Bison posted:

He was too sad that people would rush to assume the worst about someone just because they edited a Holocaust denial journal for over a decade.

which makes the "well, I was a contributing editor to White Dwarf, that doesn't mean I endorsed their editorial policies" thing more hilarious. dude was responsible for those policies for the thing.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 03:52

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

Zereth posted:

Don't forget Paizo starting a smear campaign that 4e wasn't going to be ~true D&D~ about five minutes after it was announced, well before they, or even the people making it, knew what the final product was going to look like.

Do you have a citation or source for this? Because Paizo's own Pathfinder RPG wasn't announced until the year after 4e was (2008, with 4e being announced in 2007) going digging around for playtest dates and blog posts. I think there's a goon shibboleth at play here without any actual basis in reality.

e: like Paizo definitely stoked up edition war sentiment to get their own RPG sold, that's very true. but the idea that they did it IMMEDIATELY after 4e was announced is without any support as far as I can tell.

Arivia fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 25, 2022

# ? Mar 25, 2022 04:06

Reveilled: Apr 19, 2007; Take up your rifles

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Which makes the natural healing rules for that edition even more mindboggling.

One might also wonder why a fighter down 40 HP and merely covered in nicks and bruises might find a spell named �cure critical wounds� insufficient to heal his very minor injuries. Indeed we could ask why these spells were flavoured as healing wounds in the first place, if the serious blow comes at 0.

Honestly I think the truth of it is that hit points are both actual physical injuries and an abstraction of skill/luck in avoiding lethal blows, and which one they are at any given second depends purely and entirely on what serves the argument being made best. Here it serves Gygax�s argument to make them abstractions. Later it serves an argument to make them wounds. So they are whatever the arguer needs in the moment.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 04:08

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Arivia posted:

Do you have a citation or source for this? Because Paizo's own Pathfinder RPG wasn't announced until the year after 4e was (2008, with 4e being announced in 2007) going digging around for playtest dates and blog posts. I think there's a goon shibboleth at play here without any actual basis in reality.

e: like Paizo definitely stoked up edition war sentiment to get their own RPG sold, that's very true. but the idea that they did it IMMEDIATELY after 4e was announced is without any support as far as I can tell.

Somehow I've had this bookmark for ten years. :shepface:

It's older than every single component in my computer!

Ye Olden Days of grogs.txt posted:

As it stands there remains a chance that Paizo will not convert to 4.0 next year, mostly because we will not have the materials in hand with enough time to do so. The only viable option, at that point, is to stick with 3.5 for the time being. This opens the option of producing an improved "3.75" somewhere down the road to address a few commonly acknowledged problems with the rules without throwing out the three decades of tradition that have kept D&D, fundamentally, the same game since the very beginnig. At that point, it seems, Paizo would be producing a "Pathfinder" RPG that would be wholly independent of Dungeons & Dragons and Hasbro's plans. Such a plan carries with it considerable risk, but it may be the only serious option available to us for 2008.

Beyond that, it's difficult to say. If Fourth Edition is awesome and if the OGL for the game does not tie our hands creatively or financially, we'll certainly strongly consider converting, and again I'd really like to see the material in time to judge whether or not it's a good game that our audience will like. But we've already passed the deadline for August solicitations in the book trade, and at a certain point the window for us to have Fourth Edition material at launch will close.

So I've been spending the last few nights thinking seriously about NOT converting. What it would mean for our business, what it would mean for our company, and potentially even what it would mean for the RPG industry as a whole.

It's pretty clear to me, from reading Wizards of the Coast's information releases on the new game, that they are designing a D&D for the "next generation," and that attracting a new audience to D&D is their utmost concern. It's for this reason that we've seen a lot of the old "sacred cows" slain, and from a business perspective it makes perfect sense why they would want to do this.

Wizards of the Coast is a multi-million-dollar subsidiary of a billion-dollar toy corporation. The designers, editors, and art folks working on D&D probably represent one of the most expensive Research and Development teams in the entire Hasbro "family," and an expense like that demands mega-profits. I'm not sure that a simple pencil and paper RPG can deliver the kind of profit to keep Hasbro's support, which is why I think you're seeing pushes toward micro-purchases (say of "virtual" D&D Miniatures for use on the Virtual Tabletop similar to the "virtual" cards in Magic Online), ongoing opt-out low-cost digital "subscriptions", and a strong emphasis on the highly profitable prepainted plastic miniatures. It behooves Wizards of the Coast to "monetize" as many aspects of D&D as possible, to keep the game as fresh and free of limiting "baggage" (such as continuity), and to keep up with the design approaches taken by massively multiplayer online roleplaying games that appeal to the next generation of gamers. To keep Hasbro happy, D&D must deliver huge profits similar to the company's other brands to remain a viable business for the corporation.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 04:17

TheDiceMustRoll: Jul 23, 2018

speaking of miniatures, the new ones are ludicrously overpriced, and they dont even look that good. I'm not sure what WotC is thinking, this is incredibly dumb.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 04:20

Bottom Liner: Feb 15, 2006; a specific vein of lasagna

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

speaking of miniatures, the new ones are ludicrously overpriced, and they dont even look that good. I'm not sure what WotC is thinking, this is incredibly dumb.

I saw some sales numbers recently and they were incredibly popular, like top 3 selling in the retail category. That's what WotC is thinking.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 04:28

Dexo: Aug 15, 2009; A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

people just loving love minis.

See Every single Kickstarter with a Minis tier.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 04:40

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

NGDBSS posted:

Somehow I've had this bookmark for ten years. It's older than every single component in my computer!

That doesn't actually have a source attached to it. However, it sure sounds like a higher-up at Paizo, and taking it on good faith it sure sounds like something they'd say contemporaneously. That said, I don't think it's an attack on 4e or some giant flame war/attempt to start an edition war like others are saying. It's a pretty matter of fact business communication about what 4e meant for Paizo as a company, and they raise some very good points about things that did turn out to be huge issues with 4e for third-party publishers (what became the GSL in particular.)

# ? Mar 25, 2022 06:57

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Reveilled posted:

One might also wonder why a fighter down 40 HP and merely covered in nicks and bruises might find a spell named �cure critical wounds� insufficient to heal his very minor injuries. Indeed we could ask why these spells were flavoured as healing wounds in the first place, if the serious blow comes at 0.

Honestly I think the truth of it is that hit points are both actual physical injuries and an abstraction of skill/luck in avoiding lethal blows, and which one they are at any given second depends purely and entirely on what serves the argument being made best. Here it serves Gygax�s argument to make them abstractions. Later it serves an argument to make them wounds. So they are whatever the arguer needs in the moment.

I always thought of it as depending based on what game mechanic is looking at them. Skill/luck when defending against sword blows, but neither of those help when you're immersed in acid so it has to be raw physical durability then. Etc etc.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 07:37

Subjunctive: Sep 12, 2006; ✨sparkle and shine✨

Arivia posted:

I think there's a goon shibboleth at play here without any actual basis in reality.

How so?

# ? Mar 25, 2022 09:09

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

Arivia posted:

That doesn't actually have a source attached to it.

Found the source. Erik Mona back in October 2007.

That said, I agree with you that it sounds like a fairly good summary of the business decisions they were facing at the time. Back around the launch of 4e Wizards were very waffly about what the 4e license would look like and how it would work, and wouldn't tell big third party 3.5 publishers anything about the new ruleset unless said publishers paid them some cash in advance. (Which I don't think any did, because it was an obviously bad idea.) It was all very secretive and messy and I think probably contributed at least some extent to Pathfinder's successful launch.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 11:47

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

There's also an exchange where the guy from Necromancer Games catastrophizes that WoTC will be entitled to seize and pulp warehouses of your other games under the license and the WotTC rep is more interested in being a snarky jackass than correcting him. He riled up an early "Obama wants death panels" level of panic that never went away.

I know this isn't my first time discussing it, but I can't remember which forum it was on. Hopefully someone else has a clearer memory.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 14:41

TheDiceMustRoll: Jul 23, 2018

Bottom Liner posted:

I saw some sales numbers recently and they were incredibly popular, like top 3 selling in the retail category. That's what WotC is thinking.

Dexo posted:

people just loving love minis.

See Every single Kickstarter with a Minis tier.

Yes, but

The DnD minis that are sitting at #2 are Nolzur's miniatures, which are the lovely, brittle, pre-primed, blister packed miniatures.

These are NEW miniatures, which are approaching GW prices but are somehow even more chintzy: fifty dollars for seven tiny kobolds or orcs.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 15:10

Lumbermouth: Mar 6, 2008; GREG IS BIG NOW

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

Yes, but

The DnD minis that are sitting at #2 are Nolzur's miniatures, which are the lovely, brittle, pre-primed, blister packed miniatures.

These are NEW miniatures, which are approaching GW prices but are somehow even more chintzy: fifty dollars for seven tiny kobolds or orcs.

And the Nolzur�s ones are fairly cost effective for what they are. $2 a mini is a good rate for individual miniatures these days.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 15:26

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

Yes, but

The DnD minis that are sitting at #2 are Nolzur's miniatures, which are the lovely, brittle, pre-primed, blister packed miniatures.

These are NEW miniatures, which are approaching GW prices but are somehow even more chintzy: fifty dollars for seven tiny kobolds or orcs.

GW are IIRC mostly at �2.50-4 for a non-character foot figure, but some space marine units are hitting �10-11 each if you buy the standard box from the official store.

Those are the chunkiest of boys though.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 15:30

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Warthur posted:

But that is, again, an example of Williams repeating a pattern which was already established in TSR - the attempts to do spin-off companies to pursue other media started under Gary, and indeed was his pet project which he prioritised over the entire rest of the company.

I think the key point is that you're coming at it from a comparative point of view, whereas I wasn't trying to compare them. But the thing is portraying Lorraine as just the victim of past policies does her no favors, pretending she had no agency to try and change things. She was her own sort of leader and made her own decisions.

Don't get me wrong, Lorraine likely kept TSR running a lot longer than likely would have under the Blumes or Gygax, but being better than them was an awfully low bar. I don't think the grog tales of how she sunk TSR are factual or even aimed at the right target; it would certainly have sunk under former leadership. But she also continued a lot of business practices that were ultimately unsustainable. Perhaps it's unfair to say; perhaps the company was unsalvageable, perhaps not, but that's where history put her.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 18:12

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

potatocubed posted:

Found the source. Erik Mona back in October 2007.

That said, I agree with you that it sounds like a fairly good summary of the business decisions they were facing at the time. Back around the launch of 4e Wizards were very waffly about what the 4e license would look like and how it would work, and wouldn't tell big third party 3.5 publishers anything about the new ruleset unless said publishers paid them some cash in advance. (Which I don't think any did, because it was an obviously bad idea.) It was all very secretive and messy and I think probably contributed at least some extent to Pathfinder's successful launch.

Yeah - as it stood, Paizo relied on the OGL to stay in business. WotC was moving away from the OGL for their own, totally understandable, business reasons - and yeah was kinda shady about licensing until pretty drat late in the game.

That doesn't read like a pre-emptive making GBS threads-upon as much as it reads like a totally sober understanding of the actual situation Paizo found itself in. A "Pathfinder" was basically inevitable once D&D moved away from the OGL these third-party companies relied on.

Alienating Paizo - who'd been a solid partner during 3.5 - is imo one of the more baffling business decisions made by WotC during the edition change.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 20:27

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

IIRC, the big Paizo/WotC breach came when WotC reasserted control over Dragon and Dungeon magazines, terminating Paizo's publishing contract for them on short notice (to bring them back in-house as the ongoing online support component for 4E) and claiming ownership of everything Paizo had published in Dungeon and Dragon (including all of the very nice artwork that Paizo had commissioned and paid for). This was entirely legal and part of the licensing agreement they both signed, but it left a real bad taste in Paizo's mouth.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 20:34

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

potatocubed posted:

Found the source. Erik Mona back in October 2007.

That said, I agree with you that it sounds like a fairly good summary of the business decisions they were facing at the time. Back around the launch of 4e Wizards were very waffly about what the 4e license would look like and how it would work, and wouldn't tell big third party 3.5 publishers anything about the new ruleset unless said publishers paid them some cash in advance. (Which I don't think any did, because it was an obviously bad idea.) It was all very secretive and messy and I think probably contributed at least some extent to Pathfinder's successful launch.

Thanks for putting in the work to find the source.

# ? Mar 25, 2022 20:54

PoontifexMacksimus: Feb 14, 2012

gtrmp posted:

Not strictly true; 5e outsold 4e which outsold 3e which outsold 2e, but as far as I know, 5e hasn't yet outsold 1e. And of course nothing ever came close to the various iterations of the D&D Basic Set, which collectively sold almost three million copies from the original late-70s Red Box through the early-90s Black Box. I don't doubt that D&D as a brand is bringing in more money now than it ever did in its 80s heyday, but the rulebooks themselves are only a fraction of that.

It feels strange how much talk there was (or has been in several waves I guess) about Dungeons and Dragons becoming "mainstream" if in actual unit sales it was never more widespread than in the 70s/80s...

# ? Mar 26, 2022 23:01

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 17:02

TheDiceMustRoll: Jul 23, 2018

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

It feels strange how much talk there was (or has been in several waves I guess) about Dungeons and Dragons becoming "mainstream" if in actual unit sales it was never more widespread than in the 70s/80s...

It's sadly kind of impossible to tell, since there are no definitive sales numbers for anything but TSR's bragging in the 80s. I'd love to hear what 5e has actually sold, since it's actually been at the top of amazon's books sales for months at a time several times

# ? Mar 26, 2022 23:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG as an Industry: A pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture

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