2024 D&D PHB Not-So-Shockingly Sets New Sales Record

 

This isn't exactly a surprise but according to the press release posted in this thread at EN World the new PHB is the fastest-selling D&D thing of all time. Alright. That's good for the game and for RPG's in general to a degree and promoting numbers like this is what companies do when launching a new product. It is still a little weird to see D&D treated like a mainstream product - like a videogame launch in many ways. They quote a number of 85 million "D&D fans" and I expect people on the internet to run with that number as though it's the number of people actually playing D&D which we know it is not - because if it was they would have said so. That's a nice squishy number that could include anyone who's played Baldur's Gate 3, for example, and should not be taken as hard evidence of anything.

That said I don't want to downplay WOTC's success here: they've helped to make D&D a bigger thing than it has been in a long time, if ever. They don't get all of the credit, as despite my own lack of interest the streaming stuff like Critical Role clearly had an impact, and they've had some stumbles as well like the OGL thing last year. But, even given the boost from other factors, they a) made a version of the game normal people - casual players - could understand and b) came up with a business model that involved a limited number of books per year that didn't drive everyone crazy or radically change the game - issues with 3E and 4E that limited their success to a degree.

They also appear, at least right now, to be successfully pulling off an edition change that they aren't calling an edition change. One might say "desperately" trying to call it not an edition change. I get it - a new edition is a great reason for people to jump off of the train, especially when you have the mass market audience D&D has achieved. Most normal people are not excited about paying for another set of rules for a game they already play or learning a new set of rules: "Why can't we just keep playing with what we have?" That's a completely reasonable point of view. But much like the videogame industry I mentioned above - particularly with bigger members of the industry - many game companies depend on new editions to make money because the main rulebook is the one thing everybody tends to buy. Games Workshop is the king of this and has been for some time but TSR/WOTC and Paizo are members of this society and I'd say Modiphius is moving in this direction as well. WOTC has not used the word "edition" much at all in their conversations instead using "revision" as more of the go-to descriptive term and bending over backwards to emphasize "backwards compatibility" which ... ah ... sure. It's nice and to some degree correct but I don't know that it's built to let you run a 2014 Paladin right alongside a 2024 Paladin - will the subclasses cross? I don't know yet but I would guess not without some rejiggering on the DM's part. 

Looks a lot like the last one on the inside

I do have a copy though I have not yet read it and have no plans to run it at this time. I made my D&D-type-fantasy-rpg-of-choice some time ago in favor of Tales of the Valiant and I (and my players) are perfectly happy with it. I do figure it's worth going through to see what the new standard will be. I'll post up my thoughts once I do that with comparisons to the prior version and to ToV. 

Outside of interesting ideas from competitors my other issue is the continuing push by WOTC to move towards D&D Beyond as the "standard" way to play the game and consequently the push towards a subscription fee for a tabletop game. I will not be joining this particular bandwagon and while a lot of companies are busy cross-promoting streamers and setting things up on various online tool sets I just have zero interest in playing the game this way so my take on D&D 2024 will strictly be as a set of RPG books used at the table. 

So it looks like 6th edition will continue to be the juggernaut when it comes to RPGs. Not really a surprise and it is nice to see a company making an effort to not instantly invalidate everyone's books for a new release of their game. Time will tell how it all goes but it all looks pretty optimistic for now. I'm going with the Rising Tide outlook here and hoping that continued good news for D&D will help all of those other games we like too, from ToV & PF2 to smaller names like Mutants & Masterminds, Twilight 2000, and Savage Worlds. It's all looking good for now.