Someone Cast Haste On The New D&D Player’s Handbook
The Dungeons & Dragons boom, now on vinyl, and not-so-dark urges.
Dungeons & Dragons is bigger than ever. After fifty years, there’s more people playing the game, more people aware of the brand, more people consuming D&D movies and live play streams and even Broadway shows.
But all that popularity doesn’t necessarily translate into sales of the actual game. The existential problem faced by D&D’s publishers is that they’re selling a set of rules for what is essentially a game of make-believe: The rules provide guidance and color, but you don’t absolutely need them to play, and if you do buy them, you don’t ever need to buy them again.
For the first forty years of the game’s existence, D&D’s owners kept their players as paying customers by periodically issuing new editions of the game with new rules. These updates typically fixed problems in the previous system, and added new things demanded by players. The new version of the game would be incompatible with the old one, so anybody who wanted to try the shiny new features had to buy the new book.
That business model started changing in 2019, when the then-five-year-old Fifth Edition rules for Dungeons & Dragons suddenly started getting a lot more popular. (The reasons for this are complicated, and explained in detail in the newly updated edition of my book Of Dice & Men, so click that affiliate link to learn more). Instead of killing strong growth by discontinuing the edition, the folks at publisher Wizards of the Coast decided to simply update the current rules by releasing a new set of books full of fixes and fresh features, but which was still compatible with the previous ruleset.
The first of the three new “core” rulebooks for fifth edition, known as the 2024 Player’s Handbook (affiliate link), came out on September 17th. I like it a lot, but I wasn’t sure if people would actually buy it: They don’t have to in order to enjoy whatever new D&D game content comes out in the coming years… so would anyone pony up fifty bucks?
The answer, Wizards of the Coast just announced, is YES THEY WOULD. In the first week since its launch on September 17, the 2024 Player’s Handbook has been the fastest-selling Dungeons & Dragons product in the game’s fifty-year history, selling three times as many copies as the previous version of the Player’s Handbook did in the same period of time back in 2014.
(The sales numbers also surpass previous record-holder Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, which launched in November 2020, right when the D&D audience began to swell to massive proportions.)
Wizards of the Coast hasn’t released any sales numbers, though they do add that they printed three times the number of 2024 Player’s Handbooks than the previous version in 2014, making this the largest physical first printing of a book in the history of D&D.
Of course, the audience for D&D is so incredibly big now (Wizards says “85 million D&D fans worldwide”) that maybe the huge sales are just due to a larger overall customer base, and a smaller percentage of existing players upgraded in 2024 than did back in 2014. But whether or not that is true is a lot less important than the bottom line, which is that Dungeons & Dragons is still growing crazy fast, and getting bigger and better every day.
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Some News
Dungeons & Dragons is going to release a 50th Anniversary double vinyl record
Bobby Kotick and Mike Morhaime were the video game industry’s unstoppable pair until they fought each other
Sony’s September PlayStation State of Play revealed lots of new games and shiny console covers
Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk for $15 million
The apocalyptic fantasy TTRPG Mörk Borg is getting a video game
Rules minimalist TTRPG Between the Skies has a new hardcover edition
A legally blind Fortnite player managed to win a Victory Royale
You can buy over 300 tabletop RPGs for just $10 with the TTRPGS for Accessible Gaming Charity Bundle
Watch This
This short from the YouTube channel Viva La Dirt League accurately depicts my feelings every time I try to play an evil character in an RPG.
Colophon
Currently watching: The Expanse, Season 6 • Last movie in a theater: The Substance • Podcast: Hyperfixed “Gwen Can’t Drive“• Reading: “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” (affiliate link) • Listening to: Robots in Disguise “Get Rid!“
Currently writing: Five reported articles about AI for a private client (two down, four to go) • An unnamed heist novel (currently 2103 words) • A D&D 5E adventure module for this year’s Gamehole Con (924 words)
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