D&D General How many DMs buy (official) adventures?

[MerricB]

In the greater D&D universe, we have new DMs all the time.

How many of them buy official adventures?

How much has that changed over time?

Going through a few of the various sales threads, I found information that pointed to early 3E modules (not including The Sunless Citadel) sold about 40K in their first year.
Meanwhile, 1 million 3E PHBs were sold in 5 years.

Even accounting for various time differences and stuff... there would seem to be a gap. (Can you even say "most" DMs buy adventures?)

Cheers,
Merric

 

[ichabod]

It would be better to compare sales of the adventures to sales of the DMG.

 

[MerricB]

It would be better to compare sales of the adventures to sales of the DMG.

If there are values you know, post them!

 

[aco175]

I would think buy some, vs buy all of them. I am thinking that 5e adventure books have been out ten years and about 20 of them are out now, but I only have 2, with one being an anthology. I bought the box sets, so maybe I'm up to 5.

 

[MerricB]

I would think buy some, vs buy all of them. I am thinking that 5e adventure books have been out ten years and about 20 of them are out now, but I only have 2, with one being an anthology. I bought the box sets, so maybe I'm up to 5.

I agree, and I'd assume that is true for most DMs. (Most of them aren't rabid collectors like me).

How many do you think buy no adventures at all? (Or only get the starter set?)

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Audiomancer]

IIRC, someone on the D&D said about five years ago that half of all DMs homebrew their campaigns. I have no idea if that number would hold up today. But I believe WOTC periodically asks about published campaigns vs. homebrew when it puts out surveys, so they likely have a very rough estimate.

 

[billd91]

I may be an outlier, but I bought very few adventures for 3e before I got a subscription for Dungeon Magazine. I had bought a lot more for 1e and 2e. But I also had a lot more day care expense during the 3e timeframe. It wasn’t until Paizo started doing adventure paths that I started getting adventures again.
Of course, during 4e, I bought no adventures because it was the edition of D&D I NEVER wanted to run.
But I’ve bought most of them for 5e. So, they did get me back as an official adventure buyer.

 

[Quickleaf]

In the greater D&D universe, we have new DMs all the time.

How many of them buy official adventures?

How much has that changed over time?

Going through a few of the various sales threads, I found information that pointed to early 3E modules (not including The Sunless Citadel) sold about 40K in their first year.
Meanwhile, 1 million 3E PHBs were sold in 5 years.

Even accounting for various time differences and stuff... there would seem to be a gap. (Can you even say "most" DMs buy adventures?)

Cheers,
Merric

So Teos @Alphastream posted some BookScan data in Sept 2023...

How D&D Sells and What It Means for the Hobby

How many copies do D&D's top products sell? We take a look at BookScan data and what it means for D&D and the hobby.

alphastream.org

D&D 5E’s Top-Selling Adventures and What It Means for the Hobby

D&D adventures historically don't sell well. 5E has tried several approaches. Let's take a look at 5E adventure sales in the BookScan data.

alphastream.org

For example, the DMG has total to-date retail sales (RTD Sales) of 823,116. Compared to that, the top five adventures have much lower RTD Sales coming in at...

• Curse of Strahd 147,244
• Waterdeep: Dragon Heist 120,884
• Hoard of the Dragon Queen 110,678
• Yawning Portal 108,961
• Ghosts of Saltmarsh 93,905

 

[Stormonu]

Before the days of Paizo's adventure paths and the 5E megadventures I'd venture to say that most DMs I ran across had at least 3-5 modules they had bought. I can't say how many had run them start to end, but it did make for showing structure and giving prebuilt encounters you could drop into play.

Nowadays, I see them being bought exclusively to run and not for ideas or collecting. About 3/4 of the DMs I've run across who run 5E buy them (and usually just one before they start designing their own homebrew start to finish), less so for Pathfinder (the latter seem more apt to looking for free content online) - I'd say in the 50% range.

Seeing the numbers above, I'm not surprised though. The official adventures (beyond Yawning Portal) are a big ask - they're not cheap and you're basically slotting about 3-6 months of play to finish them. I've seen very few of the big adventures run to completion before petering out for one reason or another. Out of 7 such games that I know of for 5E, only one completed the entire adventure, for example. Doesn't exactly inspire folks to buy again if their first attempt falls through.

 

[Lanefan]

IIRC, someone on the D&D said about five years ago that half of all DMs homebrew their campaigns. I have no idea if that number would hold up today. But I believe WOTC periodically asks about published campaigns vs. homebrew when it puts out surveys, so they likely have a very rough estimate.

One can homebrew campaigns (as in, settings) and still buy and use published adventures within those homebrews...provided the adventure isn't intended to be the entire campaign, that is.