FYI: forum.rpg.net/showthread.php

This says everything about the new edition.

superklaus said:

Uhm..... no. assume you put the same poll up here and you will get a different response. And newsflash, not every role player is active online in forum.

I think it's premature to compare 3e to 2e.

If 3e had as much product out as 2e, I'm convinced that the higher quality of 3e and evolution of game play would get a better showing.

jh

I think we mostly will see the love on this forum and the 2e/1e lovers on other sites.

Overall, since we don't know the sales numbers who knows how popular 3e is compared to 2e.

Personally, in my gaming area 3rd Edition is proving unpopular. I think the store I go to has sold only a dozen or so copies of the boxed set since it came out. The store owners only had 4 pre-orders for the release day event. Normally, they order books in the 4-5 dozen range for more popular games. I purchased one and then after reading through the rules the first time, started my crusade to finish collecting all of the 2nd Edition products. Prior to purchasing 3e, I only had the 2nd Ed rulebook and a few of the more common supplements. Now with my collection complete on 2e, I feel I've got more background material that I'll need for years of gaming in the Old World.

The 3e ruleset is just not to my liking. I don't begrudge others for fawning over it. It does have some really cool innovations and quite a few good ideas for how a GM can run his game. It's just not for me. The Dice conventions are just too unconventional for my taste. If the edition went percentile, I think I might have been more receptive, but since that was already in 2nd Ed, I guess they felt they needed to differentiate the game in a bigger way.

Oh well, for the sake of the 3e supporters, I hope the game sales are going well enough for FFG to continue putting out product.

LeBlanc13 said:

Seriously? 4 or 5 dozen copies? No offense intended, but I'm really skeptical about that figure.

I managed a large game store for over 5 years, and the only core book of anything that we ever sold 48 copies of in a 6 month period was the Player's Hanbook for whatever edition it was on at the time (so, 3.0 and 3.5 during those years). Even other D&D books we'd only place our initial order at about 3 dozen copies or so.

Once you stepped outside of D&D, the drop-off in sales volume was huge. For a new World of Darkness product, our initial order was about 6 to 8 copies, 4 for a GURPS book, and about 2 for just about anything else. Pre-orders for something could of course change those numbers, but not anywhere near the tune of four or five dozen copies like you mention.

For second 2nd Ed WFRP, I'd order 2 to 3 of each book: 1 copy for the shelf, 1 copy for the single customer who had a standing order for every new book in the line, and third for myself if that specific book sounded interesting.

So, if I were still running that store, and we sold a dozen copies of a $100 boxed set since it released in November, I'd call that a smashing success.

The city I'm in is reasonably sized, and usually sees 2-3 copies of most non D20 RPGs sold in the store I go to. Having high hopes for the game, the owner stocked 4 copies of warhammer fantasy 3rd ed, and sold out. He sold out of the three replacements he ordered. He's ordering four more. I'd say that is fairly remarkable for a non D20 title.

Of course, he was clever in how he marketed the new edition. He placed it right next to the three pack of D&D 4th ed books for price comparison, rather than placing it next to an individual Players Handbook.

Probably now that the sticker shock has worn off and people are looking _at the product_ the urge to purchase has returned.

jh

r_b_bergstrom said:

I was referencing D&D and I'm still pretty sure those numbers are accurate. They received several cases in of each of the core rule books for D&D when they came in. People in AZ were lining up to get their copies. Same is said for the Pathfinder game system which is pretty much a redo of 3.5 D&D.

It's entirely possible that our population base, containing Arizona State University is skewed more towards gaming than in other towns.

Based on that, less than 1 dozen boxes of WFRP 3e being sold is actually a relatively small amount.

That might help.

I dont know about any lines for 3, 3.5, and 4 D&D in Mesa, AZ when I lived there and that was right next door to ASU. Yes D&D products sell better, but then there marketed agressively, have a large game company behind them, and a large fanbase. I have nothing against D&D I hope it brings more in to the hobbie.

The only way to beat d20 monster is to expand the hobby base. I found that Warhammer is one of the best intro system to the hobby and hopefully like the xbox when enough buy it the price will drop. That is the one draw back with 3ed is its price, there is no choice for those young people looking at that cool book wondering whats in and they see the price, knowing full well almost no parent will buy (gamer parents will buy it before the kid).

Same story around here in my town: any gamers that I ask are either contemptuous or skeptical about it. They haven't tried it, though.

Some are hopeful because it's from FFG. Others derisively compare it to 4th edition DnD (although those same people haven't tried THAT game either, and are mostly just parroting popular opinion from gaming sites).

However, all of my friends who've played it love it to death and are reluctant to play any other system. Go figure.

LeBlanc13 said:

LeBlanc13 said:

Okay, so your local store does 50% more business than the shop I ran, that's awesome. You're still measuring the success of WFRP against D&D's sales figures, and that's just not a fair standard to hold it up to. Trust me, FFG's goal, or any game manufacturer's goal at this point, is not to supplant or exceed D&D sales. That's just not realistic, and all the manufacturer's know that.

As I said, D&D is the lion's share of RPG sales. Every game store is aware it too, of and deals with the reality that they'll sell a lot more of D&D books than any other RPG product. So if that store expects to sell 50 to 60 copies of a new D&D book, then I bet they consider any non-D&D book that sells 10 to 12 copies to be wildly successful (for a non-D&D item). That's just the reality of market share, D&D will sell 5 to 20 times as many books as anything else. RPG shops pay their rent with D&D, and the other books are just customer service.

In this case, since the non-D&D book is actually a $100 boxed set instead of a $30 to $40 book. In terms of income for the store, it'd be like selling 30 copies of a typical non-D&D book, which probably doesn't happen very often.

So, while you're saying WFRP 3rd is not doing very well, I'd be willing to bet it's exceeding the shop's expectations. If they had 4 preorders on a $100 non-D&D book, they were probably hoping to sell 6 copies total. Your initial post indicates they sold close to twice that, yet you categorized it as unpopular. You're comparing apples to oranges, and the measure of success just isn't the same for both fruits.

Glad to hear your local store is doing so much business, especially given the state of the economy these past couple years.

Well, actually, WHFB and WH40k tabletop games are their bread and butter. D&D and Pathfinder, I'm sure add to their coffers as well. Last year has been tough for them, but considering the economy, their doing better than they expected.

It seems in tough times, people look for good values for entertainment. Movies are getting expensive and a $40-60 RPG book is looking more attractive comparatively since you can use them indefinitely once purchased.

I agree that the price point for WFRP 3e is definitely cost prohibitive and could be a reason for lack of interest in my area. FFG could have addressed that by packaging the materials into smaller, more focused box sets though. A GM Box separate from a Player's Box could have gone a long way to resolving this though. Core rulebooks being sold separately could have dealt with this as well.

Anyway, I'm not arguing with what your saying really r_b_bergstrom. I do agree that no one is looking to take out D&D and become the new top dog. It's like trying to knock off WoW in the MMO world to do that. Everyone is competing for 2nd.

Maybe if we had the sales numbers for the WHFRP 2E rulebook in its first 6 month's release vs. the 3E release numbers (units, not $$) we'd have a more accurate comparison.

Comparing 2e and 3e at this point in time is pretty early in the cycle.

Polls are silly. They are created and used by people who want to complain about stuff on the internet. WFRP 3rd edition is the best rpg I've played in 20 years, so that poll can be shoved up where the sun never shines.

...to be legitimate or realistic. (sorry, hit submit too early)

Gallows said:

I agree that polls are not accurate.

Numbers would help, but FFG obviously won't share them and it is too soon to judge popularity between WFRP 2nd and 3rd editions yet.

superklaus said:

I'll point out that even just looking at the first few posts in that poll thread you'll see several people voted for 2e, after admitting they hadn't even played 3e. Kinda skews the poll a bit there, doesn't it?

I'll also admit, there are probably people like me who aren't registered at the website, and so cannot post. Personally, I'd vote for WFRP3 ... but I can't and I don't see the benefit of registering to a website I'll rarely visit just to vote in a single online poll.

D&D holds a huge market dominance at the moment, but it wasn't always the case. I remember back in the days I worked in a gaming store, World of Darkness books were the bread and butter RPG sales, at least in my location. In part because it covered about 5-6 different games, all of which were pretty new and popular. At the time, WoD had about three times the shelf space as AD&D, which sold about as well as FASA titles.

I actually found WoD annoying because it was really difficult to predict which books would sell like hotcakes vs. which would sit on the shelf for ages. With AD&D, it was simple. Lots of PhBs, about a third as many MMs and DMGs, and a scattering of setting boxed and splat books which rarely moved. With WoD, we sometimes sold more supplements than core books, which was really weird. But despite the sales, more people seemed to play AD&D. So popularity doesn't always translate into profit.

Bobby Fett said:

That's probably because of people like me. I own a huge WoD library, not because I like to run their games, but because I just find their books really fun to read.