You Heard it Here Last S3E9

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Welcome to you heard it here last where we talk about news, you’ve already heard.

Professor Dungeon Master on his YouTube channel Dungeon Craft announced that the New D&D 2024 Players Handbook only sold 3,773 books in its opening week. That’s right, what was announced as the fastest selling D&D book in history only sold 3,773 physical copies. The rest of those sales were digital over on DnD Beyond.

https://youtu.be/hmTKrCeaFC8?si=rJ_LZ4RbK8YAHAYD

He followed that news up with a recent report that DnD Beyond has officially locked down their digital products.

https://youtu.be/ndrfwFakQto?si=t9TfCEb9hntPTNNa

This is a quote from the DnD Beyond Support Page;

“All digital content will only be available to view and use on the D&D Beyond website. An account will be needed to access the content. So, if you delete your account you will lose the content.”

https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/7747225184788-Unlocked-Content-and-D-D-Beyond-Account-Deletion

Now this isn’t anything new to those of us who hate DnD. I learned this difficult lesson when I deleted my DnD Beyond Account during the OGL scandal. Remember kids, if you buy from DnD you don’t own shit. You only rent it and they will take their ball and go home leaving you high and dry if you disagree with them.

What’s this mean for the ttrpg hobby? What’s this mean for the business of ttrpg’s? What’s this mean for WoTC? Good thing I have Christina here to answer those questions.

Christina, weigh in with a quote from Emmanuel Kent

[Kick to Christina]

I led with the DnD Beyond story so I could follow up with this one.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/shadowdark-setting-looks-set-to-be-2025s-first-million-dollar-ttrpg-crowdfunder.712281/

Shadowdark is an OSR style game from Kelsey Dionne that made a splash on Kickstarter in 2023 when it raised 1.4 million dollars. That is a massive payday for an independent game and got a lot of people dubbing it the D&D killer. Now that wasn’t fair because it had nowhere near the market share that D&D had, but it is a cool game and a great independent game story…and then Shadowdark created a campaign setting. On March 11th of 2025 Shadowdark released Western Reaches on Kickstarter. It is a sandbox campaign setting for Shadowdark.

It made a million bucks in less than 12 hours.

Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast my be trying their damndest to kill TTRPG’s, but the hobby aint dead. Far from it. With news like this it proves that the gamers out there are looking for a roleplaying product they can trust now that D&D has continued to stab them in the back and spit on their corpses.

Throw away your D&D and play and support games made for you by people who like you.

At least that’s my thoughts.

Christina?

[Kick to Christina]

An there you have it, All the news you’ve already heard.