Observations at Half-Price

Last night, I went to Half-Price Books looking to see if I could find any old AD&D material (I didn't find anything I wanted, just some really crappy splats). A couple observations:

1. Nearly the full set of 4e books was there, including a couple adventure modules and prerelease promos. Someone clearly had unloaded his collection. Every time I go, I see a new load of 4e books. The size of the collection always indicates they came from someone who seriously played 4e and corroborates with my experience that 5e has definitely killed 4e.

2.  There was also a solid collection of 3.5 books. The core books were there, as were most of the Eberron books. I've been seeing a lot more 3.5 books in the last year. I'd say nearly every time I go to a used bookstore, there's a complete set of core 3.0 or 3.5 books on the shelf. It looks like people are offloading their 3.x stuff, too---either switching to Pathfinder or 5e (I rarely see PF books and haven't seen a 5e book yet).

3. 3rd feels ancient. I flipped through a monster manual and a couple adventures to see if there was anything worth converting to 5e. The awkward clumsiness of the NPC and monster stat blocks really jumped out. Once you've gone a while without seeing monsters with feats or DCs all over the place, they're really ugly.

4. Paizo's aggressively trying to hold onto its market. HPB is now selling new D&D Starter Sets and Pathfinder Beginner Boxes. But there's a lot more new Pathfinder stuff on the shelf besides that---the display suggests that Paizo's directly selling via HPB. There was some kind of card game, spell carts, little splat tools, and a whole bunch of other junk. Some people probably take this to mean that Paizo is way more successful, but I don't think so. PF's Amazon rank has never matched D&D's, and any time I find store data, PF and 5e are at best <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2968-RPG-Sales-From-a-Game-Store-s-Perspective#.VsX7dJTWsw4">even in revenue</a>.

Problem is, there's way, way more Pathfinder product on the shelf. That implies that WotC's margins are significantly higher on D&D, and there are at this point probably more individual people buying D&D material. There just isn't that much stuff for one person to buy before he's got everything. Fewer SKUs generating the same revenue = more people buying.

I don't think their strategy is viable. Providing more and more crap to buy just soaks more and more revenue out of the same dedicated enthusiasts (you know, like how I bought every 4e book I found). It doesn't bring in new players. My experience with 5e is that Core Rulebooks + 1 Adventure = 1 Year of Gaming for a typical table. WotC's strategy of keeping the core books in stock, printing one adventure every six months, and letting third parties handle everything else seems to be a much better long-term strategy.