Evil Hat's 2020 physical retail distribution sales (inclusive of sales to an Amazon reseller; not including kickstarter, webstore, IPR, drivethru, itch, conventions) in short: $474k gross; $326k adjusted gross after factoring in royalties.

RPG category broken down by system type of product (note Fate had many more titles in the category, whereas Forged is 3 titles and PBTA is 2).

RPG category broken down into Combo (heavy on both rules and setting), Setting (some rules, more setting), or Rules (little or no setting).

Rules, as you might notice (as it also claims a half portion of Combo), are king in Fate. Setting category both has most titles and fewest hits.

Actually, I should bust out the Fate specific version before I make that assertion, yeah?

Combo is largely Dresden Files Accelerated and Venture City, with a handful of sales from three other titles, two of them out of print by this point. Rules is all the Fate Toolkits (System, Space, Horror, Adversary) plus corebooks Fate Core, FAE, FCon. Setting is all the others.

Another slice through Fate: Core books (FCore, FCon, FAE), Stand-Alones that don't require a core book to play (FOC, DFA, others), and Expansions that do require a core book.

If you expand that to look at all our RPG books, core books continue to be the big winners. Here, Core includes the 3 Fate corebooks, AGON, Blades in the Dark, and Monster of the Week. Basically nearly all the latest and long-term hits.

Stand-alones include Band of Blades, Scum and Villainy, and Fate of Cthulhu, all of which landed between 1000 and 2000 units sold in 2020. All others in the category landed under 1k, with DFA coming closest.

Best by volume in the Expansion category are Monster of the Week: Tome of Mysteries (over 2800); Fate Space Toolkit (over 1300); Fate System Toolkit (over 1200). Everything else under 500 units, few close, but a lot of that is stuff that went OOP after declining sales.

A lot of this data adds up for me to some familiar conclusions.

Expansions are mild sellers and mainly make sense when they're expanding something already big in a direction its fans clearly want (e.g., Tome of Mysteries, or entrants in Fate's Toolkit line). Don't expect a lot.

Core books have longevity. They're the entry point, and sometimes they're all you really need unless *their* sales suggest the existence of an extended market. Blades in the Dark cleared almost 8k units in these numbers; Band of Blades and Scum and Villainy landed ~1500-2000 ea.

Folks *seem* more likely to buy rules-expanding content than other types of content. This supports a few different hypotheses, potentially, but my fave there is the perspective that it's a GM's market foremost, with players oriented on corebook entry-points and character options.

Stand-alone games (core books and non-core whole RPGs containing an entire playable rulesystem) appear to deliver more punch on average, tho as always it's hit or miss in terms of what catches fire.

Top individual products by volume:
1. Blades in the Dark
2. Monster of the Week
3. Fate Core
4. MOTW: Tome of Mysteries
5. Scum and Villainy
6. Fate of Cthulhu
7. Band of Blades
8. Fate Condensed
9. Fate Accelerated
10. Fate Space Toolkit
11. AGON
12. Dresden Files Card Game

Top individual products by gross revenue:
1. Blades in the Dark
2. Monster of the Week
3. Fate Core
4. MOTW: Tome of Mysteries
5. Scum & Villainy
6. Band of Blades
7. Fate of Cthulhu
8. Dresden Files Card Game
9. AGON
10. DF Accelerated
11. Fate Space TK
12. Fate System TK

If you're looking for actual volume numbers (again, this isn't total, it's just the data I pulled from the system I use to invoice distributors) on individual titles, here's a screencap of the top twenty for 2020.