New trend of third party products?

With the success of 3rd party material for Mutants and Masterminds (Power Corrupts) and Arcana Unearthed (Fiery Dragon and Mystic Eye's modules), it looks like there might be a new trend of products that cater to a niche of dedicated gamers-fan of original settings and rules, rather than the general herd who are deluged by too much (good) product.

Just an observation.

Krug said:

With the success of 3rd party material for Mutants and Masterminds (Power Corrupts) and Arcana Unearthed (Fiery Dragon and Mystic Eye's modules), it looks like there might be a new trend of products that cater to a niche of dedicated gamers-fan of original settings and rules, rather than the general herd who are deluged by too much (good) product.

Just an observation.

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I'm noticing a new trend of "out of the dungeon" material.

joe b.

Somehow, for the moment, I'm a bit sceptical. Why? Because I see the same sort of thing happening with other product lines as well, though with nowhere near as much quality.

With my own Big Bang series, which gets plenty of high accolades from its buyers, is only a few months old. But since the first volume was released in April, there have been three other gun-related PDFs released All of which are considered quite inferior by folks who have bothered to read them as well. One of those gun books even goes as far as to attempt to provide a format that integrates with my product line.

Now add to that things like PDF versions of the various D20 SRDs that have 25% more pages than the original non-SRD books (shouldn't the ommission of material logically result in PDFs smaller than the WotC books?), books like Ultimate Prestige Classes and Ultimate Feats, and the like which collect OGC material from other products from multiple publishers without adding any unique content.

So for now, I'd say that while yes, there is a small trend for high quality third party products to support popular non-WOTC product lines, I'm noticing that it is merely part of a much wider trend of bandwagon hopping, mainly with small publishers trying to ride profitably on the heels of larger publishers. Hell, you can even say my Big Bang series rides on the coattails of Ultramodern Firearms, even though the only reason I started writing Big Bang was because no one else writes gun books the way I want them done.

It's definitely a shame. This broader trend is part of the reason why the PDF market is so unhealthy, as it causes an already too-small market to fragment even further.

Respectfully Dana,

How does variety fracture a market?

You are assuming that gamers will purchase anything that is out there and not make judgements based on word of mouth or samples. I contend that regardless of the quantity of product, people interested in the PDF market buy based on interest not market share.

On the subject of a borader trend here.. adding on to the value or expanding the rules outlined in open content or licensed content situations is not, in my opinion, a bad thing. There are many people out there who excell at producing products that fit a niche. Not having to hastle with the mechanics of world building and focussing on one adventure, class, alternate rule, etc. often adds to the value of the whole product line.

Obviously quality is subjective. You are no more right or wrong than I am on any given position when it is based on our opinions. I like what I like, your views will vary. Saying that all of one type of book are inferior is your right to form an opinion, however it does not make any of that opinion a fact.

The whole strength of the OGL and D20 concept is the community it builds and the support it draws from non-standard sources like small third party presses.. which includes your company I believe.

LrdApoc said:

Respectfully Dana,

How does variety fracture a market?

You are assuming that gamers will purchase anything that is out there and not make judgements based on word of mouth or samples. I contend that regardless of the quantity of product, people interested in the PDF market buy based on interest not market share.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the PDF market isn't one that lends itself to "try before you buy". No picking up a book and flipping through it to decide if you like it. And publishers that provide free samples are still not in the majority. And as far as online sales go, there isn't a lot of word-of-mouth going around, either. Maybe 1 in 30 consumers bothers to express an opnion on what they've bought. So, if they end up buying one of these coattails-riding weaker products on the market, interest can easily be shattered.

On the subject of a borader trend here.. adding on to the value or expanding the rules outlined in open content or licensed content situations is not, in my opinion, a bad thing. There are many people out there who excell at producing products that fit a niche. Not having to hastle with the mechanics of world building and focussing on one adventure, class, alternate rule, etc. often adds to the value of the whole product line.

Click to expand...

I think you need to reconsider your wording there. Sure there are plenty of people who excel in producing product that fits a niche, but there are few capable of producing good product to fit those same niches. Do you honestly hold the opinion that most of the D20 product out there is good?

Obviously quality is subjective. You are no more right or wrong than I am on any given position when it is based on our opinions. I like what I like, your views will vary. Saying that all of one type of book are inferior is your right to form an opinion, however it does not make any of that opinion a fact.

Click to expand...

Trust me, if I sent you sample pages of three competing products, you might change your mind about that. Sure, a lot of the time one can say its just a matter of opinion, but there will always also be cases where it is fact instead.

The whole strength of the OGL and D20 concept is the community it builds and the support it draws from non-standard sources like small third party presses.. which includes your company I believe.

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And the whole weakness of the OGL and D20 concept is the enticement it creates, drawing in people who shouldn't be writing or publishing to begin with.

*sniffles*

Dana get off your high horse for once and stop badmouthing the competition.

Your free sample wasn't so hot either. The rules pages looked decent enough, but the gun pages are just horrible, does the concept of columns mean anything to you? If you take a look at page 15 of the free sample i see only 1 line on the entire page, that should be a big boo-boo in anyone's book. The images look like they where ripped from gun magazines and i can only start to contemplate the legal issues that entails. Gun page Angram 2000, the information these two pages have could easily be put on one page and you would still have room to spare, this is what we would call padding (ie. filling the book with extra pages without adding any content, only white space), 20% of the pages could be cut. Use of the D20 Brand Name, no OGC Liscence (OGL) or designation of OGC. Should i go on?

First make sure that you clean your own house before attacking others, especially when your a publisher!

Krug said:

With the success of 3rd party material for Mutants and Masterminds (Power Corrupts) and Arcana Unearthed (Fiery Dragon and Mystic Eye's modules), it looks like there might be a new trend of products that cater to a niche of dedicated gamers-fan of original settings and rules, rather than the general herd who are deluged by too much (good) product.

Just an observation.

Click to expand...

Well the reason we did M&M Superlink was partly due to me being 20 plus years comic book collector and the writer of it works for DC Comics. So for us it was a natural fit. Personally I wish more publishers would do more smaller "D20" product lines or do really different things. RPGNow.com is a great was to get started. I just hope more people do more interesting thing, not just another book on paladins, monk or simple stuff like that.

Cergorach said:

*sniffles*

Dana get off your high horse for once and stop badmouthing the competition.

Your free sample wasn't so hot either. The rules pages looked decent enough, but the gun pages are just horrible, does the concept of columns mean anything to you? If you take a look at page 15 of the free sample i see only 1 line on the entire page, that should be a big boo-boo in anyone's book. The images look like they where ripped from gun magazines and i can only start to contemplate the legal issues that entails. Gun page Angram 2000, the information these two pages have could easily be put on one page and you would still have room to spare, this is what we would call padding (ie. filling the book with extra pages without adding any content, only white space), 20% of the pages could be cut. Use of the D20 Brand Name, no OGC Liscence (OGL) or designation of OGC. Should i go on?

First make sure that you clean your own house before attacking others, especially when your a publisher!

Click to expand...

I have no clue what the hell you're talking about.

First, the sample consists of 7 weapon systems, and the Agram 2000 isn't one of them. The included weapons are the Ares FMG, Astra Modello 400 pistol, GRADco Gun Knives, FN Herstal F2000, FN Herstal MAG-58/M240 GPMG, M9 Service Pistol, and the XM29 SABR/ OICW.

Second, the images are taken from manufacturer press pool photos, images they distribute openly and freely as a meams of promoting their weapons. A few are also from government sources, which are public domain, since the government files and holds no copyrights over anything it publishes.

Third, you miss the point of the format, so complaining about white space is pointless. One gun or family of guns per sheet of paper. The Agram 2000 is the only gun in its particular family. I'm not going to fall into the Monstrous Compendium trap of two different monsters on a single sheet of paper that happen to throw the ability to alphabetize or categorize everything by the time you get to volume 3. And as for two columns with the fluff text, trust me, with the distruptions caused by the photos and the block of data, it looks better in one column. You don't think I stoped with the first layout I tried, do you?

And lastly, the sample I'm looking at has the legal notices on pages 46-47. Right down to designation of D20 OGC (lacking in about 80% of the D20 material I've bought in the last 6 months), right down to the Action! System notices and OGC designation, right down to inclusion of the FUDGE copyright, trademark, and licensing notices.

I dunno what you have, but it didn't come off the RPGnow site, which is the only place the sampler is available.

@danna
big_bang_sample.pdf (create date 20-02-2003) 33 pages
downloaded 31 augustus 2003
from publisher website

Contains the following guns:
Agram 2000
Ares Folding Machinegun (Ares FMG)
FN Herstal F2000
FN Herstal P90 PDW
Giat Papop
KBP PP-90M FMG
M-29 Sabr

Legal Mumbo Jumbo is on page 2, whoops!

Press pools are generally not used to fill sourcebooks, i don't know the exact legal details, but why do you think that such images are not used in established products (such as the gun book by Green Ronin and others).

As for the format and the columns. Layout is often ruled by certain 'common sense' rules, one of those is that you don't leave only a single line of text on an entire page and you don't try to fill the width of a Letter page with a small font type.

Scuse me, but two gun statbloks on a single page is ridiculess IMHO! Not many people would accept this with a printed product (paying for pages with virtually no content is something Gamers hate), so don't expect people to accept it in a pdf product that they'll probably print. Vol. 2 is advertised as having 110 pages, but that could easily be brought back to +/-70, that's what i meant by padding. The Agram 2000 isn't the only smaple gun that suffers this problem (last page Sabr M-29, KBP PP-90M FMG, Giat Papop, FN Herstal, etc.).

Then there is the use of the D20 Modern trademark. It isn't in the D20 Modern SRD and is trademarked by WotC, no additional lisence is made available to use it (unless maybe if you contacted WotC privately to obtain such a lisence), such as the D20 trademark is made available. So shouldn't be used.

Cergorach said:

@danna
big_bang_sample.pdf (create date 20-02-2003) 33 pages
downloaded 31 augustus 2003
from publisher website

Contains the following guns:
Agram 2000
Ares Folding Machinegun (Ares FMG)
FN Herstal F2000
FN Herstal P90 PDW
Giat Papop
KBP PP-90M FMG
M-29 Sabr

Legal Mumbo Jumbo is on page 2, whoops!

Press pools are generally not used to fill sourcebooks, i don't know the exact legal details, but why do you think that such images are not used in established products (such as the gun book by Green Ronin and others).

As for the format and the columns. Layout is often ruled by certain 'common sense' rules, one of those is that you don't leave only a single line of text on an entire page and you don't try to fill the width of a Letter page with a small font type.

Scuse me, but two gun statbloks on a single page is ridiculess IMHO! Not many people would accept this with a printed product (paying for pages with virtually no content is something Gamers hate), so don't expect people to accept it in a pdf product that they'll probably print. Vol. 2 is advertised as having 110 pages, but that could easily be brought back to +/-70, that's what i meant by padding. The Agram 2000 isn't the only smaple gun that suffers this problem (last page Sabr M-29, KBP PP-90M FMG, Giat Papop, FN Herstal, etc.).

Then there is the use of the D20 Modern trademark. It isn't in the D20 Modern SRD and is trademarked by WotC, no additional lisence is made available to use it (unless maybe if you contacted WotC privately to obtain such a lisence), such as the D20 trademark is made available. So shouldn't be used.

Click to expand...

Hmm... Seems you somehow got ahold of the sample that was thrown together for the RPGnow CD-ROM. Maybe a week or so before Origins, the RPGnow staff sent out an email sometime after midnight, informing vendors of the CD-ROM and giving everyone about an hour to provide demo material. If I'm exaggerating, it isn't by much. Unfortunately, trying to finish inside an hour in the middle of the night isn't the best time to do anything. What strikes me as odd is the fact that you downloaded it on august 31 when it was deleted from shortly after Big Bang volume 2 was released in July, since that volume invalidated most of the CD-ROM sample.

Now, as for printing it out... separating the stat blocks serves a purpose. People can print it out without the stats, replacing the back side with stats for other game systems, and even if it was all compressed to one page, there would still be a blank page, whether you like it or not. After all, I said one weapon or family of weapons per sheet of paper. I'm not going to fall into the trap of the Monstrous Compendium, where a monster in volume 5 might end up alphabetically between two monsters in volume 1 that happened to be printed on the same page.

As for that one line of text you're complaining about, that was created by the pdf distillation process. It did not exist in the original document, as even I find that annoying. However, with that one hour window for creation, there weren't any mistakes slipping through the cracks; they walk right up, slap my upside the face and run out the front door.

Why don't you get off your own high horse and stop complaining about dead products that have been long since fixed, and replace it with the current versions.