http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?p=7428519
Merric: Are you able to tell us anything about how the D&D team would like to proceed with the publication of adventures? Would you like them to be an ongoing feature? (Perhaps 6-12 a year?) Or is this a limited experiment that will pause for feedback/sales reports in the near future?
Charles: As many people on these boards know, when third edition and the d20 License launched, we thought a lot of third parties would see adventures for D&D as a great opportunity. WotC published a spate of them early on (the adventure path, Return to the Temple) to sort of get the ball rolling, but after that we left the category to the third-party publishers.
Unfortunately, over the past few years most of the d20 publishers decided that it was better for their business to compete directly with us, and abandoned adventures in favor of sourcebooks of the sort we already make (and make better than anyone else). As a result, the adventure market has been largely empty for the past few years. (And it's probably no coincidence that many d20 publishers seem to be struggling these days.)
D&D players have made it clear that they're interested in adventures (as you make clear in this very thread), and we're listening!
As you know, we don't generally discuss titles more than about nine months ahead of release, so I can't give you any specifics. I will say this: we think this hole in the marketplace is a long-term phenomenon, so we're looking at long-term solutions!
Merric: Are you able to tell us anything about how the D&D team would like to proceed with the publication of adventures? Would you like them to be an ongoing feature? (Perhaps 6-12 a year?) Or is this a limited experiment that will pause for feedback/sales reports in the near future?
Charles: As many people on these boards know, when third edition and the d20 License launched, we thought a lot of third parties would see adventures for D&D as a great opportunity. WotC published a spate of them early on (the adventure path, Return to the Temple) to sort of get the ball rolling, but after that we left the category to the third-party publishers.
Unfortunately, over the past few years most of the d20 publishers decided that it was better for their business to compete directly with us, and abandoned adventures in favor of sourcebooks of the sort we already make (and make better than anyone else). As a result, the adventure market has been largely empty for the past few years. (And it's probably no coincidence that many d20 publishers seem to be struggling these days.)
D&D players have made it clear that they're interested in adventures (as you make clear in this very thread), and we're listening!
As you know, we don't generally discuss titles more than about nine months ahead of release, so I can't give you any specifics. I will say this: we think this hole in the marketplace is a long-term phenomenon, so we're looking at long-term solutions!
