I think TSR was right to publish so much material

[LurkMonkey]

I suspect that the option had passed if you bought 2e books at a book store in the 3e era, that the store had already paid for and owned them. If prices were marked down, then I think that is especially likely.

Actually, most of the pieces were picked up on eBay and the used book marketplaces, so yeah, TSR got something for them originally, but I didn't buy them 'Mint in Box' as it were. The original point was that even though I loved several of the settings TSR was creating stuff for, I was unable to justify picking up everything produced as it came out in the Nineties. So although I have had time to fill in the gaps of my collection, that really doesn't do TSR any good at this point. Especially since the company hasn't existed for over a decade.

Heck I just put in an order for the three Jakandor books from a used book seller. Their sale probably isn't helping TSR's balance sheet now =P

 

[Orius]

Hmm, the historics are actually considered good? I was under the impression they were considered rather poor. I mananged to snag copies of Vikings, Celts, and Heroes myself, but never got Rome or Fortress. They're not bad, but I'm not really sure the D&D rules are a great match for the real world.

 

[Philosopher]

According to 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, they had some more of the historical books planned. The reason they cancelled the line was because they never sold well. (So, apparently, TSR made some reasonable business decisions at the time. Who knew?) There was supposed to be one focusing on Arabia as a companion to the Crusades book. There was supposed to be books on the Rus, the Balkans, and Arthurian England. I wish more of them saw print.

 

[DragonLancer]

The only historicals I picked up were the Age of Heroes and the Vikings ones. I thought both were pretty good as a jumping off point for using that sort of campaign or campaign elements.

A friend of mine who is an absolute expert on ancient Rome picked up the Roman book and said that despite some obvious historical inaccuraces it wasn't a bad one.

I think this line of books gets a bad rep for some reason.

 

[eyebeams]

Trends seize company cultures all the time, and build up ideologies to defend them. Then there's some kind of regime change and motive for people to look innovative by trashing predecessors. This is understandable because that regime change happens because the current one isn't meeting success standards.

For TSR, you have to remember that it built one of the most successful IP collections ever used for fiction from the ground up. There was probably a time when Drizzt Do'Urden -- that single character -- was more valuable then the rest of D&D-related stuff over the same period.

People like to make stupid statements that game designers are frustrated fiction writers because that gets plenty of play with fans (though in many cases, it's actually industry folks saying it manipulate fan opinions through social marketing) but for TSR, a model where RPGs served as a place to experiment with properties for fiction and promote them to early adopters probably made a hell of a lot of sense. And while it had its misses, there's a reason a TSR setting got the nod again in Dark Sun.

And honestly, WotC seems to lack the institutional talent to bring original, tightly integrated game settings out. By "institutional talent" I mean that something about the culture (and not necessarily individuals, who can be really talented even though they're not always allowed to be) makes the company bad at it.

Looking at recent openings in the D&D team, I have the feeling that they don't take settings that seriously and treat "softer" creative aspects pretty cheaply, since the jobs are all about wearing a business development hat as well. Basically, the company doesn't look like it cares enough about settings to have a settings guy. And if they don't care, why should you care?

This is not an new problem. I was chatting with a fellow who opined (and was in a position to possibly know) that WotC-Eberron (not Keith Baker's Eberron) as a sort of trash heap for setting ideas from the old days, just as the Realms had previously been able to accept all kinds of odds and ends from other games (like Kara-Tur). This is the kind of thing that people who care about "synergies" develop, instead of creative leads actually interested in the intrinsic values of what they're working on.

Certainly, 4e represents system innovations that could never be achieved in TSR's culture. It's awesome stuff. Same with 3e. But 3e also featured the dawn of an empty aesthetic over the idea that D&D was something to be embedded in a definable world -- and ironically, it did this by providing enough of a sketch (a few gods, vague history) to let DMs fake it, instead of guiding them to create worlds as a core part of the game. It feels like this is about as much as the company is interested in, even in its own efforts.

Unless WotC understand that the Realms are important as the Realms and its other settings have intrinsic value instead of just being content delivery platforms, they're going to feel weak. And they do. It's time for the company to show gamers that the people in charge of the worlds they like actually like the worlds for themselves, and to find a third way to develop interesting settings again with the idea that the company should see making them as a real part of their business. At the same time, it needs to avoid bloat. I think there's room for balance, though not the will to look for it.

 

[AllisterH]

Hmm, the historics are actually considered good? I was under the impression they were considered rather poor. I mananged to snag copies of Vikings, Celts, and Heroes myself, but never got Rome or Fortress. They're not bad, but I'm not really sure the D&D rules are a great match for the real world.

My impression was that
a) not a lot of D&D players were actually interested in those settings. Relating to the thread, with the amount of stuff being produced, it was MUCH MUCH easier for good products to escape notice.

One of the reason why 2e has fewer "classics" imo has nothing to do with the quality of the books, as Celebrim alludes to, but my belief that a classic only becomes one when EVERYONE was playing it.

2e' blistering pace of material (thanks Echohawk for those graphs...still have them from last time) pretty much meant that unless you were rich, you missed out a lot

(I for example, think I must've bought a new D&D book at least once every fortnight and many a time it was closer to once a week during the 2e era and I don't have any of the green softcovers and I think only one or two of the blue softcovers - never got Jakandor either for example)

b) systems like CORPSm GURPS et al were much better suited for historical type games.

D&D frankly has never been my first choice for any type of "historically accurate" game.

 

[Hussar]

I'm almost embarassed to admit this, but, what is Jakandor? That's a totally new one to me. hoh:

Eyebeams - I think the ship has sailed on that, tbh. Paizo seems to have the setting mavens market sewn up pretty tightly. And they're doing a fantastic job of it, let's not understate anything. The Golarian setting is a great setting, extremely well supported. But, it is also their flagship product, so of course it's getting lots and lots of loving from very talented people.

WOTC isn't really directing D&D towards that kind of gamer though. The kind of gamer that obsessively reads and rereads every piece of material about a given setting, spends hours and hours discussing the setting and whatnot. WOTC doesn't seem to be directed towards that level of gamer. They've more focused on the casual gamer, who really isn't all that interested in reams and reams of setting material. All the casual gamer wants is enought to "fake it" to borrow your phrase.

I'm not sure if there is a middle ground here to be honest. If you take the middle position, where you're going to continuously support a setting, but at a very slow rate, I think you'll wind up with a small core of hard-core setting fans, but, most of the rest will quickly lose interest. It's more of a "go all the way or forget about it" proposition. At least in my mind.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

The only historicals I picked up were the Age of Heroes and the Vikings ones. I thought both were pretty good as a jumping off point for using that sort of campaign or campaign elements.

A friend of mine who is an absolute expert on ancient Rome picked up the Roman book and said that despite some obvious historical inaccuraces it wasn't a bad one.

I think this line of books gets a bad rep for some reason.

I think part of the problem is that they erred on the side of being safe. They seemed to go to pains to avoid power creep, but ended up dispensing with a lot of what appealed to gamers about D&D. I think they could have afforded to concentrate a bit more on the fantastical elements of their respective settings.

 

[LurkMonkey]

I'm almost embarassed to admit this, but, what is Jakandor? That's a totally new one to me. hoh:

Hey man, don't feel bad. I've been playing for 31 years, I have a ton of material and I was active when it was released, and I STILL just learned about the setting last week. But, a lot of folks called it out as their favorite setting over on the 'what D&D campaign world did you most enjoy most' thread, and the three books on it were dirt cheep on the used book markets, so I figured: What the hell?

The fact that two people obviously fairly heavily invested in a hobby never heard of an entire setting kinda brings us full circle on the original argument. From what I can see and the kudos it has garnered in the other thread, Jakandor is obviously a setting that could have been very successful if it had been more supported by TSR. Yet, they had so much going on (and I think they were in the midst of imploding when this setting came out in 1998) that big fans of the game never even heard of it.

That's stupid business right there. Still, as a fan I am happy I have yet another setting to yoink from

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Hey man, don't feel bad. I've been playing for 31 years, I have a ton of material and I was active when it was released, and I STILL just learned about the setting last week. But, a lot of folks called it out as their favorite setting over on the 'what D&D campaign world did you most enjoy most' thread, and the three books on it were dirt cheep on the used book markets, so I figured: What the hell?

The fact that two people obviously fairly heavily invested in a hobby never heard of an entire setting kinda brings us full circle on the original argument. From what I can see and the kudos it has garnered in the other thread, Jakandor is obviously a setting that could have been very successful if it had been more supported by TSR. Yet, they had so much going on (and I think they were in the midst of imploding when this setting came out in 1998) that big fans of the game never even heard of it.

That's stupid business right there. Still, as a fan I am happy I have yet another setting to yoink from

I've been playing the same length of time, so it's good to see another old-timer who started in '79; sometimes REAL old-timers act like we're dilettantes instead of allowing us the grognard status we're due

I heard of Jakandor and saw one or two of the books when they were released, but never saw all of them. Other than not promoting it well-enough, I think TSR did something right with Jakandor - they started out with the intention of only doing three books, and stuck to the plan. I wish they'd done that with more of their settings; I'd much rather be left wanting more than to get sick of something due to how much of it I got.