What kind of print products would want WotC to produce?

[TarionzCousin]

I want to see Dragon and Dungeon back in print, and of the quality Paizo had them at before they got the axe. I was a happy subscriber.

Is there a smile on this forum that shows smacking of one's own head?

There's D'oh!

But perhaps you really mean "Facepalm"

Or you can always go with this classic:

Or this:

 

[JustKim]

I want them to produce cheaper products. The 3rd edition PHB was $20. The 4th edition was $35.

That's not accurate. The 3E PHB was $30. For a short time at launch, the PHB was $20. That price was artificially low because WotC was willing to lose money to win back customers, the same way modern game consoles are expected to lose money in the short term. That is not an assumption on my part, it was explicitly stated and should be self-evident if you look at how much books cost.

It is unreasonable to expect WotC to produce large, full color, high quality books laden with art, developed by a team of people, and sell it to you for less than the cost of hardcover novels with much wider distribution. I paid $26 for the latest Discworld novel, for instance.

 

[Stormonu]

It is unreasonable to expect WotC to produce large, full color, high quality books laden with art, developed by a team of people, and sell it to you for less than the cost of hardcover novels with much wider distribution. I paid $26 for the latest Discworld novel, for instance.

That's one of the problems. I don't want all the fancy border art, full-page color pictures and the like. I'd be happy with (mostly) plain text and B&W illos. Sell the fancy stuff as "deluxe editions", but give me a clean, simple book.

Sadly, I'm not a 4E gamer, but if they wanted to try and sell me something what I want are good adventures with a mix of exploration, combat and puzzles set to an interesting story - not a bunch of loosely themed encounters (The Slaying Stone moreso than Keep on the Shadowfell). I'm also a sucker for monster books (like the one coming out for Hackmaster, though I'd be perfectly fine without the color and fancy page borders/backgrounds). I guess in short, give me something that's as much a pleasure to read as to actually be useful.

 

[GreyLord]

That's not accurate. The 3E PHB was $30. For a short time at launch, the PHB was $20. That price was artificially low because WotC was willing to lose money to win back customers, the same way modern game consoles are expected to lose money in the short term. That is not an assumption on my part, it was explicitly stated and should be self-evident if you look at how much books cost.

It is unreasonable to expect WotC to produce large, full color, high quality books laden with art, developed by a team of people, and sell it to you for less than the cost of hardcover novels with much wider distribution. I paid $26 for the latest Discworld novel, for instance.

ACTUALLY, the reason originally given was that they printed a TON of copies, enough so that the actual price point was lower (the more you print out the better the bargain from the printers which leads to a better price for the customer). They printed a HECK of a lot of them...and they sold out of the first print run and printed a lot of the second. The price went up however, because they weren't printing gigantic, huge, massive print runs.

So, yes, it was artificially low in regards to what it normally would cost, but they still made a little profit off of the core books. Much of it was exactly as you say, in hopes that the initial price offering would get people back into the game. Part of it was because the 2e books originally had sold for that same price and they wanted to avoid the people who may go all nasty about it costing more, etc., despite the fact that the 2e core books had been printed over a decade prior (and inflation had occurred...books that used to be 5 dollars when 2e was printed were 8 dollars when 3e was printed, so a 10 dollar rise in price isn't unexpected).

In that light, with inflation since the release of 3e, books probably should be costing almost 20-25% more...meaning a $30 value would now be around a $35-$36 dollar value.

IMO of course, as if it didn't have to be stated.

 

[Greg K]

I've stated before
1. Unearthed Arcana 4e which includes the following:
a. removing the +1/2 level bonus to skills
b. reintroduces skill points
c. breaks down several of the skills to be less broad
d. a system for handling paragon and epic levels without paragon paths and epic destinies
e. long term injury using the disease track
f. action points that work like true20 conviction/mutants and masterminds hero points
g. the mechanics and math behind building powers (e.g., how much is a push worth)
h. reworking milestones to be more story oriented rather than encounter based for those games that are not based around the dungeon and have infrequent combats. (Rel hit on this early after the release of 4e)
i. something to help differentiate between magical healing from divine power and the warlord's healing (as brought up by Ari on these boards).
j. I wouldn't mind alternative to Paladin's Divine Challenge
k. an option to remove hit points for a True 20/Mutants and Masterminds Toughness save type mechanic
l. Adding a mutants and masterminds type complication system for additional action points
m. non-armored clerics

2. Class supplements formatted like 2e Complete Handbooks and, for 3e, Green Ronin Master Class series. An in-depth focus on an existing class, existing race, new class or new race. For classes, show how to build archetypes from cultures, movies and myths with the inclusion of new builds and powers to support them. For new races, again focus on one race and give variants for different environments and cultures

As a DM the above give tools for campaign building.

As both a DM and player, it would allow me to ignore classes and races that I do not like rather than passing up on a whole book, because only one or two elements that I do want (a major reason I did not buy WOTC 3e supplements and don't want to invest in 4e). Furthermore, having things for a class parcelled out over many supplements is annoying (again, why I stopped buying 3e products and refuse to invest in 4e). A single in depth book means less jumping between books during character creation (and as a DM makes it easier to list which options are and are not available for a given campaign)

And, honestly, I would hire Steve Kenson to write a good Shaman supplement.

3. A PHB/ Heroes of product that has the following
a. races: dwarf, elf, eladrin, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human (maybe, Lizardman and/or half-ogre as well)
b. PHB 1 classes, but replaces the Warlock with either the Bard, Druid or Shaman (and, maybe, drop the Paladin for a second from that list)

edit:
c. a new pantheon. in my opinion, recycling deities from other settings from previous existing settings is lame.

4. a single demon book that includes:
Demogorgon, Juiblex, Orcus, Yeenoghu, Lolth, Baphomet, Fraz-Urb'luu, Graz'zt, Kostchtchie, Pazuzu, Zuggtmoy, Dagon

the quasit,

Sub Demon: manes
Demi Demon: alu-demon
Semi Demon: cambion
Minor Demons: bar-lgura, the chasme, dretch, rutterkin
Lesser Demon: succubus

the type I demon (vrock), the type II demon (hezrou), the type III demon (glabrezu), the type IV demon (nalfeshnee, etc.), the type V demon (marilith, etc.), the type VI demon (balor)

Major Demon: gorristro,

5. a single devil book that includes the following:
Bel, Dispater, Mammon, Belial, Geryon, Moloch, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Asmodeus, Glasya, Lady Fierna, Levistus, the Hag Countess, Amon, Bael, Bitru, Hutijin, and Titivilus,
the imp, the lemure,
Least Devils: nupperibo, the spined devil,
Lesser Devils: barbed devil, the bone devil, the eryines, black abishai, blue abishai, green abishai, red abishai, and white abishai, the bearded devil
Greater Devils: the horned devil (malebranche), the ice devil, the pit fiend, Styx devil

6 Greyhawk based on
a. The original folio and the original boxed set
b. Pantheon from Gary Gygax's dragon articles
c. the little cultural bits from the 1e Unearthed Arcana Barbarian

7. Forgotten Realms based upon
1. 1e Greybox set
2. Original FR series supplements
(and Jeff Grubb at the helm).

8. Darksun based upon pre 1e Revised boxed set

9. Ravenloft based upon Realms of Terror boxed set and supplements w/ Steve Miller at the helm.

10. Savage World editions of 4-10 above

 

[I'm A Banana]

I have an idea. It's kind of a wacky scheme.

A DDI worth $10/month.
Seriously. Quit making it suck more. The point at which your hare-brained anti-piracy schemes start chasing away legitimate, paying customers is the point at which you should realize you've gone too far past the land of sanity and you've lost sight of what is actually important. Come back over that horizon. Make DDI worth it. Quit letting anti-piracy lunacy dictate your business decisions. This is the main thing I want from you.

More Helpfully:

• "Blockbuster" Hardcovers. More fluff than crunch. Big arty things. Proud to show these off to even non-D&D players. Think something like 3e's Draconomicon or Tome of Magic or Book of 9 Swords. Not just lists of monsters and lists of powers and lists of treasure. Give them a theme, give them a big art budget, give them a scope, and lets see what we can get. Don't give us one a month, give us maybe 4 a year. I want monster books that read like bestiaries, player books that read like legends. Make me excited for the rules therein. QUALITY stuff over QUANTITY of stuff.
• Class Digests. Softcover Essentials-style. All the rules you need to make a class, all in one place. Appropriate races. Class and racial feats. Powers. Builds. Items. I should not need anything other than this softcover book to play any class. No more "Arcane Power" this and "PHB3" that and "DDI" the other thing. All of what I need to make a Fighter, in one portable book. You can mix and match books, of course, but since the class is the single most defining trait of any D&D character, supporting the class in various ways is the ideal. Maybe another 4 or so of these per year.
• Dungeon and Dragon as DM and Player Supplements. That guy who wants new D&D rules stuff to read every month? He should get a subscription. There should still be "issues," with some sort of loose theme. This is where your Arcane Power-style alt builds and new items and fresh stuff goes. This is where short adventures and delves go. This is how you get your steady trickle of rules. You can "take it with you" to your game via your DDI subscription, or just print out your character sheet.
• Complete Boxed Sets. Think of these like the Red Box on steroids, or sort of akin to 2e's boxed sets. Everything you need to play a game right now in one cardboard treasure chest, tightly themed around a given locality. Accessories (maps, tokens, tiles, handouts, cards), adventures (a booklet of a few connected plot threads), player material (a player's booklet with new races/classes/builds/powers/feats/items/allies/knowledge) and DM material (a DM's booklet with new monsters/treasure/traps/hazards/villains/NPC's/secrets/lore). It provides mostly what is needed to support the adventures in the location; there's no need for 30 new levels of a new class. Save that for the Class Digest. Give me 5 or 10. Enough to play around in, only what I need, and no more.

As a forinstance, lets say we're re-launching Dark Sun under this model. You get:
[sblock=what you would get]

• The World of Dark Sun, a big, lush, hardcover discussing -- mostly in flavor (with rules support) -- Dark Sun and its awesomeness. You get to hear about slaves in the gladiator-pits and the liberators of Tyr. Stories and artwork, organized fluff and a skeleton of crunch. This is the book you read to get you pumped full of ideas about Dark Sun, and it includes some basic rules (survival rules, maybe a new class or build, a handful of races, gladitorial combat, etc.) and articles (no divine classes, on warped races, on low tech, on survivalist D&D, Dark Sun in D&D history) that make Dark Sun distinctive. It doesn't focus on rules elements, but rules elements are there to support it. This is presented in its own format, not a format like the other 4e books.
• The Dark Sun Digest. Easily portable softcover just filled with the mechanical rules of building a character in Dark Sun. A build, a few races, feats, survival rules, ceramic pieces, whatever else you need. You should be able to bring this + your Class Digest and make a Dark Sun character without any other books.
• "December is DARK SUN Month at DDI!". Oh I see someone was interested in the stats of the Sorcerer-Kings. HERE's a Dungeon article about them, presented like Dungeon's Demonomicon arctiles! Oh, I see someone wants to play Eladrin in Dark Sun. HERE's a Dragon article about how you might do that, complete with feats and advice and whatever.
• The Tyr Boxed Set. Adventures set in the Heroic tier in the city-state and its environs. Here's a map. Here's some desert-y dungeon tiles. Here's 10 levels of the Dark Sun builds and the Dark Sun races. Here's some monster tokens, some character tokens. Here's your DM's book with its NPC machination chart and its rules for interaction.

You also get maybe 4-8 other items this year that don't necessarily follow any ONE theme, but follow their own theme. There's an arty hardcover about the Feywild coming out. There's Class Digests for the Psion and the Necromancer. And there's a Tomb of Horrors boxed set coming out that re-launches this classic campaign. There's a steady stream of Dragon and Dungeon fluff and crunch as well -- it's not throwaway brief articles, but real robust presentations of new stuff from both designers and fans that were "promoted" to Official. So even people who hate Dark Sun have a lot to look forward to. And after this point, we're not putting Dark Sun in physical form (for a while), but it'll have its spot in our regular Dragon and Dungeon entries, along with FR and Eberron and whatever.
[/sblock]
This encourages DDI people to also buy physical product (boxed sets and lush hardcovers = physical value; if they don't play online, class digests are too), and it encourages physical people to hit up DDI every once in a while (Want to see the sweetest new Ranger build, or need stats for Demogorgon? DDI!). No one feels cheated (just a casual player? Boxed set! More hardcore? Digests and Hardcovers!).

Everyone gets high fives!

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'll throw my hat in with the "flavor heavy, crunch lite (or at least crunch medium)" crowd.

More books like Draconomicon and Plane Above, absolutely. More campaign settings. And a lot more "mini-settings." Vor Rukoth and the like are a good start, but the potential for that sort of thing in a non-defined setting is limitless. More cities and ruins, sure, but how about a nation? How about a geographical region? How about a "historical" sourcebook, during the Arkhosia/Bael Turath war? How about revisiting some classic locations (i.e. The Temple of Elemental Evil) but presenting them less as adventures and more as location sourcebooks?

A series of small books based around individual locations (be they tiny or large, but in all cases smaller than campaign-sized) is, I believe, an endless well of potential for some truly great books.

 

[Momeeche]

I want James Wyatt to rub my feet as I eat ice cream and occasionally point at at him with a spoon as I talk about D&D. Don't you want the same thing?

Anyway, I want a reasonable set of releases in a year, with the books available in hardcopy (not necessarily hardback), PDF and on kindle as well. WotC avoiding pdf and kindle is not avoiding piracy. The books hit Demoiniod and Kickasstorrents and PirateBay about a day after they hit the shelves. I'm don't think that is a good thing, I'm just saying WotC avoiding the digital medium is not doing anything good for them.

Some kind of print on demand operation, like what White Wolf does, is not out of the question.

I have other sources for my minis, which are more the hubby's thing anyway.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not to denigrate any of the many fine suggestions above- especially the nice one about a book of characters from their novels*- but all I NEED from an RPG company is crunch.

I hate it when I don't have access to the full range of crunch- as a DM or player- but not enough for me to buy digital media for gaming. So what I want from WotC is the classes, etc., that up until now have been DDI only.







* I've never read a single D&D novel and I'd probably buy that.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

A new setting that hasn't been seen before. (I like swashbucklary, how about that?)

Talents system. Every x levels PCs gain a talent. Talents are small bonuses that are for the most part entirely out of combat things. Some can be setting specific, some can grant a few of the more unloved feats (one that gives Linguist would be awesome), minor bonuses to skills, maybe a free skill power, that sort of thing. The idea is to give non-combat goodies.

Give the poor Runepriest and Seeker some love :I

I totally agree with shaking things up a la Tome of Battle or similar things. I don't dislike the Essentials style classes, but let's keep the creativity going with messing around with the Powers system. We have normal style, Psionics, and Essentials - we can fiddle and create some more!