What WotC does better than other D20 studios. (mild rant)

[Artimoff]

I said mild rant, but it's more of a complaint,

I feel that other publishers have jumped on the D20 bandwagon willy nilly. Alot of the new campain settings i've seen ( mostly S&S studios) have been presented half a$$ed. Scarred Lands puts out a magic book first, then a monster book, then a campain setting?? That's poor design work IMO. I know that Forgotten Realms has had 15 years of products and even more time for development, but S&S has flubbed up the Ravenloft products too. RL has been around for 10 years and they're producing products seemingly at random.

Does anyone else wish that settings that D20 companies intend to produce for a long time start with a DM book, Player book and Monster book? Then they can add books for particular regions, religions and race/class. It just sounds like the profesional way to do things.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sounds WAAAAAY too purchase-intsensive to me. Heck, even WotC is presenting campaign settings as DM/Player/Monster book all in one.

I've loved the campaign settings I've baught. And Scarred Lands having a monster book and a magic book first actually worked to it's tremendous advantage (people had an idea of what the setting was like before they had to shell out for the book -- mad props!).

Heck, I even liked the Ravenloft 3e setting....tasty....and it was done pretty much how you specified (at first, anyway).

In the extreme unlikely eventuallity of any of my settings being published, I'd certainly try to do one book instead of three....that's just overkill. And if it was successful, maybe specific region books (like EVERYONE does, anyway!)

Meh. To each their own though.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Ahem. Don't you mean what WotC does better than White Wolf? Unless you got some other examples.

Like it or not, but White Wolf seems to sell just fine. I know that the first 3rd Ed. game I played in had monsters in it from the Creature Collection. Why? Because the MM was still two months down the road. So call that bad design work, but it seemed to work just fine for my group.

Besides, moreso than other books they put out, the Creature Collection and Relics & Rituals were designed to be dropped into any setting. These books relied heavily on multiple contributors and were probably a lot easier to produce.

 

[Graf]

SL lead with the creature collection actually. Relics was second.

If you don't like a given product line then your only really choice is to not buy them.
If you only like [game company x] then only buy products by that company.

 

[chatdemon]

Scarred Lands puts out a magic book first, then a monster book, then a campain setting?? That's poor design work IMO.

Let's see, 3e FR products

1st Monsters of Faerun
2nd FRCS

 

[chatdemon]

That's poor design work IMO.

Now that I think about it more...

No, that's good marketting work, actually.

Hook us with teasers about the campaign setting in generic-ish books that we can use whether or not we bite on Scarred Lands, then test the waters with the Ghelspad Gaz, then go for the gusto with the big Ghelspad book.

Rather than sink a bunch of money into something that may or may not have sold, they built an audience and then filled that audience's demands.

Perfectly logical to me.

 

[El_Gringo]

Like it or not, but White Wolf seems to sell just fine. I know that the first 3rd Ed. game I played in had monsters in it from the Creature Collection. Why? Because the MM was still two months down the road. So call that bad design work, but it seemed to work just fine for my group.

Two months?

The Creature Collection only came out a week before the MM. That's why there were so many errors in it.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I think suppliment books are the way to go. Nobody cares about non-WotC campaign worlds. Nobody.

But Biggus! What about the Scarred Lands, Midnight, or Diamond Throne?

Oh, all right. Very few people care.

Look, that new WotC setting Eberron is generating longer threads a year before publishing and all we've seen is a few pages of hobbits on dinosaurs and hover trains. Whereas for the Scarred Lands, the only reason it has so much intrest is because Nightfall is such an uber-pimp he could hype Rossanne Barr into the centerfold of a lad magazine. Yes, the non-WotC settings draw interest, but EN World is lucky enough to have the company representatives post here. All the Forgotten Realms/Eberron have supporting them is a random post by SKR/Keith and there's still more interest.

The d20 campaign worlds have to go out of their way to do something clever to gain attention. Monster books and spell books that just "happen" to have a world with history behind them are a good way to go about it.

 

[Leopold]

this is all about the $$$ folks.


Look what is more useful to DM's/Players? A campaign setting that is tailored to one specific area or a monster book or spell book that can be applied to other settings not just the one it was written for?

IK is the greatest example of this. They needed to rouse up some $$$ so they released the monsternomicon to make the money to keep the company rolling so they could put out the more expensive and more specific Campaign Source Book.

It makes SENSE. IT's not half assed, it's well planned and well orchestrated to generate reocurring revenue and create intrest in the main book by selling small snippets to whet people's appetite.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

I said mild rant, but it's more of a complaint,

I feel that other publishers have jumped on the D20 bandwagon willy nilly. Alot of the new campain settings i've seen ( mostly S&S studios) have been presented half a$$ed. Scarred Lands puts out a magic book first, then a monster book, then a campain setting?? That's poor design work IMO. I know that Forgotten Realms has had 15 years of products and even more time for development, but S&S has flubbed up the Ravenloft products too. RL has been around for 10 years and they're producing products seemingly at random.

Ok, someone else pointed out that Creature Collection was released before Relics & Rituals.

But you need to understand something else about these products: They can be used completely stand-alone, using them in any world you'd like. The SL material there just gives some flavour to them, adding an interesting background.

Any DM could buy these products and use them in their games. But the SL campaign setting books (another is due out later this year, for another area of the world) really are only of interest to people planning to run in the campaign world. There is a lot bigger market for stand-alone products.

Oh, and, btw - Ravenloft first appear alot longer than 10 years ago - the first Ravenloft module was released before FR went to print.

Duncan