Jan van Leyden
Adventurer
Not only that, but 6 megapeople playing doesn't mean 6 megapeople buying. For any publisher as a business, it doesn't matter how many people are enjoying your product.
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A road not taken: What if there had been no 4E
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
Not only that, but 6 megapeople playing doesn't mean 6 megapeople buying. For any publisher as a business, it doesn't matter how many people are enjoying your product.
Mouseferatu
Hero
Um, no. It's all one market--D&D players. Individual settings target sub-markets within that primary market, but it's all still fishing from the same pool. That's one of the main reasons for the current "three and out" model: Because the specific market for any given setting is, by definition, smaller than the general D&D market as a whole, and the specific market for any specific supplement in that setting is even smaller, as you're only getting a portion of the smaller, setting-specific market.
Derulbaskul
Adventurer
... with the exception of editing. Editing was a production value that, IMO, declined over time. Stat blocks were a major culprit but the number of basic errors in later products seemed to expand. Let's hope 4E doesn't follow suit.
The Rules Compendium was one of the really useful final products for 3.5E. In a same vein, perhaps we may have been able to see compilations of feats and prestige classes, and perhaps even base classes, to round out the 3.5E products.
Some good adventures would have been appreciated. The Expedition series included were lacklustre at best, IMO, but I liked the smaller Sinister Spire and Fortress of the Yuan-ti and think some other smaller adventures like this would have been good.
I think there was also room to reissue a revised Epic Level Handbook but not until it had actually been playtested or developed or... heck anything other than the slapdash process that was used the first time.
The Forgotten Realms could have seen some introductory products. Imagine a base town threatened by some FR factions and, say, a trilogy of adventures that supported that (oh, for a change, have the adventures edited) and actually showed DMs what a campaign set in FR could be like when you ignore the novels and what people post as fact when it is only opinion on messageboards.
I would have loved to have seen books on Fey, Giants and Savage Humanoids (orcs, goblinoids etc...) plus the third Fiendish Codex.
Oh well, one can only dream....
Yeah, I didn't put the deluxe versions on the list. I've been entering a lot of data over on Geekdō.com lately, so I've become brainwashed into using their submission guidelines to distinguish "items" from "versions"
You're putting data into RPG Geek, Ant? Thank you so much!
Cheers!
Echohawk
Shirokinukatsukami fan
I am indeed. I have been working steadily through my collection and adding anything that isn't already listed on the site. I filled in quite a few gaps for Dark Sun and Birthright, a handful for the Forgotten Realms, and now I'm facing an intimidating list of 40-odd missing Ravenloft productsYou're putting data into RPG Geek, Ant? Thank you so much!
I am indeed. I have been working steadily through my collection and adding anything that isn't already listed on the site. I filled in quite a few gaps for Dark Sun and Birthright, a handful for the Forgotten Realms, and now I'm facing an intimidating list of 40-odd missing Ravenloft products
Eep!
My own additions to the the RPG Geek Database have been far more haphazard... in general, if I have a session report or review I want to add which doesn't yet have the game entry, then I have to create the game first!
(Thus why the Star Wars "Dawn of Defiance" has the seventh in the series listed and not the sixth!)
Cheers!
Nothing. 3E was dead, from a publishing standpoint. Many people were complaining the latter books had a lot of filler and repeated material. There's a reason for that: they were stretching a creatively dying line. There were a couple of things they could have done yet, but that list is very short and would not have kept them on a release schedule glood comparable to the current one.
Storminator
First Post
I have no idea what WotC would have done. I had already stopped buying 3.5 material - WotC or 3pp. I do know that had WotC not made 4e, I would have stopped playing D&D completely. And in all likelihood, never would have taught my younger son to play.
PS
PS
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Which affected TSR's overall profitability, but doesn't get to the question of market saturation in quite the same way I was referring to. Break up the campaign supplements into markets (whether referred to as sub-markets or not is more of a terminology nitpick) and you have the potential to saturate one, some, none, whatever. Your Ravenloft and Planescape product glut may not affect large portions of the Forgotten Realms market at all.
Shemeska
Adventurer
I think he's talking about WotC now having to contend with its own potential overall market being itself split into sub-markets of 4e players and a still supported base of 3.x players. Regardless of market splitting by releasing lots of setting books (or lack thereof), the market is split for them from the start in a way it wasn't for prior editions (at least not in the same way, or arguably as large of a split).
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