Some people treat gaming as more than just a "game".
These are the people who get angry at the DM whenever their character loses too many hit points, and throw a beer bottle at DM when their character dies.
Third Party: If So, Then What?
- Thread starter GMSkarka
- Start date
Some people treat gaming as more than just a "game".
These are the people who get angry at the DM whenever their character loses too many hit points, and throw a beer bottle at DM when their character dies.
Upper_Krust
Legend
pawsplay said:
Could that be (and I'm just surmising) because Pathfinder is just 'new and shiny', coupled with the thinning of 3E support over the previous 12-18 months meaning gamers were in effect, 'starved' of it.
Might be more interesting to see if 3pp for Pathfinder is outselling their 4E counterparts 6-12 months down the line.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Being more discerning shouldn't have any meaning really, since we've moved well past the early days of everyone and their brother producing d20 OGL and making a quick buck. 4e is arguably in its own GSL glut*, with random people producing stuff with varying degrees of quality, while the market has already made its influence known on the quality front with OGL publishers. In fact, the entire RPG industry has as a whole IMO massively improved production quality in the past three years or so, OGL, 4e, and non-d20 as well.
*using the term for convenience since virtually nobody is actually using the GSL among people making 3pp 4e
On that note, looking at the entire RPG spectrum, WotC is IMO firmly in the middle of the pack now in terms of production values, artwork, cover design, etc. Full color interiors aren't rare anymore, and for many publishers it seems increasingly standard (Paizo, Cthulhutech, Catalyst, WW's vampire clan books). It's less WotC slipping than literally the entire marketplace is producing at a much higher level than it was a decade ago in terms of art and production values, and we're all to benefit from that.
pawsplay
Hero
I just picked the first and latest WotC settings. If it's a stark comparison, it's certainly not by contrivance. You've got Dark Sun, Eberron, and Forgotten Realms. I could probably write a "desert adventure" that would fit any of them, but I would have to provide alternative encounters for all three. Dark Sun stuff is very different, as best as I can recall, FR and Eberron don't have the same kinds of critters and cultures in the desert regions as each other. If I want to do a "city of the elves"... that's not going to happen. Too different. In theory, I could write an adventure that could for Thay or the Dragon Kings, in the general, but all the stuff is going to have to be modular.
If I write a Generic Medievalish, it's probably not going to work with any of the published settings. So who do I sell it to? 4e fans who don't play in any of the published settings? In practice, I have to pick one of the settings and write for it, with adaptation to other settings being of secondary concern.
And that brings me back to this: I can't use their fluff, but I have a limited ability to write my own without making my product uncompatible. And FR doesn't need a generic Waterdeep, since it already has the real thing.
Wonder if WotC ever anticipated something like this happening, in how "non clone" 4E 3PP settings are not quite so popular anymore due the hegemony of the DDI character builder. Certainly it was easy to see that a DDI character builder hegemony, could pretty much squelch the player specific splatbook market.
catastrophic
First Post
Again, you're cherry-picking ideas that are difficult to fit between the settings. And a 'generic medievilish' adventure would certainly work for either of those settings, and possibly dark sun, also.
You can draw an arbitary line to support your argument, but that doesn't mean anything. I can think of dozens of scenarios that would fit well in either Eberron or FR or Krynn, Greyhawk, ect, ect. A substantial subset of DMs have their own world, but adapt scenarios and other details to it based on existing source material. How do you think these people operate?
In practice, as a developer or DM, you certainly don't have to pick one of the published settings, and that's quite abundantly clear from how people use them and build them, and the years in which generic scenarios and dungeons have been on offer. You are arguing that it is not feasable to do something which people, both publishers and DMs, have been doing successfully for decades.
This is also all, WOTC's stated approach to modules in most cases. It's also their stated approach to their world design! A third party producer does not face any distinct issues which make it harder for them to create scenarios that can be adapted to various settings. There may be related issues like deity names, ect, but frankly those issues are trivial compared to the essence of good scenario design.
This is once again simply false. There's nothing stopping you or rather, a DM, from adding your city to their Faerun, or Eberron, or Toril, or Krynn, or whatever. And they are likely to be able to do so with minimal conversion. Almost all settings have room for this kind of thing, and FR and Eberron make a point of it.
And writing fluff, even detailed fluff does not render a product incompatible except in a minority of cases. If I write a detailed history of an ancient temple to the sun god which is now in ruins, guess what? It could fit in any of those settings. If I invent a knightly order, complete with laws and chapter houses, ect, no matter what you may argue, the average DM can and will slot that order into their Silver Marches or their Solamnia just fine.
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pawsplay
Hero
By writing their own modules, or doing a fair amount of conversion work.
Are you saying it's false I can't use their fluff, false that there are limitations on how much I can change something before it becomes incompatible, or false that Waterdeep exists in the FR? Because if you are saying any of those things, I think you and I have different definitions of the word "false."
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darjr
I crit!
It could possibly be worse in the next year or so, such as a scenario where the 3PP markets for 4E and Pathfinder are both completely down in the toilet.
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Yeah, this. Which may be why I love these 4e GSL products most out of what I've seen so far:
