Khur
Sympathy for the Devil
Forked from the thread about my cohorts and me losing our jobs.
And this leads me to dispel another myth I often wanted to chime in about. Despite popular speculation, nobody really "competes" with Wizards and D&D in the tabletop RPG pool, as long as we define "competes" as "taking meaningful market share from Wizards." I mean nobody. Fortunately, one doesn't have to compete on that level to be successful. That's a good thing in my opinion, allowing games such as Pathfinder and Mutants & Masterminds/True 20 to do well (I hope) financially for creative folks at small companies.
Although I know some fans see it as a battle, we designers are fairly amicable and part of a small group, definitely with strong opinions. Even if I don't know another designer, I probably know someone who knows him or her. We've probably even had a drink with such folks at GenCon or whatnot. I wrote a little d20 book for Silverthorn Games, and got to meet Goodman at D&D Experience last year. I've had the privileged of meeting Chris Pramas and company through my association with Rob Schwalb, for example. I once did a little work with Sean K. Reynolds before he went to Paizo, and I shake his hand every time I see him. I've never managed to sit down with Jason Bulmahn for a beer, but I meant to and would in a heartbeat. I hope these people do well so they can keep doing what they love.
That doesn't mean they do or need to actually compete with Wizards. And my statement doesn't mean I think nobody can or will compete on that level. It just isn't really happening now. The real competition for Wizards and everyone else is other forms of entertainment, especially video games.
None, really, if you're talking about third-party people who make D&D-related or d20 derivative RPG materials--including 3e stuff and d20-era spinoffs. It seems to me, without any snark intended, that many people here and on other boards have a, shall we say, highly optimistic view of the size of tabletop RPG companies and who actually competes with who. Most are tiny, and darn few have the wherewithal to do more than hire freelancers on a per-job basis. (That's better than nothing, of course.) Even those that seem to have a decent "fulltime" staff sometimes have that staff spread across the country in what amounts to a collective of regularly employed freelancers. (Nothing wrong with that--it's cool people can work this way nowadays. And some of my favorite people have done so--such as Rob Schwalb with Green Ronin.)Considering the state of the 3pp business today, what companies other than WotC are likely to hire fulltime? Goodman Games perhaps?
And this leads me to dispel another myth I often wanted to chime in about. Despite popular speculation, nobody really "competes" with Wizards and D&D in the tabletop RPG pool, as long as we define "competes" as "taking meaningful market share from Wizards." I mean nobody. Fortunately, one doesn't have to compete on that level to be successful. That's a good thing in my opinion, allowing games such as Pathfinder and Mutants & Masterminds/True 20 to do well (I hope) financially for creative folks at small companies.
Although I know some fans see it as a battle, we designers are fairly amicable and part of a small group, definitely with strong opinions. Even if I don't know another designer, I probably know someone who knows him or her. We've probably even had a drink with such folks at GenCon or whatnot. I wrote a little d20 book for Silverthorn Games, and got to meet Goodman at D&D Experience last year. I've had the privileged of meeting Chris Pramas and company through my association with Rob Schwalb, for example. I once did a little work with Sean K. Reynolds before he went to Paizo, and I shake his hand every time I see him. I've never managed to sit down with Jason Bulmahn for a beer, but I meant to and would in a heartbeat. I hope these people do well so they can keep doing what they love.
That doesn't mean they do or need to actually compete with Wizards. And my statement doesn't mean I think nobody can or will compete on that level. It just isn't really happening now. The real competition for Wizards and everyone else is other forms of entertainment, especially video games.