I think TSR was right to publish so much material

[Hussar]

That graph, back a couple of pages was eye opening. WOW. Six HUNDRED products? Sure, they weren't all D&D, but SIX HUNDRED?!?!?! That's insane.

And, no, I don't think it was good for the hobby. There's simply no way you could maintain anything resembling coherent quality control when you're banging out that much material that fast.

And it showed too. Compare a cleric made from the PHB, to one made using the Complete Priest Guide to one made using Faiths and Avatars. They weren't even close. Someone really, really hated clerics when they put out the CPG. Hrm, let's take a fairly innocuous class (cleric's weren't that powerful in AD&D) and cut off both its feet and shove it back out the door.

Hey, it's not roleplaying if your character is actually effective. :/

As far as the art goes, again, totally agree that there were some great images in 2e. There should have been, infinite monkeys and all that. But, like I said, I'll stack up the 4e PHB against the 2e PHB any day of the week.

If we're bringing in 3e, I'll stack up the 3e Tome of Magic against ANYTHING. That's one seriously pretty book.

 

[Zil]

So, although TSR had an excellent customer in me, I doubt there were many like me. At least, not enough to justify all the material they DID produce, like half-a-dozen $40 box sets and scads of $15 suppliment books. So, from a business point of view, it was stupid. From a fanboi point of view, it was sheer Mt. Celestia.

Heh, there were a few. I also have every Planescape book and box set (multiple copies of some things like the Planewalker's Handbook). I also have just about every Al-Qadim, Ravenloft and Darksun 2E product. I regret not picking up any Birthright but a fellow member of our gaming group was collecting those for a game he never ran. I also have most of the 2E Forgotten Realms stuff although I didn't buy much of that - I inherited it from a fellow gamer who bought everything Forgotten Realms. Sadly I also have most of the complete series which for the most part I didn't really care for because of the game breaking effects some of the "kits" introduced.

So while I could have done with less Forgotten Realms (especially the Seven Sisters and related stuff) and the Complete Series books from 2E, I am grateful for the flood of more imaginative settings material that came out in that era.

 

[Greg K]

And it showed too. Compare a cleric made from the PHB, to one made using the Complete Priest Guide to one made using Faiths and Avatars. They weren't even close. Someone really, really hated clerics when they put out the CPG. Hrm, let's take a fairly innocuous class (cleric's weren't that powerful in AD&D) and cut off both its feet and shove it back out the door.

Hey, it's not roleplaying if your character is actually effective. :/

eh. To each their own. The people I knew liked the Complete Priest's Handbook. It became the starting point for clerics in our homebrews. Faiths and Avatars became the basis for fleshing out the information. I'll still take it over most things published by WOTC.

 

[Celebrim]

I am glad you weren't the brand manager. I, definitely, would have scaled back. However, my list would have been:

Hmmm...first, I notice that you list doesn't contain 'Night Below' which is the one thing on the list that has stood the test of time, still garners very loud acclaim, and which would be expensive to now procur via ebay or Amazon (suggesting it could be profitably reprinted).

Encyclopedia Magica, Volume II
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume III
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume IV

Only in a very small print run, and only if Encyclopedia Magica, Volume I sold well. If I remember correctly, the idea behind these was ok (compile all spells), but the execution was pretty bad as they used a book format uncommon in RPG books and I think most people found the Quarto(?) format not particularly useful.

Birthright Campaign Setting
Blood Enemies: Abominations of Cerilia
Player's Secrets of Ariya
Player's Secrets of Endier
Player's Secrets of Ilien
Player's Secrets of Medeore
Player's Secrets of Roesone
Player's Secrets of Tuornen

The Birthright setting was probably the most creative and best written thing that they published that year. It also, quite unsurprisingly, flopped. Simply put, 2e could not afford to support another setting at this time. The market was saturated, and Birthright was a niche setting at that.

The Gothic Earth Gazetteer: A Masque of the Red Death Accessory

I love the Gothic Earth setting, but can't help but feel that there just wasn't alot of demand for it. The basic problem here is that the majority of Planescape and Ravenloft material is cross compatible with other settings and with most generic homebrews. Von Richeten's Guides for example can be sold to DMs that run normal fantasy games but want more detail and variaty in their classic monsters. So who is the market for the Gothic Earth Gazetteer? Only DMs running a Gothic Earth campaign. That's a tiny number. You can sell a few to those that just like to read RPG books, but this is not something to bank the company on. Still, I would have liked to have done one or two releases per year of all new material for each setting, and this might well have been one of those for Ravenloft.

I probably would have also wanted a Dark Sun release, but that woudl have required completely rethinking what material to expand on because Dark Sun was a badly mismanaged product by this point. Ditto Forgotten Realms.

Planes of Conflict
Planes of Law

I'd be inclined to want to release only one of these and put the other off until the next year, but if there was some indication of strong sells in the Planescape setting I might have done both. Mostly at this point you are selling to setting completionists. These are books that are going to see very little use in most campaigns, but Planescape is nice in that most campaigns at least have a multiplanar universe in theory even if no one much ever goes there.

I'm torn on the moster supplements. On the one hand, monster books tend to sell well. On the other hand, they were putting out tons of monster supplements at this point and by then, they'd really soured people on the quality of the monstrous supplements and they were feeling very forced and slapdash. I think that

I think I would have taken the Night Below project and expanded on it.

a) Release a crunch centered revised 'Dungeoneer's Survival Guide'.
b) Release a fluff centered 'Night Below' generic campaign setting. The thing about the Underdark is that most campaigns have one. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the 'Boxed Set' format. You are paying for an expensive box and you can't look at the content to see if you'd really want to buy it. I'd prefer either a thick soft cover or a some sort of cheaper packaging for a bundle of books. I notice that the format didn't last much past TSR folding.
c) Release the Night Below campaign as a 4 part module series possibly also with an option to buy all four in a single bundle.
d) Release a monstrous supplement that was Underdark centric as the annual monstrous supplement.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

. . .On that day, I got the revised Dark Sun boxed set, the Player's Option Skills and Powers, and a big pad of character sheets. I loved all three. EXCEPT...

I couldn't use skills and powers with Dark Sun. And I couldn't use the character sheets for either, without making modifications (and that kind of defeats the purpose of premade character sheets, doesn't it?). Each product was mutually exclusive.

You know, those were the days when I re-typed the Dark Sun books for my own use with player's option modifications in mind. I was determined! I still have those files on my hard drive (in the obsolete Pagemaker format).

I then went and found every single arcane spell in all TSR products that could conceivably fit Dark Sun's themes (as I understood them) and typed them all up in a single document. I actually got TSR's Jim Butler's approval to post this AD&D document online for other fans to download from the official Dark Sun fansite. I believe it is still hosted on Athas.org today.

The days when timeless youth boredom led to roleplaying productivity!

 

[Hussar]

Celebrim - The Encyclopedia Magica books were the magic item books not the spells. I actually bought all four of these and loved the everyloving crap out of them.

But, I can totally see people not wanting these.

GregK - how did you manage to use both Complete Priest and Faiths and Avatars in the same game? Complete Priest cut clerics down to three or four spheres (if you had anything approaching a standard cleric's combat abilities) whereas the Faiths and Avatars were a powergamers dream. These two books were pretty much the polar opposite to each other mechanically.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Hussar
Oh! Spell Compendium, 3rd ed, I knew there was one Wayne Reynolds pic that I liked just couldn't think what it was, alas think I Ebyaed that book off (ran out of room had to get rid of 1/2 my collection, aieeee the pain!! )

The painting of the War Forged Titan vs the goblin riders in 3rd ed was damn good, probably only one I'd want a print of from that edition, that's the one I recall
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/spellcomp_gallery/92194.jpg

the books I liked in 3rd ed were the "environment" and "critter" ones: Forstburn, Stormwrack, Sandstorm, and Draocnomicon, book onthe abyss and one on the hells who's name I can't recall, Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness.
thsoe were well done and the thing is, a well done book of that nature SHOULD be able to span game editions!

Magic Item and Spell Compendiums of 2nd ed were FANTASTIC!!
"Z"..was there a cutlass that turned into a small ship?? and a magic biscuit udner Z, too? hehe

JohnRTroy,
yeah that'd be a good idea, though surprised if their wasn't a book released on such?

Orius,
well, lots of folk have sugegsted that D&D is a form of birth control all itself...
well any hobby is

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[AllisterH]

Encyclopedia Magica was the one with the faux leather cover and the nifty silk style bookmark.

In terms of production value, it was incredible (one of the few 2e books that has never fallen apart on me compared to say Faiths & Avatars that fell apart after 1 year) and in terms of content, it blew the Magica Encyclopedia out of the water (now THERE was a useless product -- all it did was reference where you could find items and didn't even have all items).

EM had full descriptions of EVERY item ever created in TSR products at that time including Dungeon and Dragon!!

The EM on the other hand even though it used full colour recycled art actually went to the trouble to MATCH pictures with the category and the black and white art was seviceable in depicting specific items when appropriately described in the text.

Great product and I consider EM as one of the "essential" items for any 1e/2e DM playing group (and I've seen similar praise for it on dragonsfoot and r.g.f.d).

That said, it was a money loser in that I distinctly remember TSR officials mentioning that they lose money on each book sold since the quality of the book itself was way above average.

Conversely, the Spell Compendium actually made money but it's production value could not even come CLOSE to EM. Hell, even the paper quality of EM was at least a grade higher than the type found in typical TSR products of the time.

 

[Greg K]

GregK - how did you manage to use both Complete Priest and Faiths and Avatars in the same game? Complete Priest cut clerics down to three or four spheres (if you had anything approaching a standard cleric's combat abilities) whereas the Faiths and Avatars were a powergamers dream. These two books were pretty much the polar opposite to each other mechanically.

The format on clerics of different deities not the powers.

 

[billd91]

The Encyclopedia Magica was exactly the type of product I wanted at that stage in my D&D playing (and running). Same with the spell compendia. It's sad that the former may have lost money because I'd give a freakin' medal to whomever came up with the idea for and provided oversight on these products.