Rules Reprints And Setting Proliferation

[Kaodi]

I think you've made an error in this comment. You're focussing on just WotC published settings. In fact, 3E was the Dawn of More Settings Than We've Ever Seen Before.

There have always been tons of settings. Just most of them were not published.

In any case, even assuming that 5e is OGL (and there are reasons to believe it will not be), it is a mistake to think that most 3pp have the sort of cache that an official D&D setting does. Even the good ones do not tend to get mentioned anywhere near as much as the official D&D campaigns - partly perhaps because D&D worlds often also have novels, games, and other material backing them up.

 

[gamerprinter]

Hmmm, thinking some more, perhaps 3 books per "set"

I am quite skeptic on this idea. What makes you think they would sell better?

Yeah, I'd have to agree with Li Shenron. For example, we were just Kickstarter funded for the Kaidan Campaign Setting (PFRPG) with the goal of creating 3 books: GM's Setting Guide, Player's Setting Guide, and a Bestiary (though only received funding for 1 full book and a partial book). But the intention was 3 books for 1 setting, because that's what is needed (450 pages total, approx).

The only way to get all of Kaidan, and 2 other settings in a single book is if that book is 1500 pages long.

I can't see 1/3 of a book supporting any setting, unless it's one damn huge book.

 

[Treebore]

Yeah, I'd have to agree with Li Shenron. For example, we were just Kickstarter funded for the Kaidan Campaign Setting (PFRPG) with the goal of creating 3 books: GM's Setting Guide, Player's Setting Guide, and a Bestiary (though only received funding for 1 full book and a partial book). But the intention was 3 books for 1 setting, because that's what is needed (450 pages total, approx).

The only way to get all of Kaidan, and 2 other settings in a single book is if that book is 1500 pages long.

I can't see 1/3 of a book supporting any setting, unless it's one damn huge book.

Not to mention the maps from the boxed sets are much cooler, because bigger is better.

 

[Lanefan]

Birthright and Mystara seem to be almost entirely forgotten.

A shame, in both cases.

Birthright came out at a bad time, just when TSR was sinking into the murk, so it got very little support. For those who want to run a campaign based more on courtly intrigue than monster killin' it's excellent.

Mystara is the polished-up version of Dave Arneson's "Known World", part of which appears in the overview map in "Isle of Dread". I have a soft spot for this one as it's the setting I've played in since I started with this game; my DM took the Isle of Dread map and built his game around it long before it was ever a published setting.

Lanefan

 

[Obryn]

Two years is a long time to go without a release.

I'd expect them to reprint anything and everything there's a perceived demand for.

-O

 

[Stormonu]

Yeah, I'd have to agree with Li Shenron. For example, we were just Kickstarter funded for the Kaidan Campaign Setting (PFRPG) with the goal of creating 3 books: GM's Setting Guide, Player's Setting Guide, and a Bestiary (though only received funding for 1 full book and a partial book). But the intention was 3 books for 1 setting, because that's what is needed (450 pages total, approx).

The only way to get all of Kaidan, and 2 other settings in a single book is if that book is 1500 pages long.

I can't see 1/3 of a book supporting any setting, unless it's one damn huge book.

I think you misunderstand. I was thinking of a slipcase set, like what was done for the 4E PHB/MM/DMG. Package three different campaign worlds, each with a book about 250 pages long. The only reason I'd think it'd sell better than having them as separate books is you could entice people to buy some of the less popular settings if they were bundled with the more popular ones (like bundling Maztica or Horde with say, Al-Qadim). And it looks like I still missed some campaign worlds to boot (Horde, Red Steel come to mind).

Also, back in 2E, TSR printed a "players guide" to FR, Dragonlance and Greyhawk that were 96/128 (for Greyhawk) pages each, with no rules and the 3E Greyhawk Gazetter is only 96 pages? These player guides had enough information about the campaign world to run it without any other books.

As for maps, the recent hardcovers had poster maps tacked into the back, didn't they? And they could always sell larger maps in packs (like Pathfinder does and they did back in the printed Dragon days of 3E).

 

[gamerprinter]

I think you misunderstand. I was thinking of a slipcase set, like what was done for the 4E PHB/MM/DMG.

Ah, I misunderstood indeed. That makes a little more sense.

 

[prosfilaes]

I think you've made an error in this comment. You're focussing on just WotC published settings. In fact, 3E was the Dawn of More Settings Than We've Ever Seen Before.

There's not a single setting in the list below that we hadn't seen before 3E, except for Spycraft, which is not a D&D setting, and any new settings with D20 Modern which is also not D&D. The statement you were replying to asked for new settings.

The Conan RPG
Dragonlance (not published by WotC)
Theives World
The Black Company
Traveller d20
Spycraft
Blue Planet
Dune
Fading Suns
Kalamar
d20 Modern
Star Drive
Forgotten Realms
Greyhawk
Gamma World

I would argue that, by far, we saw more settings with the publication of D&D 3.0 and the d20 system than with any other edition of D&D--including 2E.

I don't know how the numbers breakdown, but I don't find D20-based systems to really count; there's been D&D-esque material since day 1, and we aren't going to count RIFTS as a AD&D 2 setting.

There's also something important different about 2E settings. There were a handful of quickies, but most of them were well-supported. There were 21 RPG books (counting box sets as 1) printed for Spelljammer. That's quite a bit of material for the DM to work with, not even mentioning Dragon/Dungeon/Polyhedron or non-Spelljammer labeled material. The number of products for most of the above fit on one hand. Off the top of my head, D&D 3 had Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, Scarred Lands, Kalamar and Golarion (towards the end) as full fledged settings, with support. There's a big difference between them and settings that leave most everything for the DM to fill in.

(I mean, I wrote a substantial percentage of one setting for GURPS. But seeing as that setting is one full-page character in GURPS Wizards and one sidebar character (mine) in GURPS Bestiary, I think tossing it on a list of settings for GURPS might misrepresent things a little.)

 

[Li Shenron]

I think you misunderstand. I was thinking of a slipcase set, like what was done for the 4E PHB/MM/DMG. Package three different campaign worlds, each with a book about 250 pages long. The only reason I'd think it'd sell better than having them as separate books is you could entice people to buy some of the less popular settings if they were bundled with the more popular ones (like bundling Maztica or Horde with say, Al-Qadim).

Ok then it would certainly be a set of useful books, fine.

Then the problem would be the price. Most likely this product will be bought only by serious gamers, who might otherwise have bought only 1 or 2 of those settings book, and now they'll buy 3.

OTOH less hardcore gamers won't likely buy this sort of product because it forces you to buy something you aren't interested in. And I don't mean just people who own 4-5 books at most, but also those like me who bought ~25 books in 3ed, but still didn't buy them lightly. I might pick up a slipcase set only if I really liked 2 of the 3 settings, and I would still feel ripped off that I had to buy the 3rd. To me it's the kind of product that irks me, because it would give me the feeling that I am forced into buying more than I want or alternatively I cannot buy what I want.

I can understand that more hardcore gamers won't have the same problem. They already buy a lot of stuff they'll never use just because they like collecting books, and they'll always justify it with the idea that after all it's "potentially" another useful book or interesting to read.

WotC would need to make some good estimations on how many people are in each camp before making such a product.

 

[JohnyFight]

Advantages and disadvantages

Well, Internet is an important factor in this matter. Internet (and the electronics formats for books) has an advantage and a disadvantage:

-advantage: a whole new world of buyers. The geographic barriers has been replaced by the language barriers. An spanish guy (me, i. e.) could only buy games sold in spain. To buy a game from another part of the world was a total hell to perform. Now, If I can read english (and I can) I can buy any game or setting released in any part of the world with only a click. This transform me in a potential client for any USA company. And that's only thanks to the internet.

-disadvantage: the electronic formats for books (PDF and the likes) allow anyone with some basic resources to make a whole game or setting from scratch and sell it online like any big company could. This has oversaturated the market, mixing the buyer and the seller in the same person.

So, I think that if Wotc sells now the old settings they could sell more units than before, when it was released. Because today, every english-speaking gamer could be a potential buyer, no matter where he/she lives.