Are Game Lines Smaller Today?

[Deset Gled]

TTRPG lines have made a decided shift toward fewer releases. I think Paizo is the only company still doing monthly, physical releases for a game line. There are a bunch of reasons for this:

• [Lots of good stuff]...
• When planning for the 5e product line, we found that people wanted about 1 new product per year. The monthly release schedule was choking the game line to death. People who bought everything were playing a game that looked completely alien to people who bought just the core rulebook. 3.5 had entire action categories that were standard in books released after a certain point, but the rules for them weren't in the PHB.

I have long thought that this was partially related to changes in Hasbro management from the top down. At the corporate level, they had a notable shift from manufacturing being a core business to brand management being their primary goal. I want to say the biggest announcements about this were 2015ish - sometime around the start of 5e, although the seeds were probably in place far ahead of that. I was always under the impression that a longer product life cycle was part of that focus on brand management.

Can you speak to any of the corporate changes towards brand management being a factor in the switch to fewer releases and/or a longer product life cycle for D&D? It certainly seems like a very different take on product management from the earlier WotC announcements about 3.5e being planned relatively quickly after 3.0's release.

 

[MGibster]

I feel they discourage any significant changes to the actual system, and contribute to the insane power-bloat and 'spell for everything'. Tacking on inexplicable talents and racial abilities instead of changing the combat system from its endless 'death by a thousand cuts'.

I think that's a fair criticism. Power creep has been the bane of many a game over the years. I think my most favorite splatbooks have been setting material, specifically the ones that cover a single city. Ryoko Owari: City of Lies for Legend of the Five Rings, Night City for Cyberpunk 2020, Arkham for Call of Cthulhu, and City of Greyhawk for AD&D are all gaming products I was able to put to good use.

 

[Theory of Games]

There's actually more ttrpg books than ever IF you count PDFs (which you aren't). Digital is the way of the modern world: easier to produce, distribute and store. Books are unnecessary and archaic products that drain the planet's ecosystem. I'm glad to see most organizations/companies making the switch to digital since, we only have one Earth

 

[Jd Smith1]

There's actually more ttrpg books than ever IF you count PDFs (which you aren't). Digital is the way of the modern world: easier to produce, distribute and store. Books are unnecessary and archaic products that drain the planet's ecosystem. I'm glad to see most organizations/companies making the switch to digital since, we only have one Earth

Algae produce far more oxygen than trees. Far more trees are harvested for TP than books, and far more are burned for slash & grow farming than cut for TP.

But I only buy pdfs. Not for the planet, but because its so much more convenient.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I think that's a fair criticism. Power creep has been the bane of many a game over the years. I think my most favorite splatbooks have been setting material, specifically the ones that cover a single city. Ryoko Owari: City of Lies for Legend of the Five Rings, Night City for Cyberpunk 2020, Arkham for Call of Cthulhu, and City of Greyhawk for AD&D are all gaming products I was able to put to good use.

City of Lies is the main reason I have longed to run a LR5 campaign. I bought it just as a city supp, but it is so much more. Sadly, I've never gotten the right group together.

 

[Staffan]

I think that's a fair criticism. Power creep has been the bane of many a game over the years. I think my most favorite splatbooks have been setting material, specifically the ones that cover a single city. Ryoko Owari: City of Lies for Legend of the Five Rings, Night City for Cyberpunk 2020, Arkham for Call of Cthulhu, and City of Greyhawk for AD&D are all gaming products I was able to put to good use.

Um, ACKSHUALLY I think those are "sourcebooks". "Splatbooks" generally refer to books focusing on material for a particular kind of character, e.g. Clan book, Tribe book, Class book, etc. Since the asterisk sign is usually used as a wildcard, they were often referred to as *books, which then became "splatbook".

Then of course you have those doing double duty, such as the Psi order books for the original Trinity, which both covered a particular psi order and the region in which they were based (e.g. "America Offline" which covered Orgotek and North America).

 

[The Soloist]

Free League and Modipius are very good at churning out books for their product lines. Free League alone is running simultaneously:
Symbarum
Dragonbane
The One Ring
Forbidden Lands
Aliens
Blade Runner
Coriolis
Mutant Year Zero
Electric State
Year of the Loop
Twilight 2000
The Living Dead
Vaesen.

From my budget point of view, it’s the same as TSR, I’m continuously tapped out and thinking of closing my Kickstarter account.

It's a good thing I don't like Modiphius' 2d20 system, otherwise I would have to remortgage my house.

 

[Staffan]

Free League and Modipius are very good at churning out books for their product lines. Free League alone is running simultaneously:
Symbarum
Dragonbane
The One Rimg
Forbidden Lands
Aliens
Blade Runner
Coriolis
Mutant Year Zero
Electric State
Year.of the Loop
Twilight 2000
The Living Dead
Vaesen.

From my budget point of view, it’s the same as TSR, I’m continuously tapped out. To the point the I’m thinking of closing my Kickstarter account.

See, that's precisely the issue. I don't think the OP is complaining about the lack of books overall, but rather about the support for any given line. Now, some of these games have a fair amount of support, but others don't. Forbidden Lands was published in 2018, and has had six subsequent releases, with the last ones being in 2023. Tales from the Loop from 2017 had one stand-alone sequel game (Things from the Flood, set in the 90s and about older teens) and three more releases (primarily additional mysteries). Blade Runner was published in 2023, and has a core book, a starter game, and one adventure.

In the days of yore, Free League would have published something like 3-5 RPGs, but a dozen or more expansions for each one. Now, I can deal with conservative release schedules for a game, but then the core game needs to be made with that in mind. You can't go "here are some highly limited magic rules, if you want more options there's a book coming for that" and then hold off on releasing that book for half a decade. Tales from the Loop is a good example of how to do it: it's a highly focused game, so there isn't much need for anything other than the core book.

 

[schneeland]

Was about to say: I think Free League and Modiphius are good examples for what the OP was talking about. For me, that's less of a bug and more of a feature, but it can be a bit annoying if you are waiting for more material for a specific game, right now, but the next book might only come out in two years.

The counter-example that comes to my mind is Cubicle 7, who do a fair amount of books for their lines, especially Warhammer Fantasy 4. But even that doesn't match the frequency of book releases in the D&D3.0/3.5 era.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Was about to say: I think Free League and Modiphius are good examples for what the OP was talking about. For me, that's less of a bug and more of a feature, but it can be a bit annoying if you are waiting for more material for a specific game, right now, but the next book might only come out in two years.

The counter-example that comes to my mind is Cubicle 7, who do a fair amount of books for their lines, especially Warhammer Fantasy 4. But even that doesn't match the frequency of book releases in the D&D3.0/3.5 era.

While I love WH FRPG, I hate the way publishers keep re-releasing the same adventures that came out in the early 90s. C-7 is finally breaking out of that mold.