Recent content by Parmandur

The thing about Magic is that they do innovate new game pieces that add more toa. Game: FunkoPops are cute, but they only take up space as decoration. Also, Magic mostly makes their moneybfrom casual players, primarily buying at big box or drug stores...

And this is actually still pretty usable, since it covers a lot of specific areas that are not addressed by the new more big picture book, other than Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate and the Moonshae Isles specifically.

You wouldn't know them, they go to a different school.

I do personally love a good thick mass market paperback, so I have felt the loss acutely.

Yeah, a catalog of Wildspace systems and some procedural generation help would have made the book, IMO.

People are tightening their belts, and they are probably pretty exposed to tariffs in their logistics.

I will believe the decline started earlier, but I learned to read in the 90s so mostly I'm just talking about changes I've seen since ebooks took off when I was in College. Heck, there has been a precipitous decline in Mass Market books juat in the past half decade it seems like.

And as you say, Amazon pricing was probably juat as much as detriment: I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the folks who transitioned to buying direct had been prior Amazon customers for D&D products.

Beyond has marketed hard to school clubs, so probably pretty common.

I think Dragon Delves is of pretty good quality, as an anthology all the modules are unburdened by the need of trying to serve a larger plot which tends to be the Achilles heel of a lot of WotC Adventure books. There is one Dungeon-focused module per major Dragon type, each by a different...

YMMV with the pre-made stuff, but for Dragon Delves the designers came in meaning business in terms of Dungeon difficulty.

Yeah, and for books the mass market paperback is becoming an endangered species because of ebooks...but hard copies aren't going anywhere.

I think a more apt comparison is between recorded music and live music. Has recorded music changed the way people interact with live music? Yes. Will it ever fully replace it? No.

Oh, yeah, it isn't "real information" in that sense. Nevertheless, books released after Behond starts direct physical sales are selling less, which would match with statements about the success of direct sales for WotC.

Four or five 10th Level PCs is the stated recommendation.