4e Extravaganza Seminar (with Cover Pics)

[AllisterH]

A good example of the setting vs core placement would be Hammerfist.

Hammerfist is a generic accessory detailing a dwarven town. Previously, something like this would be published under a campaign setting.

 

[Intense_Interest]

No, because your entire premise is flawed. As soon as you removed setting-specific books from the equation, you guaranteed that your numbers would be off.

Like it or not, setting products are a part of the production line. They're a part of the D&D library, they take up spots on the schedule, and they cost the same to produce.

If you compare the entire release schedule for 3.5 to that of 4E, I think you'll find that they're comparable. And if you compare the entire release schedule of late 2E, with its huge mass of setting material, I think you'll find that some of TSR's years were more productive, in terms of sheer quantity, than any of WotC's.

Remember, this entire premise is based on that there is only a certain amount of words and pages that an RPG can produce, and that it is better for those words and pages to be spread out over a period of time, for the health of the product.

So therefore, the "setting material" is more niche-focused (more like niche of a niche of a niche focused), so the amount of words and pages used for each setting book takes less out of the "words and pages well", and is therefore more healthy for the product.

Or maybe for the consumer, but considering DDI, the price for any amount of content for D&D is a fairly stable flat cost per year.

Actually, I'm really uncertain where this premise leads to. Could GW enlighten us? What exactly is the problem, specifically, with more books being released, versus less, or versus any other situation?

 

[TylerDurden]

The RPG Company Churn

I think too many people feel that just because they produce these great RPG books that they are "milking" people for their money.

I strongly disagree, I know that Wizards or any other company for that matter spends tons of money and resources developing these items to build a better game provide fluff, and worlds, etc. The same people that whine because they have to pay money for a game they like also bitch when they don't publish stuff they want or get it our fast enough. You can't get it free, they run a business for profit.

Nobody is forcing anyone to buy these items. I think that the product lineup over the next year is great and will likely buy many of the new books. I think they look great.

The only think WOTC could do that would be a huge help is NOT REPLACE THE CORE RULES! Now that we are at 4th Edition, for gods sake do not rev it again to 5th edition! I don't mind if they come out with errata and continue to build new worlds to play in and cool new player abilities etc...just DONT MAKE ME BUY A WHOLE NEW SET OF EVERYTHING! I JUST WONT DO IT! As someone who left the game back in the 80s when I was forced to replaced my beautiful Easly covered AD&D books, I was furious! And now after all this time I have returned and enjoy the new stuff. I am glad I missed all the 3rd edition crap because it seems way too complex...me likes the 4th edition, similar to what I remember.

End rant.

 

[Rechan]

So therefore, the "setting material" is more niche-focused (more like niche of a niche of a niche focused), so the amount of words and pages used for each setting book takes less out of the "words and pages well", and is therefore more healthy for the product.

Although the setting books often have tons of crunch, too. Monsters and spells/feats/whatnots. And with each, that does take away something that could come from somewhere else.

(And often the Crunch is mined for other games, too, even if something like a Setting-Organization specific PrC is taken).

 

[doctorhook]

Cool stuff! I like most of what I see, (in terms of both artwork and products), and this Official D&D "Heroscape" thing makes me curious about what the heck Heroscape is and how to play it -- it looks like it might be a cool way to introduce my younger cousins to D&D!

I have one complaint though: the cover of Player's Handbook Races: Dragonborn -- blech! I've seen this artist's work before IIRC, but not until seeing it on a cover did it look so bad to me! Cover art should be the best artwork from the book, IMHO. I think the "look" of Dragonborn still needs some polish, but I really liked the concept sketches by William O'Connor!
[sblock=Ugly Dragonborn cover]

[/sblock]
Also, that mysterious dragon-creature on the middle card of the Three Dragon Ante picture is Io?! That's a picture of the same creature that appeared in the Draconomicon, but until now I had no idea what either creature in that picture was supposed to be -- I don't think that image was ever explained anywhere in that book, nor do I think it described Io physically. At any rate, I had no idea that the grand-daddy of all dragons was so... ugly; I thought he was some kind of Gargantuan Abyssal "Dragon-Krenshar" when I first saw him.
[sblock=Io pictures]Three-Dragon Ante preview

Draconomicon image

[/sblock]

 

[doctorhook]

*golf clap*

I see the supplement mill is still in full swing.

You've been complaining about WotC and 4E at least since 4E was announced two years ago. Since you obviously don't like either one, why the heck are you still taking time out of your day to make cynical comments about them? Not only are your comments misleading, (as repeatedly illustrated by others in this thread), but they're also extremely frustrating to those of us who are very happy with the quality of content WotC is providing -- not to mention that you've provided an almost textbook example of threadcrapping.

Please stop, GnomeWorks.

 

[Agamon]

Kewl beans. Some nice stuff there. Revenge of the Giants, Plane Below, Hammerfast and Von Rukoth. And the new 3-Dragon Ante game is an auto buy.

 

[GnomeWorks]

No, because your entire premise is flawed. As soon as you removed setting-specific books from the equation, you guaranteed that your numbers would be off. Like it or not, setting products are a part of the production line.

That's not why I'm excluding setting-specific books. Setting books do not tend, IMO and IME, to contribute significantly to a system's mechanical bloat. Hence why they are not being counted; if someone threw numbers at me for 4e (or 3e, for that matter) that included setting books, then the numbers I was using were off.

Yes, they eat up part of the schedule; yes, they take time to develop; but that's not the concern. The concern is system bloat.

What exactly is the problem, specifically, with more books being released, versus less, or versus any other situation?

...do none of you remember what happened near the end of 3.5, with the system being way too freaking huge to be anything remotely resembling manageable if you used all the books? And I'm just talking about what WotC put out; bring in third party products, and... yeah, that'd be a freaking mess.

The supplement mill contributes to the mechanical bloating of a system. Not only that, but...

The only think WOTC could do that would be a huge help is NOT REPLACE THE CORE RULES!

Oh, please. Where do you think the supplement mill ends? If you really think that 5e is anything more than a few years' distant, you are fooling yourself. The faster the supplement mill cranks out books, the sooner the next edition is going to be.

This is not a WotC problem. I know that you're all going to ignore me when I say that, you're going to continue to insist that I'm hating solely on WotC with this argument, but that is missing the point. WotC is using the supplement mill model because - you're right, it has worked in the past. It probably works pretty well now. The problem is that, the faster supplements are cranked out, the less life you get out of a given edition, necessitating putting out a new edition so that you can reap the benefits of a new set of actual core.

The issue is not with the company, it's with the model itself. There has to be a better way.

 

[doctorhook]

That's not why I'm excluding setting-specific books. Setting books do not tend, IMO and IME, to contribute significantly to a system's mechanical bloat. Hence why they are not being counted; if someone threw numbers at me for 4e (or 3e, for that matter) that included setting books, then the numbers I was using were off.

Yes, they eat up part of the schedule; yes, they take time to develop; but that's not the concern. The concern is system bloat.

...do none of you remember what happened near the end of 3.5, with the system being way too freaking huge to be anything remotely resembling manageable if you used all the books? And I'm just talking about what WotC put out; bring in third party products, and... yeah, that'd be a freaking mess.

The supplement mill contributes to the mechanical bloating of a system.

You keep talking about this "bloat", but you still haven't explained what it is nor why it's a bad thing. I play 4E, I enjoy 4E, and I pay for products that expand the content of my 4E game, so why should I be upset about a steady stream of new products? (4E's release schedule has been quite managable so far, IMHO.)

Oh, and you're way, way off-topic.

Where do you think the supplement mill ends? If you really think that 5e is anything more than a few years' distant, you are fooling yourself. The faster the supplement mill cranks out books, the sooner the next edition is going to be.

This is not a WotC problem. I know that you're all going to ignore me when I say that, you're going to continue to insist that I'm hating solely on WotC with this argument, but that is missing the point. WotC is using the supplement mill model because - you're right, it has worked in the past. It probably works pretty well now. The problem is that, the faster supplements are cranked out, the less life you get out of a given edition, necessitating putting out a new edition so that you can reap the benefits of a new set of actual core.

The issue is not with the company, it's with the model itself. There has to be a better way.

You haven't proven that supplements are being published any faster now than they were during 3E (including 3.5E). As for new editions, please don't mince words: when you say, "5E is [not] more than a few years distant," what exactly do you mean by "a few years distant"? Two years? Five years? Eight years? All of those look like they could fit your prediction, and yet there's a huge difference between them. No one expects 4E to last for fifty years, but five years isn't at all unreasonable, nor is it inconceivable that WotC will be able to come up with new and interesting material during that time.

Now please fork this over if you insist on arguing about it, GnomeWorks.

 

[I'm A Banana]

4e is part of the edition treadmill.

But with stuff like the online subscription model for DDI, they obviously are trying to find ways to wean themselves off of it.

It's a big risk to change models entirely, so they do little experiments here and there.

I don't think "WotC Makes More Books" should be that surprising to anyone. There's other ways to do it in the future that they're probably looking at, but for the forseeable future, we've got the supplement mill.

Which is fine. Most of those books, I like. It's not like there's not a demand for it.

But by D&D's 50th anniversary, we'll probably be playing the game in a very different way than we do now.