Originally I was thinking of a wish list of products for the WotC release schedule. But I figure why not open it up to any company that typically publishes d20 or OGL material.
What do you hope gets published? Similar to the past? New ideas?
Some things that come to mind for me:
WotC
Deities and Demigods - this would be a combination of the 3E book's content on building a cosmology, with the Faiths and Pantheons/Complete Champion/Core Belief's style material on incorporating religious themes into play on the 'material plane' (How churches work internally, what they do for the people that makes them relevant to the commoners and leaders of the world, agendas of the church leaders, etc). The pantheons used would be primarily or exclusively D&D pantheons - Greyhawk, FR, and Eberron, plus maybe one historical Earth one (Norse I'd prefer, but would probably do Greek or Roman for broader appeal if I was the D&D brand management folks). There would be stats for some way to interact with deities, probably stats for aspects and avatars instead of deities themselves. Those I would save for an epic level book - since at that level you might legitimately encounter and even confront deities directly.
Deities and Demigods II: Epics and Myths. This is basically the same book as the above, but instead of the D&D pantheons, they introduce real world pantheons - Norse and Indian for sure. Others as well. The book will also be the handbook for running and playing games of a more mythological tone - Norse sagas, Greek epics, that style of play. Imagine a combination of Deities and Demigods, and Heroes of Myth (similar to Heroes of Horror - if WotC had ever written such a thing). That's what this book would cover.
Manual of the Planes - Combine the info on building planar settings from the 3E version, with info on playing planar themed campaigns, sending your PCs to the planes peridically, etc.
Stronghold Builders Guide - This does for 4E what it did for 3E, with the additon of covering moving into an existing stronghold instead of only covering building new ones. It will also cover realm management - from running a frontier stronghold, fief, barony, all the way up to being king.
Heroes of Battle and Heroes of Intrigue - These two, and the above, are written together and released back to back so that elements mesh seamlessly, and players can finally have the material that so many repeatedly ask for - to provide a consistent rule set for running domains, making war, and playing politics and spy games. All three books are put into the OGL or d20 license to that publishers can write adventures that leverage the mechanics.
Book of Lairs - I think of this as half completed adventures, building blocks, and publisher doing the hard part for DMs. Give me monsters with reasons that PCs might encoutner them, from the mundane (like Trolls attacking a village near the swamp), to the more involved (Dragon from the countryside running a band of bandits). Give me good maps of their lairs. Give me stats for cohorts, treasure caches, and suggested tactics. Use Green Ronin's idea of 'capers' from their M&M 1E Freedom city book - adventure ideas for the adversaries and monsters, not mapped out adventures - Combine ideas from Book of Challenges, Fantastic Locations, and Lords of Darkness/Dragons of Faerun into a single book that gives GMs ideas, and building blocks to piece those ideas (or one's they develop on their own) together. These book has all the bits people might mine out of an adventure, without the written adventure. It is a kit bash of the things that home brewers might stat up, draw on graph paper, and so on - supplemented with some ideas on how to use it that get's creativity flowing, without the level of detail that a do it yourself DM wouldn't need to flesh out and/or document. You could even make setting and regional offshoots of this, one or two per year, like Book of Lairs Forgotten Realms, Book of Lairs The North, or Book of Lairs Sharn. Last but not least, a big part of fighting these adversaries should be action (or at least exploration) taking place in the lair! To make it over the top, give me poster maps like Fantastic locations. I've heard that the cost is high for printed maps - so let me print them out to-scale. Include a CD in the book, have it available for free on the website, etc.
Book of Villains - A companion to Book of Lairs. The adversaries might be masterminds, rival PC groups, secret wizard organizations, etc. Enemies you'd encounter and fight that wouldn't be tied to a fixed lair, that you could oppose through many adventures or storylines.
Coin and Commerce of the Realms - Let Ed write this book outlining mercantile campaigns in the Realms. I read something where Ed said he's been wanting to write something like this but it's never been green lighted by the people who decide what gets released.
Wars and Conflicts of the Realms - A book packed with plot themes, and ideas for multi-adventure story arcs as well as self contained adventures. The elements here help GMs bring the idea that 'something is always happening in the Realms' into their games. Maybe incorporating various structural elements from Grand History of the Realms, Poor Wizards Almanac, Power of Faerun, and so on. Mix, and end up with a book you can pull ideas from and riff off of for adventure laden conflicts in any region of the Realms.
Lords of Darkness 4E - Revise it. Update it. Expand it to more pages. IMO, one of the two most useful supplements for GMs from the 3E/3.5 FR product line. The other being Power of Faerun, which had minimal stats (maybe the best way to update this would be with a DI download, instead of a reprint).
Digital Initiative - Sample adventures utilizing material from new releases - ideally for free, and note these are different from any adventures in Dungeon. Don't force Dungeon subscribers to buy other products to run those adventures. Do provide example adventures that highlight cool (and non-obvious) ways to use new material to those who have purchased new releases.
Malhavok
An update PDF of Ptolus to 4E rules. Either with the material edited into a new released of the book (PDF or print edition welcome), or just a nuts and bolts PDF download of raw rules bits - swap out x with y, new stat blocks for so and so, etc.
Paizo
Greyhawk 4E. Campaign setting and supporting adventures, and source material gazeteers like Basic D&D, The Marklands, etc. (Note, if Pathfinder Chronicles is good I'd still buy that for the stronger S&S feel).
What do you hope gets published? Similar to the past? New ideas?
Some things that come to mind for me:
WotC
Deities and Demigods - this would be a combination of the 3E book's content on building a cosmology, with the Faiths and Pantheons/Complete Champion/Core Belief's style material on incorporating religious themes into play on the 'material plane' (How churches work internally, what they do for the people that makes them relevant to the commoners and leaders of the world, agendas of the church leaders, etc). The pantheons used would be primarily or exclusively D&D pantheons - Greyhawk, FR, and Eberron, plus maybe one historical Earth one (Norse I'd prefer, but would probably do Greek or Roman for broader appeal if I was the D&D brand management folks). There would be stats for some way to interact with deities, probably stats for aspects and avatars instead of deities themselves. Those I would save for an epic level book - since at that level you might legitimately encounter and even confront deities directly.
Deities and Demigods II: Epics and Myths. This is basically the same book as the above, but instead of the D&D pantheons, they introduce real world pantheons - Norse and Indian for sure. Others as well. The book will also be the handbook for running and playing games of a more mythological tone - Norse sagas, Greek epics, that style of play. Imagine a combination of Deities and Demigods, and Heroes of Myth (similar to Heroes of Horror - if WotC had ever written such a thing). That's what this book would cover.
Manual of the Planes - Combine the info on building planar settings from the 3E version, with info on playing planar themed campaigns, sending your PCs to the planes peridically, etc.
Stronghold Builders Guide - This does for 4E what it did for 3E, with the additon of covering moving into an existing stronghold instead of only covering building new ones. It will also cover realm management - from running a frontier stronghold, fief, barony, all the way up to being king.
Heroes of Battle and Heroes of Intrigue - These two, and the above, are written together and released back to back so that elements mesh seamlessly, and players can finally have the material that so many repeatedly ask for - to provide a consistent rule set for running domains, making war, and playing politics and spy games. All three books are put into the OGL or d20 license to that publishers can write adventures that leverage the mechanics.
Book of Lairs - I think of this as half completed adventures, building blocks, and publisher doing the hard part for DMs. Give me monsters with reasons that PCs might encoutner them, from the mundane (like Trolls attacking a village near the swamp), to the more involved (Dragon from the countryside running a band of bandits). Give me good maps of their lairs. Give me stats for cohorts, treasure caches, and suggested tactics. Use Green Ronin's idea of 'capers' from their M&M 1E Freedom city book - adventure ideas for the adversaries and monsters, not mapped out adventures - Combine ideas from Book of Challenges, Fantastic Locations, and Lords of Darkness/Dragons of Faerun into a single book that gives GMs ideas, and building blocks to piece those ideas (or one's they develop on their own) together. These book has all the bits people might mine out of an adventure, without the written adventure. It is a kit bash of the things that home brewers might stat up, draw on graph paper, and so on - supplemented with some ideas on how to use it that get's creativity flowing, without the level of detail that a do it yourself DM wouldn't need to flesh out and/or document. You could even make setting and regional offshoots of this, one or two per year, like Book of Lairs Forgotten Realms, Book of Lairs The North, or Book of Lairs Sharn. Last but not least, a big part of fighting these adversaries should be action (or at least exploration) taking place in the lair! To make it over the top, give me poster maps like Fantastic locations. I've heard that the cost is high for printed maps - so let me print them out to-scale. Include a CD in the book, have it available for free on the website, etc.
Book of Villains - A companion to Book of Lairs. The adversaries might be masterminds, rival PC groups, secret wizard organizations, etc. Enemies you'd encounter and fight that wouldn't be tied to a fixed lair, that you could oppose through many adventures or storylines.
Coin and Commerce of the Realms - Let Ed write this book outlining mercantile campaigns in the Realms. I read something where Ed said he's been wanting to write something like this but it's never been green lighted by the people who decide what gets released.
Wars and Conflicts of the Realms - A book packed with plot themes, and ideas for multi-adventure story arcs as well as self contained adventures. The elements here help GMs bring the idea that 'something is always happening in the Realms' into their games. Maybe incorporating various structural elements from Grand History of the Realms, Poor Wizards Almanac, Power of Faerun, and so on. Mix, and end up with a book you can pull ideas from and riff off of for adventure laden conflicts in any region of the Realms.
Lords of Darkness 4E - Revise it. Update it. Expand it to more pages. IMO, one of the two most useful supplements for GMs from the 3E/3.5 FR product line. The other being Power of Faerun, which had minimal stats (maybe the best way to update this would be with a DI download, instead of a reprint).
Digital Initiative - Sample adventures utilizing material from new releases - ideally for free, and note these are different from any adventures in Dungeon. Don't force Dungeon subscribers to buy other products to run those adventures. Do provide example adventures that highlight cool (and non-obvious) ways to use new material to those who have purchased new releases.
Malhavok
An update PDF of Ptolus to 4E rules. Either with the material edited into a new released of the book (PDF or print edition welcome), or just a nuts and bolts PDF download of raw rules bits - swap out x with y, new stat blocks for so and so, etc.
Paizo
Greyhawk 4E. Campaign setting and supporting adventures, and source material gazeteers like Basic D&D, The Marklands, etc. (Note, if Pathfinder Chronicles is good I'd still buy that for the stronger S&S feel).
