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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6552772" data-attributes="member: 37579">Prior to 1984. Earlier than that was comparable to 1978 and still less than what 5e will release this year in official content. That was when TSR really started churning out the products.Of course, that was also about the time the Blumes were also trying to sell TSR because it was in poor financial shape. Three years later and TSR laid off 75% of its employees. D&D has a long history of poor finances and struggling to turn an adequate profit. Continuing using the strategies of the past seems like a losing proposition. The difference between a monthly AP released in six parts and a single volume adventure products is largely cosmetic. I'm sure WotC could split up Princes of the Apocalypse into six books, with a total cost of 2.5x the single volume price. At 96 pages each, the Tyranny of Dragons storyline is effectively six 32-page adventures.There's no point though. Most people aren't playing fast enough to get through an entire storyline in less than six months. And the number 1 bit of advice people are given when asking about running a Pathfinder is "wait until it's finished so you can read it all and be ready."Individual AP volumes made sense for Paizo in 2008, because they were a magazine company and needed to continue monthly product for their subscribers. But the first part of their APs always sells better and later volumes sell far fewer copies. And there's a continual demand from the fans for collected volumes that Paizo cannot fulfil. Because the APs are written over several months, the authors can't coordinate well, and build a cohesive story. APs tend to be very episodic, and the overarching plot tends to be loose. If one chapter needs to be longer and another shorter, there's no way to shift content. And a lot of the content you're paying for in the AP is largely redundant: monsters that are hard to find later, some fiction, and a world article. If they could start again, Paizo might very well opt to release single volume APs, where they could create a more cohesive and focused product.  Pathfinder has also been dethroned. It ruled for four years. Whether or not it reclaim the top spot or sinks into gaming history but remains to be seen. I bet not.Personally, I'm not buying any more PF books. I'm still playing, but I'll barely get use out of what I already have. I just used my copy of Monster Codex for the first and likely the last time, essentially having paid $45 for a book that saw three hours of use. The value of future purchases is lower and lower. They've written themselves out of business. The more books they produced the less I needed them. It's better than during 1e when a lot of adventures were tournament specials and only a handful were ever re-released. How many potential classics were never reprinted? How many RPGA modules are lost to time? I know of a half-dozen Ravenloft adventures that only saw print at a few conventions and the few remaining copies now sell for hundreds on eBay. Right now, half a year in, the Adventurer's League stuff is limited to stores. Who knows if it'll stay that way and not end up on D&D Classics when the scenarios are retired? Yeah, I miss the web enhancements. But the free PDF of the basic rules is nice. As is the HTML version of the rules. Oh, and the playtest content. And the planned free PDF of support stuff for Princes of the Apocalypse.So much of the support stuff is unneeded. Why do I need to go to WotC for maps when I can browse around Google Images or the Cartographer's Guild and find ten times as much? I'm glad they're not wasting their limited resources on that stuff.They can't all be winners. Paizo has released some stinkers as well. And there's no guarantee that if they released two dozen adventures that any would appeal to you in just that special way. If you don't like that, there are the handful of earlier Encounters adventures. Plus the D&D Classics ones. Or Pathfinder's adventures. Or the 3rd Party books. Or free stuff on fan websites. There's no shortage of adventures that can be purchased. WotC doesn't *need* to add more. They get very little out of it. There's no need to cut open the goose to try and get all the eggs at once.</blockquote>

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