Andy Collins speaks - Upcoming Products

[Welverin]

Okay, you can have 2 books on dragons and 2 books on psionics, so long as WotC also releases "Races of Water" and the "Hydronomicon".

Fine with me, though my confusion over the RotD and Draconomicon thing is the assumption there is any overlap that negates the need for the RotD since the other already exists.

Charles Ryan: http://boards.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=395908
We are not currently interested in supporting additional material for Greyhawk, either with inhouse products or through a licensee.

We believe our audience is best served by a very limited number of well-supported campaign settings, and we've chosen to support Forgotten Realms and Eberron, and, through a licensee, Dragonlance. As someone else has already pointed out, the audience for Greyhawk (and other old TSR settings) may be fiercely loyal, but they aren't numerous enough to support the line. If we diverted resources toward those settings, we may make a few thousand (or few tens of thousands of) fans happy, but we'd be pulling resources away from settings that have hundreds of thousands of fans.

Why is there the assumption that any campaign setting put out needs to be further supported? Why couldn't they go the Council of Wyrms/Ghostwalk fire and forget route?

I understand and agree with the need to limit the number of supported settings, but I don't think that requires others be completely avoided.

 

[Sunderstone]

Fantastic Locations products: I play DnD, not a minis skirmish game.

I agree with this. I understand the marketing behind this but I hate having so much focus on Minis. Pen and Paper RPG has now become a Pen, Paper and Metal RPG.
Ill pass.

Most of the lineup is indeed "Meh" to me, no disrespect to the authors involved, just not my bag.
As for definite purchases....
1) Races of the Dragon- mainly to complete the "Races" set, so far Races of Stone has been the best of them. The others were ok.
2) Tome of Magic- another 2nd edition book getting an update. This works for me, hopefully it lives up to the older one.

As for Eberron, I own none of it. I do own several Final Fantasy games for various Console Systems though.

 

[Thaniel]

Magic of Eberron: No interest in Eberron. And wasn't market fragmentation by publishing too many competing settings the reason all the TSR settings got canned originally?...

Two settings (FR and Eberron) is "too many competing settings"?

 

[Knight Otu]

Fine with me, though my confusion over the RotD and Draconomicon thing is the assumption there is any overlap that negates the need for the RotD since the other already exists.

It is a bit strange, right. From what little we know, Races of the Dragon is not about dragons, but about races that claim (rightly or not) kinship to dragons.
The comparison is a bit like saying that both Manual of the Planes and Libris Mortis are about Negative Energy (my example is admittedly more extreme).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why is there the assumption that any campaign setting put out needs to be further supported? Why couldn't they go the Council of Wyrms/Ghostwalk fire and forget route?

Yeah, that's always been the weakness in the argument. And don't forget that the 3E version of "Oriental Adventures" as another fire/forget setting that gave us rules changes, spells, monsters and some setting info. Putting out a 3.5 Arabian Adventures or MesoAmerican Adventures in this same format wouldn't be a big issue at all, nor would doing a Sigil sourcebook this way.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Yeah, that's always been the weakness in the argument. And don't forget that the 3E version of "Oriental Adventures" as another fire/forget setting that gave us rules changes, spells, monsters and some setting info. Putting out a 3.5 Arabian Adventures or MesoAmerican Adventures in this same format wouldn't be a big issue at all, nor would doing a Sigil sourcebook this way.

Heck, I think that's one of the reasons to do it.

Take all the Innitiate Feats and bring them in one place.

Take all the GH regional feats and bring them in one place.

Take the monsters, prcs, feats, and other goods from the Polyhedron days and put it in one place.

If the chrunch is there, people will buy.

 

[tetsujin28]

No interest in the Eberron stuff, but Heroes of Horror sounds cool.

 

[Pants]

Magic of Eberron: No interest in Eberron. And wasn't market fragmentation by publishing too many competing settings the reason all the TSR settings got canned originally?...

I'd hardly call 2 Campaign Settings (FR and Eberron) as being 'too many.'

Why is there the assumption that any campaign setting put out needs to be further supported? Why couldn't they go the Council of Wyrms/Ghostwalk fire and forget route?

I understand and agree with the need to limit the number of supported settings, but I don't think that requires others be completely avoided.

I'm a big proponent of this idea. A one-shot campaign book with MAYBE a follow up adventure or supplement could work rather well for some of the CS's. They may not have everything in them, but they'd be a good starting point for others who want to expand on it.

 

[Welverin]

I'm a big proponent of this idea. A one-shot campaign book with MAYBE a follow up adventure or supplement could work rather well for some of the CS's. They may not have everything in them, but they'd be a good starting point for others who want to expand on it.

While I would like that for any setting I'm interested in, I think it needs to be avoided at all costs for this idea to fly. If WotC starts producing other books it will lead to expectations that can't be met, a stand alone setting book could be bad enough in that regard.

For me a stand alone CS works well because I have plenty of fluff in my old 2e books, and single book updating rules is all I really need.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Yeah, that's always been the weakness in the argument. And don't forget that the 3E version of "Oriental Adventures" as another fire/forget setting that gave us rules changes, spells, monsters and some setting info. Putting out a 3.5 Arabian Adventures or MesoAmerican Adventures in this same format wouldn't be a big issue at all, nor would doing a Sigil sourcebook this way.

Don't forget that Oriental Adventures was tied heavily into the licensing of Rokugan to AEG. AEG's license was written in a way which necessitated the use of Oriental Adventures - it's another instance of "We let you put the d20 logo on something so that people playing with your stuff will need a Player's Handbook", only s/something/Rokugan and s/a Player's Handbook/Oriental Adventures.

In the current climate of restricted setting licenses and whatnot, I doubt Wizards would publish Oriental Adventures.