Banishing "Sacred Cows"

[Desdichado]

That's what Dungeon Magazine is for. It's the best possible way to publish modules.

I can't say this authoritatively, but I'd guess the circulation of Dungeon magazine relative to sales of books is miniscule. And even then, Dungeon magazine doesn't focus on dungeon-crawls. It's got all kinds of adventures.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Back to the Dungeon (again!)

I can't say this authoritatively, but I'd guess the circulation of Dungeon magazine relative to sales of books is miniscule. And even then, Dungeon magazine doesn't focus on dungeon-crawls. It's got all kinds of adventures.

From:
http://www.wizards.com/dungeon/submit-to-dungeon.pdf

Appendix A:Back To the Dungeon!

One of the goals of 3rd Edition is to take the D&D game “back to the dungeon.” Dungeons facilitate game play. Being underground, dun-geons set apart the “adventure” from the rest of the world in a clean way. Of course, not all dungeons must be underground. “Dungeon” could mean any self-contained environment. This includes castles, ancient ruins, outer-planar strongholds, and other locales. One of the virtues of
the “dungeon” is that it can be transplanted easily into any D&D campaign with minimal effort

Ah, Joshua, if only the facts weren't so inconvenient to your arguments.

 

[jasper]

Not at all. I don't have a problem with folks who dungeon-crawl, I just suspect that not that many people really do it much anymore. Especially the "pure" dungeon-crawl of old-timers fame. I've yet to talk to anyone who preferred that kind of game still.

hey JD talk to me. I been playing since around 1979.
I prefer crawls.
Don't have to worry about city guards hassle me
Thieves in night stealling my horse
dragons from above oh my

 

[Desdichado]

Re: Back to the Dungeon (again!)

From:
http://www.wizards.com/dungeon/submit-to-dungeon.pdf
Ah, Joshua, if only the facts weren't so inconvenient to your arguments.

Uhh, not only did I not dispute those "facts" (which aren't really, but let's not get into that) but they don't have much relevancy on what I'm saying. How does the focus on designing modules (which I stated to be a very small percentage of sales and output from not only WotC and 3rd party publishers) -- or wait, not even that -- Dungeon magazine articles have anything to do with the philosophy of the gaming system as a whole? It's very convenient that you ignored my comment on the circulation of Dungeon magazine relative to the game as a whole while using a portion of the submissions guidelines to make some point about the industry as a whole.

That's not a case of facts contradicting my argument, that's a case of you finding obscure and irrelevent "facts" and using them to try and bolster up your own.

 

[Desdichado]

hey JD talk to me. I been playing since around 1979.
I prefer crawls.
Don't have to worry about city guards hassle me
Thieves in night stealling my horse
dragons from above oh my

Alright, one. Who was it that said the thousands of folks at rpg.net and this site combined were too small a number to be statistically important?

(which I still disagree with, BTW. I haven't done the math to find out what a real statistically significant portion of that population needs to be, but to write it off just because it's less than 1% is foolhardy. To write if off because you suspect that there's inherent bias in the results, that's something else.)

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Re: Re: Back to the Dungeon (again!)

That's not a case of facts contradicting my argument, that's a case of you finding obscure and irrelevent "facts" and using them to try and bolster up your own.

Well, let's see: 1. You stated that 3E wasn't about Back to the Dungeon. I found several quotes and articles on the net that clearly stated otherwise. 2. You stated that "Back to the Dungeon" wouldn't improve sales or attract players to D&D. There's plenty of evidence that 3E's "Back to the Dungeon" focus out-sold the previous edition of D&D which did not have the focus. 3. You wrote that Dungeon magazine did not have a focus on dungeon. I found the quote from the submissions guideline that indicated the precise opposite.

Joshua, admit it. Dungeons sell. Dungeon crawling sells. And turning D&D into a namby pamby point-based clone of GURPs will not sell. But hey, don't let the facts stop you. You're on a roll.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Re: Back to the Dungeon (again!)

Uhh, not only did I not dispute those "facts" (which aren't really, but let's not get into that) but they don't have much relevancy on what I'm saying. How does the focus on designing modules (which I stated to be a very small percentage of sales and output from not only WotC and 3rd party publishers) -- or wait, not even that -- Dungeon magazine articles have anything to do with the philosophy of the gaming system as a whole?

Um, are you actually reading what's here?

You asked for proof that 3E was touted as a "return to dungeon crawling". You have been presented with a document, direct from WotC, that says, in no uncertain terms : One of the goals of 3rd Edition is to take the D&D game “back to the dungeon.”

Note that it does not say "One of the goals of WOTC modules..," or, "One of the goals of Dungeon Magazine..." It says, "One of the goals of 3rd Edition..." That's the Edition as a whole. The fact that it happens to come from a document that relates to Dungeon is irrelevant - it's WotC saying that one of 3E's goals was dungeoneering. Period.

Sorry, you cannot dodge this one. You may argue that one document doesn't count as "widely touting" or the like. However, we now have a direct quote from WotC as to this being a goal of the new game. Unless you want to say they are lying, you don't really have any room for manuver on this...

 

[Desdichado]

Re: Re: Re: Back to the Dungeon (again!)

Well, let's see: 1. You stated that 3E wasn't about Back to the Dungeon. I found several quotes and articles on the net that clearly stated otherwise. 2. You stated that "Back to the Dungeon" wouldn't improve sales or attract players to D&D. There's plenty of evidence that 3E's "Back to the Dungeon" focus out-sold the previous edition of D&D which did not have the focus. 3. You wrote that Dungeon magazine did not have a focus on dungeon. I found the quote from the submissions guideline that indicated the precise opposite.

Joshua, admit it. Dungeons sell. Dungeon crawling sells. And turning D&D into a namby pamby point-based clone of GURPs will not sell. But hey, don't let the facts stop you. You're on a roll.

Uhh, no. You said you found a fact that dungeons sell. What you found was a statement that a magazine that specializes in adventures for a relatively small portion of gamers wants "dungeons." Therefore, that is not a fact, it is at best an indirect correlation. But, with the parable of SKR, which made everyone hungry and also showed that WotC doesn't actually have any idea what kinds of products their customers want, we can downgrade this "fact" to somewhat below a reasonably likely opinion.

Then, in an attempt to do something that I still don't understand, you tried to refute my position that all those pages on dungeon environments in the DMG are wasted space that could have better been spent on alternate rule systems. However, since you did this by refering to a document that calls for adventure writers to change their paradigm from a story-based to a situation based structure, using a "dungeon" as a metaphor for adventure structure (specifically even, in your own quote, referring to any adventuring environment as a metaphorical dungeon, even if it had nothing whatsoever to do with a dungeon) then it had absolutely no relevence to what I said. It wasn't even a good argument against my rather off-handed remark that even Dungeon magazine isn't chock-full of dungeon-crawls, like you think it does.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, you decide to insult people who play GURPs (which I don't, by the way, so you most likely missed your target there too) by saying that point-based character creation was namby-pamby. What this has to do with dungeon crawls is quite obscure.

 

[Desdichado]

Re: Re: Re: Back to the Dungeon (again!)

Sorry, you cannot dodge this one. You may argue that one document doesn't count as "widely touting" or the like. However, we now have a direct quote from WotC as to this being a goal of the new game. Unless you want to say they are lying, you don't really have any room for manuver on this...

I'm not trying to. I admitted on the last page of this thread that I was wrong about that, not having been active in the D&D community before 3e. Read my reply to Thorin above. It's ironic that I typed out that reply right before I left for home and before I even got to the parking lot I knew that I had left myself open for multiple misinterpretations because I hadn't been clear enough.

Speaking of dodging, are you going to reply to my reply to your last message, or not?

 

[Umbran]

Which is exactly why you think I'm mistaking players of a game for the market for a game. I understand your point perfectly. However, the effects of it are still a wash. Why should D&D players buy less (or more) books for their game than a Vampire player, or a GURPS player (who probably actually buys more, just because there are so many more)? Therefore, one can make a pretty reasonable assumption that there is a direct correlation between players and buyers of games. And that correlation should be about the same for all game systems equally.

Um, no. You, in the absense of other data, may make that assumption, but that doesn't make it correct.

You see, folks like Ryan Dancey have access to actual sales data that we do not. When he says that D&D vastly outsells other games, you have a few choices: Either he's right, he's mistaken, or he's lying.

There's a lot of other industry people around here. If he were mistaken or lying, one of them should have spoken up by now.

Whether or not he, or we, understand why one game sells much more than another (a topic which we can and have had many threads about), the fact that it does is a matter of sales record.