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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mouseferatu" data-source="post: 4859396" data-attributes="member: 1288">Okay, in reverse order...It was, indeed, wishful thinking on your part. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Such was never stated or implied, and would, in fact, be an impossible business plan for any major RPG setting.So, on to the major point...That may be, but we're talking about the company, and the market as a whole, not the preferences of certain individuals. (For those who followed us over, my contention was that "setting bloat" is far worse for WotC, or any other major RPG company, than "other bloat.") Here's what I'm talking about...We have the overall D&D Market, which (for purposes of this discussion) consists of anyone who currently plays or might be interested in playing. I'm going to abbreviate it DDM, from this point onward.Also for purposes of this discussion, we're going to leave out two sub-groups of the DDM. Those groups are:Collectors, who buy pretty much every book produced for D&D. They don't need to be factored into our thinking, because they're a safe bet unless the company really pisses them off.Borrowers, who almost never buy the books. We don't need to consider them, because while they're technically part of the potential market, they're not really among the buyers we have to shoot for.Both of the above are, of course, simplifications, but they'll do for our purposes.Okay so far?So, other than the PHB itself (and even that's debatable), no D&D book is going to appeal to the entire DDM. Every single D&D book published, from the DMG itself to a campaign setting to the smallest adventure has a target market (hereafter abbreviated TM) which is made up of only a portion of the overall DDM. The larger a book's TM--that is, the greater the portion of the DDM that it appeals to--the better it's likely to sell.This, obviously, fluctuates. Some people outside the anticipated TM may buy a book, and some people in it will decide not to. We're talking anticipated markets, and general trends. But they'll tend to even out.So, let's look at a book like Martial Power. The TM for a book like that is pretty big, since it consists of anyone who's playing a martial class, is thinking of playing a martial class, or really likes the martial classes.Compare that to, say, the core setting book for Eberron or Forgotten Realms. The TM for such a book consists of people running that setting, some of the people playing in that setting, and people who are so fond of settings that they'll buy any of them.Can you take a guess which TM is larger? I'll give you a hint; it's the first one. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />That's okay, because while the TM for a book like Martial Power may be larger, the TM for the core book of a popular setting is still plenty big enough to make it worthwhile.But that's the core book of the setting. The problem now is that, for each setting book beyond the first, the size of your TM shrinks by an enormous percentage.If WotC publishes a book on the planes, their TM is any DM or player who enjoys planar campaigns or planar influence within said campaigns. But if WotC publishes a book on, say, the planes of Eberron (back when the cosmologies were wildly different), their TM is limited to Eberron DMs or players who have said interest.And the more esoteric you get, the more your Target Market shrinks to a smaller and smaller percentage of the D&D Market, because you're already started off at a disadvantage by restricting your TM to fans of a given setting.(That's one of the main reasons for WotC's decision, in 4E, to limit settings to a 3-book model: Because the more books you have on a given setting, the more you're getting into diminishing returns.)Now, let's look at TSR back in the 2E era. They had an enormous number of settings, each of which was being supported to a greater or lesser extent. And each one was, by definition, targeted at only a tiny portion of the market, because only a sliver of the market (even if it was, in some cases, a wide sliver) was into any given setting. Every spot on the schedule reserved for a Planescape book was a spot not being given to a Greyhawk book; every spot for a Ravenloft book was one not being given to Al-Qadim. Heck, take it further. A book about, say, the Ravenloft domain of Souragne would've been targeted only at the portion of the RL market interested in that setting, with the RL market itself only being a portion of the overall D&D market. And all such spots were spots not being given to "generic" books which might have a much larger TM, because they'd appeal to a far greater portion of the market than a setting book.Or, in shorter terms, any "generic" D&D book is carving its potential niche out of the entire D&D audience. Any setting-specific D&D book is carving its potential niche out of the niche already carved out by the setting itself.But all these books, whether the Player's Handbook 2 or the Complete Book of Golddwarfistan in Faerun, require (more or less) the same amount of resources. Sure, maybe this book here can reuse some art, or that book there can use less experienced (and thus cheaper) freelancers, but those are minor fluctuations. For the most part, any book of roughly comparable size has the same production and opportunity costs of any other.So what we have is a situation where WotC is sinking X amount of dollars into a book, no matter what it is. If Book A potentially appeals to, say, one-fifth of the overall D&D market, while Book B potentially appeals to one-half of the Setting 1 market, but that setting itself appeals to only one-fifth of the overall market... Well, I'm not that good at math, but I can see which is the wiser choice.(BTW, I'm making these numbers up. I don't have access to sales figures, and couldn't share them if I did. I'm talking about theory.)And that doesn't even take into account other costs, such as the size of print runs (which are, again, based on anticipated sales and the size of the TM), or the question of what other book ideas don't make it onto the schedule to leave room for the book in question.Bottom line: Setting books (perhaps beyond the initial core guides, if that) are almost innately lower sellers, or at least far greater risks, than "generic" books. And if each said book is a potential loss, how much worse for the company when the majority of the catalog is made up of such books?Yeah, it sucks for people who prefer settings over crunch. And I'm not being dismissive what I say that; I'm a setting-whore myself. So this may not play into any individual's idea of "bloat." But where the company is concerned, and where the bulk of the market is concerned, this is just the way it is. A bloat of setting material can be far more harmful to the bottom line than even a much larger surplus of "generic" sourcebooks can be.And this may just be the single longest post I've ever made on ENWorld. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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