Charles Ryan speaks - Fantastic Locations

[Crothian]

So, it is going to be like the Book of Challenges??

 

[Mark]

I take the Sun Tzu comment as referring to d20 publishers taking on WoTC at things they compete in (sourcebooks) but have little chance of truly competing, as opposed to taking the piece of the pie that WoTC abandoned (adventures), eventually leading WoTC to jump back in that piece of the market, possibly taking that out of play as well. I don't see betrayal, I see puzzlement that reminds me of when I was 4 years old trying to tackle my 16 and 19 year old brothers in football. I tried real hard, but I couldn't really accompish much, and my brothers would watch me bounce off them, and just shake their heads.

Maybe...

 

[DaveMage]

From my own personal experience, I'll buy d20 adventures (I love Goodman Games's Dungeon Crawl Classics series) but I haven't bought a d20 rule supplement in.... I honestly can't remember.

Um, Mike, I have to chuckle at this comment since many, many of the d20 rulebooks in existance were written by you. (And damn fine ones, by the way.)

It seems the d20 rulebook boom ended when you joined Malhavoc.

I wouldn't think you would need to buy a d20 rulebook since all the rules one would ever need were penned by you anyway.

 

[Psion]

I don't think it's wise to immediately write off adventures. If we looked purely at the numbers, d20 had its biggest sales when adventures were the big thing. From my own personal experience, I'll buy d20 adventures (I love Goodman Games's Dungeon Crawl Classics series) but I haven't bought a d20 rule supplement in.... I honestly can't remember.

My experience runs just the opposite. Perhaps one of both of use are reading our personal buying preferences into the matter. (OF course, you have access to a few more authentic figures... but I notice that Malhavoc is only incidentally putting out adventures.)

What you say SOUNDS rational. But to me, it doesn't jive with the state of the market. If your name isn't "Necromancer Games", examination of the market suggests that d20 adventures weren't too viable a market. Fiery Dragon, Monky God, Troll Lords, AEG, and FFG all have shyed away from adventures and turned other market segments.

 

[Psion]

Um, Mike, I have to chuckle at this comment since many, many of the d20 rulebooks in existance were written by you.

Well, my reasons to buy books from some of the other companies he used to freelance for dropped (most particularly Mongoose and FFG.)

I wouldn't think you would need to buy a d20 rulebook since all the rules one would ever need were penned by you anyway.

Just so. I guess they're just "house rules" to him.

Or author's copies, so he wouldn't have to "buy" them.

 

[Mercule]

You know, while I don't believe that PDFs are "the future of the hobby"--there will always be a place, and I firmly believe a much larger place, for the printed word--I'm starting to think that PDFs may be the future of modules.

You know, I think I could get on board with this idea. Even after getting a tablet PC (what I said was my minimum for considering PDFs to be usable), I find I'm not overly interested in PDF rules supplements.

A module, on the other hand, would rock. I don't mind printing out a few pages, nor do I mind my modules to be somewhat lower print quality. The icing would be if the text was either editable or copy-paste-able. I've spent the last month running a module out of an old Dungeon ("Natural Selection" FWIW) where I'd retooled large amounts of the backstory to fit into my homebrew, and I would have loved to be able to just do that in-line or in something like OneNote. This is especially true when I was doing my conversions and wanted "revision tracking" on my inline notes.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I'm very glad to see WotC getting back into adventures. IMO, it should be the parent company leading the way in terms of producing good adventure stories. I think it's inexcusable for a company to be designing and producing a game, yet not producing adventures for new players to run with that game!

The early WotC adventures were great. Some had teething problems, but the storylines were good and I found them enjoyable to read and run. As they say, practice makes perfect!

I would, however, prefer that WotC make fewer but better adventures. No need to flood the market with crap...

 

[WingOver]

I would, however, prefer that WotC make fewer but better adventures. No need to flood the market with crap...

I agree here. I think WOTC employs some of the best artists in the market. I'd like to see some ultra-high quality adventures filled with great art and maps.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Is the D20 Modern book Critical Locations, scheduled for release later this year, going to be part of this line?

 

[JamesDJarvis]

I think wotc could do fine with brief adventure lines.

They just shouldn't bother to keep them in print. After the print run sells out (or before) they can be made avaiable via pdf.

There could even be pdf specials that could add portions even whole side adventures to an adventure to buff them up for campaign use. Stuff like that might cause a regular published adventure to be a mess but if peopel can seek them out on thier own well it adds to the useability of the base module. Remeber the lizard men in B2? Polishing that outdor encounter up into a whole dungeon/adventure is the sort of thing i mean, it wouldn't do much to keep adventure focused on the caves of chaos but it would add to a game where the DM wanted to focus more on adventurers using Castellan keep as an adventuring base.
Folks might also put down a coupe bucks for a brief module via pdf that WoTC couldn't really afford to put in print.