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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seankreynolds" data-source="post: 1949904" data-attributes="member: 3029">Yeah, sorry, I was considering only the biggest d20 print publishers with that number: Green Ronin, Mongoose, and Sword & Sorcery mayb manage a 10,000 unit print run, but you're right--most d20 publishers are happy to get 1,000-1,500.True, but every d20-logo'd book requires the Player's Handbook, and the PH is pure money for WotC now (they've recouped all the development costs by now, so their profit per core book is greater). Sure, if Joe Gamer buys a $30 d20 book from some other company, yes, WotC has "lost out" on the $2 profit they would make if Joe instead bought the latest $30 Eberron book, but Joe still had to buy his PH for $30, and that's about $4 in WotC's pocket.I don't think we can really determine the actual effect without a nine-dimensional graph (# gamers vs. $ spent on WotC vs. $ spent on non-WotC vs. core book sales driven by d20 vs. people who use the SRD instead of a core book, etc.), but the WotC axis is just so big that every other part is almost insignificant by comparison. You're right, we should compare WotC to all non-WotC publishers ... but I still think it's a very small effect at best. Especially as the d20 license allowed WotC to stop making nonprofitable products (like adventures) and hand that business to someone for whom it is profitable (smaller publishers) and still reap the benefit of people needing to buy WotC books to use those nonprofitable products. And sometimes those products help grow the market (which offsets the "only so many gaming dollars" problem). Take the Black Company setting for example. I'm certain there were non-gamers who picked up the game just because they're interested in the Black Company. Some of those may become gamers, and thus start spending money on gaming materials ... including WotC products, as they need the PH to play d20 products, and that may get them interested in non-BC gaming. WotC would never pursue the BC license because it's not mass-market enough for Hasbro to risk spending money on it ... but Green Ronin is willing to take that risk because it's easier for them to make a return on their investment. So GR takes a risk, and succeeds, and more people enter the d20 hobby, which is derived from D&D. WotC wins. (And catching up with the thread, I notice that's basically what Joe Mucchiello and some others have said.)Yeah, that's just me (a) being conservative with my numbers, and still dwarfing non-WotC sales with those conservative numbers, and (b) hesitant to reveal information that may be proprietary, as I can't remember what figures are public and what aren't. In any case, the 3.0 PH print run was HUGE. And it sold out VERY quickly.I don't believe 3.5 had anything to do with the announcement of AU. I was at WotC when we were working on 3.5, I was gaming with Monte while he and others were playtesting AU. I don't recall anything about "we have to beat Monte to the punch," but I could be wrong.I don't believe there was any territorialism with the name AU. Monte asked WotC if it was OK, they said yes it was and IIRC told him that they were already planning a book they were going to call UA.Anthony Valterra saw that they were going to change the d20 license by adding content restrictions, tried to get his book done before they did so, but the book was delayed until after the addition of the content restrictions to the license, so he made it a non-logo'd book.In the same way that a human is "affected" by the amount of blood lost from a mosquito bite.</blockquote>

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