d20 backlash??

[Desdichado]

Well, based on the fact that the game is dead -- i.e. no new material is being produced for it, and Chaosium's new stuff does not support d20. Maybe Chaosium is indeed too poorly run to have taken advantage of CoC d20. I don't know about that. But the game is dead. I have zero interest in debating this, in any case, except to remark that the BRP version is far more appropriate for the subject matter than the d20 system. I suspect that most CoC fans also realize this, hence the continued popularity of BRP CoC, and the abandonment of d20 CoC.

If you have no interest in debating it, you shouldn't bring it up, throw out innacurate and ignorant statements and then expect to walk away from it. I think that BRP is wildly innapropriate for Cthulhu and was always a poor fit of the Runequest system to a genre in which is dosn't work. I suspect more Cthulhu fans actually play d20 than BRP these days. I never anyone claim they play BRP except online, while I can easily find half a dozen d20 games in my local area.

 

[Gundark]

I read these post and say to myself "How much things stay the same".

People play D&D, it is the common rule set, by using the d20 rule set other games will be played by people that would not play them otherwise, selling a product under the d20 logo ensures your product will at least be looked at by the greatest market share, you could even be lucky enought that it helps your non-d20 games. This d20 backlash/bubble myth is the niche market, RuneQuest is better than D&D, DragonQuest is better than D&D, WFRP is better than D&D, Earthdawn is better than D&D, HERO is a better game than D&D, on and on and on but you know what? Most gamers DO NOT CARE, they will only buy WoTC products, it is a small percentage that go outside to the non-d20 games and then you know what happens when they try to run it, they find out no one wants to play it, they all know the D&D rules so they go back to playing D&D.

29 years it has been that way.

Just a rant for a few.

yeah this is true....

 

[Desdichado]

There dude! Right there! Don't you see it!

Seriously, though, yes, there are hordes of them. Go hang out on rpg.net for a while, where you can't swing a stick without hitting references to a dozen of them.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

There are fewer established, print companies doing d20 stuff. In fact, of the top d20 companies I don't think any of them were around 6 years ago. I could be wrong, though.

Way back when d20 first came out of the gate, I remember Ryan Dancey saying that he was surprised that so many companies had jumped on to d20 so aggressively. He had expected a much slower build up of volume. Instead, we saw a rapid flood of material.

The one thing I've learned about the gaming industry is that, almost invariably, if anyone has a whiff of success with an RPG product there'll be imitators. The costs to produce stuff are low enough that you can risk a few books on what looks like a hot topic. d20 definitely fell into that category.

The problem is that of all the systems out there, d20 is the hardest to design for on two levels.

First, it's the most mechanically precise game on the market. Even more importantly, its fans are aware of the mechanics and generally seek mastery of them. Unlike the hordes of rules light games out there, D&D rewards you for learning the rules.

The problem is that, as a whole, the industry didn't have anyone trained to write d20 stuff. Early products (mine included) are full of rules gaffes. However, this never really got any better. The industry as a whole wasn't used to producing a product like D&D. If you look around the market, the staggering majority of RPGs use simple rules sets. d20 presents a mode of design that most writers in the industry aren't comfortable with, even 5 years after its release.

This dovetails into the second point - most publishers and game writers simple don't get D&D. The staggering majority of d20 books aren't bad, or horribly written, they're just pointless. There are literally hundreds of titles out there that don't offer any real, compelling reason to buy them. My sense is that, in a lot of cases, publishers just solicited ideas from freelancers and published the ones that sounded good. Very few, if any, companies had long term plans for their d20 publishing schedules, or any predictions for how d20 could evolve and how to respond to likely changes as the market matured.

The problem I see now is that WotC is leveraging its advantages to produce designs that are consistently superior on every level to third party stuff. For a time, d20 stuff could compete with WotC. Wizards had the same problem with building up a knowledge base and methods for d20 design. They also produced softcover, black and white books just like d20 companies. Now, neither of those are factors any more.

So, IMO that's why you see a slowdown in d20 products. There's always been a backlash - a lot of people in the industry hate d20, and a load of dysfunctional gamers will hate whatever's popular. But that's been there since day 1. I remember people claimed that d20 would be a colossal failure. When the books started selling, those same people predicted that d20 couldn't handle other games or settings. When they were proven wrong again, they predicted the death of d20 and have done so now for 4, maybe 5 years.

I agree with most of what you're saying here. Good d20 publishing (and OGL publishing) requires a certain level of expertise with the system. Initially, no one had it. Then, Wizards mastered it (coinciding, in my opinion, with the release of d20 Modern and the revisions to D&D in 3.5) and left the companies that didn't behind.

However, I disagree that WotC is producing designs that are superior on every level to third party stuff. What you and Monte are doing at Malhavoc is, IMO, on par if not better than WotC's stuff. What the post-Conan Mongoose is doing with their material, especially in that line, is on par if not better. What Green Ronin is doing with Blue Rose and, indeed, all their d20/OGL material is on par if not better.

Quite a few companies that didn't do d20 well are dropping out.

AEG is a good example. Their Rokugan material never really had the kind of rough parity that WotC expects of D&D products; power spikes and dips were more extreme and more common.

Old Mongoose is another example, but where AEG pulled Rokugan to its own system, Mongoose has adapted by improving its overall standards and moving more and more toward an OGL model.

Green Ronin probably did d20 better than any of the first wave of third party publishers. But their big new releases are OGL (Blue Rose) or a unique system (WFRP).

What seems to have happened is that the publishers that were essentially non-d20 publishers out to make a quick buck or fans convinced that their homebrew and house rules were the bestest ever are dropping out of the d20 market. The former are going back to their old way, the latter are facing the reality of how expensive and difficult RPG publishing can be.

The professional d20 companies are learning how to use the system, just as WotC has. Quite a few of them seem to be finding it more lucrative to release OGL variants that, though more compatible with D&D than, say, a Storyteller game, are nonetheless games unto themselves. I suspect that Mongoose and Green Ronin, for example, both have business plans now whether they did at the outset or not.

 

[Desdichado]

Green Ronin probably did d20 better than any of the first wave of third party publishers. But their big new releases are OGL (Blue Rose) or a unique system (WFRP).

Don't forget their very recent Black Company release (d20) and later this year Thieves' World (d20) release as well, though.

 

[mearls]

However, I disagree that WotC is producing designs that are superior on every level to third party stuff.

The key to figuring out why WotC does so much better, and in fact is flourishing while almost every other company is floundering, is both simple and hard to see at the same time.

The staggering majority of d20 stuff expects you to junk your current campaign, or at least radically change it, or even start playing a new RPG, to make use of it. Nobody aside from WotC does a good job of providing support for a DM who's running a standard Greyhawk game. Most d20 publishers assume that you want to add lots of detail to one small subsystem or you're interested in a new game.

So, to pull one of your examples, Blue Rose *isn't* a success compared to Complete Adventurer, because it chases after an entirely different, and much smaller, market. Really, you can't compare the two. For the average DM, the Complete Adventurer is much more useful.

I think the movement by most d20 publishers into new games and out of D&D supplements exists because they can't compete with WotC for the typical D&D player.

A lot of online RPG reviews start are founded on the idea that a reviewer has to judge whether a product sets out to meet its goals. I think a better way to look at a product, especially when compared to WotC's stuff and when judging if it's going to sell very well, is to judge it on whether it makes the typical D&D campaign more enjoyable for the typical group of D&D players.

When you look at stuff in that light, things start to make a lot more sense. The vast majority of d20 stuff serves no useful purpose for the typical D&D group. There's a reason that WotC puts so much effort into customer feedback and market research - you'll get killed in the RPG market if you can't make stuff that gamers want or need.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The staggering majority of d20 stuff expects you to junk your current campaign, or at least radically change it, or even start playing a new RPG, to make use of it. Nobody aside from WotC does a good job of providing support for a DM who's running a standard Greyhawk game. Most d20 publishers assume that you want to add lots of detail to one small subsystem or you're interested in a new game.

What are you doing Mike? Spying on my beef with A Game of Thrones and other GoO products? That's a bad writer!

I wouldn't say nobody is doing it though. Green Ronin's Advanced Line is still D20 based and Book of Roguish Luck from Malhavoc is d20 based. Even their Egyptian Adventuers book for their Mythic Vista line is d20 compatible. Mongoose appears to have several d20 based adventures cmong , hoping that the adventure crowd, riled by WLD, is still there.

It's just the support has gone from fast to famine from most other publishers. Survival of the fittest I guess and all that.

 

[barsoomcore]

Go hang out on rpg.net for a while, where you can't swing a stick without hitting references to a dozen of them.

And, after hanging out on rpg.net for a while, if the urge to swing a stick becomes overwhelming, well, nobody over here will blame you....

The vast majority of d20 stuff serves no useful purpose for the typical D&D group.

Quoted for truth. I think I got pretty lucky with my Hot Pursuit product -- it's a product that makes any d20 game better, and nobody had done something in that space yet. It was only a matter of time, and I have to admit I felt a lot of pressure to get it out quickly before somebody beat me out the gate.

But there's a staggering amount of stuff out there that is just so completely worthless to me I find it amazing anyone thought producing it was a good idea. Then again, this is an industry where a great deal of the production is being done basically by hobbyists without business plans, so much of the available product literally represents one person's idea of what would be cool or profitable.

 

[francisca]

The staggering majority of d20 stuff expects you to junk your current campaign, or at least radically change it, or even start playing a new RPG, to make use of it. Nobody aside from WotC does a good job of providing support for a DM who's running a standard Greyhawk game. Most d20 publishers assume that you want to add lots of detail to one small subsystem or you're interested in a new game.

I'm in complete agreement with you on this, on two fronts. In some cases, I want a different game. I like Conan d20, Legends of Excalibur, and The New Argonauts, and like the treatment they got. Many other products which are not complete games/settings do bring too much baggage with them for me to import into my just-about-greyhawk-anyway hombrew. Which explains why a lot of my d20 stuff has been steadily heading out to ebay.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I don't think we're seeing any sort of backlash. What i do think we're seeing right now is a total saturation of the market. There are few areas that either haven't been covered already or are about to be covered in the very near future (at least as far as the fantasy genre goes). This is leading the publishers that put out good product and had a viable business model to test other waters as well. It doesn't mean that D20 is dying, just that it's dropped to Mach 2 From Mach 5.

Kane