d20 backlash??

[Kanegrundar]

And the reason Pinnacle have stopped publishing Deadlands d20 and Weird War II lines is...?

No idea, but I think that a good possibility would be that maybe Pinnacle didn't do a great job of letting people know that the product were out there. I knew about Deadlands D20, but didn't know about any of the others until I happened upon them while browsing RPGNow. Not sure, but could be part of the reason. The few products from the Deadlands/Hell on Earth/Weird Wars lines have all been pretty good.

Kane

 

[fanboy2000]

In time, he would drop all that unhealthy conditioning, but not before it had given him an ulcer and caused him to lose his hair. Well, that might not have been so much White Wolf as the McDonald's, the verdict's still out on that one.

Yeah, that secret sauce can really do some damage.

 

[Gomez]

And the reason Pinnacle have stopped publishing Deadlands d20 and Weird War II lines is...?

....they wanted to focus with their own Savage Worlds game system?

 

[mmadsen]

Yes, there is at least one backlash against d20. It's a distributor/retailer backlash. Just like they've had backlashes against CCGs and miniatures games. It's because many of them do the same stupid thing over and over: they see something is selling well, buy all of it they possibly can, then get pissed when the market shifts.

Anyone -- particularly any gamer -- who "knows it all" when it comes to distribution should play the Beer Game:

The Beer Game is a logistics game that was originally developed by MIT in the 60s and has since been played all over the world by people at all levels, from students to presidents of big multinational groups.​

 

[KDLadage]

d20 Backlash?

Well, I am no expert (and I cannot claim to have some super-secret insider knowledge on the inner workings of the various cogs that keep this hobby chugging along) or anything like that. I am a freelance writer, and an independent publisher (sometimes). So I can only tell you what I have witnessed and seen in the hobby since the Dungeons and Dragons v3 rules were released, and the juggernaut that is the d20 system/OGL was unleashed.

When the d20/OGL was announced, I was working on a re-write of the Shadowlands (later to be known as UMBRAGIA: Realms of Shadow). The system we were using for this setting at the time was a variation of the FUDGE engine. My original campaign notes had been in GURPS (which was, for all intents and purposes a perfect fit for the setting). But getting a license to publish GURPS (or, what at the time was a new concept: Powered By GURPS) is not trivial -- especially if you are a basement publisher, as I am and always have been.

So we worked in FUDGE. Nice system. A bit granular for some people's taste (mine included) but we trudged on. Then came d20.

I looked it over. I contacted my writing partner and we both mulled it over. We looked at how the d20 license would work and if it would work well for us. But mainly we looked at the how the system had been updated. It was a vast improvement (in our opinion) over AD&Dx and so we thought, what the hey, we can give this a shot.

We worked pretty hard, and in the end, we managed to publish the SHADOWLANDS Core Book. It was a rather massive tome... and did well review wise. Then came the legal boom over the name. Despite the fact that the name Shadowlands had been used by many different companies, it had been used by some that disapproved of our using it... and so UMBRAGIA was born.

We decided to split off the UMBRAGIA stuff into smaller chunks. So we divided it out and produced UMBRAGIA: Realms of Shadow Volume 1 -- People of the Realms. This was a volume that described the 19 races of UMBRAGIA and how they interacted. Good stuff, in my opinion.

The team grew around this time. I had a great team at this point -- me, Niko Ruff, Ben Seibold (and some occasional input from Liquide and my old writing partner, Rich Bowman). We put out Volume II - Nations of UMBRAGIA which detailed the various cultures involved in the setting.

Then we did the most impressive work we had done to date with Volume III -- Liber Veneficium. This volume tore the arcane spell casting system in d20 down and re-tooled it to fit the way magic worked in UMBRAGIA. It was an amazing piece of work. Wizard and Sorcerer were thrown out and replaced with the Magi (who required a special feat to even get into the class -- a sort of hybrid between standard base class and prestige class). He could specialize in various Spheres (Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Spirit, and Nature) such that no two magi were alike.

We got rid of the Bard and replaced it with the Minstrel who used various forms of instrumentation to create different effects -- in other words, just like how no two magi were alike, no two bards were alike either. Some played drums for loud, dramatic effects, while others played strings for more subtle, social effects. it was working out great!

Last, we had an NPC class known as the Touched that was granted arcane magical power that was not derived from study like the magi or tied to social norms like the minstrel. All of our arcane casters used a Mana Point system that allowed for 100% spontaneous casting, and a lot more fun in spell management, as they could only recover so many Mana points per day (meaning that they could be like all hell breaking lose for a day, then spend several days recovering to full strength). Of course, we added a section where they could use more Mana than they had, and risk magical backfires... it was very cool (and based on the UMana system developed by S. John Ross for GURPS).

We started working on Volume IV -- Liber Sacerdotti to re-tool the divine spell casters as well. This started out as a simple project, but quickly took on a much grander scope. We wanted clergymen in this setting to be a lot more than roaming Red Cross workers with armor and weapons... we wanted a true Priestly class -- and a true Crusader to go along with it. In other words, we wanted no two Priests and no two Crusaders to be alike -- unless they worshipped the same deity.

A system was being born... re-tooling the divine spells so that they could be divided into roughly equal parts -- we modified the mechanic of the "turn/rebuke undead" so that Priests could be given different powers depending upon whom they worshiped. We modified the Domain system so that we had Clerics able to do 100% spontaneous casting and to ensure that clergy of one deity felt fundamentally different than others. it was working too... very well. We had managed to remove alignments in such a way as to re-tool all of the spells and abilities that were impacted by or impacted that system... that was a *lot* tougher than it sounds.

We had Priests (which replaced by Clerics and Druids), we had Crusaders (which replaced both Paladins and Rangers), and then we had the Blessed (an NPS class of those touched by the Gods...). All seemed to be going well...

When the realization that we had spent nearly a year re-writing all of the fundamental rules of D&D in order to get the system to work for our setting hit us like a tone of bricks. What we had, in the end, was not D&D anymore. In fact, it was only superficially d20...

We stepped back... and thought to ourselves that, perhaps, we need to decide what we want from d20 before we go on...

This was not aided by the fact that Rich Bowman had all but withdrawn from the UMBRAGIA project. He was working on a unique sci-fi setting called Aetasidus: Age of Stars. He and Niko had done a lot of great work there... and they had run into the same road-blocks. d20... d20 Modern... none of them seemed to be able to really simulate the type of world that Rich wanted.

So Jagged Edge Games started working on a variation of the core d20 rules. We developed some great stuff for nearly a year. We had what was, in our minds, what d20 should have been all along -- simple, flexible, internally logical, and capable of handling anything from Dungeons and Dragons most powerful elements, to a good gumshoe RPG in a world created by the novels of the 1920s. It was shaping up nicely...

So what happened?

A lot happened.

Niko and Bennie decided that they were getting sick of the complexities of the more subtle rules of the d20 system. We wanted to simplify further, but any further and we were no longer d20 -- even in the most basic way. At which point we had to wonder if it was worth starting with d20, if what you ended up with was no longer anything like d20.

The project simply ended.

We had completed 90% of the Volume IV ... only to realize we needed to make so many changes that it was going to impact the core rules ... to start re-tooling to core rules ... only to realize that we needed to make so many changes to the core rules that it was no longer d20. All to handle what (in my mind) was a fairly basic fantasy setting.

Now do not get me wrong. D&D3.0/3.5/d20/d20Modern -- they are all good games. But they are not nearly as generic as a system goes as you might think. The system has, built into it, a lot of assumptions that are just not true in all fantasy worlds. Try, for example, running a game in a world with little or no magical items -- as UMBRAGIA is. Suddenly, the CR system breaks down at CR5+ or so... why? Because the entire game is built around a large assumption that at level X the party will have Y magic items or approximately Z value. it is a good assumption for the basic D&D game... not a good assumption for may campaign worlds that a DM and player might want to explore...

So is there a backlash against d20?

No.

There is just reality finally sinking in with the publishers of many games that d20 may simply not be the way for them to go with a particular project.

But that is just my $0.02 worth.

 

[Ranger REG]

....they wanted to focus with their own Savage Worlds game system?

Why? Didn't Deadlands d20 and Weird War II have followings or were they was too small to count, much less support the lines?

 

[der_kluge]

Someone with some free time needs to do this analysis, it would be interesting.

Take a list of all the d20 products created over the last few years, and sort them into categories:

modules
Supplements to the core rules
variations on the core rules
new settings
expansions on new settings

Modules is self-explanatory. Included here would be anything that didn't attempt to change the rules, just gave the people ways to play the existing game. Supplements would be additions to the core rules, like new spells, or new feats, but no rule modifications. Any alternative rules would be variations. New settings would be just that, and the last one is self-explanatory.

It would be interesting to see how many "variations on the core rules" there were versus supplements on the core rules. Someone earlier talked about d20 publishers' attempts at revising the d20 system through a myriad of rules expansions and variations. For example, I could play the game with "Buy the Numbers", "Artificer's Handbook", and "Elements of Magic" and end up with a game that looks almost nothing like d20.

 

[Storyteller01]

Actually, this is a hold over from TSR. Most of TSR's sales of AD&D books came from regular book stores like Waldenbooks and BDalton. Those stores are already used to carrying D&D books from WotC. Let's not forget that their quartly catolog is sent to book stores and contains many, many novels.
QUOTE]

Not quite true. We had 3 'Wizards of the Coast' games stores here in California (at least three that I know). The stores ended up closing down (per a store employee) because of pressure from other game and toy stores. Toy stores claimed that WotC was attempting a monopoly. They would have owned all the elements of developing and distributing games, reducing costs well below what other stores could compete with.

Games stores claimed that Wizards had been shipping their products to their own stores early. Anyone in the industry can tell you that whoever can get the books on the shelves will survive the longest.

The connections may be a hold over from TSR, but Hasbro is more than capable of developing these same senarios (see M:tG). They'd actually be better at it, given Hasbro's own connections with the toy/gaming industry.



Not bashing WotC, just making an observation.

 

[Turjan]

It would be interesting to see how many "variations on the core rules" there were versus supplements on the core rules.

You want to know whether the ratio is 1:99 or 1:999?

Someone earlier talked about d20 publishers' attempts at revising the d20 system through a myriad of rules expansions and variations. For example, I could play the game with "Buy the Numbers", "Artificer's Handbook", and "Elements of Magic" and end up with a game that looks almost nothing like d20.

I suppose you will have to think hard to find many more examples of this kind. You might list AU, but then it gets sparse. Unless you count the bucketloads of variants for rangers, sorcerers and bards .

 

[fanboy2000]

We had 3 'Wizards of the Coast' games stores here in California (at least three that I know). The stores ended up closing down (per a store employee) because of pressure from other game and toy stores. Toy stores claimed that WotC was attempting a monopoly. They would have owned all the elements of developing and distributing games, reducing costs well below what other stores could compete with.

Actually, they had Wizards of the Coast stores all up and down California because that's where the biggest concentration of Game Keepers was, and WotC bought the Game Keeper in 1999 IIRC.

All Wizards of the Coast stores closed a year ago because the retail division wan't making money. I worked for Wizards of the Coast from the time they bought The Game Keeper to the last day my store was in business, March 31 2004, and while everything you say about making and distributing games is correct, that's just not how it happened.

Pokemon was like that, mostly because WotC/GK stories where the only stores in the area that sold Pokemon cards at MSRP, a price that was far lower than everyone else. Wehn the Pokemon sales dried-up Hasbro had bought the company and no one knew what to do. WotC retail thought we were a toy store, for some reason I can't fathom, and stocked us with toys and games that were often double what people would pay at Walmart and Target. In fact that was my #2 most often heard complaint.

My #1 most often heard complaint was that we didn't have enough Settler's of Catan, Axis and Alies, and Avalon Hill games that long time customers expected us to have. We lost customers, but didn't get enought new ones from Pokemon to balence it out.

I want to point something out to you, something that makes little sense to me but something I've heard of other companies doing. WotC retail had to buy M:tG cards from WotC manufacturing.