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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 2046458" data-attributes="member: 7394">Right now D20 is exactly where Ryan Dancey originally predicted it would be by now. The only real exception is the sheer number of people who jumped into the market right away after D20s release. Now all these companies that embraced D20 initially are having problems because the market is too crowded.  As for what is successful in D20 land and why, I agree with others, that you have to look at what the demand is. Initially after D20 came out, adventures were all the rage. Then came a couple campaign settings with some new player oriented rules content. Shortly after that came the flood of player oriented rules supplements. Those sold well at first, largely because WotC was taking its time releasing supplements that covered those areas (mainly race books and class books). Then people either decided that the rules in those books weren't balanced correctly, or they hit their fill. Since players outnumber DMs, they make up the largest part of the market, so they are the ones publishers wanted to market their products to. However, this eventually waned since the average player probably does not need ten books that cover the various options for dwarves. As time went by, WotC continued releasing more of this type of material, and the demand for it from third party publishers diminished even more. So now that the demand for player oriented books has largely gone away, the focus has been forced to shift back to DMs, who always need new material (although many of them are very creative people who would much rather create their own stuff ratehr than buy pregenerated material for their games). This means that publishers are back to making more settings, monsters, and adventures. Unfortunately those sell worse than the player oriented books, and despite the hard times the publishers are going through right now, there are still too many publishers in the industry for it to support them all. I predict that in the next couple of years we'll see the print publishers shrink down to three to five. Most of them will be successful by supporting the brands that they have developed themselves. This means licensed stuff like Babylon 5 and Conan will probably continue to do OK, as will "Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel", and the best setting material out there like Midnight. I think Malhavoc Press will always have a place in the industry because the Monte/Mearls team is one of the best rules teams out there, as will Green Ronin for continuing to put out top notch material that is useful to DMs. I don't feel that there is a true D20 backlash as much as there is saturation. Publishers that can successfully diversify into other forms of print products could do alright, and any publisher that can manage to bring in brand new younger players will definitely do better than the rest. As for other game systems, as a committed D20 designer, I don't buy too many of them, but it is nice to see some good playable rules light systems being developed and I wish them luck. So that's my 2 coppers. Take them for what they are.</blockquote>

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