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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rawhide" data-source="post: 2059752" data-attributes="member: 29145">It's kind of hard to jump in after Clark, who after all has experience and perspective with what publishers and distributors are saying and doing that most of us lack. That said, I do have a thought or two.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.When anything d20 sold 5000 copies even if it was crap, no one acted as a gatekeeper. Retailers (and thus distributors) bought just as much CrapFanboy d20 company releases as Green Ronin or Necro. In 2000, that worked. By 2001, you couldn't buy everything, so retails stuck to names they recognized or looked really, really cool.Then the other problem happened. Established publishers produced crap books, often as conversions. Remember Deadlands d20? The publisher apparently felt fans didn't respond to a change in system. The real problem is that the conversion was shoddy as heck. Even allowing for Mearls' learning curve among publishers, that book was poorly done. If any serious d20 designer had been brought in for it (and a bunch got laid off from WotC around then, so they were available) it would have sold much better.An even better example is Silver Age Sentinels d20. The original SAS rocks, but the d20 version reeks. It's the worst d20 effort I've personally ever seen. It make no sense at all, and is close to unusable. But since d20 was supposed to be hot, and GoO was known, a lot got ordered.When things like that failed to sell (and at my FLGS would still be on shelves if they hadn't been moved to $5 bargain bins) retailers concluded it was impossible to pick the winners from the losers. If there hadn't been a d20 glut in late 2002/2003 it might not have been so bad, but there was.So, WotC still sells. That's both because people know it won't suck as bad as SAS did, and because they can advertise. A lot of fan related sites have ads for them, at movie new sites and fiction sites. And don't think there aren;t a lot of harcore WotC only pople out there- there are. Most rpg fans aren;t on the internet, and most stick to one or two publishers tops.A few others can still get decent numbers. But even Necro, Mongoose and Green ronin arenl;t selling like they did. Other people had to pull out, and that starts the second backlash -- disgruntled publishers.Well, maybe not disgruntled exactly. but consider -- if you used to publish d20, and now you don't, is it in your best interest to promote d20? No, you want people to give up on it so they'll buy your books for Other Game. So a lot of publishers now talk up their Other Game, while doing everything they can to bring down d20 without -looking- like they're trying to bring it down.SJGames, for example, has one lone idiot writer doing d20 stuff for Pyramid, once a month. He's really only there to reming die-hard GURPS fans that they hate d20. It's worth SJGames time and money to put out one article amonth they know everyone will hate, to drive backlash sales of their own books.The backlash is real, but it's all based on money. Gamer backlash, if it exists, is just the same pickng and moaning that's gone on since Dave and Gary decided to print a little game.</blockquote>

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