d20 bubble bust?- High Prices, too many books

[buzz]

Why not just not mark your book titles as PI?

Because then you get everybody and their brother putting out products that use the same names, a similar look, and that have a big d20 logo on them. It'd be stupid for them not to keep the titles under their control. E.g., the 304 companies that were basically trying to do this at the dawn of 3e.

And why isn't it "Players' Handbook"?

The same reason the DMG is not the "Dungeon Masters' Guide". It's a handbook for the player (singular), not a single handbook for all players (plural). They could have gone either way, but they way they went is perfectly legit, as well as in line with common practice.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Furthermore, that's really not for citation, that's for reference. Strictly speaking, any OGC you reproduce in your work isn't from the PH/DMG/MM--it's from the D20SRD. Those abbreviations are really only useful for pointing people to material that *isn't* in your work. Which is a slightly different problem (though one that will profit from teh same solution as the citation problem).

It's true that the nominal source of re-used content is the SRD, rather than the Core Rulebooks etc. However, since Wizards has left the business of selling the SRD to others, it seems like they'd rather have references point to the books they are selling rather than the abstraction they're not.

My interest in citations comes not only from my concern for the health of open intellectual systems, but also from my desire to survive as a publisher even in an environment where the Open Gaming License freedoms were used to the maximum extent possible.

If I designate 100% of my work OGC and you post it all online for free, I'd like for there to be a citation that reminds users where to go if they want to buy a nicely laid out hardcopy of that content.

If I designate some of my work PI, I'd like to make it easy for people who re-use my OGC to refer to the source where I'm selling the PI related to it.

I don't at all blame Wizards for wanting to draft the OGL in a way that preserves their brand and its ability to make money. I do think that an accurate and mandatory citation system is an important component of making money, but I see the rationale for wanting to limit compatibility claims--and, like any legal document drafted during a revolution, the OGL probably represents a compromise between contentious factions with differing interests.

I also don't think the license needs to be modified in order to make citation mandatory. AFAIK, the scientific citation system isn't codified anywhere; it's just the way every publisher does it. If you don't cite prior work properly, you're not considered a legitimate scientist; you can't get published in scientific journals, and ideas that are published outside those journals are generally ignored regardless of their merit. I'm not enough of a historian of science to know what battles it took to cement that community standard for publication, but it's real and it works.

And, speaking of variant abbreviations, why are the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide referred to using standard acronyming practice--taking the initial letter from each word--but the Player's Handbook grabs an extra letter for no obvious reason? And why isn't it "Players' Handbook"?)

A better question might be, why aren't there abbreviations for the newer sources that have contributed to the SRD?

 

[CarlZog]

Getting back to the original questions: Is there too much stuff and is it too expensive?

This thread has drifted off into a wealth of industry issues, which I find fascinating, but let me interject a pure consumer viewpoint for a minute here.

I do not understand people complaining that there is too much for them to buy, or that they are being forced to buy new books.

One of the big reasons I started playing D&D is that DMing was a creative outlet. I could play with as little or as much pre-prepared material as I want to. When I started playing, I was using one saddle-stitched, b&w booklet of rules with a spot-color cover ('77 basic set). After finishing the module that came with the set, I made up everything else for the next year. The only thing I spent money on was graph paper. I don't know how good it was, but it was mine. And my friends and I had fun. ("And I walked up hill in the snow in cardboard shoes... Damn kids today!" )

This is still true today. Nobody NEEDS any of this source material. Consequently, nobody NEEDS to go buy a whole new set of rulebooks every time there's a new edition published. All you need is a rules set that you and a few friends agree on. Who cares what the rest of the world is playing?

I'm not trying to sound ridiculously minimalist here, just putting things in perspective.

Of course, the truth is that soon after I started playing I wanted to read other people's ideas. In '79/'80, my local shop was filled with amateur mimeographed junk, and I bought a lot of it. A lot of it was the same; a lot of it was crap; and I'm sure a lot of what I didn't buy sat on the shelf until the day the store went up in flames.

The difference between then and now is that I didn't have ENworld, or a thousand other websites and messageboards, reviewing everything everybody put out. I'm in a MUCH better position today to make qualified buying decisions than I was 25 years ago. These days the internet has become my local shop. It's where I go to talk about games, see what's new, hear what others are doing, get product opinions from around the world, and buy stuff.

Yes, there is a LOT out there right now, but I've got the tools to weed through it, and I think those tools are generally doing a pretty good job of bringing the the cream to the top.

Does it cost too much? I don't know. Personally, I don't need everything I buy to be in full-color, hardcover, with lots of ultra-professional art. This is a game of the imagination; if your descriptions are good, my mind's eye can fill in the imagery. (I'm sure that sounds old-fashioned and makes the marketing guys role their eyes.)

Anway, prices will also always be expensive as long as you're setting up traditional presses for relatively small runs. No way around that.

My price point is based on how much use I'll really get out of it, but right now $40 pushes my limit for any one thing. And I don't buy much.

I think this hobby is in better shape today than it has been in a long, long time.
Roleplaying experienced a rebirth with d20, and now it's going through another maturing phase. As long as good, new ideas are out there, there can't be "too much stuff". The stuff that isn't good, or truly new, will get sifted out of the mix.

For you guys in the industry, that does mean that the pressure is on, and things will continue to change. But cheap media like PDFs, and low-overhead internet sales will continue to give little guys with good ideas a fighting chance.

zog