d20 bubble bust?- High Prices, too many books

[Belen]

Has the bubble burst or will we see a number of companies die out in the near future? Is the d20 market saturated with similar books and high prices?

There are too many books to keep track of. Personally, I buy from only a few companies now, as I just cannot afford to buy there products and still experiement with the newbs. Even the companies that are left are stretching the available wallet. I can afford Green Ronin, Fantasy Flight, and WOTC only. Heck, I can only afford those three companies at the Amazon rates!

Rules: Anyone else have enough rules to last a lifetime? It's getting harder to tell the difference between a lot of companies. Feats, Spells, PrCs have become so standard that they have completed saturated...everything. No only is it impossible to use a fraction of the material, but it is impossible to master any of it.

Price: The price of d20 products has been climbing in the last fews years. And this year we can expect to see a product reach 100 dollars! This is just nuts. Is this a symptom of massive discounting? For instance, I would not have bought "Complete Divine" at retail price. Instead, it was worth it because I got the book for $21 dollars from Amazon. Is this the reason price has risen so much and so fast?

It's too much. Anyone else feel this way? I feel like I am at the overload point. I love to buy RPG books, but the current market is completely frustrating. Heck, all of the FLGS in my area is cutting back to WOTC books only. You can order third party stuff, but this means that we're buying blind, and so few products get more than a handful of reviews.

Ok...so I am somewhat frustrated. I ramble....

 

[EricNoah]

My theory is that there are many "little deaths" going on all the time and we don't get to see it. I mean, really, what company is going to have a press release reading "Despite all efforts, we have failed to sell our products and so we are closing up shop"? Even if a company closes its doors, human nature holds out hope against hope that something could come back around and allow one more try at success. Plus, with so many little companies, each little company probably has the resources to try and fail once or twice before being "wiped out." For every one that dies, another will rise to try to take its place. It's a rough, tough business -- the survivors will be "the best" and the ones that fade into the mists of time will be "the rest." Which makes great companies like Green Ronin, Malhavoc, Necromancer Games, etc. all the more remarkable.

Edit: as far as prices go, you'll want to check out the recently-resurrected Price Sensitive Gamers thread -- http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12471

And as far as "too many books" -- that's an argument I will never understand. Yeah, I personally don't need any more PrCs for a while, but so what? When I've had enough, I stop buying. What's too much for me might be not enough for others. I don't think "too many books" is a good argument for companies to stop publishing. Now, "not enough sales" -- that's a good reason.

 

[hong]

Me, I'm just bitter about my tax bracket.

 

[Ghostwind]

As long as the barrier of entry to publishing d20 books remains so low, you will continue to see a flood of products by new publishers, making it all the more difficult for 'established' publishers like Bastion, Green Ronin, Malhavoc, Necromancer, Fantasy Flight, etc. to succeed. When you have Joe Average, who thinks his campaign setting is better than Eberron, goes out and prints 3000 or more copies of the book and then gets someone to distribute it (only to sell 300-500 copies), he's stuck with a big debt and no desire to do anything more. But then Jim Cool comes along and thinks his elf book is the next big thing and the cycle starts all over again.

At the store where I work at, we are not ordering/reordering anything d20 for stock unless it comes from AEG, Bastion, Fantasy Flight, Green Ronin, Malhavoc, Necromancer and Wotc. Special order only are: Atlas, Fast Forward, Fiery Dragon, Goodman, Kenzer, Mongoose, Sword & Sorcery, and a few others. It's a real challenge for retailers to weed the crap from the good when they have 125 new d20 products every month to choose from. So many are choosing to fall back to Wotc only, especially when they are too stubborn to mark the old not-selling inventory down drastically and blow it out to door to make room for new.

The prices of RPG materials hasn't been an issue, although the $50 mark seems to be the top for our customers. We won't be ordering the WB Dungeon from AEG for stock. Most of it boils down to the fact that if the customer wants it, he'll pay for it. It all depends on his needs and likes. The same can be said for the content of the books. If they need it, they'll buy it.

The long and short of it all is this: You want less books and lower prices? Then figure out how to raise the barrier of entry so the market is not so flooded with new one shots from newbie publishers. That's the only way I see things changing, unless you're willing to abandon d20 completely and go to Savage Worlds or somethign like it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have no issues, while books may appear on the same subject, it is presentation and subject matter that I look at, I have a chioce based on my gaming style and campaign.

 

[MonsterMash]

I've got to admit for the size of market there seem to be a lot of books published, but then again conventional publishers seem to be forever adding new titles whether in fiction, non-fiction (especially things like gardening or cookery books - just how many can the market stand). The obstacles to getting published are lower than back in the old days, so more stuff makes it into the market place. The other issue is that compared to when 3e first came out the economy is weak in a lot of countries, so people will buy less product.

It can be hard to tell how a company is doing as so few are full time operations and if a pre-announced title doesn't come out there are a lot of other reasons than the company closing for the delay. It probably is important for the market to grow for the long term health of tabletop RPG, but that doesn't tie in so much with the amount of product available. During the inital D&D boom there was far less product available and it didn't stop the game becoming popular.

 

[Minicol]

I myself buy a lot of D20 products. Almost all the fantasy ones in fact. I believe I own about 80 % of everything fantasy D20. While I have favorites publishers, I rarely find something so bad that I would regret having bought it.

Even though, I also noticed the rise in costs (even more than you maybe since everything in France is an import). But the worse is not this : there are so many books around now that even with my good reading rate I have over 120 D20 books to read.

Even if all the ones I bought are good, I am not sure everybody is as avid as me for D20 stuff, nor that anybody can afford it.

Let's just hope that all our respective favorites publishers surviveand let's keep buying their stuff.

 

[Crothian]

Well, the bubble has been bursting for a while now. Prices are not just high now, they'vve been high for a while. Companies are not just dieing now, they've been dieing for a while. But d20 is still going strong. So, I think its just changing, not really bursting.

 

[BryonD]

At the store where I work at, we are not ordering/reordering anything d20 for stock unless it comes from AEG, Bastion, Fantasy Flight, Green Ronin, Malhavoc, Necromancer and Wotc. Special order only are: Atlas, Fast Forward, Fiery Dragon, Goodman, Kenzer, Mongoose, Sword & Sorcery, and a few others. It's a real challenge for retailers to weed the crap from the good when they have 125 new d20 products every month to choose from. So many are choosing to fall back to Wotc only, especially when they are too stubborn to mark the old not-selling inventory down drastically and blow it out to door to make room for new.

I have seen an aspect of this.
The game store near me that I shopped at for 20 years had 2 of virtually everything right after the D20 system started out. The good stuff vanished in an instant and the junk sat there. Months and years ticked by and the junk still sat there, taking up shelf space. (The store owner not figuring out to liquidate is a separate matter) Anyway, it became obvious that they were afraid to invest in more D20 product after a while, so I learned that I could never find anything I wanted there because they would not stock it.
A couple months ago they went under. I have no idea if this has anything to do with why, but it seesm so to me.

On the other hand, you may be discounting the "cool and fun" factor. Joe Average and Jim Cool are publishing because it is fun to write the stuff anyway. I think most games companies seem to fail to accept that there is going to be less potential compensation for doing stuff that a lot of the consumer base likes to do themselves. Obviously, there is still the tedious day-to-day business stuff there, and the companies that neglect that will fail quickly. But these exist in boring businesses as well. Joe Average isn't out there writing financial reference books as a form of fun. So that doesn't chip away from the demand side of the marketplace as it does in gaming.

 

[Narfellus]

d20

hmmm...changing but not really dying. I can see that crothian. I have slowed down my book buying, and this relates to the original post. Personally, i feel that there are too many books rehashing the same material. We all know the rules, and the only thing to do is keep tweaking thos rules until they've changed so much that someone wants to write a new edition of D&D. But, it's all evolutiuon of the game, and the alternative would be NO game. So, we can buy or not buy what we choose, but i agree, the hard part is CHOOSING what to buy or not buy. What is a kickass product? What's a poor product? And what's gold to one person might be dung to another. I've read plenty of glowing reviews about game products i was repulsed by. I do wish we had less choices so it would be easier to get a handle on the quality/quantity of material out there. Right now it is too much for other than Green Ronin, WotC, Fantasy Flight, and maybe some Sword and Sorcery. But even with those big 4 the products are hit or miss depending on my tastes.