D20 saturation at an end?

[Sebastian Ashputtle]

Is there some massive group of boardgame enthusiasts that I've never heard of? Do they have conventions, websites and message board where they chat about the new releases?

Yep, there are tons of board-game fanatics who play few, if any, RPGs.

I met this guy recently who saw me reading a D&D Player's Handbook at Starbucks and we started chatting. Turns out he and his buddies are fanatical boardgamers, but they only play "Games most people have never heard of [i.e. no Monopoly ]". So he invites me to join them for a weekend session of Settlers of Cataan (I think that's the name), and I'm like, "Well, I'm more into RPGs. Why don't you come and play D&D with us this weekend?" And he says, "Well, I'm not that into role-playing games."

And that was that. :\

 

[Sebastian Ashputtle]

But we won't have the books. In the "Great RPG Purge of '06," brought on after the announcement of D&D 5th Edition at GenCon

Now this is just silly. By 2006, we'll easily be into D&D *6th* edition.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Okay, then what do you thing is not "crap"? I find it odd that you list those two companies. While they do put out some very good products, they also have what I feel is some pretty bad ones as well.

Creature Collection II is good. Tome of Horrors 2 is also good. For 3.0, Tome of Horrors 1 was good. The name escapes me at the moment but the big compendium/conversion put out by Green Ronin that covered their demon and devil books was pretty good as well. There are others...

Most third party products I flip through and quickly put back on the shelf. There are some companies that I won't even give that much consideration to because I'd had some of their books in the past and really REALLY didn't like them.

As I said, it was all IMHO, not a universal truth that would hold for everyone. Me, I'll stick with official WotC products (and even some of those are hit and miss..Planar Handbook and Savage Species, I'm looking at you) and a handful of trusted third-party companies.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I find it interesting that so many people are now coming to realize what was evident at Gen Con a year ago: that there are too many companies producing too many of the same books. There's too much crunch and not enough fluff out there. More than anything else though, there's too many publishers and not enough good new ideas to go around. Lets face it, 3rd edition isn't a new game anymore. People aren't looking for a ton of new subraces, prestige classes, feats, and unique spells for the dwarf anymore. Between the WotC books, which many people posting to this thread consider canon, and the various other publishers, there's plenty of material out there for this. The days of the small publishers marketing exclusively to the players should be at an end.

So what's left? It should be obvious, but material for the DM is scarce. Where are the adventures? Why do the campaign setting books have to be so full of player oriented rules when they should be providing adventure hooks for DMs to use? What about books that help you build a campaign around a central theme?

Settings are one of the few areas where a publisher can really stand out by presenting a new unique vision of what a fantasy world can be. But what makes one campaign setting different from another? I picked up the Dawnforge setting, knowing that it was one of the WotC setting search projects that didn't make the cut, and spent more than half the book trying to grok what made it different than any other relatively generic campaign world. It's not a bad product - not by a long stretch, but many of the elements within had that less than shiny and new feeling.

Ultimately I do believe that the D20 publishers do need to thin out. As an RPG freelancer, I've made in-roads with enough publishers that I'm reasonably certain that I can continue doing this far into the foreseeable future. What I would like to be doing, and what I would like to be buying, are products that either make my job as DM easier, or products that are highly imaginitive. What I would like to see are more Spelljammers, Eberrons, Darksuns, and Midnights. What I would like to see less of are the Greyhawks, the Middle Earths, and Krynns - I love them to death, but is there really any new ground to cover there?

 

[Mark]

First off, let me prefice this post by saying I have never purchased a Monkey God product so I can't comment on quality

Paging David Hurd. Paging David Hurd. We have your new sig quote and the irony is delicious...

 

[DaveMage]

What I would like to be doing, and what I would like to be buying, are products that either make my job as DM easier, or products that are highly imaginitive. What I would like to see are more Spelljammers, Eberrons, Darksuns, and Midnights.

And more Planescapes, please.

 

[broghammerj]

Paging David Hurd. Paging David Hurd. We have your new sig quote and the irony is delicious...

You must mean this guy:

www.concertartists.com/HurdD.html

I'm not so sure that's exactly fair. I mean I wish the guy well and all. It's not like there isn't a ton of other d20 companies I haven't purchased from.

 

[Akrasia]

... What I would like to see are more Spelljammers, Eberrons, Darksuns, and Midnights. What I would like to see less of are the Greyhawks, the Middle Earths, and Krynns - I love them to death, but is there really any new ground to cover there?

(Putting Krynn in the same category as Middle-earth is annoying, but whatever ..)

The fact of the matter is that most people who play DnD are not looking for the "exotic". Most just want your "Conan-meets-Gandalf" kinda game. They play once every week at most -- probably less, given how much damn time it takes to prepare 3.x adventures, etc. -- and are happy to play McGruff the "grumpy Scott/Dwarf"; Cleverardo the "cunning and charming Elvish thief"; etc. Stereotypes reign supreme in most "Sunday evening" games.

In short, I agree with your claim that DM-products are the ones that will last, but disagree with your claim that "unusual" settings are the way to go.

So this gets to the "meat-and-potatoes" point of your post, which is correct: in the long-run, the things that will sell, are the "campaign-maintainers", that is, the tools (namely, campaign settings and adventures) that enable a GM to keep his/her campaign going without too much effort. But I am not sure that "exotic" is necessarily the way to go. I mean, how many "Eberrons", "Steampunks," and "Iron Kingdoms" can the market handle?

Okay, I am rambling. But I suspect that some percentage above 60 of all gamers would be happy with a minimal Greyhawk setting and monthly adventures from Dungeon.

The prognosis is grim. The RPG market is diminishing.

But frankly, I have no stats to back any of this up.

Nevertheless: you heard it here first!

Seriously, 20 years from now: NO Rpg industry, just fan-supported material. I kid you not. Start updating your vitae now. :\

 

[Devilkiller]

Most people I've played with are very leery of allowing any classes or feats that aren't from WotC into their D&D games. They also tend to either write their own adventures or get adventures for free online. Toss in the fact that the people who don't run Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk generally run homebrews and there's just not much 3rd party stuff my gaming friends would be interested in buying. This is obviously even more true with the 'core rules only' group.

The only 3rd party products I've bought myself were an "En Route" book which was on clearance and one of the little half a page wide "one session" modules AEG put out a while back...something or another about St. Bethesda.

I agree with Whisperfoot that more adventures would be nice. Actually, I'd like to see short adventures in particular, the sort of stuff I could easily use as filler in a campaign or to spark an idea for a longer quest of my own devising. I also agree that unusual campaign settings have a better chance to really catch on and make a difference for a company.

In short, I agree with your claim that DM-products are the ones that will last, but disagree with your claim that "unusual" settings are the way to go.

I don't know. If folks don't use Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or some imitation of their favorite fantasy novel they generally just seem to whip up a generic homebrew. Sometimes if somebody sees something really different they might say "Wow, that's cool!" though, and i think that is the chance for the 3rd party publisher to break into the campaign setting market in a big way. Right now everything seems to be all about Eberron. If a 3rd party could get this kind of buzz going they'd stand to make a lot of money IMO.

The bottom line is this is not a good decision to compete with the Mike Tyson of RPGs.

As a boxing fan I have to chime in that Mike Tyson hasn't been the top fighter in the heavyweight division for over ten years. Still, I guess it is never exactly a "good" decision to fight Mike Tyson. You'll probably win the fight, but you might lose an ear...ouch!

 

[Olive]

Eh, I think this is a matter of personal taste.

And how...

personally, I don't get it. Most of WotC stuff has appealed to me. It's of a dependable power level (ore or elss), and it's well produced and well written.

I like some 3rd party stuff, but nothing I have seen has really floated my boat like my favourite WotC stuff. Too much in the way of new rules systems, rather than using current rules systems.

I think that the best 3rd party stuff is for d20 Modern from what I've seen so far...

Anyway, I'm glad GR is still publishing, and Malhavoc and a few others.