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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Futurity" data-source="post: 1730134" data-attributes="member: 10738">This from the latest news on Enworld:Steve Creech of Bastion Press has posted the following information about d20 publishers leaving the d20 market: I talked to MonkeyGod at Origins and they told me then that Frost & Fur was their last release. Financially, it didn't make sense to spend four times the effort and money to produce a roleplaying game that only sold a few hundred copies at best when they could make board games under their other name, Face 2 Face Games, at a fraction of the cost and have sales that numbered in the thousands. They also confirmed it again to me at Gen Con when they said Arms & Armor v3.5 would be the only 3.5 collection of weapons and armor because they were not going to do a 3.5 version of From Stone to Steel.Of course, MonkeyGod isn't the only company no longer producing d20 materials. To my knowledge, Atlas only has one or two products in development and they are done with d20 supplements for the time being. AEG has no plans to do anymore one-word titles, instead doing Spycraft driven and Warlords d20 lines. Fast Foward is done completely. Living Imagination is done and is going back to focusing on their LARP business. Rumor (and I stress that word) has it that Fantasy Flight is done with their Legends & Lairs line for the forseeable future. There are also a couple of other companies on the bubble who I expect to call it quits in the near future. As far as an official notice, don't hold your breath. I doubt any company will make a public announcement saying they are giving up. No one wants to admit defeat and many will probably try to get back in the game if things pick up again._________________________________________________I kind of hope this is true. It's not that I begrudge any of the publishers mentioned above, but the fact is that most of the book lines for D20 that they published were either redundant or poorly conceived.  At one time or another I have picked up books from all of their lines, usually at a bargain discount because the FLGS was unable to move them at full price.  While on average any single FFE, FFG, Bastion, etc. book might have some useful content, the overall redundancy of the products from publisher to publisher might be a greater sink to value than any other factor.  Another thread in the open gaming forum was talking about the dearth of modules, as well.  Oddly, a few years ago it seemed like the problem with D20 was that there were too many shoddy modules in production, and not enough really worth buying.On the other hand, I don't think that a handful of companies deciding not to make bad publishing decisions is such a blow to the D20 market, as those products out there worth buying are clearly succeeding (Spycraft, for example).  New games this year that are worth owning, keeping, and dare I say it, running are plentiful, and eating up my free money, which guarantees I have no extra cash for redundant, useless junk which treads on old turf.  Eberron, Conan RPG, HARP, Malhavoc Press, these are all holding their own in a saturated market by virtue of their quality (okay, well in spite of editing issues with Conan....still a great game).  In short, my feeling here is that the market deserves this break, and it is a good thing that publishers who approached publishing D20 products like more of a business and less of an exercise in creative, stimulating writing, should leave the market for ground which they do better with.  I would like to say that of all the above mentioned publishers, Monkey God deserves better than it got; they produced some fine modules for D20, and their Stone to Steel book remains in my (very small) list of "must have" D20 books.  To everyone else, I look forward to your board games or non D20 rpgs (Fireborn, anyone?).</blockquote>

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