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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 1730671" data-attributes="member: 7394">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?</blockquote>

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