Decline of RPG sales

[MerricB]

Not really. Eberron is an innovation against previous cultural offerings of D&D. It is not traditional fantasy. This is fine. Eberron is meant to be marketed to people who are more familiar with pokemon, final fantasy, and x-men than with more traditional styles.

I wonder why I like it so much, then, as Greyhawk is my preferred setting and I don't enjoy Pokemon or Final Fantasy, and gave up the X-Men years ago.

Although Eberron draws on more outside the Tolkienesque settings, I don't think you can boil it down to Pokemon, Final Fantasy and X-Men. That ignores the wider trends of popular fantasy fiction. If anything, the world of Harry Potter bears more resemblance to Eberron to anything than in Pokemen or the X-Men. (I'm not familiar with Final Fantasy).

It's an interesting feature that D&D itself is so against traditional fantasy - because, in traditional fantasy, wizards are rare and mostly the enemy. If they are friends, their magic is hidden and secretive (see Gandalf). What a contrast to the magic-user of D&D, throwing fireballs everywhere!

I'd much prefer they have a generic setting or materials for this regard, but that is a preference.

Does default D&D/Greyhawk fill that need for you?

Cheers!

 

[rounser]

Eberron is an innovation against previous cultural offerings of D&D. It is not traditional fantasy.

At it's heart, D&D is just a bunch of favourite sword and sorcery fantasy cliches. I suppose my distaste for the setting revolves around it muddying those waters without having a strong theme to it to latch onto ("It's D&D with this twist:"). Even Dark Sun and Spelljammer had that, and you could sum up that twist in a few words. Instead it's a kind of unfocused mishmash, part this that and the other...

And when it was launched, they promised that a focus of the setting was "making the impact of magic on the world make sense", which displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes D&D tick, IMO. I really wanted them to go back to D&D's roots and do something like Wilderlands - that's how the game could have been reinvented in terms of D&D doing what D&D does best, but I suppose they were gunshy after TSR reinventing the wheel and failing so many times. Instead they played some weird novelty card that seems related to a fascination over at WOTC with pulp.

Heck, I can even see why a novel setting won: After reading 1000 proposals of the same-old same-old derivative D&D drek, something novel would seem like a really good idea.

 

[MerricB]

At it's heart, D&D is just a bunch of favourite sword and sorcery fantasy cliches. I suppose my distaste for the setting revolves around it muddying those waters without having a strong theme to it to latch onto ("It's D&D with this twist:"). Even Dark Sun and Spelljammer had that, and you could sum up that twist in a few words. Instead it's a kind of unfocused mishmash, part this that and the other...

I well understand that. There's a bunch of really unfocused bits in Eberron. (The same also applies to Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, btw, but they're off to the edges a lot more).

I boil down Eberron to "It's Indiana Jones in a fantasy world!" as a starting point. That covers most of the adventures. (Occasionally substitute "James Bond" in there).

Looking at the published adventures:
* The Forgotten Forge - Indy Jones
* Shadows of the Last War - Indy Jones
* Whispers of the Vampire's Blade - James Bond
* Grasp of the Emerald Claw - Indy Jones

Cheers!

 

[WizarDru]

And when it was launched, they promised that a focus of the setting was "making the impact of magic on the world make sense", which displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes D&D tick, IMO.

Wouldn't that be 'players'? The ones who are buying the game in droves? I would think successful sales show a pretty good understanding of what makes D&D tick.

 

[rounser]

I would think successful sales show a pretty good understanding of what makes D&D tick.

Slap WOTC production values and the D&D logo on something more traditional; would it have sold better? We'll never know.

 

[MerricB]

I really wanted them to go back to D&D's roots and do something like Wilderlands - that's how the game could have been reinvented in terms of D&D doing what D&D does best, but I suppose they were gunshy after TSR reinventing the wheel and failing so many times.

I don't think it's entirely that. I think the ongoing trends of fantasy have taken us far away from the Lieberesque worlds. When I think of the major fantasy books of recent times, most have magic front and centre, and often integrated into the world.

Cheers!

 

[rounser]

I don't think it's entirely that. I think the ongoing trends of fantasy have taken us far away from the Lieberesque worlds. When I think of the major fantasy books of recent times, most have magic front and centre, and often integrated into the world.

That's a good point. Nonetheless, I'm not sure that there was a need to go Indiana Jones to update things, either.

It's interesting to look where they've landed out of the original directions of "back to the dungeon", "crunch good, fluff bad", "balance is king", "let those d20 guys make the modules, we'll make a fortune selling PHBs" and "keep the number of settings to an absolute minimum".

I think all of those had unintended side effects which proved that the issues weren't quite as black and white as these policies suggested they were. They've all been very good for sales, but I'm not sure if they're sustainable. Likewise, if Eberron comes to define what D&D is because the alternatives aren't there, that could have unintended side effects too.

 

[Turjan]

Likewise, if Eberron comes to define what D&D is because the alternatives aren't there, that could have unintended side effects too.

You talk as if the FR were already dead and buried .

 

[MerricB]

You talk as if the FR were already dead and buried .

That's an important point. I know that the primary problem of FR vs Greyhawk is that they're so similar. (Look, I much prefer Greyhawk to the FR, but I can look at them objectively and say that the play experience is very similar in both). Both cater for what we probably agree on is the core D&D experience.

The second D&D setting was required to be different than FR. It's D&D with a twist.

Eberron doesn't supplant the Forgotten Realms. The FR is still extremely viable, and, indeed, more visible than Eberron. Look in the bookshops and tell me how much shelf space the Eberron novels take compared to the FR novels.

As an aside, one can see that the Dragonlance novels are still a going concern. Why then are the Dragonlance setting books not still published by Wizards? My theory is that the actual world is terribly difficult for DMs to come up with viable adventures in it. Great to read about, much harder to play in. (Consider also that all the Weis & Hickman DL novels are about big, world-changing events, which can't really be translated to D&D games on an ongoing basis. The RPG needs more stability in the game world).

There's an interesting divergence: Novels are often about a world-changing event. RPGs are often about preventing a world-changing event. Discuss.

Cheers!

 

[BryonD]

Eberron is meant to be marketed to people who are more familiar with pokemon, final fantasy, and x-men than with more traditional styles.

Yep. Which is why I really don't care for it.
It is a genre soup mis-mash of magitech, supers, sci-fi and fantasy. Nothing is automatically any one of those, but they are all blurred together.

If that is what younger audiences want, then good on WotC. I've got no gripe with them choosing the up and coming audience over my personal preference.

But I'm still going to spend my money on what I do want, and this ain't it.