Did This Prove to be True?

[Scribble]

Q: Great. Now I have to go out and spend thousands of dollars to upgrade or replace my 2nd Edition library. How fair is that?

A: If you have an extensive TSR library, chances are most of it is campaign source material. Although some adjustments (such as character stats) may be necessary, most of that material remains as valuable as ever.

The good news is we don't plan to replace your library with another one of equal size. One very important lesson Wizards of the Coast learned from TSR: Don't saturate the market. We don't expect to produce nearly the same number of different items for 3rd Edition as we did for 2nd. We'd like to see the number of basic rulebooks kept to a small number, and we want to keep the number of books that players will use equally manageable.

Did this remain true?

Did they put out less material then TSR?

Granted, I agree there were many less settings, but did it really remain true?

 

[Belbarid]

Did this remain true?

Did they put out less material then TSR?

Granted, I agree there were many less settings, but did it really remain true?

Yeah...

See, the thing is that WotC gets paid when people buy books. If they don't release books, people won't buy books. WotC learned what T$R learned. If you publish it, they will come.

Or am I being overly cynical?

 

[borc killer]

It would be nice to see the full numbers.

They mostly put out 2 books a month and maybe a few little things here and there... two books seemed like a good amount.

But the first part was true. I did keep a lot of it and updated it. But it sounds like the break between 3 and 4 will be much harder to convert.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

Did this remain true?

Did they put out less material then TSR?

Granted, I agree there were many less settings, but did it really remain true?

I think so.

The 3.5 revision complicates things, since a lot of material got recollected. Also, AD&D 2e lasted 11 years, to the 8 years of D&D 3e.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

Seems like it.

 

[T. Foster]

WotC put out much less material for 3E than TSR did for 2E. However, when you factor in the d20/OGL publishers, especially in the 3.0 era before publishers started branching off into their own systems, much more material was released in total for 3E than for 2E. So I guess it depends on your perspective.

 

[MerricB]

More hardcover books in 3e. Fewer everything else. I have about 60-70 Wizards HC books from the 3e era, and I didn't get a few... in total, fewer than 100 Wizards HC books. Once you add other supplements, you get a total of about 150, I think.

Cheers!

 

[Dykstrav]

Just for the sake of getting a rough idea, I'm going to go count the books on my shelf and let you know how many I have. My 3E collection is extensive but my 2E and 1E collections are satisfactory at best.

3E/3.5: 91 hardcovers, 48 softcovers, 4 boxed sets. I basically own everything printed by WotC for 3e/3.5. Lucky me that I know someone that owns a game store.
2E: 16 hardcovers, 55 softcovers, 26 boxed sets. I had a part-time job back in those days, but still I missed most of the early 2E material.
1E: 13 hardcovers, 49 softcovers.

So while I don't have complete 1E/2E libraries, a cursory glance suggests that they put out at least as much material as TSR ever did.

 

[Yair]

3E/3.5: 91 hardcovers, 48 softcovers, 4 boxed sets. I basically own everything printed by WotC for 3e/3.5. Lucky me that I know someone that owns a game store.

Aw, gods. How do you use even a small fraction of that? I'm having a hard time lugging around the relevant 3E books as it is, and I basically only use the Complete series...

I don't even have enough library space for all of that!

So while I don't have complete 1E/2E libraries, a cursory glance suggests that they put out at least as much material as TSR ever did.

Yeah, I'd be surprised if this isn't so.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yanno....I've been thinking about the "WotC released far less for 3E than TSR did for 2E" and I'm not so sure this is true.

In fact, I think it said so often - nobody is thinking about it critically.

Sure - if you count SKUs - it's less.

If you count retail value of the product released? That "imbalance" start to right itself mighty quick.

If you count pages - I'm not so sure it's true at all.

My point: the commitment one has to a system is not measured by the numbers of "Players Secrets of <insert Birthright domain> you have - or that you publish. It's about the number of books each player bought on average, the investment of $$ into those books they did buy and the page count of what they purchased.

The same could be said for what was released.

When you look behind the SKUs, the imbalance vanishes; in fact, it may well be in favor of 3E folks. I wouldn't be so quick to give WotC a bye on this one.