Did This Prove to be True?

[billd91]

If you count retail value of the product released? That "imbalance" start to right itself mighty quick.
<snip>
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 money invested only makes sense if you're using some variety of constant dollar and not the prices from one product and the prices from another one 10 years later. I'm quite skeptical of basing any comparison on dollar values of the materials.

 

[Echohawk]

Did they put out less material then TSR? Granted, I agree there were many less settings, but did it really remain true?

Yes. By my count, TSR/WotC produced 556 AD&D 2nd Edition books (over 11.5 years), compared to a mere 180 for 3.X (over 7.5 years).

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

A far greater portion of 3e material has proven useful to me than were the 2e supplements.

IMO the most expensive game or supplement is the one you do not use.

 

[Maggan]

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.

There comes a time when numbers are numbers. E.g., if you take a look at this list here:

http://www.acaeum.com/library/stocklist.html

And of course, the lists here:

www.hitpointe.com

You can pick out unique stock numbers for whatever product line you want. You will find that the amount of material put out for 2nd edition far outnumbers the releases for 3e. It seems as if 2nd holds its own even if you only look at rules, and discount multiple versions of the same book (softcover and hardcover releases).

EDIT: Counting the releases that I think would be considered rules, and not adventures, campaigns, character sheets and screens, I count 95 releases for 2nd ed. I'll count the 3e rulebooks when I come home, I have a close to complete set.

/M

 

[Mark Hope]

As has been pointed out above, WotC put out less adventures and campaign stuff than TSR (which were the two main hallmarks of 1e and 2e respectively) but far more rulebooks. Far more. Which makes this: "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" seem quite laughable.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The number of books one really needs to buy is 3 in 1e/2e/3e.

As far as optional books are concerned, the 3e supplements are reasonably modular. You could buy 1 or 3 or 0 easily enough.

I found the 2e Options books to be pretty hopeless unless you bought a whole big bunch and integrated them as a de facto AD&D 2.5e done in full bloat mode.

 

[DarkKestral]

As has been pointed out above, WotC put out less adventures and campaign stuff than TSR (which were the two main hallmarks of 1e and 2e respectively) but far more rulebooks. Far more. Which makes this: "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" seem quite laughable.

I think that the number of basic rulebooks WAS kept to a small number. really, over all of 3.5, there were a total of 3 'core', and 7 books that could sort of replace the core. However, 5 of those were MMs, and are the books most likely to be copied out of before-game to avoid time spent referencing the material, and are meant to help "Monster-of-the-week" games. A normal buyer might have the 3 core plus another MM or two or maybe the PHB II or DMG II. Not bad.

However, for a company interested in selling books to players, keeping down the number of rulebooks a player uses in-session is.. not something they can really control over the long term, if they want to stay in business. Even so, I'd say any given player is only likely to use 3-5 books maximum in-session, including the core three. However, several of them are probably mostly used out-of-game (item purchasing, other things not likely to come up in-session that often) and others would have simple things taken out of them that are easy to copy down. So, during playtime, I think it's a possibly valid statement for the majority of gamers. Just not for the type we see here...

 

[MerricB]

As has been pointed out above, WotC put out less adventures and campaign stuff than TSR (which were the two main hallmarks of 1e and 2e respectively) but far more rulebooks. Far more. Which makes this: "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" seem quite laughable.

It was true in 3e.

They realised how foolish that was in 3.5e and went for the crunch.

Cheers!

 

[TerraDave]

We will probably never know word count. But I remember those "complete" books being smaller, having bigger fonts, and more white space.

On the other hand, the 3rd edition core rule books were more complete then the 2nd ed ones, and I never felt compelled to buy many others.

 

[green slime]

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.

This is my experience as well.