Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 4534601" data-attributes="member: 1645">Jasperak, I think the analogy you used was a good analogy -- TV programming and RPGs are similar in some important ways -- but the proper conclusion is the opposite of the one you expected.It takes WotC just as much effort (i.e. money) to develop a bard class or frost giant monster manual entry for one gamer or one million gamers.  (Yes, printing those pages isn't free, but printing costs aren't WotC's primary costs.)But we gamers each value the different classes, monsters, spells, etc. wildly differently.  If they sold the bard entry only to people who wanted to play a bard, they'd have to sell it for a shockingly high price.By bundling different classes, monsters, spells, etc. together -- ones that any one gamer might love or hate -- they can charge one fairly low price.  Cutting out eladrin and dragonborn wouldn't reduce the cost of a Players Handbook meaningfully, but putting them in might make a few more sales or increase the price some customers are willing to pay.I wouldn't extrapolate WotC's best strategy from my own personal tastes, and I wouldn't recommend that you do so either.  Different gamers have very different tastes, and WotC's job is not to cater to any particular gamers, but to the vast majority of gamers.Did they do that well this time?  I'm not sure.  Does leaving the Frost Giant out of the first Monster Manual cost them more sales of MMI than they'll gain in sales of MMII?  Again, I'm not sure.I agree that it seems odd though, not to include such a "core" monster in MMI.</blockquote>

Verification