Does Enworld have a major impact in the D20 market?

[Morrus]

I would have to agree that EnWorld's impact is greater on the PDF industry than it is the RPG industry as a whole. In fact, EnWorld's affect on PDF sales is strong enough that I've always wondered why they never started their own PDF sales site. To me it just made perfect sense.

I've considered it more than once. Probably will do so again. For me, there are some major hurdles to getting something like that off the ground, but once it was in place, I can't see it not doing extremely well.

 

[philreed]

I've considered it more than once. Probably will do so again. For me, there are some major hurdles to getting something like that off the ground, but once it was in place, I can't see it not doing extremely well.

I agree that it would likely be a huge job. I also agree that it would do extremely well.

 

[Turjan]

Necromancer is not sword and sorcery alone.

Sorry, but I don't quite get that sentence. Do you mean that Sword and Sorcery is not restricted to d20 companies?

The insider does not work well for stores. They usually ignore it. Stores need release dates and a product blurb. It would help if all that could be found in one central location as that would make it easier for stores to find out the info they need.

The insider has that stuff at the end: Releases sorted per release month with the short product blurb. But you are right that it's hard to find something specific in there.

 

[Belen]

Sorry, but I don't quite get that sentence. Do you mean that Sword and Sorcery is not restricted to d20 companies?

Necromancer publishes titles through a number of companies. For instance, Troll Lord Games and Kenzer will both publish Necromancer titles. The only Necromancer stuff that would be found in the WW Insider would only be the titles published through the Sword and Sorcery label.

 

[Ghostwind]

As a person who orders stuff for my store from Alliance Midwest, I will say that they ARE scaling back considerably on the numbers of non-Wotc d20 stock numbers. I can't tell you how many times I have been told "X" new release was not in stock or was on backorder. It took me weeks to get Black Company in when it ws released. Furthermore, I know that they are cutting their pre-order numbers to drastically low levels. I almost get the impression that they are readying themselves to carry only a few 'select' publishers and then dropping the rest. But that is just my take from the retailer end of the perspective.

 

[Turjan]

Necromancer publishes titles through a number of companies. For instance, Troll Lord Games and Kenzer will both publish Necromancer titles. The only Necromancer stuff that would be found in the WW Insider would only be the titles published through the Sword and Sorcery label.

Oh, that's what you mean . Okay, that's a very specific problem of Necromancer.

If I get you right, you suggest some specific d20 leaflet with all new releases, but less wordy than the Insider. I just spoke of the Insider because it contains short blurbs like you mentioned (see attachment); would something like that work?

 

[Belen]

Oh, that's what you mean . Okay, that's a very specific problem of Necromancer.

If I get you right, you suggest some specific d20 leaflet with all new releases, but less wordy than the Insider. I just spoke of the Insider because it contains short blurbs like you mentioned (see attachment); would something like that work?

It would be nice to have a complete listing of d20 products and not just the stuff from WW.

 

[Turjan]

It would be nice to have a complete listing of d20 products and not just the stuff from WW.

Yes, that's what I meant (although I didn't write it as I see ). I don't have much hope that anything like that would work, though. There are too many companies involved, and some of them have even a hard time keeping their webpages up to date.

 

[William Ronald]

Perhaps EN World can tell companies what a dedicated core of gamers (more dedicated than just the casual gamer) is thinking about their products and what they do in their games. So, it might give an informed opinion on products and the interests of the gaming public. We may pr may not be a representative sample of the gaming populalation, but we tend to buy more than just one product. Also, unlike the gaming market of 20 years ago, the internet allows for rapid response on products, and also allows developers to talk about the products they are working on and gain some feedback. I think that a good RPG company succeeds by producing good products that their customers will want, and recommend to friends. So, EN World can serve as a good place for the industry to better understand their customers.

 

[Steverooo]

2. We "plant the seeds" of ideas into D&D. WotC game designers do read these forums and tons of new ideas are suggested or requested all the time around here. The designers who read or hear about our ideas can't help but be influenced. All people are impacted at least a little by the ideas they accumulate in their heads such as by reading them on ENWorld.

I know that many of the complaints and ideas that I posted to the 3e "Fixing the Ranger" thread were adopted by WotC for 3.5e. (Naturally, I choose to believe that this is because I was right, and my arguements irefutable!) I think that it is fair to say that ENWorld does not fly below the radar of many D20 publishers...