Dragonlance, do you like it?

[Belen]

Huh? You are way off here.

Eberron was released at Gencon 2003. Since that time, we have recieved:

1 Eberron Campaign Setting
2 Races of Eberron
3 Sharn
4 Five Nations
5 Eberron Explorer's Handbook
6 Eberron DM's Screen
7 Eberron Character sheets
8 Eberron Adv Trilogy: Whisper of the Vampires Blade, Shadows of the Last War and Graps of the Emerald Claw adventures: 32 pages each. - 96 total. (Actually - come to think of it - was Shadows of the Last War only 16 pages long?)

DragonLance was released at Gencon 2002 - 1 year before Eberron
So far:

1 DragonLance Campaign Setting
2 DragonLance Age of Mortals
3 DragonLance DM's Screen
4 DragonLance: Bestiary of Krynn
5 DragonLance: Towers of High Sorcery
6 DragonLance: War of the Lance (330pp. or so)
7 DragonLance: Tasslehoff's Map Pouch
8 DL AoM1 : Key of Destiny - 192 pp adventure
9 DL AoM2: Spectre of Sorrows - 192 pp. adventure
10 DragonLance: Holy Order of the Stars (later this week):

On the horizon for later this year are DragonLance: Legends hardcover and another 192 page adv. Price of Courage.

Too slow? Huh? Au contraire, with the exception of the Forgotten Realms, you will not see a more rapid and expansively covered setting on the market. (And DL is catching up to FR 3.5) In comparison, even Greyhawk and Eberron both fall short.

While I appreciate your frustration at HootS and Legends not being in your hot little hands and some early target dates announced which fall a few months late - I think your perceptions (emotions) are not according with reality (logic).

Uh...no. I was correct the first time. The three Eberron adventures were released separately, so there have been 10 Eberron releases. This does not count several additional adventures in Dungeons, nor the multitude of free articles, or Eberron specific DDM minis.

The reality is that we have received 4 sourcebooks in three years for DL. Period. Whereas we have received 6 sourcebooks for Eberron in two years (Magic of Faerun comes out in Oct.)

Heck, we have 7 Eberron RPG products coming out in 2005 alone.

So, yes, DL has a glacial publishing schedule. Midnight has a MUCH faster schedule than DL.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Well, if we do indeed count the 3 adventures for Eberron as 1 product, that brings it to 8 in 2 years for Eberron (4 / year) and 10 in 3 years for Dragonlance (3.33 per year)

Uhmmmm...should we just count the pages perhaps? You can take the three modules, add in all the pages in Dungeon too and you won't *touch* AoM Adv Path for length. Not even close.

Shackled City is long. AoM is already that long - and it's only 2/3rds of the way done. If we are counting 32 pages worth of adventures, Sov Press has already released 12 of them - as long as the entire 1st edition campaign module series.

However, Eberron has seen other support - each critter in the Monster Manual III has a section for being used in Eberron specifically, and there is at least one Eberron adventure in Dungeon magazine since the release.

Yes it has. It has all the marketing glitz - and budget - of Hasbro behind it.

DragonLance is a game that Hasbro does not want to sell - and a novel line that they can't sell enough of it seems.

I think that the release schedule is on par actually. The delay in getting product out after Age of Mortals was released was not assisted by the fact that Sov Press' main distibutor went under and owing them money. There were delays in the initial year or so. Even still - they clawed back and got the thing on course.

I think Ms. Weis has done a fine job in the circumstances and the perception that product has been slow is just that - a perception - not a reality.

I didn't claim it was faster- I claimed there was more out for it - and there is. I also do think the release schedules are comparable between the product lines. If we wanted to match release dates since Gencon 2003 - they'd be tied actually.

Given that one publisher is WotC and the other is a 3rd party licensee, that's doing pretty damn good, imo.

Whatever the case, it certainly isn't a valid excuse to knock the line or suggest you can't play it as it's not in a game-ready state. That's just loopy.

 

[Steel_Wind]

The reality is that we have received 4 sourcebooks in three years for DL. Period. Whereas we have received 6 sourcebooks for Eberron in two years (Magic of Faerun comes out in Oct.)

Heck, we have 7 Eberron RPG products coming out in 2005 alone.

So, yes, DL has a glacial publishing schedule. Midnight has a MUCH faster schedule than DL.

Magic of Faerun (not a Eberron product) comes out in October? And you count it? That brings you to six.

Holy Orders of the Stars comes out day after tomorrow - but you won't count it? And then you discount another randomly released hardcover in the DragonLance line (don't know which one you selected - but you certainly did not count one of them as there are five on my shelf already) and that's how you get to four?

So discount two: count a phantom book for another setting and I'm wrong and you're right?

You compare a 32 page adventure as being equivalent to a 192 page adventure campaign? literally a 1 to 6 ratio in page count?

throws up hands

Ok. You are right. I'm wrong.

 

[Odhanan]

I'm a huge fan of the original modules. Played them. Loved them.

[RANT ON]

Third edition's campaign setting completely turned me off. First, all the races available seemed half finished to me. Like using Savage Species, putting a LA on the abilities of a centaur and poof. Done. Done? Not satisfying me since I can do the same on my own (I should say, I'm almost allergic to PC races with starting hit dice and such. Playable at the table, certainly, but propose them as default choices in a setting? No).

Most importantly, I felt like the authors let me down. I wanted to play Dragonlance. What I loved about DL was not the War of Souls. I had even no particular knowledge of the War of Souls (and still do not). The CS was not well organized/clear. I remember the Hawkmoon RPG (in its French edition): I could run a Hawkmoon game without actually read Moorcock (and of course, after running a few games I did). The DL campaign setting wanted to sell me the novels of the War of Souls, and if I didn't want them, the parts of the CS about the War of the Lance were ridiculously summarized and blurred. In the end, no focus, and no feeling of an achieved product but rather a collection of notes.

Sure, you could tell me this or that sourcebook is GREAT, but I wanted to just have a playable setting in one volume, and I don't have that with the DLCS.

Add to this what other people have said generally about settings with metaplots, that you can apply to Middle-earth or high-level FR (when wanting to absolutely respect the setting as written, which I don't), or countless other settings out there. It just turned me off big time.

[RANT OFF]

 

[Belen]

Magic of Faerun (not a Eberron product) comes out in October? And you count it? That brings you to six.

Holy of the Stars comes out day after tomorrow - but you won't count it? And then you take another released hardcover in the DL line (don't know which one you selected - but you certianly took one of them as there are five on my shelf already) and that's how you get to four?

Sorry, it is Magic of Eberron.

Sure, I will count it. We have 6 sourcebooks for DL in 3 years. They annouced Holy Order of Stars at least 2 years ago. Heck, I could pre-order Holy Order on Amazon before Towers of High Sorcery.

Also, I clearly remember directly ordering from Sovreign and having them take nearly 3 months shipping the books to me and pricing them 20 dollars above retail.

I love Dragonlance, but they just do not put out the books quickly enough. If we look at the previous releases, we see that the sourcebooks almost always come out closely together, then we wait almost a year and get another two books. The publishing schedule is glacial, then really quick, then glacial again.

I am only saying that they need to improve. Their schedule prevents people from really getting into the setting. Heck, my FLGS bundled the DCLS and AoM together for $35 and cannot get rid of them.

People lose interest if they do not see a product come at regular intervals.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I love Dragonlance, but they just do not put out the books quickly enough. If we look at the previous releases, we see that the sourcebooks almost always come out closely together, then we wait almost a year and get another two books. The publishing schedule is glacial, then really quick, then glacial again.

May I suggest to you that the reason for this is partly revealed in the poll results above?

There are a lot of DragonLance fans - and a lot of UN-fans. For whatever reason. The reasons are not terribly important if you are a small publisher. The economic effect, otoh, IS important. They can't sell the product through the book trade or as massively hyped product to gamers at large. They are not Wotc.

Sov Press needs Origins , Gencon and Dragoncon dollars and Jamie Chambers has stated before that the cons are a big part of their business plan.

Looking at what they have done, its pretty obvious that they need to sell major hardcover product to a concentrated group of fans at full retail within 30-60 days of their publishing date. That's the convention market.

It's not hard to see why this is importnat to them. Think it through.

They do this because:

1 - they get full markup for their product, as opposed to 30-40% of MSRP retail; and,

2 - they get that money within 30 to 60 days of their printing date. While I don't know for sure, this, I *strongly* suspect, allows them to have their product printed on net 60/90 terms and pay it all - or nearly all of it off - with major Convention retail dollars.

In other words, this business plan covers the major costs of good sold for their most expensive releases in order to stay afloat for the rest of the year to develop and release smaller products. General release retail product at your FLGS accounts for their overall profits - but it takes them a lot longer to dig that money out of the distribution chain.

Sov Press is playing it smart and using the distribution system and summer convention markets to their advantage.

 

[mcrow]

Well, I didn't realize I was going to opne such a big can of worms!


Anyway. I am perfectly happy with Sov Press's release schedule. There are plenty of new things comming out every year for DLRPG, and there are so many novels to read as well. I am also a Midnight fan and FFG release schedule is not faster than DL and in fact I think the page count (counting only 2ed core book + all the sups) for DL is higher. I think the Sov press stuff is in general atleast as good as any WotC settings and in production values they are also right there. I don't like most of the stuff in Dragon mag so I could care less what settings they cover. I doubt you could name a non-wotc publisher that puts out products with the quality that Sov Press does.

 

[Razuur]

You might be interested in a new trilogy of books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - the Dark Chronicles. They're including sections that were originally edited out for space, and expanding on the story in general. Should be a fun ride.

Wow. When does this come out? This is exactly what I am looking for.

Razuur

 

[Desdichado]

Had a few good ideas. Had too many really bad ones for me, though.

I've also (like many, I suppose) always seen it as a novel setting rather than a game setting.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Wow. When does this come out? This is exactly what I am looking for.

Razuur

I think summer of 2006. Not sure on specifics yet.