diaglo said:
yes, there are other hobbies where people leave due to disenfranchisement.
they no longer feel like their hobby is going in the right direction.
I'm sure that there are, but I can't think of any right now.
As far as adding new books and new rules for 3.x, this complaint just never seems to go away. I'm not entirely sure why.
My wife likes to do needlepoint. She gets excited when she finds new colors of yarn. I never hear her complain, "There are too many colors of yarn! I'm going to quit needlepointing!"
We both like to cook. We are constantly on the search for new recipes. Does the world
need new recipes? No. We can get by with what we have. We can all just eat the same thing every day for the rest of our lives (well, within reason...). But, when browsing through a book store, we're likely to go to the Cook Book section and look for something new. We certainly don't complain when we see that a chef we like has written a new cookbook.
I don't see too many Star Wars fans complaining that there are "too many action figures" (except from the standpoint that they can't afford them all, or maybe don't have room to store them). Same with comic book fans and comics (although Marvel did go a little crazy there in the 1990s with too many titles) and with music fans and music. People don't complain when their favorite bands have put out too many new albums (unless those albums suck, but there will still be fans who like the new stuff anyway and will buy it).
I think that the complaining about new material coming out for 3.x can be broken down into a few areas:
1) Money. Some people feel like anything WotC puts out is needed for their game, and they can't afford it all, so they get bitter and complain. Note that you don't need to buy all of these new books. Just use the Core three books to run your campaign. Or, heck, get it for free as the SRD. Just because you feel that you can't afford a new book doesn't mean the book is unwarranted.
2) "Usefulness". If you don't have an arctic area in your campaign world, then
Frostburn is going to be pretty useless. Note, however, that this does not mean it is a useless book for everbody.
3) "Too Many Options! I'm overwhelmed!" Relax. Switch to decaf, and just use what you want. Or don't use any of it. No one's forcing you to read through and use all of this stuff. They're called options for a reason: they're
optional.
That's all I can think of right now. I think most of the complaints really fall into area #2: most people have a tendency to evaluate books based on how useful it is for them personally and then make a judgment about its worth without considering how someone else might feel about it. For everyone who thinks that
Maelstrom is going to be a complete waste, there are probably just as many people who run a "water-world" campaign who can't wait for this book to come out.
I'll be the one in the nursing home, cajoling the other geezers into a game...
