Failed promises

[J-Buzz]

Player's Guide to Faerun. I guess I was expecting more...

Ditto

Seemed like it was nothing more than the player info pulled from the Campaign Setting book. It really turned me off. I have been very leary of buying books because of that. Although the DMG II looks interesting.

 

[eyebeams]

So if there's something I don't like, I should just shut up and leave it in the store?

I say that is my right to complain. Actually, I'm sure that many designers want us to tell them what we hate about their stuff. If we stop buying without saying a word, they'll sit there wondering why their sales plummet. They might thing that noone likes the game anymore and stop producing. But if a lot of people complain about how they don't like a particular thing, the designers might rething the thing, fix it in the next edition, and sales go up again.

D&D wouldn't be what it was if the fans just stopped buying.

If you buy what you like and don't buy what you don't like, you'll get the message across pretty darn quick. I'd like it if fans simply didn't buy something they didn't like. Even though it's in a company's interest to push collectibility to make a buck, in the long term it would be better if opeopel just didn't get what they didn't go for. This says what you like in no uncertain terms.

Commentary alone is something many of us treat with suspicion, because (as Gareth alluded to) most of the time a bad vibe about a book consists of 10 or fewer people complaining on multiple boards.

 

[Pramas]

Interesting. I would have imagined that it took enough liberty with "standard" D20 to have made the 3.0/3.5 switch largely irrelevent. It had its own classes, etc...

Right, well, that presumes people bothered to even look at it insteading of saying, "Oh, that's 3.0, I'm not interested." Similarly, many people missed the fact that Testament was a great resource for historical gaming because they didn't give it a closer look.

 

[Garnfellow]

Interesting. I would have imagined that it took enough liberty with "standard" D20 to have made the 3.0/3.5 switch largely irrelevent. It had its own classes, etc...

I think 3.5 hurt third party publishers in two very different ways. One is perceived obsolescence, which made 3.0 books appear less attractive to buyers and probably depressed sales on backstock 3.0 product. Even though most gamers might rationally know on one level that the two versions are fairly compatable, on another level it's very hard to not feel like a 3.0 product was somehow . . . substandard . . . once 3.5 had hit the streets. I realize that this simply isn't true, but it's how many customers think.

The second way 3.5 hurt third party publishers was to create a huge vaccuum of capital as a substantial number of customers re-bought their core books, which presumably diverted funds away from purchases of new third party products.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

If you buy what you like and don't buy what you don't like, you'll get the message across pretty darn quick.

But not the whole message. The most important part of the message would be lost - the part which part of the product made people shy away from it.

Commentary alone is something many of us treat with suspicion, because (as Gareth alluded to) most of the time a bad vibe about a book consists of 10 or fewer people complaining on multiple boards.

It's not always just a handful of people, though. I'd advise you to make a post about how you liked 3.0 harm and people should write if they disagree, and then count the different users that would post, but such a post would probably detect as a troll post, screwing the results.

 

[Kanegrundar]

If you buy what you like and don't buy what you don't like, you'll get the message across pretty darn quick.

So, you can tell a book you'll like from a book you won't just by thumbing through it at your FLGS? That's great, you're much better than I am. There are many books that I thought I was going to like while I was standing by the rack at the shop and then got home and tried to use them and found out how horrible they were. I don't like the book, but the publisher and designers got my money anyway. Therefore, the only way they would know about my dislike of the book is if I said something about it.

Kane

 

[Arnwyn]

If you buy what you like and don't buy what you don't like, you'll get the message across pretty darn quick. I'd like it if fans simply didn't buy something they didn't like.

Well, you have thousands of market research firms and successful companies disagreeing with you. And rightfully so.

Commentary alone is something many of us treat with suspicion, because (as Gareth alluded to) most of the time a bad vibe about a book consists of 10 or fewer people complaining on multiple boards.

Indeed. Because that kind of "market research" is the .

 

[Mr. Patient]

I don't know that it really ever had great promise, or that I was especially eager to see it, but Monsters of Faerun was a severe disappointment, even if you give it a pass because it was such an early book. It's full of wonky 2e-style mechanics, bizarre and clumsy flavor text, crazy CRs, and too many boring spidery creatures. I've been thinking of posting a review to reevaluate the book in light of everything we now know about the d20 ruleset (but didn't back then), but I'm not sure it's worth doing for a four year-old book.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm not sure it's worth doing for a four year-old book.

If you feel it is worth your personal time, then the answer is "yes". There are plenty of older materials that I really think warrant more examination (Testament, Bluffside, etc.) Look at it this way, maybe someone is thinking about bidding on the book on eBay or something.

Plus, it will increase your review count. Chicks dig a large review count.

 

[Garnfellow]

I don't know that it really ever had great promise, or that I was especially eager to see it, but Monsters of Faerun was a severe disappointment, even if you give it a pass because it was such an early book.

Dang, that's another book that really ticked me off. It was pretty darn expensive, for what you got. And there were a lot of core monsters that got stuck in the Forgotten Realms ghetto. How are bullwugs and perytons Monsters of Faerun?