Forgotten Rums....? Evil Overlords...?

[JeffB]

Re: DM Support

Dungeon Master's Guide, 256 pp. The granddaddy of 'em all.
Monster Manual, 224 pp. Enough monsters to populate any campaign.
Monsters of Faerun, 96 pp. But just in case MM wasn't enough...
Deities & Demigods, 224 pp. How to use gods in a campaign, including creating your own.
Manual of the Planes, 224 pp. How to use the planes in a campaign, including creating your own.
Eight "Adventure Path" modules plus Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, total 480 pp. More than a full campaign's worth of adventures.
Book of Challenges, 128 pp. But just in case the modules weren't enough...
Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, 128 pp. Unlimited dungeons.


And don't forget Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine. That's another 100+ pages or so every month (or roughly 2,500 pages in the past two years), plenty of which is directed primarily at the DM--new monsters, tactics, organizations, rule variants, Dungeoncraft, and, of course, adventures.

Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but...what's this support you're looking for?

Andy,

I'll give ya the DMG and MM...however those are CORE books...they are needed to run the game..that's not "support" That's providing the rules...

MoF...yeah I guess...although I can get conversions of monsters for free over at the CC site....

Deities and Demigods...nope...That's a book of rules with little support...how many DM's need STATS for Gods? Creating A God's stats is not support...that's rules-crunch...

Manual of the Planes...PERFECT example of what many DMS are looking for...a little Fluff, some Crunch but mostly a SET OF TOOLS for DM to use to create his own cosmology or utilize the "Core" cosmology..

modules...Yes that's DM support...however I personally feel that's an area that WOTC should stay away from...The D20 companies clearly outshine WOTC in that regard...

RttToEE...Mega-dungeon crawl...yes it can set up a long campaign...See the above answer for modules...

Book Of Challenges..yes...that's a cool thing....

Stronghold BuildersGuidebook...too narrow of a focus...that's like saying that the 2E Complete Ninjas Handbook is great DM support..yeah I guess..If you REALLY like Ninjas..

Dragon & Dungeon....well.. Dungeon..Yes...that's support...Dragon...nope...barring a few good articles by Greenwood and Laws and a couple of others..Dragon has mostly been crunch/rules stuff for players with an emphasis on themes to push whatever particular product WOTC is peddling that month...Most of them are a waste on me....I mean C.mon..the Stronghold builders guide AND a whole issue of Dragon devoted to it... that's ridiculous...


So not including the MotP and the BoC...I don't see it...

Books like the MotP which are primarily TOOLS with some fluff and crunch to get my creative juices going are a perfect example of what I need as DM support.....I don't need stat block after stat block of monsters, Stats for Gods my players will never meet, whiz-bang feat power-combos, and yet even more dozens of bizarre PrClasses...That's stuff primarily for players to gawk over over and say "I want this"...

IMO of course,

 

[Zot_Wyzo]

Re: Re: Margins... stupid.

Except we are talking about RPGs - a game - not novels. In the novel area you are correct - but even there you can target novel lines that are not making their margins. On the RPG end we can predict within 10% what a product will do. If we say we are going to sell 100 units in a year we will sell somewhere within 90 to 110 very consistently (we get surprised on occasion but not often).

AV

DANG! I wish the bean counters at the company I work for could do that well estimating sales of products! Heck, I even wish they could estimate within 50%!!!

We've produced product that cost so much in development, then turned out to sell so few units it doesn't even pay the salary of one support technician (we're into software development). Fortunately, the bread and butter product makes up for these losers.

If we were that successful in predicting sales of a new product only 50% of the time, we'd be worlds ahead of where we are!

My hat is toipped to you, man. You've got it going on!

 

[Ds Da Man]

Well, I for one think that only a few things have been left out by WotC, and that was a good set of mass battle rules, and more computer tools. By computer tools, what I mean is something akin to the FR Atlas (which I do like), but more "interactive". You know, click on an area, the view explodes, then click on a town, and it enlarges, and actually be able to click on houses, shops, etc., and actually have a fellow pop-up that will offer items (random or pre-picked by DM). You good have a tool-set that allows you to build your own interactive towns and such. Preprogrammed little shopkeepers and bar wenches. Maybe offer adventure module and city expansions for it. This would be the true help a working DM could use.

For the record, I think WotC has put out some amazing stuff, with a lot of variety. I love Star Wars, D&D, and CoC. Their selection has been wonderful, and I have bought quite a bit. Gracious amigos!

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

For all of you that think companies and bean counters only care about CEOs, I think you are wrong...
...you all seem to see movies, read books, eat, where do you think that stuff comes from? From companies.

While it is true that all - or at least most - of our material goods come from large companies, this is no way negates our rights to question or critize them. This is a capitilist society not a fuedal one. Companies are not our lords and masters - no matter how much they might wish otherwise.

I believe that there are enough people out there buying D&D products that even if Hasbro does mess it up, it will return.

The central question of this thread is not "Will D&D go away?"

However, a central question to this thread is "Will the Forgotten Realms go away?" becuase it only made a 4% profit when Hasbro had counted on a 5% profit.

 

[Coreyartus]

I don't know squat about business, profit margins or the like. I'm just a game player. But I don't understand, and will never understand, why it is necessary to continually make a bigger and bigger profit off of every item sold year after year.

I worked for a long time in a major fast food restaurant franchise store, and they made no profit off of the food they sold. Nothing. The company stayed afloat (and thrived fantastically) because they made their money selling the soda that went with the food. The bulk of the items sold were food items, but that didn't matter--they knew they had to sell the food so people would buy the drinks. They would never ever have dreamed that they actually could make a profit off of every item sold--it would have been impossible and the company would have gone out of business instantly. They covered their costs with the food, and that was enough.

I don't know how things work at large corporations like Hasbro, or what their expectations are when they release a product. It seems to me though, that if WotC products aren't pulling down a large enough profit margin to keep them happy, they should consider not the content of the product (which they could easily evaluate based on the plentitude of RPG sites that offer reviews and our own verbose opinions on such venues as this one) but their own methods of evaluating success. There are plenty of companies out there that are happily doing very well without having to continually rake in mounds of money. What was Hasbro thinking, that RPG's were going to be the next Barbie? Get real! It seems to me, IMHO, that the problem lies not with the Forgotten Realms crunchy vs. fluffy conundrum, but with a company whose bottom line is a profit margin that is unrealistic for the industry it's dabbling in.

 

[THG Mage]

However

After looking over this immense thread, I felt I needed to at least stop by and chime in. I think we are all missing the greater point, the overwhelming question that we all have in this and all matters. Forgotten Rums, Donuts, Munches etc are all well and good but the true question is:

Hows the setting search going? Any updates? Are we ahead of schedule? Information and news please AV? Any little glimmer of news would be appreciated.

 

[Chairman Aeon]

Re: Bean counters

Now about this pastry nonsense. I want to ask this simple question: You are in charge of a recipe business. You are informed that your recipe books must make a certain profit margin. You have two main lines we'll call them Core Donuts and Forgotten Rum. CD sells alot better than FR. You need to increase your margins.
1) You can lay off some elves and get the remaining elves to work harder. (lower your costs keep revenue the same)
2) You can increase your prices and piss off your Gnome customers. (keep costs the same, raise revenue - hopefully unless the Gnomes rebel)
3) You can cancel the FR line, lay off some elves take the revenue hit but make your margins. (lower revenue but lower costs more)
4) Or (and this is apparently the evil choice) you can try to find a way to make your FR line sell better. (raise revenue without raising prices and keep costs the same).

Well Tony, I can call you Tony right? =J

In all honesty the best option is (3). Option (4) requires watering down the Rums so it isn't really Rum, but grog. The people who don't want and rum will complain about the rum in the grog. You may reach a point where you are labelling water as Rum and the rum fans won't buy it because they see there is no Rum and the non-Rum people don't buy it because it's labelled Rum.

So put FR on the shelf and do a campaign book for an older setting or a new one. Give it a 50/50 fluff and crunch setting books. Maybe a perfect bound monsters and magic books. Put out a trilogy of novels and then do another setting.

And by the way I have a degree in accounting and I never counted a single bean (unless it was a chocolate covered coffee bean) in my life.

I.

 

[J Lloyd]

Re: DM Support

[Andy_Collins]

"I'm curious: what's your definition of 'support'? [sic] 'Cause it seems to me like there are an awful lot of 'DM support' products on the shelves."

"Just for the sake of argument, let's completely ignore any "support" afforded to the DM by the...the five classbooks, and the "player" chapters of the Psionics Handbook and Epic Level Handbook."

Let's, indeed, since (1) the class books are not really DM support products (they are player support), and (2) as a DM, I would not buy these books to get help in DMing D&D games. I would buy them to get help in DMing selective sorts of issues within the game, and these issues are "add-on" issues (you know, like adding psionics to the base game, or adding "epic" level play, whatever that might mean). You are adding a different twist or dimension to the game so obviously you must add-on different ways for DMs to handle them.

"And also ignore any "support" that might be gained from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting and its following products, as well as from Oriental Adventures."

Indeed, since as a DM that runs my own campaign, I would never think about getting these products to help support my DMing efforts for my world.

...

"That's approximately 1,978 pages of products directed primarily (if not wholly) at the DM, or about 82 pages per month of the lifespan of 3E D&D. Almost three pages per day, if you're reading 24-7."

And most of it is not useful to most DMs. Or let me put it in other words, most of it is material that most DMs do not or cannot or will not use for their own campaigns. So you have a great deal of DMs who could do without a good deal of the material.

Why is it that a DM's Guide can be written, but a DM's Supplemental Guide can't be written? There' has to be a 1000 books that places a host of uninteresting or non-useful things for a DM into a book full of player support.

J. Lloyd

 

[ColonelHardisson]

don't need the planes - have more important things to focus on.

Manual of the Planes is about far more than the planes. That aspect of it can either be ignored, or, more usefully, used for examples of how various worlds can be created. The material it has helps provide actual in-game effects for narrative design choices. It's one of the most singularly useful books I've ever seen in regards to helping DMs design unique campaign worlds. Even better, the actual crunchy bits (as well as the fluff) provide tons of inspiration for even more radical customization of individual campaign worlds.

Besides the 3 core books, MotP is, in my opinion, the most important hardback done for D&D.

 

[Chairman Aeon]

Re: Niche markets

Maybe Hasbro needs to realize that they bought into a niche industry, and that it might not get all that better. Trying to market D&D to the masses does not work.

...

Hasbro's mistakes seem to be in putting too many eggs in the Pokemon basket at just about the time those eggs were breaking, and in somehow thinking they can make D&D sell like Monopoly or Magic. Ain't gonna happen. The problem isn't that it isn't profitable (as I read it) but that is isn't profitable enough.

You bring up a point. How many copies of Monopoly, Clue or Risk are sold yearly? While I see lots of copies of board games, they aren't exactly flying off the shelves at Toys'R'Us. On the flipside they must sell well enough to have a whole wall dedicated to themselves.

I.