Alright I may just be a kid with no game experience, and no business knowledge and frankly right now I think that's a good thing. In short there have been mistakes on both sides the past year and a half I suppose. People have been begging for more and more Rule books. The Crunch I suppose. Sword and Fist, Song and Silance, The castle book, and the Challanges book, and honestly these books haven't done as well as the Hardbacks, and frankly arent that well done in fact their quite bad half the time because their all rules, and all those numbers and rules and classes, and roles are annoying fine thank you, it may be useful but honestly not really, their much without the other half, and frankly there two expensive and too badly done for thier usefullness if any. I know honestly from a business stand point it made sense to do them, but frankly why not just do one hardback with all the Classes information, all the numbers, PcR's, stat's, and the what not, and make sure it's damn well done good, I mean seriously the Errata and what not is enough to drive a person crazy this are supposed to be useful tools, and useful does not involves downloading or having to wait for FIVE PAGES OF ERRATA fixing mistakes that could have been taking care of before the product was released, The rules can be honed the info as well. I mean look at Star Wars one and a half years after the first book is released they release a new book with the same rules and the fixes they could have done before they released it. It only takes a little work, and with a Big company like WotC yeah they are looking for the next huge big thing since Pokemon, that exploded out of nowhere but guess what like all fad's it ends, hell I don't even know if that Fifty dollar Charizard is worth anything anymore because the Fad is gone people have moved on, and yes magic is populer, but it didn't start off that way in the beginning it's had damn near ten years to grow and mature, and thanks to that growth and maturity it sells well, it's not insanely huge but it's known by certian people. I would have to say five out of ten people I meet in the average day might know what magic the gathering is. But most don't, it's a niche, that has grown over time. And yet Wizards of the Coast, and yes their owners Hasbro have since Pokemon failed tried to catch the next shooting Star, Harry Potter CCG, Star Wars Ccg, they've bought these Lisence in order to try and gain more and more money like they did with the Behemoth that was Pokemon well guess what. You can only cage it for a little while before they Behemoth smashes itself against the cage over and over and kills itself.
And then we come to DnD and hey I may not be a business major but it seems to me that the best releases they've had in the past year and a half have been books that combine everything, Rules, PrC's, Race, Stat's, and oh guess what Fluff. Book of the Planes, Forgotten Realms Core Rulebook, Oriental Adventures, Psionic Handbook, Magic of Fearun, combined all of that stuff, and they've selled like hot cakes. Gone into Reprint, been lusted after and praised, and hell they where well done, without hundreds of Errors, and are big thick heavy books. If they want to make the most money it would seem wise to follow this pattern at least to me and hey guess what I don't have a huge business degree, and hell yeah I may be wrong, but if the quality of the Product is high, and well done then it's going to do well, I know The Book of Vile Darkness is going to be good, and I am damn well going to get it as soon as I can, because I know that quality of work, art, stories, and rules are going to be there, it's a combination of all those things. You can't have one without the other I guess what I'm trying to say, and by focusing on one thing your going to kill it off as well because after a while people are going to look at the Rules and go hey I'm sick of Rules it's boring, I want something more and move onto something else that has what they want. Can't have one without the other and if you do focus on one thing your going to kill it.
And I suppose there are other factors too. But honestly I could probably focus on five good ones. First off favoring one thing over the other, if you do that eventually your going to kill it do to overexposure. Hell it's like plants almost if you leave it out in the sun too long it's going to wither and die, and if you give it too much water it's going to become soggy and die, you have to have a balance and hey yeah there's the Lawful good vs Chaotic evil axis once more if there is no balance, no shades of grey in between those two forces their just going to headbutt each other until they both die from head trauma, you can't have Rules without a setting to use them in. The next thing is advertising I mean it really is pretty pathitic when you think about it, Dungeons and Dragon's is know throughout the world it seems hell it's as North America as TV, showbiz, sex, and pie. I Knew about Dungeon and Dragons for years before I finally found out exactly what it is. I mean damn it that's pretty damn odd huh, and yet the main representation of it to the world is that pathitic Dungeon and Dragon's cartoon and that stupid as hell, pathitic excuse of a Z Movie. I mean for god sakes take some pride in your work and your product, cause what kind of example are you setting to the world in general that this work of art game. This piece of art that is the Tabletop Rpg world is that dumb. Last time I checked and this maybe just me the game I play the Dungeon and Dragons I know and Love isn't about some idiot kids, and their Unicorn but an Epic Setting of magic, and Warrior Kings, the stuff of countless Legends and Myths, the works of ages, and I can be a part of that, I can be that King, I can forge those legends, I can be anything I want to be without limits, and instead of showing this, instead of bringing it to the fore, we show them pieces of living dung like that. Now I'm sorry if that seems like a rant, because I was trying to prove my point. It seems to me in general that the industry is projecting the wrong image, and not saying the right things, if the Players had know That Lords of Darkness had the PcR's they craved, the Spell they lusted for, and Magic items they could never get enough of, they would have picked it up in an instant, and if the DM knew it listed in detail every single minute of Fzoul's day, and that's just to be literal, they would have picked it up as well cause you know what? It's useful to both of them not just one of the other. A balance, but nope most ended up thinking it was just a big huge book of Npc Stats for a DM, and missed the magic inside. And I guess that's what I mean by the advertising sucks. I think in general the reason 3E started of so well, why I was willing to spend so much damn money on the Three Core Rulebooks, and then the FRCR is because I knew what I was putting my money down for, you couldn't open a Gaming magizine without finding out what was coming, and it seems to me it damn well worked. But I maybe wrong. The next is sheer slopiness on some of the books produced in the last year and a half, and this seems to mainly be those smaller thinner books, the Class books, the Challanges books, the Thing books, they seemed sloppy, then seemed to be a waste of my hard earned money, they basically in general sucked, and I think I have to put Faiths and Patheons into the same boot, they focused too lightly on the material, or they wasted a great deal of space, now personally if I was running the Dungeon and Dragon's branch of Wizards of the Coast I would have looked at our big hardcover books and realized hey this is good, this makes sense, Why publish five Class books when I can do a spiffy and impressive Core Class book, make it have all the infromation in one spot, instead of a hundred different places, put them all in one spot cause yeah this player may say Rogues ROCK, and mages suck but hey maybe one day he'll say well I want to play something different what haven't I done, and he'll go over that chapter devoted to Wizards, and say hey I think I might try this, it looks interesting to me, but because of the way the class book was done, he can't really do that can he, he can't look in depth on a wizard, and it's not like he's going to go out and spend the money on a book he heard is really sloppy and badly done, it'd be a waste of his money, and if he's thinking that, the most likely so are a whole bunch of people, so take some pride in your work because it's good stuff, the hard Covers are impressive, and they really do make more sense, but hey might not be commerical viable, but you know what I think they might just be. Sorry if I'm repeating myself. The next two points I'm going to touch on really quickly, the first is cancelling something before it's really grown, Chainmail was what killed off Nine months after it was released, before it really gained steam, and the second is paying redicalous amounts of money over something that may damn well fail, and I'm going to be blunt, The Star Wars Trading card game, and Harry Potter will never make as much money as Pokemon, that was a fad that burned out quickly, so are these. And we as the players bitch a hell of a lot, maybe we should step back and realize that yeah we may not like paying for the book, but that it's going to last us nearly forever, especially if it's good, and even if we got the source book five years old, things change, I mean yeah Peter Parker is Dating Mary Jane when you first read your Spider Man comic, but hey five years has past, and not their married, things don't stay the same forever, and sometimes change is bloody good.
In any case I maybe just rambling but I've got one last thing to say, someone said on the boards how Lord of the Rings is mostly crunch, but you know what it's a combination of both, there are some well thought out extremely detailed things in that series the history and languages of the Elves, and the Dwarves, I mean honestly how many authors go into that much detail about how to speak, and even make a language, that had never been done before in liturature I believe not once, ever, and here he did it, but over this extremely, extremely intiricite shell he added a casing and that is the story which is told, the Adventures and Struggles of the Fellowship of the ring, thier loves, their hopes and their dreams, he brought those cultures he devolped, that history he created to life, because without the one, the other doesn't work, without the story, and the characters, could you honestly say you'd give a damn about their history, and this odd language know as Elven?
Now I think I've made my point and I'm sorry if this is too long but I think it needed to be said, there has to be a balance, if they did that hey I'd buy the books instead we have to search for the great among the medicore. You make your own destiny, but without balance your going to die quickly. So my vote is this, give me both of them, preferable at the same time, because if you don't you'll kill it off.
There I'm done, that's it. Just a fan who's loved this game for a very long time. And in the early hours of the morning I lay my thought's bare to you.
