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

[mearls]

I was laughing while reading that news update on the front page...but it was very interesting.

I cringed.

Think about it for a moment.

The higher-ups want books with more crunchy parts than world development.

At the same time, they're ponying up $160,000 in pay outs, plus God knows how many man hours of work, to find a product that promises precisely the world development material they don't want to publish.

 

[Psion]

You bring up a good point wolfen priest, and expose what I think is a false dichotomy people are creating: crunchy versus fluff.

To me, fluff is stories, world specific stuff, etc.

There is sort of an in between state -- inspriational material. Adaptable fluff, if you will.

I find books like Lords of Darkness useless for my purpose despite the fact it has crunchy bits -- it is painfully world specific.

But MotP gives you adaptable little ideas that you can attach to any campaign. It has dozens of different sample cosmologies, and most of the planes you could extract and use with specific cosmologies.

People attribute the popularity of FRCS to its crunchy bits. But if you think about it, only a third or so of this book is very crunchy. But there were many inspirational ideas in the rest of the book, the kind that are more portable than the typically much more detailed setting books like Lords of Darkness or Silver Marches.

 

[Kitsune]

The value of fluff is in the eye of the beholder. Anyone playing in the Realms should be leaping for those books, since those details are what make the Realms a fully detailed fantasy world. For anyone not playing in the Realms, however, it's a waste of money.

Me? Bring back Planescape and Spelljammer and I'll buy every single fluff book that's cranked out for them. The Realms just don't interest me, however.

 

[Warchild]

There is sort of an in between state -- inspriational material. Adaptable fluff, if you will.

I think your on target there, Psion.
The books i value the most do just that, ex: MOTP, Occult Lore, Legions of Hell (mostly crunch, but the fluff thats in LOH is quite inspirational -adventure wise-and useful). Like many, i haven't even used a ton of the crunch from the MOTP book (just haven't had the need/opportunity just yet), but its eye-opening quality of "fluff" is what has me snared. I was never much of a planar travel type of player/DM and rarely used such material in my games. After getting MOTP, i have to try hard to not let it's influence creep into everything i do. Thats a supplement!!

I find books like Lords of Darkness useless for my purpose despite the fact it has crunchy bits -- it is painfully world specific.

My problem for such products is a little different. I've been playing FR for so many years, there is little i haven't explored. Books like this trample over the things we have already done. Although Lords of Darkness give you a mechanics conversion for the bad guys of the realms, so it has a little more value to me than actually the Silver Marches (though i didn't/won't buy either), an area with which we have already touched many times ourselves (ie my group and players) in campaigns over the years. I really don't need the area expanded, because we have already done it and don't want to change what we have done over the years. Thats a symptom of a setting that has been around a long time. Although i ended up having the same problem with Scarred Lands. I had the Gazetteer long before the source books began coming out for it. So by the time they did, i had already created much of the setting myself out of necessity and wasn't interested in material that was likely to override what i had already done. Although no matter how much it differed from my own version, Hollowfaust was damn cool.
I don't know how common my situation is, though. Everyone in my group has 15-20+ years(one has 10, but it is a jam-packed 10 years) of gaming experience. Even setting rulebooks tend to get chopped up by whoever in the group is running at the time. I/we judge a book by its QUALITY of fluff (not mentioned much in this thread, but all fluff is not talented fluff) and ease of ajustibility, because after so long a period of gaming we already know what we are doing and/or looking for. We just look to add books that will help us along and provide the ocassional spark.

 

[Zulkir]

Psst... WotC D&D people...

Make smaller books. Charge propotionaly the same as one bigger book. Less profit (production costs)... but more copies sold!

Psst... hey buddy. Hate to break it to you but larger books sell more copies then smaller books (by alot). Smaller books means less copies sold, higher production costs lower revenue and lower and lower profits both!

AV

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I'm just wondering how well Manual of the Planes sold (... I'm guessing it sold well).

Because if the WotC bean-counters consider that book to be "crunchy," they really have their heads up their donut cores.

I have yet to use the actual "crunchy" rules of that book. It was all fluff. Maybe it was re-hashed fluff, but it was still fluff!!!

As a big fan of Manual of the Planes, I have to disagree with your assessment of the book. It actually had a lot of "crunchy" stuff, and gave you the tools to create more. I'll agree that it had a lot of "fluff," so to speak, but much of that "fluff" demonstrated how the "crunchy" bits could work. I think I'll start a thread on the sheer potential of Manual of the Planes sometime soon.

But, your overall point is interesting. Would a book like MotP make the cut now in the eyes of the bean counters? MotP is a book that can appear to be "fluff"- laden at first glance. Would the FRCS book make the cut? It's starting to appear that such books wouldn't in the current climate.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Psst... hey buddy. Hate to break it to you but larger books sell more copies then smaller books (by alot). Smaller books means less copies sold, higher production costs lower revenue and lower and lower profits both!

AV

Hey Anthony, I know the setting contest is all-consuming right now, but I was wondering if you could tell about the SRD approval process. That is, how soon and often can we expect more material to be added to it? I know you're busy, but I thought I'd ask.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I agree. 2E FR had a lot of stuff that best belonged in a novel, since it wasn't useful in a game. I'm all about game utility. A book with no game info shouldn't have the D&D logo on it. But a book with no FR info other than a few placeholder names shouldn't have the FR logo on it. (WotC already has a world full of placeholder names ... it's Greyhawk ... and it really isn't even used for that.)

It's very possible I'm selling the recent 3e FR stuff short. However, I'll probably only find out if someone in my circle of gaming friends buys some of it, and I happen to look through it. That's around 15 gamers, some of whom buy a lot of stuff - and I don't think more than 1 or 2 will buy it. As opposed to probably 7-8 ELH, 8-10 DD&DG, etc. So it will be tough to break out of that mold. I have a limited gaming dollar to spend, and it's going to stuff that I know I'll use.

OTOH, I was a fan of the VanRichten guides - although mostly for the crunchy parts allowing me to customize my undead and whatnot. So I'll put up with some fluff to get at the good bits.

 

[Zappo]

Psst... hey buddy. Hate to break it to you but larger books sell more copies then smaller books (by alot). Smaller books means less copies sold, higher production costs lower revenue and lower and lower profits both!

AV

I think he was referring to beancounters stating that their evil overlords wanted to see big numbers of copies sold even more than they wanted to see big profits.

So, dividing a 200 pages book which would sell 10000 copies in four 50 pages books which sell 8000 copies each totals up to 32000 copies.

The evil overlords see a lot of copies and are happy, even though they are actually losing beans.

The whole suggestion was just a joke, I reckon, though.

 

[Zulkir]

Bean counters

Folks,

I would like to stand up here for a moment and let everyone know that when you talk about bean counters who don't know anything about gaming or the industry or don't care about consumers you are talking about me (a guy who has been gaming since High School, in the industry for six years and posts regularly to this board).

So please, have a heart, try not to call me any names that might actually hurt to much. Remember I have an actual name (Anthony Valterra), I go to cons so you can actually shake my hand (I'll be at GenCon), I have an e-mail address (zulkir@wizards.com - yeah, and I really know nothing about the Realms ).

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).

Us evil bean counters or so evil that we work our asses off trying to make the Gnomes happy and keep the Elves alive (how is that for diabolical!)

AV