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

[Eridanis]

Maybe this is more for the d20 Publishers post, but I think we might be overlooking some very juicy information in that story. Sales figures. I presume everything is in 1000s. Or at least in proper proportion. Very interesting. For those who dont know, sales numbers are normally a pretty closely guarded secret.

Clark

This is what jumped out at me, too. I already knew that Hasbro was tightening its grip on WotC; but what I've been curious to know is how many books they've sold.

Shall we start taking bets on how much longer D&D will remain a Hasbro imprint? I say in two years, Clark (Necromancer Games) or Monte (Malhovoc) or Chris Pramas (Green Ronin) will be the new Geek-in-Chief of our favorite game. Just hypothesizing...

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Count me among those who find very little value in the Silver Marches or similar books. I've bought nearly every major WoTC 3e, from Core books to Splatbooks to DD&DG to the FRCS and Magic of Faerun. I will probably get the Book of Challenges and Epic book, though I'm in no hurry.

Silver Marches never had a shot at my gaming dollar. I don't run in the Realms, so I have zero need for it.

Sean seems to have forgotten the lessons of the past. Ryan Dancey has pointed out many times the laws of diminishing returns in regards to settings and settings books. I also concur with those who point out that supplements are crappy places to tell stories. Or to be more to the point, almost all the stories I've ever read in supplements tended to be crappy.

I know designers love to write fluffy pieces that show off their prose and original ideas, but I run D&D campaigns. Not fiction judging sessions.

I also run them in my own game world - mostly because the supplements for world settings are not consistent in meeting my wants and needs for my games. That means that all the non-crunchy bits might as well be blank space.

I know SKR hung around rec.frp.dnd back in the day, and he was certainly there in the waning days of TSR, when it seemed like 90% of the people were clamoring for adventures and supplements that didn't try to force a story on them. We know how that story ended:

The elves got their way and D&D nearly vanished from the world.

I'm sorry for those who might prefer to write such things, but I haven't been buying their products for decades, and most likely won't in the future. Give me Magic of Faerun or a MMII over Silver Marches any day.

 

[Teflon Billy]

...I say in two years, Clark (Necromancer Games) or Monte (Malhovoc) or Chris Pramas (Green Ronin) will be the new Geek-in-Chief of our favorite game. Just hypothesizing...

My money is on White Wolf.

Which I guess means it still might be Clark

 

[Grazzt]

You know what?
I bought the FRCS, Monsters of Fareun and Magic of Fareun.
I didn't buy Lords of Darkness or faiths & Pantheons and don't plan on buying Silver Marches.

Why?

I don't play in the Realms! These books have so little value to me over the more "crunchy" ones like the FRCS. I don't care about Realms specific stories or cities or characters or organizations. Most of the stuff written for the Realms is way more trouble than it's worth to use in a non-Realms setting. If there is not enough "crunchy" stuff that can easily have the Realms serial numbers filed off and reused somewhere else then why should I bother with it?

The same goes for Realms specific modules. I looked through Into the Dragons Lair and Pool of Radiance and found them both too tied to the Realms to use in any campaign outside the Realms. City of the Spider Queen will also get a good look over before buying for the same reason.

I feel sorry for those that run a Realms campaign in that most likely the source of new fluff (excepting of course novels and TV shows) will dry up in the not so far future but you won't see me change my buying habits to prevent it.

Totally agree with bushfire. I too bought the FRCS, MoF, and MaoF, but didn't buy Faiths & Pantheons, Lords of Darkness, and I won't be buying Silver Marches. Basically for the same reasons bushfire stated. I have never been a big FR fan at all, but I borrow here and there from the setting (all good things come from borrowing...look what the Realms has borrowed from other settings, mythologies, etc.)

Realms-specific modules, I have never bought. Just not worth the trouble of ripping all the "Realmslore" out to run it.

But- even if the Realms "dies" (in the sense that it isn't being published anymore) there is already enough Realms stuff from 1e, 2e, and 3e to keep players going for quite a long time.

Now- anybody think this is the reason WotC ran their "New Campaign Setting" hunt? Because they knew FR's days were marked?

 

[Spove]

I think the bean counters should do a case study on the Harley-Davidson AMF years.

AMF bought HD and took a quality based product and drove it into the ground by focusing only on the bottom line. What turned HD around in the end? Why it was HD execs buying HD back from AMF. And once again focusing on quality.

Anybody want to go in halves-ies on WOTC?

 

[Drew]

Me, I like chocolate chip. A little bit of both. All crunch is a cracker.

Great quote! Well said.

 

[bushfire]

But- even if the Realms "dies" (in the sense that it isn't being published anymore) there is already enough Realms stuff from 1e, 2e, and 3e to keep players going for quite a long time.

Now- anybody think this is the reason WotC ran their "New Campaign Setting" hunt? Because they knew FR's days were marked?

I give the Realms less than 5 years before it goes away as a published setting. Once the "new" campaign setting gets up and running (should take about 2 years) the Realms will just fade away. I can't see Wotc publishing more than one major setting at a time.

It is possible that the TV show or Cartoon or whatever they are planning may breath some life into it but that is a long shot.

 

[Balsamic Dragon]

I just started running in the Realms, not because I haven't, in the past, come up with my own campaign worlds, but solely because the 3E FR book was very compelling and had lots of good fluff. I have little need for crunch these days. I can write it myself. In fact, so can everyone else. Crunch is plentiful on the net and while the overall quality is low it is easily fixed and implemented in any game you happen to be running.

Fluff, on the other hand, takes time to write. I find that I don't have that kind of time these days (unless, of course, I get picked for the setting search, in which case I will make time More importantly, you can own fluff and you can't really own crunch anymore. Crunch, it should be noted, is mostly OGL. Fluff is not. Thus, it seems odd to me that a company would be concentrating on putting out crunch rather than fluff. Even the crunchy bits that aren't OGL are easy to copy with slight alterations into OGL crunch. After all, gamers have been writing house rules for years.

So more fluff is really the way to go in my opinion. Lots of good fluff with a little bit of crunch to back it up! Is anyone else getting tired of this metaphor?

Balsamic Dragon

 

[MulhorandSage]

I'm in Sean's camp with this one. I like crunchy bits, but it needs the cream to achieve the best flavor.

I think you need go no further than to compare Magic of Faerun with Tome and Blood. Both are books of spells and prestige classes that were released at roughly the same time. Both have a lot of value. However, for me, Magic of Faerun blows Tome and Blood out of the water, and it does so for several reasons; its better production value and more content are obviously important, but the chief reason is that Magic of Faerun has a well developed setting from which to draw its inspirations.

Magic of Faerun exists in a living breathing world, and it's all the better because of it. Without the content of the Realms, it'd be a much more generic (and bland) book, and the creators would have had a much shallower well of inspiration to draw upon. Good worldbuilding builds on itself. Build one, and the crunchy bits will come in greater abundance than if you'd striven solely for crunchy bits from the start.

Scott Bennie

 

[Lady Dragon]

Ok ,lets look at some facts.Basically there are 3 reason a person will buy a forgotten realms book (or any book for that matter,though I"m sticking to FR for now)Please note that more than one reason may apply.

1.This person intends to use FR as there campaign setting.

2.This peron intends to read this book for inspiration(he hopes to get ideas for his own campaign),Entertainment(he likes to read them for enjoyment)or information(he's a player trying to get an edge.)

3.This person wants to strip the book of crunchy bits for other reasons either as a player or a DM.

So now I'll go through each of the FR books with the type that might use them.

A.Forgotten Campaign Setting-Type 1.Absolutely can't play FR without it unless you want to use only 1st and 2nd edition material. Type 2.Yes its a very good book with a great deal of information. Type 3.Of course almost half the book is crunchy bits.

B.Monsters of Faerun-Type 1 yes type 2 & 3-only if you like monsters.

C.Magic of Faerun-Type 1-yes its a great resource Type 2 only if you enjoy reading crunchy bits. Type 3-Absolutely this is a very crunchy book.

D.Lords of Darkness type-1 yes, type 2 yes, type 3 $30 is a lot of money to spend on a book with only a few pages of crunchy bits so probably no.

E.DM screen Type-1 yes type 2-no,this is not good reading type 3 probably not.

F.Faiths and Pantheon Type 1 yes Type 2 yes type 3 yes

G. Silver Marches Type 1 yes, type 2 yes ,Type 3 no

I find it interesting that they do mention numbers and I take 40 to mean 40,000.To WoTC this is unexceptable.I'm betting that no D20 company has even come close to a number that high It really makes you think about just what WoTC is looking for since SKR implies that Lords of Darkneww did make a profit just not as much as they wanted.