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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Grumpy Celt" data-source="post: 262264" data-attributes="member: 1019">My underwear is evil.Point 1.  This was from an earlier post but it was not a rhetorical question.  How far can the game mechanic – the “crunchy” – be drawn out before it gets stretched thin and becomes redundant and starts to belabor the point.Technically speaking, only the “Players Guide,” the “Dungeon Masters Guide” and the “Monster Manual” are necessary.  Books like “Tome and Blood” and all the class builder books do help but are strictly optional.  As such they are a kind of “crunch light” game mechanic.  The same is true for the “Psionics Handbook,” “Deities and Demigods,” “Manual of the Planes” and the “Epic Level Handbook.” They all help the game, they are more game mechanics – i.e. “crunch” – than they are superfluous story – i.e. “cream” – but at the end of the day they are all still optional game mechanics – “crunch light” to coin a term.   The same will be true for the forthcoming “Monster Manual II,” the “Book of Vile Darkness” and “Savage Species.”  They will help the game, they will be more game mechanics – “crunch” – than superfluous story – “cream” – but at the end of the day they will still be optional game mechanics – “crunch light.”   After the “Players Guide,” the “Dungeon Masters Guide,” the “Monster Manual,” the “Psionics Handbook,” “Deities and Demigods,” the “Manual of the Planes,” the “Epic Level Handbook,” the “Monster Manual II,” the “Book of Vile Darkness” and “Savage Species,” what other books – even optional game mechanics/“crunch light” books – can be done? (This does not include pre-prepared and pre-canned adventures modules.)After these ten book are published, there will be dozens of playable races, dozens of playable classes and prestige classes, hundreds of spell, hundreds of feats and probably thousands of magical items ranging from the great to the small.  Everything from good to evil to arcane magic to divine magic to psioncis to fist fighting to castle building and beyond will have been covered.What else can be made - even optional game mechanics/“crunch light” books – before it begins to become redundant? This is not a rhetorical question.What else can be made - even optional game mechanics/“crunch light” books – that will not start to belabor the point? This is not a rhetorical question.What else can be made - even optional game mechanics/“crunch light” books – that will not stretch thin the game mechanic, customer plausibility and the market? This is not a rhetorical question.Point 2.To reiterate, to Wall Street a 4% profit is an inexcusable failure because the “board of directors” had been counting on a 5% margin so much so that they went ahead and spent the 1% they did not (and would) not have. And if you want to refute this and to deny that it happens, then how can one explain WorldCom, Xerox, and Enron?So, if the DMG and the PG and the MM made – hypothetically speaking – a 5% profit. However, the FRCS only made a 4% profit. By the standards of Wall Street, FRCS then is a failure. If further Realms books only make 2.5% profit or 2% profit then that is even worse. If Magic the Gathering and Pokiemon and the Harry Potter trading card game made a 10% profit, then the failure of the Forgotten Realms books becomes past being inexcusable and its time to schedule a trip to the slaughterhouse.There will never be a way to make FRCS – or any setting for that matter – "profitable" in a way that makes the board of directors happy.  Because no setting can possibly live up to the sales standards set by the PG, the DMG and the MM – and that is so say nothing of the sales standards set by Magic the Gathering and Pokiemon and the Harry Potter trading card game.Because that is the way the world works.</blockquote>

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