Has 3rd Party Material Helped (!!!) WotC ?

[diaglo]

Word.

Map folio or Dungeons of Doom? Dungeons of Doom.
Races of the Wild or Bow & Blade? Bow & Blade.
Deities & Demigods or Book of the Righteous? Book of the Righteous.

Not that WotC doesn't have some good books (Draconomicon, for example, rocks). But I find the notion the WotC has the only quality products out there rather dubious, except perhaps in the realm of production values. Even there, they have competition (World of Warcraft RPG, anyone?)

preach it brotha.

i'm finding the WotC stuff to be smaller, more expensive, and less useful than it was in the past.

although, they do throw out a decent one on occassion. the DMG II imo is what D&D for Dummies should have been.

 

[MonsterMash]

Personally I think that the third party publishers have helped drive sales of the core books for WotC, I wanted to play Necromancer and Goodmans modules, but needed to buy the core rules from WotC to do it.

Got to admit that to date my purchases from WotC have just been the three core books, everything else is third party - if I want monsters the Tome of Horrors series is good, for environment books Frost and Fur, rather than Frostburn. For settings I'll use the Wilderlands and CSIO, so Necromancer and Judges Guild get my money. Though I'll be fair and say I do want the DMGII by the look of it.

 

[DaveMage]

As time goes by, and as the number of 3rd party d20 products rises into the thousands, I think it will only help WotC from the standpoint of the "Wow, there's so much stuff, I'll just stick with what's official" viewpoint.

If for no other reason than budgetary concerns.

I feel for those who enter the hobby at this time. With *so* many options, it's probably scaring some people away.

To buy most of the products released for d20 since 2000, you'd need over $25,000.

I do think that 3rd party publishers have created some gems that WotC has yet to match. The Battlebox from Fiery Dragon is, IMO, the absolute best 3rd party product out there, since it's literally usable for every combat of every session. AEG's World's Largest Dungeon has no counterpart from WotC. I'll second (or third, or fourth) Psion's recommendation of Dungeons of Doom (although, technically not a d20 product), it's much more useful than the Map Folios. Bastion Press' Oathbound is much more interesting to me than Eberron, though obviously there are many who love Eberron. I don't dislike Eberron, but reading through it did not inspire me to play it.

Necromancer Games and Goodman Games continually fill the niche that 3rd party companies were expected to fill: adventures. WotC, unfortunately, hasn't done too many lately (although there are some short ones coming out later this year).

 

[The_Universe]

Of course 3rd party products have helped sell WotC products - most are useless without a PHB. And that's great.

But I still buy "3rd Party" stuff all the time, although I *also* buy most of WotC catalog.

 

[der_kluge]

It's certainly an interesting theory. I know a lot of GMs who "only allow WoTC" material. Thing is, some of the most broken stuff I've ever read is WoTC material. I also tend to buy more d20 stuff than WoTC stuff, but then I consider myself better educated regarding gaming material than most D&D players on average. The only current WoTC book I wouldn't mind having is Sandstorm, other than that, pretty much everything else I'd care to own is third party stuff.

 

[Psion]

I think those who find it an astonishing revalation that WotC benefits from 3rd party publishers ought to step back and learn a little economics and history associated with the situation.

In short, the game benefits from support as a whole. But small print run items are not profitable for a large company like WotC. They have salaried employees and other fixed cost items, has an upper management that is not risk-tolerant (anyone remember the forgotten rums stories), and has certain expectations of profit margins. In short, WotC could not afford to support the variety of lines that late TSR did. Note that WotC has cut back to two supported setting lines for D&D, compared to all the ones TSR had. Word had it that the cut off number in late TSR was 5000 copies minimum to even think about printing it. I suspect that WotC's standards are higher than that.

So, in essence, what is WotC to do? Third party publishers are a form of outsourcing. Most third party publishers don't report to corporate bureacracies. Many third party designers don't do this as their day job. They can "afford" (yeah, I know, some can't) to put out smaller print run items and give the customers support that WotC could not afford to provide. Further, if the skaff effect is to be beleived, the variety offered by third party products helps keep players in the network and reduces the inefficiencies of players returning from other systems. And networks are vital to WotC's strategy.

So if you see the situation as "every penny that a third party publisher got could have been a penny WotC got", you are preceding from a faulty assumption from the outset.

 

[nothing to see here]

I think those who find it an astonishing revalation that WotC benefits from 3rd party publishers ought to step back and learn a little economics and history associated with the situation.

In short, the game benefits from support as a whole. But small print run items are not profitable for a large company like WotC. They have salaried employees and other fixed cost items, has an upper management that is not risk-tolerant (anyone remember the forgotten rums stories), and has certain expectations of profit margins. In short, WotC could not afford to support the variety of lines that late TSR did. Note that WotC has cut back to two supported setting lines for D&D, compared to all the ones TSR had. Word had it that the cut off number in late TSR was 5000 copies minimum to even think about printing it. I suspect that WotC's standards are higher than that.

So, in essence, what is WotC to do? Third party publishers are a form of outsourcing. Most third party publishers don't report to corporate bureacracies. Many third party designers don't do this as their day job. They can "afford" (yeah, I know, some can't) to put out smaller print run items and give the customers support that WotC could not afford to provide. Further, if the skaff effect is to be beleived, the variety offered by third party products helps keep players in the network and reduces the inefficiencies of players returning from other systems. And networks are vital to WotC's strategy.

So if you see the situation as "every penny that a third party publisher got could have been a penny WotC got", you are preceding from a faulty assumption from the outset.

I never thought about it that way...by opening up certain Intellectual properties, Wiards has in fact been able to lower it's own support costs, and focus it's creative resources on high return products. It is outsorcing. Great Analogy!

Here's an obersvation of my own. I remember back near the launch of the whole OGL Ryan Dancey citing the law of network externalities as the driving motivation behind the whole movement.

If you observe networks (of any sort) there does seem to be a fairly iron clad law that as the network as a whole strengthens, the benefits of this strengtehning are most pronounced at the centre of the network.

This was the rationale behind -- "building the d20 base through opening up the rule set will ultimately sell more Core Rulebooks" mentality. And certainly the general health of the D&D brand seems as strong as it ever was.

Where I fall down a little bit is in wondering whether the d20 market actually is a 'network' in the conventional sense of the word. Perhaps it is. An equally likely postulate would be that by resussictating the rules engine of the world's most marketable RPG title, all Wizards did was revitalize a powerful brand... which would make D&D a branding case study, as opposed to a network theory one.

And, if that is the case, d20 as an experiment neither particularly helped or harmed the position of the market leader.

 

[Greatwyrm]

I certainly think 3rd party material helps WotC, that's the whole point of the OGL. It makes a bigger better game and sells more PHBs.

I agree with this general idea on its face, but I think there's another factor, too. It's just kinda tough to say this without sounding like a conspiracy nut.

In addition to supporting their game, WotC has found an easy and pretty cost-free way to take people who might otherwise have been directly competing with their product and got them to produce complimentary products instead (instead being a matter of degree).

For example, Fantasy Flight Games was already an rpg and game company. The OGL allowed them the opportunity to support D&D, but at the cost of supporting their existing games. We saw a lot of the Legends & Lairs series, but not a lot of Blue Planet during that time. Now that they're moving away from d20 some, we're seeing more new product, such as of new board games and the Fireborn rpg.

To a lesser extent, I think this has happened with White Wolf, too. Their core products have been carrying on at a fairly normal pace, but they've got quite a stake in the OGL race now too. They did full conversions of the Trinity line to d20. They've produced a lot of original material, like Scarred Lands, and licensed material, like Warcraft. Where would their core WoD games be if they'd placed those d20/OGL resources with the WoD department?

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

In addition to supporting their game, WotC has found an easy and pretty cost-free way to take people who might otherwise have been directly competing with their product and got them to produce complimentary products instead (instead being a matter of degree).

I agree with that totally, Greatwyrm. From a business perspective, it was a great decision. Eliminate your opponents by *allowing* them to "play on your team".

 

[TheLe]

I agree, Wizards has some really good books like Draconomicon and Lords of Maddnes. But for me those books while great have little usefulness. I don't use a lot of Dragons or Abberations in my games. To make either more common takes away the strange and majestic feel of them. For modules I go to Goodman Games and NEcrmancer. For class books I perfer Green Ronin, AEG, FFG, and even some of the Mongoose books. For monsters I have plenty of great choices from Atlas, Inner Circle, Mongoose, and Soveign Stone. But the most useful so far have been the little encounter books the Mystic Eye Games and Atlas put out. These books are a gold mine of ideas and really help to shape adventures.

and The Le Games, right? You use The Le Games' books too, right?


~The Le Games