Have the third-party d20 publishers failed?

[Jupp]

.....snip....

Again, I ask, why does this responsibility to the new generation have to be dumped completely on shoulders of the small, third-party d20 companies? It's not their product that's in the mainstream stores where these kids are buying their first D&D books. It's WotC's.

And, thankfully, WotC is taking care of this

.....snip....

Well, I am certainly not asking for all the D20 companies to kill themselves while making that killer adventure no one will buy in the end So yes, the one that would probably be the most able to draw in new blood into the ranks of roleplayers will certainly be Wizards since they are the ones with enough hitpoints to make it happen.
Perhaps it is just me feeling flooded with thousands of source books and accessory pdfs when all I want to have is something like: 1 source book, 3 adventures, 1 accessory, 3 adventures, etc.. So yes, call me selfish but to me an adventure has the plus that either I can play it straight away or I can rip the cool parts/ideas out of it and make my own module. With an accessory/source book I can do only the second part and then there is still 80% or more of it that I would never use to put into my campaign.

 

[Chaos Drake]

I find slayer's guides next to useless. The Yuan ti one had some okay stuff, and Dragons was pretty good, but many of them provided little more than obvious exposition and stat blocks that did not fit the rules.

And I made great use of Factory for my Japan-analog in my Second World game. Which is definitely not Cyberpunk or Shadowrun. (Final Fantasy and BGC ripoff, yeah.)

Which just proves a publisher will never anticipate how their products will end up being used. There are a lot of creative GMs out there who can adapt products in just too many countless ways. That's the way it is, and should be.

 

[Cerubus Dark]

And I made great use of Factory for my Japan-analog in my Second World game. Which is definitely not Cyberpunk or Shadowrun. (Final Fantasy and BGC ripoff, yeah.)

I collect Monster Books for 3.x so I find a use for them. Plus it gives me ideas on using them too. Glorifed "stat blocks" or not, they are useful to me.

As for Factory, I was going to run a Dragonstar or BGC style game but I didnot like the way the book was set up. Although I do like the rules on Magical Weaponry and Armor listed in it.

 

[buzz]

Perhaps it is just me feeling flooded with thousands of source books and accessory pdfs when all I want to have is something like: 1 source book, 3 adventures, 1 accessory, 3 adventures, etc.. So yes, call me selfish

See, this is the beauty of the the market. Only buy the stuff you want.

 

[Psion]

See, this is the beauty of the the market. Only buy the stuff you want.

Ah, but obsession is a cruel mistress.

 

[Crothian]

See, this is the beauty of the the market. Only buy the stuff you want.

I do, and its still more then I can afford

 

[Henry]

To play Devil's Advocate (or just be a jerk), I'd wager that much of our fond remebrances of some of these classics is simply nostalgia. I mean, Keep on the Borderlands was pretty much zero help to me as a newbie DM. The whole premise is very tenuous, like most of the classic adventures ("There's a dungeon nearby. You decide to explore"), and the keyed descriptions were basically mammoth blocks of unbroken text with all kinds of details and stats just crammed next to each other. Running those modules was next to impossible for me.

This shows me just how different various gamers' experiences were. Looking back over the Keep on the Borderlands, I am amazed at just how much material that little module contained. At age 10, I was solely unappreciative of the amount of good DMing info contained in that thing - I played it as a straight up dungeon crawl, monsters in each room, etc. Later in life, re-reading it, I realized what all it contained:

• A comperhensive home base for the PC's to stage their expeditions taming the wilds, complete with fleshed out NPC's with goals and alliances
• A rather large area to wander in, to have adventures in, or for a DM to introduce new elements into, such as bandit camps, new threats such as lizard men, and a a "cave of the unknown" to try my hand at
• A whole page of DM'ing advice at the start, arranging for a caller, dispelling adversarial DM/PC relations, and advice on roleplay
• It taught me the importance and value of rumors and involvement in the campaign worldm particularly in the Keep and the human inhabitants of the caves;
• Reward that was non-monetary in nature
• It taught me about dynamic alliances between inhabitants in a community, even a community of monsters
• It taught me that monsters should and do react to player losses as well as player victories; it even introduced the concept of replacing or tallying losses in an NPC stronghold depending on how the game went
• Finally, for a ten year old who had never heard the words "castellan", "caraffe", "portcullis", etc. it expanded my vocabulary with an index for these terms.

One heck of a feat for a slim 16-page adventure with two maps!

 

[JeffB]

Deleted..double post

 

[JeffB]

This shows me just how different various gamers' experiences were. Looking back over the Keep on the Borderlands, I am amazed at just how much material that little module contained. At age 10, I was solely unappreciative of the amount of good DMing info contained in that thing - I played it as a straight up dungeon crawl, monsters in each room, etc. Later in life, re-reading it, I realized what all it contained:

• A comperhensive home base for the PC's to stage their expeditions taming the wilds, complete with fleshed out NPC's with goals and alliances
• A rather large area to wander in, to have adventures in, or for a DM to introduce new elements into, such as bandit camps, new threats such as lizard men, and a a "cave of the unknown" to try my hand at
• A whole page of DM'ing advice at the start, arranging for a caller, dispelling adversarial DM/PC relations, and advice on roleplay
• It taught me the importance and value of rumors and involvement in the campaign worldm particularly in the Keep and the human inhabitants of the caves;
• Reward that was non-monetary in nature
• It taught me about dynamic alliances between inhabitants in a community, even a community of monsters
• It taught me that monsters should and do react to player losses as well as player victories; it even introduced the concept of replacing or tallying losses in an NPC stronghold depending on how the game went
• Finally, for a ten year old who had never heard the words "castellan", "caraffe", "portcullis", etc. it expanded my vocabulary with an index for these terms.

One heck of a feat for a slim 16-page adventure with two maps!

Amen Henry You saved me ALOT of typing. It wasn't that the material wasn't there,It just wasn't spelled out to the nth degree in a 128 page hardcover.... the building blocks were there.

Many of the classics packed a helluva lot more useful info into their meager page count than most will care to admit (or remember). B2 as well as T1 are perfect examples. Look at the original GDQ series...still smaller than the average D20 supplement page count-wise but look at the gigantic campaign setting it gave us above and below ground as well as various planes to visit. Quality of page count, not Quantity of page count.

As a modern day example Crucible of Freya along with it's free web enhancements serves the same purpose as B2 and T1 did.

That said I also like the "toolkit" approach mentioned by Psion, I don't want just or only modules/adventures. The subject material in that case is not my cup of tea, but I'd much rather have the modern day equivalent of Borderlands, The Big Rubble, or Pavis than I would a "mega dungeon" like CotSQ, RttToEE, or Banewarrens.

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

Exactly so. Of our Mythic Vistas line of campaign settings, Mindshadows is the worst selling one. It melds southeast Asian flavor with psionics and martial arts to create what is (IMO) a very interesting setting. It seems "too different" for the average D&D fan though. Atlas had a similar experience with Nyambe, which was the first serious attempt to do a fantasy African setting.

I find this to be particularly sad... Mindshadows, and Nyambe are two of my favorite campaign setting that have come out for 3.x. Luckily, we are running a Freeport campaign and have placed both locations in our game world!