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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imagicka" data-source="post: 1731912" data-attributes="member: 4621">Greetings...  When I first got involved in D&D, and Roleplaying Games, I was very fortunate to start with a group of semi-experienced players and a very intelligent, creative player took me in and showed me the ropes and took me under his wing.  As such, I didn't have a lot of 'bumbling around' experiences that people have in regards to D&D and RPGs.    I never played any D&D modules that TSR put out, most were all homemade campaigns that a handful of DMs that we would game with would make.  When I finally did play TSR modules, I was sorely disappointed.  They were little more than (I thought) randomly placed rooms with little rhyme nor reason to why things were the way they were.  I drove the DM who was running the campaign insane with questions like: "Well, if there is a chimera in this sealed room here, what does he eat? Where does he get his drinking water from?"      Ahh, but look at the wealth of imagination inspiring resources that are out there.  Now, I don't know how old you are, but I am one of those 2nd Generation D&Ders, and I shall assume you are as well.  I didn't play the original white-box book D&D...but got into AD&D, and AD&D2.  What was there around there in regards to movies and books?  What resources were there to network and communicate with other RPGers?  Back in the late 70's and 80's...not much.  Even in the late 90's...when 'internet' wasn't a common term...there was the Usenet.  But most gamers I knew weren't on the internet. (Ahh, those great and heady days of rec.games.frp)   But now, everyone has the internet...everyone has access to those video games which are called...*cough* Roleplaying Games.  Not to mention, you have one of the grandfather of fantasy literature, and the grandfather of roleplaying games now with nice shiny new coats of paint.  D&D 3.0/3.5 and the LotR movies is no doubt enticing new players to join our wicked ranks.  But they have a wealth of imagination spurring resources that we never had.  I'm waiting for all the people to start jumping onto the Medieval Fantasy bandwagon and start pumping out sword and sorcery movies now that LotR has hopefully done for us what Star Wars did in the late 70's.   As for third party publishers and supplements.  Well, I enjoy getting my hands on and reading anything and everything.  Why?  Because even bad supplements help to spur my imagination.  As a gamer and DM who writes his own material, when I read something, and I don't like it, I often say "Well, that's not good...the concept is nice, but this is how I would have done it."  After all, that's how most of us GMs who have their own game world settings start off. We don't like the Vancian (Fire & Forget) magic system of D&D, so we change it...we don't like the game world, and think that Greyhawk is a little boring, or that Forgotten Realms has a little too much magic, or that things just aren't 'logically' designed.  But as for campaign and modules. I see them around here and there.  But yes, there aren't a lot of them out there.  But I don't think that modules were always a big seller, even in the old days.  I know, that as the president of a University roleplaying club, I met a lot of players/DMs, and most of them never had modules.  Those people who did have a couple donated them to the club.  But it wasn't a lot.  Nowadays, with all the wealth of fiction and video games and movies, I think that there would be even less of a demand for modules, since people would be more inclined to create their own even if they are just starting out roleplaying.   But those are modules, and not so much supplements, worlds, and alternate rules and systems that are the bulk of what is put out by third party publishers.  Which I think is the way it should be.  When I read something it will spark and idea of a campaign.  Rarely have I read a module where it fit into my campaign world.  Therein lies the problem.  How can you make a module that is not influenced by the game-world setting?  How much magic do you put into it?  Does the magic and treasure, and ultimately what the characters take out of the module with them as booty...does this mesh with the rest of the game world? Is it going to unbalance things? After all, you don't want your party who barely have two magical items to rub together amongst them all to go into a module and walk out with a dragon's horde of holy avengers for everyone, and extras for rainy days.   As for 'entry level' games/systems.  I don't know of any game that could be considered entry level.  Lots of people abandoned D&D because it was too complicated.  A lot of people get into D&D because it is the common game.  Or at least when I started playing.  What about now?  I know that 10-14 years ago, when White-Wolf was the hot new kid in town, no one was getting into D&D.  I would even go as far as to say that Vampire:tM helped keep RPing alive, when all sorts of companies were going under, including TSR.  How much of the market does D&D hold?  I won't look for a statistic, or say what I think that percentage is...(*grins at Joshua Dyal*) but I'm pretty sure we can all agree that it's pretty big.  Even with all the RPGs that are still around.  LARPing is the new big thing now, and White-Wolf's games are still pretty popular.  I know lots of players who LARP and play Vampire/Mage/White-Wolf who won't even touch D&D.  I'm sure it won't be long before WotC puts out a set of LARPing rules for D&D.</blockquote>

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