How D&D Was Saved and Made It To 4e

[Saishu_Heiki]

I was jumping around the interwebs and found some incredible articles.

The first describes the god-awful way that TSR was run into the ground, by one of the programmers for the CD-ROM Core Rules. It also describes the reason that the 3.0 Character Generator was a failure. http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/rants/tsr.html

The second is an old post from Ryan Dancey. He talks about the heroic effort it took to save D&D, and the people that made it happen. It is truly an eye-opening read. http://web.archive.org/web/20040530094717/http://atlasofadventure.com/Archive/TSR1997Buyout.asp

After reading these, I want to buy Ryan Dancey and Peter Adkison a beer. They took on a failing, floundering business and made it thrive again. They saved my game, and gave me the opportunity to make new friends.

The changes to 4e make more sense after reading these articles. They *listened* to the players, and the new edition is meant to be fun.

I don't know how to get ahold of Ryan or Peter, but somehow I hope that someone can pass on a very personal and heartfelt "thank you" from this particular gamer.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

Of particular note:

Our customers were telling us that we produced too many products, and that the stuff we produced was of inferior quality? We can fix that. We can cut back on the number of products we release, and work hard to make sure that each and every book we publish is useful, interesting, and of high quality.

The glut of products killed 3E.

I'm fearful we haven't learned from that. 4E already has supplemental products rolling down the pike shortly after the release. I would have preferred a year's moratorium on new material.

But you gotta make products to sell products, and you gotta sell products to make money.

Dangit.

W.P.

 

[VBMEW-01]

This is some good stuff, thanks for posting it.

 

[malraux]

The glut of products killed 3E.

I'm fearful we haven't learned from that. 4E already has supplemental products rolling down the pike shortly after the release. I would have preferred a year's moratorium on new material.

But you gotta make products to sell products, and you gotta sell products to make money.

Dangit.

W.P.

I don't think product glut caused that many problems for 3e. If you look at the problems that people have with 3e, its not way too many supplements that just sit on shelves, its problems that are inherent with the core design.

 

[Crothian]

Of particular note:

The glut of products killed 3E.

Third party glut though, not so much the stuff Wizards produced. And it alone didn't kill 3e. Nothing has killed it as long as people have the books and play it.

 

[Voss]

Oh, that isn't a problem for the audience. Its a potential problem for the company, since they aren't making money back on products that don't sell well.

 

[PoeticJustice]

I don't think product glut caused that many problems for 3e. If you look at the problems that people have with 3e, its not way too many supplements that just sit on shelves, its problems that are inherent with the core design.

Yeah, but those problems are manageable until you introduce a zillion new spells, prestige classes, and magic items that expand a character's so-called options.

 

[malraux]

Yeah, but those problems are manageable until you introduce a zillion new spells, prestige classes, and magic items that expand a character's so-called options.

Those increase some problems, especially for DMs working on NPC. But the inequity in spellcasters verses melee or the lag in high level combat are not really caused by the splats.

 

[Terramotus]

The glut of products killed 3E.

I dunno. Certainly I don't buy every product that comes out. For the past couple of years I've only bought products that were directly applicable to my current campaign. Mostly, that's because of my disenchantment with 3E - our group detoured into d20 Modern and Iron Heroes quite a bit.

But I think that's a different situation from 2E where there was lots of very specific campaign setting material on the shelves. Some of it, I think, had obsessive-compulsive DMs who were absolutely in love with the setting as their only audience. Hardcore fans with a mental illness are not a large enough audience to base a product line around.

 

[hexgrid]

The glut of products killed 3E.

Nothing killed 3e - it never failed, at least not in the way those articles describe TSR failing.