How "deep" into a setting will you buy?

[Argyle King]

It depends upon how I feel about the setting. Currently, I love both Banestorm and Dungeon Fantasy from SJG, so I've picked up quite a few of the pdfs and various other materials for those.


In the past, I dropped a good chunk of change on Ptolus. I loved that setting. I also have a modest amount of D&D 3rd Edition Eberron stuff.

I don't think I've really bought into any of the D&D 4E settings. I wasn't a huge Realms fan to begin with, and I wasn't happy with how Eberron turned out under the 4E ruleset at all. I did pick up Manual of The Planes, so I suppose that's technically part of the 'default' 4E setting, but that's been pretty much it. Aside from just generally not being interested, at the time when some of the source books came out, I didn't like how some of the things were marketed. As a customer (rightly or wrongly,) I occasionally felt as though WoTC was making more effort to sucker me into buying something than they were making an effort to get me to want to buy something.

I guess my answer to your question is that it depends upon how I view the quality of the setting and my opinion of the company trying to sell me the setting.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I buy the first couple books, and might get a third or more if I really like that particular area, but I Want vagueness in my world, an overview and adventure hooks. If the contents of every drawer in every desk in the kingdom is detail, it is way too much. I jsut buy what I need to play. OR run, and it is not much.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

For the past few years I've been on a "5 books or $150 for a game line".

I am not the target market for WotC.

 

[green slime]

I'll get as much as I can get my hands on.

For 1e, 2e, and 3e, that was a lot, the vast majority. Pretty much everything that appeared in the FLGS, except Jakandor and Planescape (budgetary constraints at the time forced tough decisions). Living on the outskirts of civilisation, I notice there are a few clenodes I have missed, but not much. Since 4e, I got the PHB, and that was it.

 

[ggroy]

In the past, I didn't really pick up many setting splatbooks.

Back in the day, there wasn't really much to pick up setting-wise for D&D/AD&D other than the Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms box sets, and the first several Forgotten Realms supplement books. I left rpg gaming altogether shortly after the FR grey box was released, and completely missed the 2E AD&D and 3E D&D + d20 glut eras.

When I came back to rpg gaming shortly after 3.5E D&D was released, initially I didn't pick up many setting books other than the campaign setting guides for whatever I was DMing. I picked up the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Castlemourn campaign setting books.

It was only when a lot of campaign setting splatbooks were starting to show up in the bargain bins, that I started to pick up a lot more stuff. Initially it was d20 stuff like Scarred Lands, Freeport, Oathbound, etc ..., when they first started to show up in the bargain bins in late 2005 and 2006. Later I picked up many Eberron and Forgotten Realms supplement books, when they first started showing up in the bargain bins after 4E D&D was announced at Gencon 2007.

Fast forward to the present day, I never got around to directly using many of the "bargain bin" Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Scarred Lands, etc ... books in any of my campaigns. I only read through these books a few times, mostly for some campaign ideas or encounter areas.

 

[DragonLancer]

If I like a setting I will buy all source matrieral for it. I won't pick scenarios as I prefer to write me own these days. I enjoy getting deep into a setting.

 

[Haltherrion]

Somewhat off topic but related to your basic concept (which I take to be "how much of the WOTC product are you buying"), I'm not planning on any further purchase of 4E core books, let alone setting books.

On setting, I personally like creating settings so no need to buy setting stuff.

But on the rest of the rule material for 4E, I've noticed:

• The "focus books" like Draconomicon and Open Grave are much less interesting now. In 3.5, it was nice to get the extra prestige classes and feats. 4E doesn't have prestige classes and any other niggling stuff of interest (feats and monsters mostly) are available in the DDI tools.
• PHB/PHB2 provides all the classes my group needs. So far neither my players or I have purchased PHB3 and we may never do so. The hybrid class part seems interesting but monk-oids and psionic-oids aren't are thing.

Personally, I'd like WOTC to find D&D financially rewarding and worry about them making additional books unnecessary for players like me. In years past when money was easier to come by, I might have bought more books just for fun, even a few setting books to pilfer ideas from. But these days, the cost/benefit is such that I'm not inclined to purchase more books and in all previous settings I've purchased a lot of books. Speaking of which, I need to unload my 3.5E books at some point

 

[Beginning of the End]

I think there are generally three lines to be drawn:

(1) The Minimalist. These guys just want a minimal structure, and anything more than that just gets in their way. Where exactly this line is drawn can vary a lot, but most minimalists draw the line at "just the core".

(2) The Utilitarian. These guys will buy anything that is useful for their campaign. They'll go deep, but only if the depth addresses their immediate needs. So if they're running a campaign set in the Serpent Kingdoms, you can probably sell them the Complete Guide to Serpent Kingdom Mating Habits. But you'll never sell them anything for the Gold Coast.

(3) The Collector. They'll buy everything because they want a complete collection. This can be driven by the appeal of high quality material, but it can also be driven by a "gotta catch 'em all!" mentality.

Of course, in all cases you hit the ceiling of monetary limit. This can be very bad for completist collectors, however: People who would buy everything in order to "keep their collection complete" can very suddenly become people who don't buy anything at all because they can't keep up with your releases, and once their collection is no longer complete they lose their motivation for further purchases.

The minimalist and utilitarians will invest in core products, but you'll generally only get a perpetual churn of fresh product if you build up a sufficiently large supply of collectors and then set the right pace for your product so that you don't break their backs.

The advantage of having multiple lines is that you can potentially create "sub-collectors" -- people who couldn't afford to collect your complete product line, but can afford to buy all the books about the Forgotten Realms (for example). The disadvantage is that you can end up fracturing your market without any appreciable gains.

The potential limitation of WotC's approach is that they're not fully exploiting the potential of utilitarians and collectors. But if they manage the product lines correctly, they may be able to serialize the utilitarians: Play the 2010 setting for a year, and then be ready to pick up the 2011 setting and adventure products.

In a thought potentially more appropriate for the If I Was Running WotC thread, I'd be experimenting heavily with trying to create unified play experiences: Publish the core setting book in January and run both an adventure path an Encounters series from January thru December. Next year we do it with another setting. My "core" releases would be the smaller portion of my release schedule, and each product would be focused on potentially evergreen expansions to the breadth of the game instead of depth-building variations on existing themes.

 

[BenBrown]

Historically? Not very deep. I've bought the Dark Sun campaign setting book for 4E. For 3.5 I bought the Eberron campaign setting book, and Races of Eberron, and another Eberron book when things were on clearance. That's pretty much it for D&D campaign books I've purchased. I've been playing D&D since 1980, although not so much during the 2nd ed. AD&D days.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

There's no comprehensive answer from me, but I'm a rather difficult to please customer for settings.

When a campaign settings seems enticing - like Darksun 2e, Planescape 2e, Eberron 3.5e, or Ptolus 3.5e - I'll buy the first product of the line. At the first reading it has to pass the I-want-to-run-it and the I-think-my-players-will-like-it tests.

Darksun failed the Itmpwli-test while Planescape failed both. In both cases that means End of Story.

After a setting has passed these tests I start buying the pertaining books until:

• the quality turns out to be bad
• topics become uninteresting
• plans for the campaign die or
• the campaign comes to an end (mostly by the players losing interest).

Another possibility is a setting going into background mode, like FR did in 3e: I was running a campaign in the Dalelands region, based on FRCS, MaoF, and Moof, bought the sourcebook for the northern regions, and stopped buying FR material. Nevertheless I looked in bargain bins and on ebay for FR books and bought several more or less unrelated titles.

Generally I like to read a new setting book, but there's a low probability of exploring more of the line.