I hope Eberron is a flop. Am I evil?

[s/LaSH]

Dead is, indeed, my kind of evil. But not a very intense evil; nobody acts out of pure malicious intent, there's always some good involved. In this case, Dead is acting out of love for something else, normally a noble goal. Dead's good-axis is just a few degrees off center; this vector would be pointing closer to good if one vital sub-vector were included. That sub-vector is economic reality. If Eberron flops, WotC suffer. A rather generically-tasked workforce is gutted by necessary layoffs; other releases suffer. Wizards' D&D division is diminished and may not recover for quite a while - or at all; D&D is, however, just a subdivision of WotC, and could theoretically be jettisoned before it causes the CCG and other divisions to collapse with it. In that case, D&D would likely recover a few years down the track in the custody of another company. But who? Kenzer? White Wolf? One of the other large d20 publishers? It would definitely result in a change of character for the game - either they keep D&D as its own 'D&D simulates D&D' paradigm and throw in a couple of their own products just to 'keep that feel' (so you have Zombie Lords or some such as a base class and catpeople replacing halforcs), or they rejigger it to reflect 'medieval fantasy' and throw out everything that makes it D&D (so you have a mandatory 'disease save' after every wound, wizards are only suitable as NPCs, and the game becomes unrecognisably realer).

Hopefully, the future is not so unkind.

It has been said that Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb. That isn't true. As I think I've just demonstrated, Good is more complicated, and the truly good must be very smart indeed.

 

[mearls]

Am I evil?

I have no idea how this thread has gone, but here's my two cents:

No, you're not evil. I remember back in the 2e days, when TSR seemed dead set on destroying Greyhawk with an endless stream of bad modules and terrible novels. It seems like you miss the old settings and don't want the new one, Eberron. I can relate - it hurt to see Greyhawk dumped on while the Realms became the big setting.

But really, WotC probably isn't going to bring back those settings. Most of them weren't real sales successes. Greyhawk does have the RPGA campaign, plus adventures in Dungeon. Eberron has nothing to do with WotC's decision - even if they didn't want to do a new setting, they weren't about to bring an old one back.

It isn't a zero sum game - Eberron's gain is not Mystara or Greyhawk's loss.

 

[Mixmaster]

Eeeeevil? no way!

Drinking too much Haterade? Probably!!

Most importantly, this is Wotc's 1st setting. They've had to nurture existing settings (GH, FR), or hear from the other systems' fan boys if it wasn't DONE JUST RIGHT (Dark Sun, Planescape), or hear from other fanboys if they were not done at all (Birthright, Spelljammer)

They have a setting they can hang their hat on and say (or brag) "This is our setting that WE built from the ground up!"

I want this to succeed. I may never even play Eberron (I'm very happy with my KoKalamar settings - no flames please), but I've always felt that for Wizards to succeed (even more now that they're a piece of Hasbro), they need to look forward, not back. This is the proper stategy to take at this time.

As Patrick Y says perfectly, you couldn't publish a GH sourcebook or mod with alienating some faction of that base, they'll flame and criticize it, not purchase and it will fail.

Lastly, I hope that the core rules for Eberron need little changing for 4th edition ......

*dodges trash and fruit*

 

[mearls]

One other thing - the computer game companies that went with Eberron chose it because they like it. From what I understand, they looked at Eberron and immediately tabbed it as the setting they wanted to work with.

In a lot of ways, that makes sense. It's easier for a computer game company to work with a new property, since they don't have to worry about stepping on the fan's expectations and dealing with lots of back story and history.

There also aren't too many books coming out for Eberron - it looks like about one per quarter, plus the series of three intro modules. There's the Sharn sourcebook in November, plus Races of Eberron in February. That's it from now until next May.

I don't think WotC published enough D&D books to juggle more than two settings and their core releases.

 

[Trainz]

Trainz doesn't know if you're evil (you might).

The fact that you didn't post in your thread for a while makes Trainz think that you're trolling.

Eberron is the brain-child of one of us gamers, and Trainz wishes all the best for that guy. Trainz doesn't personally want to buy and play Eberron, but you or Trainz have absolutely no reason to wish ill towards it.

And Trainz thinks that referring to oneself in the third person makes one look like Smeagol, who was a filthy and unpleasant little critter.

Word.

 

[Nisarg]

Eberron is the brain-child of one of us gamers, and Trainz .

Well, one of us gamers plus a marketing board of Hasbro.

Its not "the brainchild" of Keith Baker the way FR was Ed Greenwood's homebrew game world for years before being published, or Greyhawk was Gary Gygax's personal playground.

its only his "brainchild" in the sense of him coming up with a few concepts on a piece of paper, later 10 pieces of paper, that some marketers in WoTC/Hasbro felt would be the most marketable of all possible entries.

Note, however, that I have already mentioned on this thread that I do NOT hope it flops. That wouldn't help anything.

Nisarg

 

[Wormwood]

its only his "brainchild" in the sense of him coming up with a few concepts on a piece of paper, later 10 pieces of paper, that some marketers in WoTC/Hasbro felt would be the most marketable of all possible entries.

Don't forget the 100-page final entry (which may have contained 'a few concepts' as well).

Marketable = good, in this case. Did anyone seriously expect the setting search to produce Harn? How excited would the community have gotten about another generic classic fantasy setting, anyway?

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Eberron interests me but since D&D is not currently my game of choice, I doubt I would buy it unless a good deal came along or my gaming group suddenly wanted to play it, abandonning our current campaign of Mutants & Masterminds.

I don't think hating Eberron makes you evil, but I would like to know - just out of curiosity - if dead (the original poster) submitted his own idea to WotC. We could then see a better perspective on where the hate is coming from.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It has been said that Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb.

They got it wrong. It's Good will always triumph because Evil is too smart for it's own good.

 

[Desdichado]

So are you evil? You wish. Myopic and in dire need of a business course? Yes.

Hehe. Yeah, I think that about sums it up.

Personally, I don't want any of the old settings. I already have Planescape, the only one I might possibly be interested in. But I'm more interested in new stuff. Eberron? Pretty good. Hope it does great. Iron Kingdoms? Even better. This is what campaign settings should be like. Midnight? Another one that blows the old settings out of the water.

And that's just scratching the surface. d20 is the way to go. We have more campaign setting choice than ever before. How anyone can honestly yearn for a reversion to the days of TSR and the release of a handful of settings, most of which weren't really very imaginative or unique and which were strung out on one unnecessary book after another -- yeah, that's not evil, that's just dumb.