Your lousy view of the OGL is of course a matter of public record here on EN World, but I'm curious what you mean by Ryan Dancey being wrong about organized play.
Could you be a bit more specific?
--Erik
I think TSR was right to publish so much material
- Thread starter Silverblade The Ench
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Your lousy view of the OGL is of course a matter of public record here on EN World, but I'm curious what you mean by Ryan Dancey being wrong about organized play.
Could you be a bit more specific?
--Erik
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
My guess (and it's only that) is that he's referring to Ryan's purchase of Living City, which foundered even as Living Greyhawk took off.
I'm operating off of ten-year-old memories here, but all of the books I mentioned earlier in the thread were still in their production cases, so none of them had been returned from retailers.
I think it wasn't just one book. My impression is that retailers returned tons and tons of books (many of them novels) to their distributor, who sat on them for a long time. When finally the distributor returned all of their backstock to TSR, it was the avalanche that destroyed the camel's back (and the camel).
--Erik
Well, that's my guess too. Ryan's company was Organized Play (note the caps), and John didn't capitalize the words in his post, suggesting maybe he was talking about the concept of organized play in general.
Which is why I asked.
--Erik
I was actually quoting from one of the threads critical of Ryan's ability to predict trends...goes to Google...
Ah, here's where KingOfTheOldSchool makes that statement.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/other-...edicts-pathfinder-rpg-06-a-5.html#post4155089
To be honest, I was going my memory and that thread has several samples, I could have used another.
And as far as a "lousy view" of the OGL, well, I feel there is validity in critiquing an open license--I won't apologize for having a conservative viewpoint when it comes to things like owning your own creative works or criticizing things that might not make a lot of long-term economic success. It certainly wasn't the big success or filled the entire vision Ryan himself had of it. It's obviously a success for some people, including your own game company, but at minimum I see the flaws as well as the benefits.
Ah, here's where KingOfTheOldSchool makes that statement.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/other-...edicts-pathfinder-rpg-06-a-5.html#post4155089
To be honest, I was going my memory and that thread has several samples, I could have used another.
And as far as a "lousy view" of the OGL, well, I feel there is validity in critiquing an open license--I won't apologize for having a conservative viewpoint when it comes to things like owning your own creative works or criticizing things that might not make a lot of long-term economic success. It certainly wasn't the big success or filled the entire vision Ryan himself had of it. It's obviously a success for some people, including your own game company, but at minimum I see the flaws as well as the benefits.
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Orius
Unrepentant DM Supremacist
So how many of those novels from 95-96 were any good? I can't comment too much, because I've read little of it, but most of it looks forgettable. I'm not going to count the reprints of the classic Dragonlance novels, but a lot of the Dragonlance books from that year look like they cover some really minor stuff from the setting. The only execption would be Dragons of Summer Flame and the lead-in anthology The Second Generation which both cover the main metaplot for the setting and are fairly good for D&D fiction.
Much of the rest of the stuff looks like a big pile of dreck intended to make money off the various settings. Maybe some of those books are good, but I really don't know. I will say right off that the Blood War trilogy for Planescape was crap, and not in a good way. The story sucked, and it broke the setting's rules
. It was so bad I forced myself to finish the second horrid book and never bothered to read the third.
Much of the rest of the stuff looks like a big pile of dreck intended to make money off the various settings. Maybe some of those books are good, but I really don't know. I will say right off that the Blood War trilogy for Planescape was crap, and not in a good way. The story sucked, and it broke the setting's rules
(one of the main characters created planer portals, which according to setting rules couldn't be done by PC types, there was also the big battle scene at the end of the second book where fiends and celestials flew into Sigil from the top of the Spire, which also goes against setting rules)
Hussar
Legend
Echohawk - that's interesting. It looks like novels and game books were booming throughout much of 3e as well. From that graph, the period from 04 to 08 saw just as many novels and game books as the peak of 2e. However, the fact that WOTC was producing a fraction of RPG books in a comparative period I think says volumes as well.
It certainly looks a lot healthier anyway.
It certainly looks a lot healthier anyway.
AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
The Black Vessel, the single novel set in the Savage Coast (aka Red Steel), was by far the best Mystara novel. Still, it was never fated to be a major seller being a sub-setting of a third-tier setting. It's actually not too bad game fiction. But maybe Mystara's novels were poor enough that it's not a stringent benchmark.
Echohawk
Shirokinukatsukami fan
Yeah, the higher number of novels from 2005-2007 surprised me too. Sufficiently so that I went back and double-checked my numbers. In 2006, WotC released a whopping 60 novels, although 15 of those were reprints of previously released books (and the graph doesn't include those, it only counts new releases).
Here's how the 45 new titles for 2006 break down:
13 Dragonlance titles
11 Eberron titles
14 Forgotten Realms titles
1 Mixed-world anthology (Dragons: Worlds Afire)
6 Kids books (Knights of the Silver Dragon series)
Comparing that to the 2009 novel release schedule is interesting:
5 Dragonlance titles
3 Eberron title
13 Forgotten Realms titles
3 Kids cooks (Dragon Codex series)
plus a whopping 21 releases in 2009 that were reprints of previous releases or omnibus editions collections previous trilogies.
Were the Birthright or Ravenloft novels best sellers?
I can see a lot of that stuff being returned, especially if it was a new product and turned out not to "turn into gold" like many FR or Dragonlance novels did. Plus you have the a-tier authors, (Greenwood writing for his setting, Hickman and Weiss for Dragonlance), and the b-tier, and it looks like they may have been spreading things too thin.
Plus, were the Quest (aimed at younger audiences) line successful? It wasn't the early 80s and D&D seemed to lose a lot of the audience it gained at its peak.
I can see a lot of that stuff being returned, especially if it was a new product and turned out not to "turn into gold" like many FR or Dragonlance novels did. Plus you have the a-tier authors, (Greenwood writing for his setting, Hickman and Weiss for Dragonlance), and the b-tier, and it looks like they may have been spreading things too thin.
Plus, were the Quest (aimed at younger audiences) line successful? It wasn't the early 80s and D&D seemed to lose a lot of the audience it gained at its peak.
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