I think TSR was right to publish so much material

[Scribble]

There are multiple ways of viewing that release schedule. You see innovation, I see some of that but also infer a sales-driven need to try something very different and see if anything sticks.

I kind of doubt WoTC is just randomly tossing ideas out there though.

Shrug- I see your view as coming from a pessimistic starting point.

 

[Klaus]

TSR tried to support several self-isolating settings in the same intensity, instead of focusing on accessories that could be used with any setting and only a few setting-specific supplements. For isntance, a "core D&D" desert monster supplement could've been used with FR, Al-Qadin, Dark Sun or Greyhawk.

 

[Neonchameleon]

over years there's been a point brought up often that TSR produced too much stuff for AD&D, and that was bad for the game and cost them money.
I strongly disagree.

A game needs BREADTH of appeal. This requires catering to lots of people with differing tastes, and generating lots of interest.
Having lots of players, attracted by lots of varied things interesting to them, is vital

Gaming needs breadth of appeal. This doesn't mean that Dread, My Life With Master, or Spirit of the Century appeals to everyone or even should.

Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!

Who's this "most" you're talking about? Because the impression I have of that period is that it was an utterly incoherent mess with no real focus. Round then I was playing GURPS - which was a coherent mess with a deliberate range of focusses. And even that was ultimately tied into gritty fantasy.

All this made D&D a very fertile, fun thing to be involved with

Only if you were already involved. From the outside it looked like an incoherent mess that was best avoided.

3rd ed kept a good deal of interest by the Open Game licence with many variant folk producing interesting material (Ihave lots of the Slayers Guides for example, and other stuff).

3e did it right. Well, 3e and GURPS. You could tell what was mainline and what wasn't. But 3e collapsed under its own weight.

If you can't tell what's mainline or core and what isn't, then it becomes far too PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) for new people to have a clue where to look.

IMHO however, WOTC "cut their own nose off to spite their face" with the more strict 4th ed system and stopping pdfs.
Sure, piracy and competitors may suck, but, you lose interest of players, they expect and want lots of "stuff", to keep interest high, making a broad fun community.

Keeping 4e rules tight has been one of the best advances 4e has made. It means that the DM does not need to supervise every goddamn rulebook to prevent Pun-Pun or the Diplomancer turning up (or just broken spells). It means that there's no longer an intimidating volume of Stuff for e.g. the realms being published. So new players are much more secure playing 4e settings.

On the other hand they've locked down too much. More 4e third party settings and adventure paths would IMO be a good thing. As would 4e Modern (including 4e Pulp, 4e Action Movie, and 4e Spy), 4e Supers, and 4e Space Opera. But I for one don't miss Mongoose's Quintessential series.

As for the PDFs, I agree about the 2e ones. People playing 2e or earlier aren't likely to switch - either they stayed with the old editions or they are having fun going retro. It's money for nothing. (And I'd bring 3.0 pdfs back with Essentials).

No one company can create enough content to satisfy a happy "bubbling with excitement" fan base. (This also applies most definately to MMOs said that to them before long time ago, D&D like it or not is in competition with them for folks' spare time)

What WoTC does with 4e is the bits I find it hard to do myself. I've never been as keen on DMing as with 4e, and the players bubble with enthusiasm. (As someone else on these boards said "Paizo produces everything I like doing for myself. WoTC produces everything I don't like doing myself. So I go with WoTC." It's an approach that works for me - and most of what TSR was producing was far lower quality than Paizo and was dire when it tried to do what WoTC does.)

Hence fan content and competitors are good at keeping the game "bubbling" with excitement, keeping the interest is key, not mere sales income 1st and foremost. The "buzz" will make more money than being a tightwad.
Closed tight control always ends up slowly eroding user base numbers.

Do you have evidence that the game grew in the 2e days?

TSR failed because of bad financial leadership and foolish investment from what I can gather, not from too much AD&D inventory per se. (the dice issue was the biggie, poor relations/oversight with important seller, She Who Must Not Be Named, etc )

Thus would D&D not be best served by making a LOT of varied material and having looser licencing?

Except that TSR is known to have done no surveys about what the customers wanted, and what would sell. Therefore they ended up with warehouses full of stock with a total value of $0.00

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ryan Dancey on the Acquisition of TSR

Excerpts from the article (most relevant points highlighted - things they are turning back on italicised):

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.

Our customers were telling us that we spent too much time on our own worlds, and not enough time on theirs? Ok - we can fix that. We can re-orient the business towards tools, towards examples, towards universal systems and rules that aren't dependent on owning a thousand dollars of unnecessary materials first.

Our customers were telling us that they prefer playing D&D nearly 2:1 over the next most popular game option? That's an important point of distinction. We can leverage that desire to help get them more people to play >with< by reducing the barriers to compatibility between the material we produce, and the material created by other companies.

Our customers told us they wanted a better support organization? We can pour money and resources into the RPGA and get it growing and supporting players like never before in the club's history. (10,000 paid members and rising, nearly 50,000 unpaid members - numbers currently skyrocketing).

Our customers were telling us that they want to create and distribute content based on our game? Fine - we can accommodate that interest and desire in a way that keeps both our customers and our lawyers happy.

...

We listened when the customers told us that Alternity wasn't what they wanted in a science fiction game. We listened when customers told us that they didn't want the confusing, jargon filled world of Planescape. We listened when people told us that the Ravenloft concept was overshadowed by the products of a competitor. We listened to customers who told us that they want core materials, not world materials. That they buy DUNGEON magazine every two months at a rate twice that of our best selling stand-alone adventures.

 

[wedgeski]

There are multiple ways of viewing that release schedule. You see innovation, I see some of that but also infer a sales-driven need to try something very different and see if anything sticks.

No viewer bias at all there then.

I too am watching these releases with interest. Essentials doesn't offer much to my already-long-running 4E game, but there's plenty of other stuff on offer from Wizards over the next year that'll probably be getting my coin.

 

[rogueattorney]

A game needs BREADTH of appeal. This requires catering to lots of people with differing tastes, and generating lots of interest.
Having lots of players, attracted by lots of varied things interesting to them, is vital

The problem is that the TSR products of the time period you are talking about were each very narrowly tailored to appeal to a very small subset of their fanbase.

Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!

Does anyone really think that? I thought the common consensus is that 1977-ish to 1983-ish was the Golden Age of O(A)D&D and that the popularity of the D&D brand peaked in about 1984 or 85. By the accounts I've seen, the D&D game playing population of the mid-'90s was about half that of the mid-'80s

 

[Stormonu]

The basic problem is that from around 1989 to 1998, TSR produced almost nothing worth owning. Those few items of quality that they produced were swamped under a ton of garbage with low production values, low density of information (big fonts, wide margins, spurious and repetive artwork, ink bling), limited utility, poor writing, bad editing, and no play testing.

I'd have to go back and look at a catalog for those years, but I know I was buying (lots of) stuff for D&D right up to went TSR went under. Granted, I haven't been able to read through everything in the mass I own, but I can't remember anything off the top of my head that I'd discard as garbage back from the 2E days - well, except maybe DragonStrike.

TSR was putting stuff out at an unsustainable rate - which was bad for them - and I remember most people had left D&D for WoD games or CCG's, but I was never unhappy with what was being put out.

 

[cildarith]

Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!

Umm, no, I'm afraid it was most definitely not the Golden Age. It was the "age of 90% (or more, in this case) of everthing is crap."

As rogueattorney has mentioned, 1977-1983 was the Golden Age of (A)D&D.

I'm sorry you missed it.

 

[Agamon]

Umm, no, I'm afraid it was most definitely not the Golden Age. It was the "age of 90% (or more, in this case) of everthing is crap."

As rogueattorney has mentioned, 1977-1983 was the Golden Age of (A)D&D.

I'm sorry you missed it.

Yeah, 2e was the golden age? Yikes...I'd rather refer to it as the dark ages.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

The basic problem is that from around 1989 to 1998, TSR produced almost nothing worth owning. Those few items of quality that they produced were swamped under a ton of garbage with low production values, low density of information (big fonts, wide margins, spurious and repetive artwork, ink bling), limited utility, poor writing, bad editing, and no play testing.

It's notable that there is almost nothing that is 'classic' from that era.

Now that I strongly disagree with.
Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape "weren't worth owning"!?
"The Illithiad", "The Sea Devils" you are trying to tell me were crap?!
Um, no way!!

Now, you're right that there were definately stinkers at times, but here's a point many folk don't get:
YOUR stinker maybe MY fave!

now, I'd say the last TSR boxed campaign setting for the Forgotten Realms was really poor quality, IMHO as an example of what you were speaking of, quality wise.
Compared ot the 1st "grey" boxed set, it was awful! lousy illustrations, poor printing/font and layout etc.

And I can well believe TSR didn't calculate production run amounts to what was economically viable (as said it wasn't well run by all accounts)

I foudn many items to be fun, useful or whatever.
"Fun" is important, wish folk would remember that at times like the collectible cards (handy for quick NPCs and generla interest value).
"useful", like the Encounter Cards, that was handy.

"The Illithiad" was outstanding. So they sure could make quality.

What angered me as a customer though were the damn metaplots in novel lines so they could re-write settings so they could sell newer boxed sets after screwing up perfectly damn good settings, GRRR!


"Too much stuff" well you weren't meant to buy it all, folks!! Didn't this occur to anyone else?