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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5300504" data-attributes="member: 4937">Hmmm...first, I notice that you list doesn't contain 'Night Below' which is the one thing on the list that has stood the test of time, still garners very loud acclaim, and which would be expensive to now procur via ebay or Amazon (suggesting it could be profitably reprinted).Only in a very small print run, and only if Encyclopedia Magica, Volume I sold well.  If I remember correctly, the idea behind these was ok (compile all spells), but the execution was pretty bad as they used a book format uncommon in RPG books and I think most people found the Quarto(?) format not particularly useful.The Birthright setting was probably the most creative and best written thing that they published that year.  It also, quite unsurprisingly, flopped.  Simply put, 2e could not afford to support another setting at this time.  The market was saturated, and Birthright was a niche setting at that.I love the Gothic Earth setting, but can't help but feel that there just wasn't alot of demand for it.  The basic problem here is that the majority of Planescape and Ravenloft material is cross compatible with other settings and with most generic homebrews.  Von Richeten's Guides for example can be sold to DMs that run normal fantasy games but want more detail and variaty in their classic monsters.  So who is the market for the Gothic Earth Gazetteer?  Only DMs running a Gothic Earth campaign.  That's a tiny number.  You can sell a few to those that just like to read RPG books, but this is not something to bank the company on.  Still, I would have liked to have done one or two releases per year of all new material for each setting, and this might well have been one of those for Ravenloft.  I probably would have also wanted a Dark Sun release, but that woudl have required completely rethinking what material to expand on because Dark Sun was a badly mismanaged product by this point.  Ditto Forgotten Realms. I'd be inclined to want to release only one of these and put the other off until the next year, but if there was some indication of strong sells in the Planescape setting I might have done both.  Mostly at this point you are selling to setting completionists.  These are books that are going to see very little use in most campaigns, but Planescape is nice in that most campaigns at least have a multiplanar universe in theory even if no one much ever goes there.I'm torn on the moster supplements.  On the one hand, monster books tend to sell well.  On the other hand, they were putting out tons of monster supplements at this point and by then, they'd really soured people on the quality of the monstrous supplements and they were feeling very forced and slapdash.  I think thatI think I would have taken the Night Below project and expanded on it.a) Release a crunch centered revised 'Dungeoneer's Survival Guide'.b) Release a fluff centered 'Night Below' generic campaign setting.  The thing about the Underdark is that most campaigns have one.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of the 'Boxed Set' format.  You are paying for an expensive box and you can't look at the content to see if you'd really want to buy it.  I'd prefer either a thick soft cover or a some sort of cheaper packaging for a bundle of books.  I notice that the format didn't last much past TSR folding.c) Release the Night Below campaign as a 4 part module series possibly also with an option to buy all four in a single bundle.  d) Release a monstrous supplement that was Underdark centric as the annual monstrous supplement.</blockquote>

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