D&D 5E In your Years of Gaming, How many Psionic Characters did you See played

[Olrox17]

No, it means that the market for those things is so fragmented that any one of those products becomes a niche sale that WotC isn't insterested in pursuing.

That seems to be the rather cold equation that's being operated under. Sure, a new Dark Sun might be popular with new players, but, there's no way to know that is there? You have to do the market research and testing and all that goodness before you even consider the project. Same with Psionics or any number of other things. Since there isn't any clear winner for what people want, it's a much riskier thing to do.

Particularly when WotC is really putting all its eggs in one basket with such a slow release rate.

The market only gets fragmented if they release all of these products, all at once. Which is exactly what WotC is avoiding with their slower release rate.

If we really want to know Enworld’s opinion on a dark sun setting book, we need a poll specifically on that. You know, I might make one myself.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, I'm sure that if you ask the people at En World, if they want Dark Sun, they will say sure. Fair enough. Only problem is, if you ask the same question about Planescape, or any of a half dozen other settings, you'll get the same results.

All it really tells you is that En Worlders are old.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oh, I'm sure that if you ask the people at En World, if they want Dark Sun, they will say sure. Fair enough. Only problem is, if you ask the same question about Planescape, or any of a half dozen other settings, you'll get the same results.

All it really tells you is that En Worlders are old.

If you look at the poll, quite a few old settings do comparatively poorly. The next one is Greyhawk at 18%. FR is shockingly unpopular compared to Dark Sun.

 

[Olrox17]

If you look at the poll, quite a few old settings do comparatively poorly. The next one is Greyhawk at 18%. FR is shockingly unpopular compared to Dark Sun.

Well, we already got a FR setting book. I'm sure that's a factor. People might want more settings rather than multiple books on just one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, we already got a FR setting book. I'm sure that's a factor. People might want more settings rather than multiple books on just one.

True, technically it is more FR on the poll.

 

[Hussar]

If you look at the poll, quite a few old settings do comparatively poorly. The next one is Greyhawk at 18%. FR is shockingly unpopular compared to Dark Sun.

But, again, comparatively poorly isn't really a measure is it? When the BEST performer is somewhere in the 1/3 range, it's not like there's a huge demand for it.

Look, again, I'm not trying to piddle in anyone's corn flakes here. I'm really not. But, if the best you can say about a setting is that 1/3 of people are interested in it, well... that's kind of damning with faint praise.

Or, to put it another way, if you know that a product is only interesting to 1/3 of your fanbase, are you going to invest several hundreds of thousands of dollars in it? Remember, WotC isn't interested in anything that's not going to move 100 000 units.

 

[Olrox17]

But, again, comparatively poorly isn't really a measure is it? When the BEST performer is somewhere in the 1/3 range, it's not like there's a huge demand for it.

Look, again, I'm not trying to piddle in anyone's corn flakes here. I'm really not. But, if the best you can say about a setting is that 1/3 of people are interested in it, well... that's kind of damning with faint praise.

Or, to put it another way, if you know that a product is only interesting to 1/3 of your fanbase, are you going to invest several hundreds of thousands of dollars in it? Remember, WotC isn't interested in anything that's not going to move 100 000 units.

Again, I believe you are interpreting the data incorrectly, but I've already made my point above.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

That's not how the poll works. You can only vote for the three you are most interested in out of the dozen plus choices. Getting anything over 20% or so is pretty darn popular in that sort of poll.

 

[atanakar]

One (1) guy managed to get the percentage result required to have psionic powers with an AD&D character. He was very happy but once I started putting monsters that were attracted by his psionic aura he didn't like it so much. Never had a psionic character in my games ever since.

Never played Dark Sun or buy the original box.

During a AD&D2e game by another DM she gave a special gem to a Psionic character. He could store points in it between adventurers. It made him too powerful and unbalanced the game.

 

[JediSoth]

While I voted "Nope. Didn't use psionics at all in my D&D." That's not entirely accurate. I always allowed it as an option in my AD&D games, but no one ever chose to use it.