Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5412084" data-attributes="member: 22424">I'm pretty sure the answer is &quot;maybe&quot;.No, because the plan for this year was always to focus on Essentials, which was a deliberate repackaging/clean-up of 4e (the same way 3.5e was for&nbsp; 4e, but without the same level of rule changes, and handled much better, IMO). Given its purpose, then, this year was always going to look like the creative well had run dry.Yes, because RPGs don't sell all that well, and because vanilla ice cream sells best despite not being anybody's favourite. (It sells really well because although everyone prefers something else, they rarely agree. Vanilla is thus the acceptable compromise.) What this means is that WotC, in order to sell enough units to enough people, are forced to stick with the 'vanilla' path, deliberately avoiding more obscure variants. The problem is, we've long since reached the point where people have enough of that - how many people don't have enough game material to last them until the day they die?(It's maybe worth noting that WotC did &quot;Dark Sun&quot; and &quot;Gamma World&quot;, two of the most 'out there' variants, in the same year that they reaped the sales boost from a new packaging of the core rules. I would be very surprised if either sold anywhere near as well as, say, Forgotten Realms, or if they did well enough to sell as the setting in a 'normal' year.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 5412084, member: 22424"] I'm pretty sure the answer is "maybe". No, because the plan for this year was always to focus on Essentials, which was a deliberate repackaging/clean-up of 4e (the same way 3.5e was for 4e, but without the same level of rule changes, and handled much better, IMO). Given its purpose, then, this year was always going to look like the creative well had run dry. Yes, because RPGs don't sell all that well, and because vanilla ice cream sells best despite not being anybody's favourite. (It sells really well because although everyone prefers something else, they rarely agree. Vanilla is thus the acceptable compromise.) What this means is that WotC, in order to sell enough units to enough people, are forced to stick with the 'vanilla' path, deliberately avoiding more obscure variants. The problem is, we've long since reached the point where people have enough of that - how many people [i]don't[/i] have enough game material to last them until the day they die? (It's maybe worth noting that WotC did "Dark Sun" and "Gamma World", two of the most 'out there' variants, in the same year that they reaped the sales boost from a new packaging of the core rules. I would be very surprised if either sold anywhere near as well as, say, Forgotten Realms, or if they did well enough to sell as [i]the[/i] setting in a 'normal' year.) [/QUOTE]

Verification