Is the d20 market completely saturated?

[JohnNephew]

GM Aids either provide GM advice, or do the necessary but un-sexy work for him. Examples of GM Aids are Robin Law's "Guide to Good Gamemastering" and Johnn Four's "NPC Essentials". Ambient Game's (?) "Everyone Else", Gold Rush Game's "Village of Briarton", and the Scarred Lands "Wilderness and Wastelands" are examples of GM Aids which do the necessary work for you.

I think GM aids are a definitely valuable type of product. We've seen that our products in that vein -- such as Backdrops, Seven Cities, Seven Strongholds -- have had good ongoing sales, meaning that GMs are buying them (and then stores are reordering).

They have a problem in that, like adventures, they appeal fundamentally to GMs, and thus have a smaller potential market than, for example, player-oriented class books. This may be limiting the number of them being published, but there are still a lot of them out there. (We have more of our own on the way, such as Sacred Ground, now at press for release sometime next month, which is like 7C/7S but containing temples and holy sites.)

Mearls is right, this is perfect definition of innovation: "stuff that DMs and players need to own, even if they don't know they need it yet."

The amount of product in the market, though, may be enough to make it hard for people to get exposed to products that are innovative under this definition. (Stores and distributors may not realize that players and GMs will need a new and different product, and they may be unwilling to order it in significant quantities, or reluctant to reorder it, as other dozens of books clamor for the dollars they have to invest in inventory.)

When you discover something that really clicks, and makes you wonder how you got by all these years without it, shout its praises so that others will know to look for it!

 

[Kerrick]

touche and well said JohnNephew.

You took the words out of my mouth.

Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of money to spend on 3rd-party products, though we have seen some that look quite interesting. One that our group does have is Green Ronin's Ultramodern Firearms for Modern d20. If you're playing a Modern campaign and need a large variety of weapons, this book is invaluable - it has dozens and dozens of pistols, rifles, machine guns, and even heavy weapons, al laid out with all the pertinent information you need, and each even has a short history.

And of course we have the BoEMs I-III - good stuff in there. One of our players is playing the variant bard. We also use Ambient's (now EN Publishing's) Everyone Else for those villagers and city guards. We have R&R 1, and the CC 1-2, though we don't use them very much. Other than that... we don't really use a lot of 3rd-party stuff, sad to say - if we need something, we usually come up with it on our own rules. I will, however, take a stroll through RPGNow later today and see what interesting things I can find.

Getting back to the original discussion: Besides the fact that there are far too many products on the market, there aren't nearly enough consumers. Now, we're disregarding the print market for the moment - the vast majority of d20 products are pdf, which means they're sold over the internet. For some strange reason, a lot of gamers don't even know about this great resource they have at the their fingertips - there are only something like 8,000 customers at RPGNow. (And yes, I do spread the word when I talk to other gamers, but most of the people I talk to already know about it, so...) I think if we could get more people to invest an interest in the online market, the sales would go up, for one thing, but it would also enable the cream to rise to the top more easily, as more people buy the things that truly interest them and leave the dross behind.

 

[gambler1650]

I started thinking that the D20 market was close to saturated a couple of weeks ago when I was looking through the reviews section. There are usually 2-3 books on individual races, monsters or classes, often even ones that are 'new core classes' (Witches and Shamans for instance). One area that I don't think is oversaturated is in Campaign Worlds. I can easily think of at least a couple that might be entertaining (assuming they haven't actually been done - a 'caveman' style one done on a prehistoric world with intelligent dinosaurs where the main classes are most likely to be barbarians, shamans and rogues (scouts) - for all I know this one's been done but I haven't seen it yet). Sure there are a _lot_ of them, but most have something new to offer, and in fact WotC is the one that shows the least originality (Kalamar, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Dragonlance are all retreads.. so for that matter is Oriental Adventures though that's at least an original setting). I have Oathbound and Midnight on the way, am thinking about Slaine... I have Nyambe (was highly glad to see that one done), Scarred Lands, Engel and Mutants and Masterminds which all have a different take on the usual.

I agree with another comment that there should be more DM aids, but I've found enough of those online for the areas that I'd like to see (world building for instance). Books like Traps and Treachery, Wilderness & Wasteland fit these, as I assume does the Monster Handbook and Dungeoncraft by FFG. What might be nice is someone to create a campaign setting or campaign within a setting and at the same time write up a sort of 'development diary' online (I've seen a few of these in the Plots and Places section here and in old dragon articles online) that could be purchased with the campaign setting, or maybe even a DVD.

One of the ultimate problems with the multitude of books is simply, not everyone will have everything that a DM might use in his campaign anymore. Gone are the days when a player could show up to play with nothing but the Player's Handbook and know everything necessary to play (unless the DM is playing a straight 3E AD&D campaign). Additionally, keeping track of what's allowed and what isn't could become difficult. For instance, I'm planning on running a Scarred Lands campaign, but I also really like the concepts in the Book of the Righteous regarding holy warriors (basically each major god gets a 'Paladin' type). Maybe I really like a prestige class from another book, and want to throw some of the Nyambe setting onto a large island southeast of Ghelspad... I also like the witch class and Drow description by Green Ronin, and the Fey and Star Magic concepts in Mongoose Publishing. Suddenly I have more than a handful of books that I'm using, but I'm not using all elements of them, so have to remember what I'm allowing and what I'm not. In some ways, while it makes it less work for the DM in creating a campaign world (there's almost always something that'll substitute for a homegrown concept now), there's more keeping track of things.

I do think that if the market isn't exactly saturated with respect to original ideas, that it's reaching critical mass... In other words, there's just too much!

 

[Justin Bacon]

Aside from Mongoose's Fighter book, we haven't really seen much in the way of books covering mass combat and, warfare, although this year should see that change, assuming both Fields of Blood and Cry Havoc are released in 2003.

And THE ART OF WAR from Troll Lord.

(cough)

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

(Author of THE ART OF WAR)

 

[der_kluge]

I think one of the major differences today as compared to 10 years ago is that gamers are older, but they are also busier. As a result, I believe, the average gamer plays in one game, maybe two, but plays regularly, and the games tend to last longer. Fewer people have time to be the DM, and those that are, time is probably at a premium. Thus, innovative games that require new rulesets, or lots of reading to understand that world are going to be novel, but will likely get played less than those that take place in a standard fantasy D&D (ala Greyhawk, or FR) world. If I were to start a new campaign, I could either tell my players "the world is earth-like, kind of like Forgotten Realms" and everyone would get it instantly, and we could begin playing right away. We have a basis for comparison. I think that's why innovative campaign settings probably aren't as popular. In college, we made new PCs like we were going out of style. We played Ravenloft, Al-Qadim, Planescape, Dark Sun, and standard world campaigns. We'd quickly tire of one, and move on to another, but we were always buying the new world supplements. We just don't have that kind of time to do that now.

That's my opinion, for what it's worth.

 

[JoeGKushner]

And THE ART OF WAR from Troll Lord.

(cough)

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

(Author of THE ART OF WAR)

And once again, we get a subject chocked to saturation with not one or two, but a minimum of three sourcebooks.

 

[Justin Bacon]

And once again, we get a subject chocked to saturation with not one or two, but a minimum of three sourcebooks.

Sure, but only THE ART OF WAR is going to be any good.

Personally, I suspect we're all doomed. WotC is releasing the MINIATURES HANDBOOK this Fall. That makes four sourcebooks dedicated to mass combat, and WotC is the big-boy on the block.

And I say that with the full knowledge that all three of the D20 supplements are going to have their own unique strengths.

Justin Bacon
triad3204@aol.com

(For those of you ignoring that smiley face: That's a joke. I'm not going to bash unpublished supplements I've never seen. Of course, I believe that THE ART OF WAR is going to offer you the most bang-for-your-buck -- along with some ancillary benefits that you'll see coming down the road shortly -- but that goes without saying.)

 

[gambler1650]

Parallel to wargaming

I've noticed something interesting in comparing role playing games to wargaming (historical), specifically their communities. Both are niche products that developed around the same time (60's-early 80's) and then seemed to fall off the radar. Both had one or two main publishers during their 'glory years'. Both now seem to be enjoying a renaissance in proliferation of companies and games, though wargaming doesn't have a D20 analogue. Both seem to be reaching a saturation point where there are too many products to easily keep up with, potentially splintering the community. Both are still niche products.

My theory is that both are made up primarily of customers who're 'rediscovering' their youth (what happened with me in both hobbies) and voraciously buying almost anything that's produced. As such, I'm gonna do a poll about age of the average wargamer.

 

[Mark]

Excuse me while I wax philosophic here, but as a player, and a sometimes DM, there's really not much left for me to purchase that would extensively add a huge amount of value to the game. I mean, there are tons of splat books, tons of monster books, plenty of modules, campaign settings, and a host of other great products out there, that already add a lot to my game.

Do others see as I do, that the d20 market is saturated with product, and the margins are continuing to shrink down as fans reach a point to where more books add less and less to their already diverse game?

Thoughts?

Still feel that way, Curtis?

 

[Crothian]

This thread is two years old, and even now there is not Saturation in the market. THere are lots of cool things coming out I want to get.