Imaro said:
I would say almost jumped off that bandwagon. As I said in my earlier post Conan 2nd edition is still d20 (though on their boards alot of customers asked for it as a Runequest setting). I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't sell as well as they expected it to just because 4e was announced. In the end this is a big risk when you base the majority of your products on another company's game. I think companies like Green Ronin(True20) and Mongoose(Runequest) realized this at a certain point.
Conan is OGL, not d20. The differences between Conan and D&D 3.5 are subtler than between True20 and D&D 3.5, but they're definitely there. You can't port directly between the systems the way you could with, say, d20 Modern or Grim Tales, although conversion is a lot easier than with True20.
I don't really think Conan 2e will end up harder hit by D&D 4e than it would have if it had been a RuneQuest release. The blow was much more to the Conan 2e reveal's visibility and marketing, not to the system itself. No more, at least, than 4e will be a blow to other d20-derived incompatible systems like True20.
Imaro said:
I could totally see them doing this, the difference between them and such companies as Paizo and Necromancer Games who really are kind of beholden to WotC for sales, is that when the newness of 4e slows down (or a new edition is announced) they continue to have customers who are loyal to their other brands. Thus they can better weather the inevitable dry spells of d20 publishing. All IMHO of course.
Agreed. Mongoose is in a much better position than a pure d20 company would be - even a better position than, say, Green Ronin. True20 and Mutants and Masterminds are still tied to some extent to the d20 system, whereas lines like RuneQuest, Traveler and the Mongoose minis games are completely independent.
About the only other company with that kind of security, albeit on a smaller scale, is Privateer Press, for whom the d20 material is basically a hobby next to the runaway success of their minis game.