Necromancer Games-update by Orcus

[Orcus]

I guess my question, since you are fielding them, is if there are other OGL games out there that you have played (aside from Pathfinder) that you might consider supporting (some GR game or elsewise).

I dont think so. We havent before. Frankly, I'm a D&D fan. It was initially hard for me to even consider supporting Pathfinder. But I have so much respect for Paizo and Erik Mona and James Jacobs and company and I know that their game really contains the heart of 3E D&D I came around. But my number one goal is to support D&D. That;s just where I'm at.

 

[Voadam]

So it was such a huge success that they haven't made any other systemless settings?

Strange. When some companies find something that's highly profitible, they continue doing it.

Green Ronin has tons of books for settings that could get this style treatment ranging form their elf setting to the isle of psionicists (that got kicked in the neitherregions by the 3.5 switch), to book of the righteous. That they haven't speaks volumes.

Unless I'm way off base, companies don't go, "you know, while we'd sell thousands more of this book, let's instead do this one."

I dunno, is the upcoming 256 page Song of Fire and Ice Campaign Guide going to be statless, stat-lite or stat heavy with NPC and kingdom stats?

I seem to recall Chris saying a few years ago when it was first anounced that it would be statless but I can't find the reference so my memory may be faulty here (tinged by my preference?) and/or plans may have changed. Or not, we'll see when it comes out (or Chris says one way or the other) I guess.

 

[FunkBGR]

Clark -

Isn't the complaint about distributors editionless?

Also - I always thought it was a given that Pathfinder sells way less than 4e, just because it's not "prime time" D&D or mainstream D&D or whatever.

Erik and James have popped on the forums explaining how they can't sell in big box stores because they're on a different scale of economy.

Maybe I misread your earlier posts - and I'm definitely not trying to attack you or anything. I just wanted some clarification.

Isn't Pathfinder having the same problems with distribution?

 

[BryonD]

I think that's nonsense.

If Green Ronin produced the Book of Fiends right out the gate and if Creature Catalog hit right out the gate alongside Tome of Horrors, those books would have sold.

OK. I think you may be wrong.

That said, I will caveat that the established names may very well have had some home runs right out of the gate if they had come out fast and hard. But I still think that great publishers producing great product would have a much harder time finding buyers for on-going products.

Part of the 'real' problem is that WoTC, even with the OGL, still controlled the market by being the big dog. If it shakes, the fleas fall off. Those companies that conintue to do well do so on brand recognition, individual name recognition, and by getting away from WoTC d20 system and making their own OGL variants. Green Ronin mentioned dozens, if not hundreds of times, along with others, that when 3.5 came along, it killed their catalog sales.

I don't recall 3PP all branding together and vowing to fight 3.5 by sticking to the OGL that most closely resembled 3.0.

Instead they get it in the sack, puked, and picked up the pieces.

Those that had strong name recognition were able to weather the storm. Those that had strong name recognition and wanted to be more than just a 3PP saw the writing on the wall. If WoTC could do it once, they could do it again. (And they did with 4e.)

It's much more than... 'merely' certain styles of books not being a good fit for 4e in my opinion.

Apples and oranges.
Yes. 3.5 put a major hits on 3.0 back stock and put everything in a tailspin.

The truth of that is in no way incompatible with the lack of appeal of 4E 3PP stuff to the overall market.

After 3.5 came out, new stuff clearly marked as 3.5 still sold. The weight of the impact, both to the finances of the 3PPs and the portion of the market that was ticked, both assured that things never went fully back. Plus, 3.5 was still 3X, so a lot of people were flush with product. Those things hurt. But the 3.5 market was still viable for a few years. The 4E 3PP market was pretty much DOA. Even for those publishers who did dive right in.

If it was the same as 3.5, then sales should be BETTER for a whole new game, not far worse.

I am 100% certain that you personally, Joe, would buy the stuff you are talking about. And I'm 100% a lot of other 4E fans reading this here on ENWorld would. But every one of you added together doesn't make nearly enough. The nature of the game and the nature of the fan base, as a whole, are very different.

 

[BryonD]

And the reason why (and I think many people are still not seriously considering) is the char builder. Unless a 3PP's stuff becomes part of the char builder, you're going to find many more DMs just saying "no" to 3rd party products even if the GSL had been a verbatim copy of the OGL.

Yeah, that has to pile on.

But I still remain convinced that the same basic result would exist even without the builder.

 

[Wicht]

Erik and James have popped on the forums explaining how they can't sell in big box stores because they're on a different scale of economy.
[snip]
Isn't Pathfinder having the same problems with distribution?

Actually I understood that the problem for Paizo was that at the end of the magazine run they did not have the distribution framework in place for selling books in the stores. They are just now getting that in place and are hoping to be in bigger stores.

For what its worth Books-a-Million already carries Paizo books.

 

[Orcus]

Isn't Pathfinder having the same problems with distribution?

Good question. Right now Pathfinder is an unknown quantity, but Paizo isnt. They get a lot of love and people are enthusiastic about it. I think the distributor support is there more for that than for 3P 4E stuff. Its hard to say. It may be that the same exact problems will exist there too. Right now, thats not my belief.

 

[carmachu]

Just for the record, I do not think either that the "split" is 95-5. I was merely exaggerating in order to find out what was meant by "the fanbase is split", because it sounded to me as if it was an (ballpark) 50-50 split that was implied, which I thought was a bit odd.

No not even close to 50/50....but one could say its significant enough to take note of. Its not something I would dismiss and ignore. Its certainly not like the shift from 2nd to 3rd, where as most jumped folward.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I dont believe I can legally support 1E or 2E (I dont want to start taht discussion again, but people know I believe OSRIC is problematic).

OSRIC is not the only way to support TSR-era D&D. For example, you've previously said that you think the OGL-only "1e compatible" approach that Goodman Games took with their 1e compatible DCC modules didn't suffer from the same problems that you perceive in OSRIC:

This is not legal advice, but I see absolutely no problem with doing what was proposed above (OGL adventures using 1E terms also contained in the SRD with no OSRIC at all). Just refer to the monster names and to class names and things like that. Leave out the 3E stat blocks. And you've got yourself a 1E compatible module without any of the problems of OSRIC. You've always been able to do that with the OGL. In fact, you could even probably put a "compatible with the 'old school' edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game" on your product...I absolutely think you can do that.

(And there's the similar approach taken by C&C, which uses the OGL to publish rules that are very similar to TSR D&D -- so much so that it's relatively simple to interchange material between C&C and TSR D&D.)

We are a small company with limited resources. To some extent, also, we have to follow the lead of Wizards...And since we model ourselves on Judges Guild, we believe in the evolution of the game.

Evolution of the game aside, I note that Judges Guild has partnered with Adventure Games Publishing to release JG material under C&C rules. And Goodman is working with Black Blade to release 1e compatible modules, using the OGL-only approach you saw no problem with -- no OSRIC in sight. I don't think a small company needs to shackle itself to Wizards.

 

[BryonD]

Just for the record, I do not think either that the "split" is 95-5. I was merely exaggerating in order to find out what was meant by "the fanbase is split", because it sounded to me as if it was an (ballpark) 50-50 split that was implied, which I thought was a bit odd.

Understood. I don't think putting a number on it is even particularly meaningful because the group of people being discussed has changed.

I do think, speaking in purely qualitative terms, that there is more of a split between groups of self-described "D&D gamers" than ever before. Yes, there was a split long ago, long before anyone ever said 3E. And split continued through 3E. But if nothing else, 3X hold-outs have simply joined the ranks with pre-3E hold-outs, increasing the "non-current-edition" slice right there alone. But also, purely imo, the slice of hold outs is quite significant this time around.

And that doesn't even get into the people who have simply moved on to games not called "D&D" (or directly derived from D&D).