Niche products

[JoeGKushner]

Lets see,

* I would like Green Ronin to do a book on elves. Yes, it has to be Green Ronin, and yes it has to be elves.
* More books on monsters from the outer lower planes.
* A book on artifacts
* Books with ready-made non-WotC specific "underdark" settings.
* Adventures. Yes, adventures! Now that it's arguable that the sourcebooks have been done, lets start seeing some interesting stories that use those sourcebooks. Worried that people don't have the original books? No big deal, that's what OGC is about.

GR has Bow & Blade coming out.

GR also has a third outsider book on the Neutral Evil fiends coming out too. This of course doesn't count other monster books like Denizens of Aradnu (ms) and Boundless Blue

AEG has Relics, a book in the one word title for high powered magic items.

FFG had the Dungeon Design book while Goodman has the Underdark book coming out.

Adventurers? Haven't noticed any shortage there. Troll Lords, Necromancer, and even Scarred Lands have all recently gotten their adventure books out lately.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Does anyone else feel that we're getting more and more "niche" products, that the niches are getting smaller and smaller, and we're getting fewer "broad" products?

I'm buying less and less, because more and more seems to be so narrowly targetted, it's simply of no use to me.

Cheers
Nell.

No.

There are more products on the market and this may enhance the apperance of niche products but the reality is different.

Malhavok still products a lot of non-niche products. Heck, I'd consider psionics non-niche with his latest book that augments/supplements the standard system.

AEG has both niche and non-niche books with the L5R/7th Seas and one word title books. Not to mention Spyrcraft, etc... Fantasy Flight Games is in the same boat with their Legends & Lairs books and their niche Dragonstar products (and Midnight). They've expanded thought with their monster series and magic series.

How about Sword & Sorcery Studios? Even if you don't like Scarred Lands, R&R I &II, and CC II and upcoming revised, not to mention the various class books, are all general. This doesn't include the various non-niche products by Necromancer.

Atlas has a book on politics. Semi-niche as it can be used with almost any type of campaign. Another book on NPCs. Definately non-niche.

Sure, we have products like Dark Inheritance building on the D20 Modern block with their own take on a horror-kung/gung fu type deal, but there is so much more standard stuff out nowadays that you may be looking at it and missing it.

Streets of Silver, a sourcebook for Twin Crowns. Niche or general? I'd say general because it is a general sourcebook.

 

[malladin]

I think a lot of people do niche products that are designed to be broader than their intended target.

When we started up we spent some time looking for what products appeared to be missing from the market place. One thing we noticed that was missing was books for the specific wizard specialities other than Necromancy. Since we noticed this, we have, admittedly, had umpteen Enchantment books (Joe's is best ) and some interest in divination, but anyway back to the plot.

When we thought about doing a source book for specialist wizards we were immediately thinking 'hold on, how many people play a specific type of wizard, particularly if we are consciously avoiding necromancy.' So we had to think of a way of approaching it that might widen its appeal in the market place. Hence we came up with the idea for the Academy Handbooks, with each book not only providing the crunch for abjurers and wizards in general, but also providing a universal setting to be integrated into whatever campaign setting anyone was wanting to run.

That said, St. John's colege of abjuration remains our weakest product, comercially, but arguably our strongest critically. In today's market place its difficult to find a hole fpr a product that someone else hasn't alreay filled. We were lucky to get Forgotten Heroes: Paladin out before both Call to Duty and Quintessential Paladin. As far as I can tell no one has yet done a class book for Sorcerers, so hopefully we'll get a similar response to Forgotten Heroes: Sorcerer. The question is, though, do as many people play Sorcerers as do Paladins?

As publishers, particularly in the pdf market, we have to pitch products as generic as possible - settings just won't sell in the pdf market. We also have to find holes in the overall product spread, so it's inevitable that we're going to end up with more and more tightly niched (if that's a real word ) products.

That said, some of these are great products - check out the Sigil's Treasures and Objects d'Art if you don't believe me .

cheerio,

Ben

 

[Arnwyn]

Does anyone else feel that we're getting more and more "niche" products, that the niches are getting smaller and smaller, and we're getting fewer "broad" products?

I'm buying less and less, because more and more seems to be so narrowly targetted, it's simply of no use to me.

In some cases yes, in some cases, no. (Uh, I guess that means my answer is "yes"...)

For example, I saw a suggestion bandied about somewhere that someone wanted to make a d20 "Dog" pdf. Guh?

But, on the other hand, I'm still waiting for rules that covers kingdom-management (ie. something different for PCs to do once they've reached higher levels that isn't more hacking'n'slashing). Or merchant rules when PCs travel to their next adventure location and want to make some coin on the way there.

So, to be honest, I think I like niche products - while most won't suit my tastes, one might come along that will have *infinite* use IMC. I'm willing to wade through the useless stuff to get that one book that's perfect for my game.

I'm also a big fan of adventures (buying everything NG puts out), as well as self-contained easily-insertable setting books - examples include books like "Freeport" and Kalamar's "Geanvenue". I slapped those right into my FR game with almost *no* work involved on my part. Wicked.

I think I've had enough with "broad" products (at least of the type that's coming out recently). The last thing I want to see is "Quintessential High Favor Elf Book #312".