D&D 4E Non-WotC publishers - 4ed, settings, and $5,000

[Glyfair]

Only because the book hadn't been written yet.

A pity the same could not be said for the Forgotten Realms. :\

The changes for Eberron were never going to be wide or major (per James Wyatt and, from a less informed stance, Keith). It was much easier to do so.

Also, Eberron only has a couple of years of "canon" in it's belt (even if you include Keith's rambings on the subject that are often better than some of the published material). The Forgotten Realms needed a huge clean up of the perceived "needed backstory" to be attractive to new fans (I know Sean Reynolds feels the 3E version did this, but I truly feel that it failed, as someone who has never played in the FR to my memory).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, yeah, but it's mid-February and almost none of the third-party developers have even seen the 4e rules. It takes more than 4 months to design, playtest, lay out, print, and distribute a book, I'm betting... and that's if they released the rules immediately.

This is what I have read on these boards:
There are freelancers that work for several partys of the d20 industry that became playtesters or have otherwise access to the 4E rules. There NDA forbids them to give details to anyone, but apparently, some still have made deals with the devil with some companies (I think it was Necromancer Games and Ari Marnell?) to create D&D 4 compatible material that can be released once the GSL is finished. This means the material is already in the works, but no one but the designer (and possibly the gaming group he's playing with) have seen any of it, since their NDA forbids them to do so.
We'll see how this works out...

 

[Pinotage]

As for Arcanis? Who knows.... Living Arcanis is doing well with 3.5 rules, and I that changing that whole thing would be a massive undertaking, likely not worth the effort.

This is what Henry said about it last month:

As far as presuming that Arcanis is going 4E, I wouldn't do that just yet. Getting Arcanis to fit into 3.xE was difficult enough. Until we actually see the system I won't make that final decision, but suffice it to say that if its not a good fit for the setting, then it won't be going to 4E.

Pinotage

 

[JVisgaitis]

First, if you were a 3rd-party d20 publisher (or if you are, for that matter), does it make more sense to: A) Spend the $5,000 and get stuff out there this summer (and perhaps make more money because of the thinned field), or B) Save the dough and flood the market January 1st (or whenever the gate-opening would be), and instead publish stuff that is 3x ed but sneakily "4th edition compatible"?

We have yet to see the GSL yet, so it's hard to say. It really depends on what position a company is in. For a garage publisher like us it probably makes more sense to wait. Unless you have really effective marketing and all of that, the lead time isn't much of a big deal IMO. I don't think the flood the market strategy is a good one as I'm sure there will be a ton of stuff available that day. The big challenge for any small publisher is getting distribution. I'd be curious to see how distributors will react to 4th Edition 3rd Party Support as I have the feeling that they would be pretty standoffish with any new publishers. It'll be interesting.

Secondly, does it make sense to 4edize an already published setting (like WotC is doing with the Forgotten Realms) or start over with a new setting? And if you are going to 4edize, do you do it drastically (like FR) or just more along the lines of rules updates and a newer-and-prettier book?

For us it does. We purposefully held off releasing our Campaign Setting so we could do it in 4e. Will we redo some of our other material? Sure. I think a 4e Denizens of Avadnu would be sweet. Since we didn't do a lot of 4e material, we will mostly have new stuff. I think you'll see a mix. If it was me and we had a huge product line behind us, we'd probably start on something new. Rehashes of popular products could be cool, but I don't think it makes for a good business model.

 

[JVisgaitis]

1) Sure you'll get the jump on everyone, but the rules you get aren't final until publication anyway, so you'll more than likely end up with higher development costs due to having to constantly change your product to fit whatever changes are made during 4E development.

I'm not sure where you heard this, but its not correct. Development would pretty much be finished by the time we received the packet.

 

[catsclaw227]

I'm not sure where you heard this, but its not correct. Development would pretty much be finished by the time we received the packet.

This mirrors what Clark with Necromancer said as well. I believe his Advanced Player Guide is mostly done already (with Mouseferatu doing some of the writing), even though he has never even seen it and knows nothing about its contents.

I imagine setting work is easiest for a quick jump into 4e. The fluff is the biggest part.

 

[Mouseferatu]

This mirrors what Clark with Necromancer said as well. His Advanced Player Guide is mostly done already (with Mouseferatu doing the writing), even though he has never even seen it and knows nothing about its contents.

Just to clarify, so as to avoid confusion in the future... I wrote part of the APG, not the whole thing. I have no idea if the entire book is complete, or who else might be working on it. I can only speak to my portions of it, which are (at least in rough draft form) indeed finished.

 

[catsclaw227]

Thanks for the clarification Ari, I assumed from cobbling together various thread posts and such that you were the primary developer on that project.

You know how the internet is..... oops....

Edited my earlier post above....

 

[Mouseferatu]

Thanks for the clarification Ari, I assumed from cobbling together various thread posts and such that you were the primary developer on that project.

You know how the internet is..... oops....

Edited my earlier post above....

Oh, not a problem at all. And I'd have been happy to do more of it, if the timing had worked out.

I just didn't want people to get the wrong idea or expectations, or to take any credit belonging to any of the other folks who end up working on it.

 

[kennew142]

As for Arcanis? Who knows.... Living Arcanis is doing well with 3.5 rules, and I that changing that whole thing would be a massive undertaking, likely not worth the effort.

Arcanis is currently doing well under 3.5. Given the fall off of players we experienced in Tucson during the slow transition from 3.0 to 3.5, I would be surprised if the same didn't happen after 4e comes out.

Since the 4e announcement, we've had so little participation in game days that we haven't held many. Most folks seem to be waiting for the new edition and Living FR.

My Tucson group decided not to go to Origins this year because of the new edition. We've been experiencing 3e fatigue for a long time. As much as we love Arcanis (IMO the single best shared world campaign ever), we will likely not be continuing with the Living Arcanis campaign if it doesn't convert to 4e rules. We played at the battles of Empebyn, Solanis Mor, Sicaris and Entaris. But high level D&D has us down in the dumps. I don't know if I ever want to play my 16th level sorcerer again, despite the rich campaign story and his personal history.