Ranger REG
Explorer
Oh, good. You're here. I have a question. What's the status on Dragon Fist Wuxia RPG?Pramas said:Man, those notes are rough. I'd just like to point out that I can in fact string more than three words together.
Notes from Green Ronin seminar
- Thread starter Krug
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Pramas
Explorer
Ranger REG said:
Those interested in the future of Dragon Fist, please drop by this thread on the GR forums.
http://www.greenronin.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=67415#67415
I give an update of where we're at and I want to get your feedback on the future.
trancejeremy
Adventurer
The trouble with RPGs, is that they do not really become obsolete. Companies like WOTC want huges sales, but the only things that sell on the scale they expect are the corebooks and the most popular sort of splatbook (class and some races). Because after the first initial push, sales go flat.
Smaller companies, OTOH, only reach a small portion of the roleplaying userbase as it is. So when they put out a rulebook, it's future sales in later years might actually still be pretty hefty. At least compared to the original. There's a lot more room for them to expand.
WOTC doesn't have that luxury, since pretty much everyone who is interested in roleplaying owns the D&D core books. They can only expand the number of roleplayers (which doesn't seem to have increased much), or put out new editions every few years, in order to get sales spikes. But the latter will have diminishing returns.
So I think the trouble is, WOTC is just too big to be in the RPG business. They'll never make the sort of money Hasbro wants, unless they shove out new editions really often (if then). And if they do that, it hurts everyone else.
Even things that go obsolete, like video game consoles or movies, there is a reluctance among consumers to upgrade. But with RPGs, it's even more so.
So it's smart to smaller companies like Green Ronin to build up their own brands, at the expense of d20, if they can.
Smaller companies, OTOH, only reach a small portion of the roleplaying userbase as it is. So when they put out a rulebook, it's future sales in later years might actually still be pretty hefty. At least compared to the original. There's a lot more room for them to expand.
WOTC doesn't have that luxury, since pretty much everyone who is interested in roleplaying owns the D&D core books. They can only expand the number of roleplayers (which doesn't seem to have increased much), or put out new editions every few years, in order to get sales spikes. But the latter will have diminishing returns.
So I think the trouble is, WOTC is just too big to be in the RPG business. They'll never make the sort of money Hasbro wants, unless they shove out new editions really often (if then). And if they do that, it hurts everyone else.
Even things that go obsolete, like video game consoles or movies, there is a reluctance among consumers to upgrade. But with RPGs, it's even more so.
So it's smart to smaller companies like Green Ronin to build up their own brands, at the expense of d20, if they can.
Ranger REG
Explorer
Meh. What's done is done. Peter Adkison sold his company, got billions, and for some reasons he disagreed with the mother company (something about losing the electronic rights and Atari) and quit. Apparently, it's big enough to be in the TCG business, and most recently, strategy boardgames since Hasbro assigned Avalon Hill to them.trancejeremy said:
Vocenoctum
First Post
See, the thing is, according to most of the publishers after the initial rush, sales drop to a trickle. Sales will probably have small spikes later on, such as when a new product releases that requires the initial product, but otherwise it's gone.trancejeremy said:
Couple that with the total lack of support for most older books, and it's why I think 3.5 hurting their backstock is silly. How many publishers have been asked for 3.5 updates for older products and replied that it's not worth it to have folks to free updates for products that aren't selling, vs creating new product that folks will need to buy?
If the old product sells so badly that it's not worth supporting it, then it's probably not worth purchasing.
I stopped buying a lot of third party stuff because it simply wasn't useful to me. I've gotten more use out of the Freeport trilogy than any of GR's race books for instance. 3.5 had nothing to do with it (though it's one of the marks I hold against Malhavok stuff, that they charged a couple dollars for PDF updates to 3.5, too small of money to justify their charging, and charging at all detracts from the effort. IMO.) and a lot of the companies (GR included) could have used the oppurtunity to touch up the mechanics as they updated to 3.5 (as WotC themselves did with some PrC's, feats and spells in follow up books.)
Vocenoctum said:
Right. So Spycraft (v.1) is easier for you to grab stuff from for your game than Arcana Unearthed or Book of Erotic Fantasy is? Point is, whether or not it has a D20 System logo on it is not a good indicator of the content--and, tangentially, that what you are referring to as "OGL stuff" is often not any more deviant from the D&D3E rules than stuff with a D20 System logo on it.
[And, while i'm at it: "D20" and "OGL" mean something quite different from what you, and most of the people in this thread, seem to think they do: what you mean are "D20 System logoed" and "D20 System", respectively. An OGL game might not even be D20 System.]
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