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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 2786264" data-attributes="member: 957">I think I'm one of the few others.I guess the problem is they we are talking about several different things and none of them can be clearly defined.  Yep, that's people.  They tend to do this stuff.I think listening to people can sometimes be a surprisingly bad way to find out what they want.  You get vocal minorities skewing the data.  You also get a lot of people saying that they "don't" want something, but giving you no data on what they do want.We keep hearing the "market" cry out, more fluff less crunch.  But then we hear publishers say that they produce fluff and it doesn't sell as well as crunch.  A thousand people saying they want fluff doesn't mean much to the market when they have a thousand different ideas of what constitutes the fluff that each individual wants.  In the end, the amrket is where the money goes, not where the talk goes.Well, there is a whole seperate aspect of where does the 3rd party D20 market stands.   I'll just leave that alone because I don't have a fraction of the knowledge there that you do.  But if sales are down in general, then that must be taken into account in any further discussion.There are people, such as me, who jump at the advanced series and aren't really interested in TW.  I'm certain there are others who truly are burned out with the generic stuff.  Two or three years ago groups A & B were both buying a lot of stuff.  Now, perhaps, they are segmented.  So when you do a TW, group A complains that you are not doing stuff that they want for their D&D game and if you do Advanced XYZ group B complains that you are doing the same old stuff.  Unfortunately there isn't anything incompatible there.  It is a segmented market, in some ways, and each segment is certain that their ideas are best.Heck, I wouldn't even state that the "D20 support" stuff is a better way to go than the niche stuff.  I have no idea what sells better.  I just know there are different points of view on them and you are going to hear them.I'm sorry, I don't mean to imply that there is one clear message.  They are probably lots of different messages all coming at the same time and they makes for just so much noise.  Before I chimed in the topic had already come up that a lot of stuff is not perceived as "D20 support" and that was one message that was being heard through the cacophany.  As someone who can relate to that point of view I chimed in, hoping to shed some light on the thought. (obviously I did a very poor job)Being WotC really has very little to do with the topic at hand.  Eberron doesn't get a pass for being WotC.  Eberron gets a pass because it is designed from the ground up with being a D&D game that uses all of the D&D material.  Freeport gets a pass for the same reason.  TW, in many people's perception, mine included, was built first and foremost to model the TW books.  There is the difference.  If I buy a bunch of WotC books for my game, I can also buy Hammer and Helm and race/feat/class books from 5 other 3rd party publishers and expect it all to pretty much work together.  But if I buy TW, then I can't make that assumption.  For example, I expect that for a given game I've got to throw out either the core D&D magic system or the TW magic system.  So that is ineffecient.  And I know I'm not going to play in the actual TW setting, so that is going to be more stuff that won't be used.  It comes down to me wanting to buy product that works with the product I already have.You could easily argue that I can play one game with D&D magic and then later play a game with TW magic.  But in my case it just isn't going to happen.  I am simply set for a very long time with D&D and Grim Tales.  Two of my players are die-hard D&Ders.  They know how much I love GT and they enjoy when we play it.  But if you ask them, they want to be the dwarf barbarian and elven archer killing orcs.  So when I get a chance to divert from D&D, I'm gonna use that chance to run GT.  Bottom line, no matter what you do, some people are going to complain.  And when today's complaints are exactly the opposite of yesterday's it is not a contradiction.  It just means today's action caused a different group of people to speak up. The best you can do is try to understand what is really meant by each individual message without trying to look for one unifying answer.  Then try to understand what real spending habits are driven by which message.  No matter what you do, there will be plenty of complaints.  But trust me, there are a lot of really crappy companies out there and no one is complaining about what they do, because no one cares.  There are VERY few companies that I would take the time to spell this out to.  So, I'm really meaning to help and I really just claim to speak for my point of view.  If my position doesn't represent where the funds are, then so be it.  But when you hear complaints of this type, I think this is, more or less, what is meant.</blockquote>

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