One Bad Egg going dark

[Shroomy]

Well, even though I never bought a OBE product, I still find the news a bit disappointing. Hopefully, if these guys want to scratch their 4e itch, that they'll get the opportunity through WotC (I mean, Rob Donoghue has worked on AV2 and DMG2) or another 3PP.

 

[evilhat]

Yeah, honestly the potency of DDI's tools is near the top, if not the top, cause leading to poorer sales performance (which, as someone pointed out, was not the only factor in our decision), and a general customer perception that using 3PP 4E products is more effort than it's worth.

Clearly we didn't have a big enough name, given the people in this thread who never heard of us, but clearly it was pretty hard to make a name (even with two Ennie nominations this past year!) in the 3PP 4E arena. Most folks seemed to look to the older guard (several stellar examples of which have been named in this thread) rather than poking around for the new guys like us. And with One Bad Egg being an as-available priority for us, we simply didn't have time to push it out there more. That said, I do think we did push it out there reasonably, within the limits of what could be afforded -- the sales, while they kept us from losing money on OBE, never yielded anything big in the way of profits, and profits are what you need if you're gonna spend money on marketing (which, yes, is a Catch-22; but marketing might net you nothing, so you have to treat money which you spend on it as just plain lost).

A footnote: I will point out that there's been almost no overlap in who's working on the Dresden Files RPG (on the Evil Hat side) and who's been working on the One Bad Egg material, aside from me. I purposely kept those teams separate. DF work's been chugging away, hardcore, the whole time.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Thanks for all the kind words.

For my part, it's not so much that we couldn't compete with WotC. Rather, I lost a lot of the drive to design as WotC put out more and more material as if they sucked it from my brainpan while I slept.

My 2cp: I first approached Rob and Fred about doing some 4e stuff with them for a simple reason: I liked playing 4e and had a lot of design ideas floating around in my head. We were all pretty much on the same page. OBE would be a good venue for us to explore those design ideas and get them out to other people who might find them fun and useful too. Things started out great. As I started working on 4e projects, though, a peculiar thing happened. I kept have to push back some design stuff based on what WotC was putting out. Me: I’ll work on a binder class. WotC: We’re releasing the shaman in PHB2. Me: I’ve got a lot of neat ideas for minions. WotC: Here’s a shiny new Monster Builder that makes monster design virtually obsolete. You get the idea. (And there are many more examples, q.v., Fred’s arena powers and WotC’s arena items in AV2.)

For me, this is a good thing. The company that publishes D&D is routinely doing almost exactly the kinds of things I am looking for. OTOH, it makes the hard work of creating and publishing material difficult to justify.

For my part, this gives me more time to finish up Tokyo Rain.

 

[Urizen]

I'm certainly sad to see you guys go away. One Bad Egg put out excellent material for 4E.

From a development standpoint, I loved being able to add the gods of the Shroud to Scarrport and have been thinking of ways to use them in other Campaign Cutouts (if any).

That said, I'm in agreement about the financial viability of supporting 4th edition. There just doesn't seem to be much interest in products developed by 3pp such as myself.

 

[fanboy2000]

For my part, it's not so much that we couldn't compete with WotC. Rather, I lost a lot of the drive to design as WotC put out more and more material as if they sucked it from my brainpan while I slept.

You know, I've heard that they named the company Wizards of the Coast for a reason. I mean, there are some pretty weird rumors floating around about PPeter Adkison and Richard Garfield.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

From a development standpoint, I loved being able to add the gods of the Shroud to Scarrport and have been thinking of ways to use them in other Campaign Cutouts (if any).

I think I speak for all the Eggheads when we say that the Open Gods project in general and your Scarrport product in particular were one of the highlights.

 

[Rechan]

Thanks for stopping by, Fred, Jacob!

A footnote: I will point out that there's been almost no overlap in who's working on the Dresden Files RPG (on the Evil Hat side) and who's been working on the One Bad Egg material, aside from me. I purposely kept those teams separate. DF work's been chugging away, hardcore, the whole time.

Well, at least now you have some free time and less stress on your hands, I hope.

All the more for Evie.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Unfortunately I must admit that I learned your names and always thought "one day, you'll get some stuff from them that Jack99 and others are applauding so much", and... Well, that day never came.

Though - since it's PDFs, they are still around, right? So maybe one day...

 

[coyote6]

Though - since it's PDFs, they are still around, right? So maybe one day...

On the blog post, they mentioned that the PDFs will continue to be sold on the various PDF sites, but they will be transferring them to Highmoon. (For now, they're still under One Bad Egg.)

 

[El Mahdi]

This is too bad. Unfortunately, it does seem that the type of success that 3pp's had during 3E (and the extent of the success) probably won't be emulated with 4E. They seemed to have some fairly cool products, and a couple looked intriguing (like Hardboiled Armies), but I guess the 3pp market just isn't there (except for a few of the bigger names).

I hope everyone who worked there will find a way or place to land on their feet. Good Luck and Best Wishes.