Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Garnfellow" data-source="post: 4461422" data-attributes="member: 1223">The first few splatbooks for any new edition of any system are almost always devoted to updating older material to the new edition; things that were too cool to be jettisoned outright but maybe not so cool or important that they had to be included in the new core.While most veterans would argue that you have to do it this way -- we need to have official 4e gnomes, barbarians, frost giants, etc. as soon as possible! -- the consequence is that the first round of splatbooks (again, for any new system) tend to be a little lackluster. This is by their very nature, as they are often just rehashing second tier material.Take a look at the first couple years of 3e WotC releases. I think Manual of the Planes was the only real home run in the bunch. The rest were fairly staid. (Compare/contrast the prosaic MMII with any of the later monster books, for example.)What made 3e different, though, was that the OGL gave so many third parties the ability to produce their own material. Because they didn't have access to old WotC IP, in general the 3PP stuff had to be new content. And because there were so many 3PPs in the mix, the good publishers needed to quickly diversify their offerings.This led to a bonanza for consumers. The first couple of years of 3e were filled with an unprecedented quantity and variety of new material. As JeffB said, every time you went to ENWorld in those days it seemed a new product was being announced. The boom very quickly provided enough d20 material to appeal to anyone of any taste. It was just a crazy, exciting time.The GSL has severely curtailed the amount of 3PPs willing to jump into the ring, and of those few publishers who have gone 4e, many of them are starting out with re-hashes of older material. The 4e product I'm most interested in is . . . Earthdawn.It's just very different circumstances now.</blockquote>

Verification