Stormborn
Explorer
The OGL thread brought some interesting comments, particularlly from Pramas. General trends in the market seem to indicate that d20 is on the decline in terms of sales. This is not just consumer based, but retailer based. Part of the problem is that there already exists quality supplements for most of the material in the Core Books. Why buy or produce another dwarf book if you already have the ones done by WotC, Bad Axe, Green Ronin, etc.? So, to make up for that some publishers, like GR (or even WotC), are producing setting specific books. Which is great, but obviously have a more limited market than a "generic" d20 book. (Although I personally feel that any d20 book, no matter what the setting, is potentially useful to me I can see the argument that not everyone feels the same.) Then when you bring in the idea of a possible non-OGL 4e you begin to have those not-so-good feelings about the future of out favorite publishers. And as a freelance writer who is just now getting to the point that I always have at least one game related project going and I have a small list of publishers who know they can call on me for whatever they need, I particularly am interested in the fate of the industry beyond 2006.
We all know that we don't really need more books.Certainly if I never bought another game books again I could run DnD 3.5 for the rest of my life and not touch everything covered in the books i already have. But that was true after I bought the core books. I could have run off of those forever, and some people do. But books keep the hobby going and keep companies in buisness and checks in the mail.
So what next?
All of that got me thinking. Could one or several of the major 3rd party companies come up with a viable non-d20 open sourced Fantasy RPG, which could with support at least be competative with d20 or the much hyped 4e?
On the positive side it would open up all the possibilities of a new system without dependency on WotC, and possibly revitalize the market, and all of those subsequent books. But oh man what a beast to try and create.
Certainly the talent exists between GR, Malhavok, etc. Could they work together to pull it off? Would retailers support it in an era of dying interest in d20? Would it be economically viable to put the time and effort into developing, producing, promoting, and supporting such a thing?
We all know that we don't really need more books.Certainly if I never bought another game books again I could run DnD 3.5 for the rest of my life and not touch everything covered in the books i already have. But that was true after I bought the core books. I could have run off of those forever, and some people do. But books keep the hobby going and keep companies in buisness and checks in the mail.
So what next?
All of that got me thinking. Could one or several of the major 3rd party companies come up with a viable non-d20 open sourced Fantasy RPG, which could with support at least be competative with d20 or the much hyped 4e?
On the positive side it would open up all the possibilities of a new system without dependency on WotC, and possibly revitalize the market, and all of those subsequent books. But oh man what a beast to try and create.
Certainly the talent exists between GR, Malhavok, etc. Could they work together to pull it off? Would retailers support it in an era of dying interest in d20? Would it be economically viable to put the time and effort into developing, producing, promoting, and supporting such a thing?
