Repeating the Mistakes of the Past

[Mercurius]

But bottom line, in a comparison of "glut", I think you are objectively wrong to claim 4e was glut compared to Pathfinder for the past two years. I think, for whatever reason, you have not been noticing just how much content Pathfinder's had for the past two years.

Mistwell, you seem to give no credence to the importance of perception. I may be "objectively wrong" but that doesn't discount what I am saying, which has to do with perception, or subjectivity, which you find "strange" and then revert to "objectivity only!" and thus misunderstand my view - furthering the point of the power of perception!

It would be interesting to compare different editions (and Pathfinder) by type of product - setting vs. rules/splat vs. adventures, etc. If we look at it only a spectrum of:

setting (specific).....adventure path (somewhat specific, but adaptable).....adventure module (non-specific)....rules/splat (non-specific, options/expansion)

My guess is that the higher percentage of books towards the "right" end of the spectrum, the more it seems like glut because the more specific the book is (to a campaign world, particular theme), the less it seems like "glut." This is why Martial Power 1 and 2 seem like glut, while Neverwinter doesn't.

I think another aspect of this is that, as I said, Paizo's hardcovers don't feel like filler or like they are churned out to meet a deadline - they are chock-full of information.

Again, it isn't only about what is "objectively" true, but what subjective perceptions are - we're humans, after all!

 

[Jester David]

I truly don't get statements like this.

It's like massive numbers of people are blind to the release schedule from Paizo for the past two years.

It's not like this is a subjective opinion. You can count the number of products, you can count the page-count, and you can see for yourself.

Paizo has been putting out MASSIVE amounts of material this past two years. It definitely surpasses anything WOTC did with 4e, in any particular year of 4e.

I suspect people somehow place special importance on whether the binding of some books is hard or soft, or maybe it's the subscription-nature of some of the Paizo material.

But on any measure I can think of, Paizo hasn't been "slow" publishing for two years. They've been sprinting like mad to put out tons and tons and tons of material.

And it's not all adventures. Heck, it's not even campaign materials. There are tons of new rules in the past two years as well.

I just don't get why people are not seeing what Paizo's been doing this past two years, the sheer quantity of material they've been putting out. How can anyone say 4e was glutonous compared to how Paizo's been doing it this past two years? I mean, just go into any game store that stocks both games, and LOOK at the shelf space taken up by each, and compare for yourself.

Paizo has been catching up, but I think WotC still has them beat.

Paizo has been increasing their release schedule.
The Player's Companions are monthly, but have only been so for a year. But those are equal parts fluff and crunch. Many are pretty world specific and easy to ignore.
The Campaign Settings books are also mostly fluff. Each tends to have a few monsters and some other stuff. Occasionally they'll have a crunch heavy one, but those are the exception. However, they are all tied heavily to their campaign world so they're not assumed products.
Those, and the modules, are pretty much equivalent of Dragon and Dungeon in terms of mechanical content.

And Paizo also has the three hardcover books each year.

But let's do the math.
Rulebook (576) + bestiary 1-4, GMG, NPC Codex (320) + APG (336) + Ultimate Combat/ ARG/ Mythic/ Ultimate Magic/ Ultimate Campaign (256) + Ultimate Equipment (400) = 4500 pages.

Most of the 4e books were 160 pages. I count 23 of those. Plus the PHBs (322, 224, 224), the DMGs (224, 224), and the MM (290, 224, 224) = 5600 pages.
(PLUS all the smaller sized Essentials books.)

Note, neither of the above include campaign settings or adventures. WotC produced 1400 pages per year of generic RPG content while Paizo produced 1125 pages per year. However, keep in mind that WotC cut their 2011 releases by a third.
Looking back before, WotC was also maintaining and equivalent release rate during much of 3.5e and was releasing constant content even during the build-up to 4e.
That's a glut.

The constant wave of books probably helped kill 3e earlier than necessary. And it likely harmed 4e but not allowing the content to be tested and tightened as much as possible.

 

[Sunseeker]

This debate still rages to this day on if the direction of a product should be based upon "customer feedback" or if it should be directed by company desires. For a more modern take, look at BioWare and Mass Effect 3. There's a whole new wave among cartoonists and writers on if their stories should be written by the writer alone, or if the fans should have a say in the direction of the story.

Personally, I think either way can lead to failure. Strong internal direction is always needed, and while customer feedback is nice, it shouldn't get in the way of the vision of a product. If customers want something different, well that's the free market for you.

 

[Hussar]

I agree. The Gaming products are growing at an amazing rate, another 14% the first 3 qtrs of the year and Hasbro has to be planning to leverage that to offset falling Boys products.

Personally, I think Hasbro looks at D&D properties as a whole and think "there is no way his brand should be any smaller than MtG... Fix it". When you consider the properties and the real transmedia opportunities available, its hard not agree. (And with respect to movies, I think they are far better focusing on creating a movies around Drizzit, that the D&D brand anyway: its a story driven media , so use your most successful story)

The problem here being the fact that TSR hosed themselves by selling off the movie rights to D&D in perpetuity to that sank that made the last three D&D movies. If Hasbro ever gets those rights back, you can bet you bottom that they will be doing a Transformers style big tent movie with D&D. Just way, WAY too much brand recognition to not jump on that.

And, hey, I'm not commenting on the quality of the Transformers movies at all. Like them or hate them, they were WILDLY successful. And, oh look, a couple of Transformers animated series are on TV again. Like I said, whether it's Transformers, or GI Joe, or whatever, you can bet the second Hasbro gets the rights back, they'll go into production.

But, as usual, D&D gets screwed over by previous licensing.

 

[trancejeremy]

While they licensed out the D&D brand, they didn't license out any of the settings. They cannot make a D&D movie, but they could make a Forgotten Realms or Eberron or Dragonlance movie.

Forgotten Realms at least has a lot of name brand potential, since it's on all of those novels.

But I think there's no guarantee it would bring in money. While Transformers did very well, you had Battleship being a massive bomb.

Another comparison would be to Disney making movies out of its rides. Pirates of the Caribbean was a huge hit, The Haunted Mansion was a big flop, and presumably prevented them from making any further ride based movies, instead trying to milk every last drop out of the Pirates movies.

 

[Mistwell]

Mistwell, you seem to give no credence to the importance of perception. I may be "objectively wrong" but that doesn't discount what I am saying,

When someone is objectively wrong, I do think it's fair to discount it, to some degree.

which has to do with perception, or subjectivity, which you find "strange" and then revert to "objectivity only!" and thus misunderstand my view - furthering the point of the power of perception!

I don't share your perception, I suspect thousands of people don't share your perception, and I am trying to change your perception by pointing out that it's objectively flawed. I'd be doing the same thing if you were saying you simply perceive the earth to be flat and I should give great credence to that perception.

I also think Paizo figured out they were over-publishing. They just cut the individual adventures, and reduced the upcoming schedule relative to the prior two years. I'm betting they saw some dropping sales in some types of products, from the glut.

I think another aspect of this is that, as I said, Paizo's hardcovers don't feel like filler or like they are churned out to meet a deadline - they are chock-full of information.

WOTC's didn't feel like filler or churn to meet a deadline either.

Here's what I suspect might be going on here - you like Pathfinder, and you're not really much of a fan of 4e, and so you didn't really read much of the "fluff" type hardback books for 4e. Am I right in that guess, or way off?

Did you read Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead, The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea, The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos, Underdark, Hammerfast, or any of the other fluff-heavy books in the line? To me, these are some of the best books published for any version of D&D in many years, and I don't think they should be bashed as churn or things to meet a deadline, particularly if it turns out you never even read them.

I think Paizo publishes high quality material, most of the time. I have no bash here for them. I don't play Pathfinder, but that's purely because my group happens to not be into it. I'd be fine playing it.

But I think it's bloody obvious that, between WOTC for 4e, and Paizo for Pathfinder, it's hands down an easy call to say Paizo has been glutting the market far more than WOTC in the past two years. And if you "perceive" it to be different than that...I have to wonder if it's just a matter of faith in a company or product line you happen to like that is coloring that perception, versus a company or product line you don't have much interest in?

 

[Mistwell]

While they licensed out the D&D brand, they didn't license out any of the settings. They cannot make a D&D movie, but they could make a Forgotten Realms or Eberron or Dragonlance movie.

Forgotten Realms at least has a lot of name brand potential, since it's on all of those novels.

But I think there's no guarantee it would bring in money. While Transformers did very well, you had Battleship being a massive bomb.

Another comparison would be to Disney making movies out of its rides. Pirates of the Caribbean was a huge hit, The Haunted Mansion was a big flop, and presumably prevented them from making any further ride based movies, instead trying to milk every last drop out of the Pirates movies.

They may be able to make a D&D movie. We will see how those lawsuits play out, but there was a timing issue in the license contract, and it may not have been met.

 

[Mistwell]

Paizo has been catching up, but I think WotC still has them beat.

Paizo has been increasing their release schedule.
The Player's Companions are monthly, but have only been so for a year. But those are equal parts fluff and crunch. Many are pretty world specific and easy to ignore.
The Campaign Settings books are also mostly fluff. Each tends to have a few monsters and some other stuff. Occasionally they'll have a crunch heavy one, but those are the exception. However, they are all tied heavily to their campaign world so they're not assumed products.
Those, and the modules, are pretty much equivalent of Dragon and Dungeon in terms of mechanical content.

And Paizo also has the three hardcover books each year.

But let's do the math.
Rulebook (576) + bestiary 1-4, GMG, NPC Codex (320) + APG (336) + Ultimate Combat/ ARG/ Mythic/ Ultimate Magic/ Ultimate Campaign (256) + Ultimate Equipment (400) = 4500 pages.

Most of the 4e books were 160 pages. I count 23 of those. Plus the PHBs (322, 224, 224), the DMGs (224, 224), and the MM (290, 224, 224) = 5600 pages.
(PLUS all the smaller sized Essentials books.)

Note, neither of the above include campaign settings or adventures. WotC produced 1400 pages per year of generic RPG content while Paizo produced 1125 pages per year. However, keep in mind that WotC cut their 2011 releases by a third.
Looking back before, WotC was also maintaining and equivalent release rate during much of 3.5e and was releasing constant content even during the build-up to 4e.
That's a glut.

The constant wave of books probably helped kill 3e earlier than necessary. And it likely harmed 4e but not allowing the content to be tested and tightened as much as possible.

There is a reason I kept saying, over and over again to make sure it was clear, that I was speaking to just the past two years.

Someone recently did a comparison of the publishing by Paizo for the past two years, to the publishing by TSR in the final two years of their governance of D&D, where they published the most amount of materials ever. And that analysis showed Paizo put out just about exactly as much as TSR had, over that same time frame.

They did that in response to Morrus saying it felt, to him, like Paizo was coming close to the peak TSR days for publishing. And it turned out his guess was correct.

 

[Warbringer]

While they licensed out the D&D brand, they didn't license out any of the settings. They cannot make a D&D movie, but they could make a Forgotten Realms or Eberron or Dragonlance movie.

That was my understanding, but INAL

 

[Jester David]

There is a reason I kept saying, over and over again to make sure it was clear, that I was speaking to just the past two years.

Someone recently did a comparison of the publishing by Paizo for the past two years, to the publishing by TSR in the final two years of their governance of D&D, where they published the most amount of materials ever. And that analysis showed Paizo put out just about exactly as much as TSR had, over that same time frame.

They did that in response to Morrus saying it felt, to him, like Paizo was coming close to the peak TSR days for publishing. And it turned out his guess was correct.

I'm not sure TSR's final two years were their most prolific. That was well after they started having financial problems, were cutting products left and right, stopped producing the magazines for a while. And quite a few worlds had "ended" at that point.

He's a glimpse back
1997
1996
1995
1994

Paizo is stretching themselves a bit thin. Sales are also likely hitting a cap. Subscribing likely helps as people will buy extra products for the convenience of products they like being automatically shipped. But as people stop buying, having reached enough content, and other players go back to WotC, Paizo will have to tighten belts.
But I think they're financially in a better place.