Kristian Serrano
Explorer
http://paizo.com/dragon/products/issues/2002/296Duncan Haldane said:
Sales of upcoming Greyhawk Ruins will determine it's future
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Kristian Serrano
Explorer
PrCs
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft included PrCs and feats (I think) specific to the adventure; I'm hoping Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins will do the same.
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft included PrCs and feats (I think) specific to the adventure; I'm hoping Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins will do the same.
mattcolville
Adventurer
This whole thing strikes me as incredibly...silly.
If WotC wants Greyhawk to succeed, then they should work to make it a success, like any other company. Support it and promote it.
Obviously there are a few people at WotC who want to see more GH stuff, while the majority of the people in charge disagree. Those first few people occasionally get thrown a bone. Ok. But coming out with this coy, "Weellll...IF it does well then MAYBE we'll do some more stuff" is a complete smokescreen.
The reason there's no more GH stuff is because the people in charge don't like GH. If they liked it, they'd support it and promote it and make it a success. If a lot of people buy GH the people in charge...still won't like GH.
If WotC wants Greyhawk to succeed, then they should work to make it a success, like any other company. Support it and promote it.
Obviously there are a few people at WotC who want to see more GH stuff, while the majority of the people in charge disagree. Those first few people occasionally get thrown a bone. Ok. But coming out with this coy, "Weellll...IF it does well then MAYBE we'll do some more stuff" is a complete smokescreen.
The reason there's no more GH stuff is because the people in charge don't like GH. If they liked it, they'd support it and promote it and make it a success. If a lot of people buy GH the people in charge...still won't like GH.
Mechanurge
First Post
I'm not sure it's fair to judge the popularity of a setting by an adventure, but I will definitely buy this book to support the setting. It's great that Greyhawk is at least being given consideration after years of being ignored. That said, it's true that Greyhawk is defined more by its adventures than any setting books. The LGG comes off as very dry reading indeed and it would probably be better to imbed the necessary setting information into a series of well-designed, high-quality, hardcover adventures. If they're clever that's probably what Erik et al have done with this Expedition already.
Let the Greyhawk revival begin!
Let the Greyhawk revival begin!
mattcolville said:
That's - completely backwards from a sales and marketing perspective. In a good sales environment, if you have one thing that sells with minimal effort (let's call it Forgotten Realms supplements) and another thing that you have to go out and build the market for (let's call it Greyhawk supplements) then you're going to put your effort into the easy thing for maximum return - that's simple business.
The only reason to put effort into building a market is to try to expand to customers who don't buy the "easy to sell" stuff -- if you think that there's a large enough customer base for it. This had to be part of the logic of coming up with Eberron - that there was a large enough customer base who didn't want the Tolkeinesque fantasy of the Forgotten Realms to sustain another campaign setting.
The "common wisdom" for the last 7 years seems to have been that Greyhawk and the Realms are too similar to each other for both worlds to have full support. The fear would be that either there isn't a large enough customer base for Greyhawk OR (possibly worse) that having Greyhawk as a setting would cannibalize customers who buy Realms material and lead overall sales down for both lines. (Note that I don't think that Greyhawk and the Realms are all that similar, but that at least seemed to be the viewpoint around 2000-2001 when Greyhawk was made the "default" setting with no supported supplement line).
The key things would be to convince WOTC that there is enough of a fanbase for Greyhawk material that it would be worth producing AND that sales of such material would not cannibalize their existing Forgotten Realms or Eberron sales (in essence, that Greyhawk wouldn't compete at all with the Realms or Eberron). In that sense, putting out some "trial balloon" products is an idea that makes a lot of sense. And, given that Greyhawk really was an adventure-driven setting more than it was a sourcebook-driven setting, I don't think its a stupid idea to start with adventures as the trial balloon products.
As a disclaimer, I'm seriously looking forward to this adventure. I love the work that both Erik Mona and James Jacobs have done in Dungeon and I'm dying to see what they do with a larger canvas to work with. I also have to say that if I had to choose between getting one or two Greyhawk sourcebooks a year or one or two large adventures set in Greyhawk a year, I'd choose the latter (especially given the coverage that Greyhawk gets in Dragon). For me the fun and memories of Greyhawk lie in the adventure settings the world has, and not so much in the world itself.
crazy_cat
Adventurer
Thats enough!! Stop it right now....Jer said:
This thread is supposed to be about the future of Greyhawk, and thus we don't have the time to be listening to any well reasoned or rational points of discussion - no matter how well meaning the intentions behind them may be.
Sorry
GeorgeFields
Explorer
Jyrdan Fairblade said:
It would be 10 times better, too.
Ranger REG
Explorer
So's Dungeons & Dragons. Should I let that go, too? :\Zendragon said:
Thulcondar
First Post
Speaking as someone who has just about every GH-related item ever released (with the lamentable exception of some of the early Minifigs, which I'm still trying to track down, having seen them advertised in early issues of The Dragon, and the LG material, which I intentionally eschewed), and who has dutifully kept up with all the releases and modules and books and boxed sets and so on and so on and so on, and who has been running Greyhawk since the original folio came out in 1980...
I wish they'd just let GH go.
Sure, I'll buy the upcoming book. I'm a collector. And I like Erik's work and know him to be a true devotee of the setting, ever since I was his DM back in Boston. If anyone won't make a pig's ear out of this, Erik won't.
But honestly, the more stuff that gets published just takes the setting further and further away from the original intent and feel. Part of it has to do with the changes in the game system. I went to 2nd Edition, but went back to AD&D 1E when 3.x hit. Not to turn this into yet another edition-war thread, but there really is a difference in the feel of the game. Greyhawk is embedded in the older version of the game. It derives much of its charm, its feel, and its nature from the older style of game-play wherein stereotypical heroes battle stereotypical bad-guys. Where archetypes battle archetypes, obviously and deliciously derived from the good old days of tabletop wargaming. Where encounters aren't necessarily "level balanced" or whatever you call it nowadays.
I say the less GH material that's published, the less chance that the setting will be screwed up any more than it already has been, by folks who want to set their own stamp upon it. I don't believe Erik will do that, because he loves the old Greyhawk that I do. But if they do decide to revive the setting as one of their core product lines, I shudder to think what new manner of nonsense will be introduced, with the ultimate effect of genericizing the setting to the point where it is indistinguishable from Eberon or the Realms.
Leave it alone, sez I. I'm willing to risk missing a single wonderful product for fear of enduring a dozen clunkers that ruin the setting.
I wish they'd just let GH go.
Sure, I'll buy the upcoming book. I'm a collector. And I like Erik's work and know him to be a true devotee of the setting, ever since I was his DM back in Boston. If anyone won't make a pig's ear out of this, Erik won't.
But honestly, the more stuff that gets published just takes the setting further and further away from the original intent and feel. Part of it has to do with the changes in the game system. I went to 2nd Edition, but went back to AD&D 1E when 3.x hit. Not to turn this into yet another edition-war thread, but there really is a difference in the feel of the game. Greyhawk is embedded in the older version of the game. It derives much of its charm, its feel, and its nature from the older style of game-play wherein stereotypical heroes battle stereotypical bad-guys. Where archetypes battle archetypes, obviously and deliciously derived from the good old days of tabletop wargaming. Where encounters aren't necessarily "level balanced" or whatever you call it nowadays.
I say the less GH material that's published, the less chance that the setting will be screwed up any more than it already has been, by folks who want to set their own stamp upon it. I don't believe Erik will do that, because he loves the old Greyhawk that I do. But if they do decide to revive the setting as one of their core product lines, I shudder to think what new manner of nonsense will be introduced, with the ultimate effect of genericizing the setting to the point where it is indistinguishable from Eberon or the Realms.
Leave it alone, sez I. I'm willing to risk missing a single wonderful product for fear of enduring a dozen clunkers that ruin the setting.
