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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark" data-source="post: 676059" data-attributes="member: 5">At first I thought, "This is some sort of troll."  The I read on and MoRuss chimed in and I thought, "MoRuss must know something and certainly wouldn't participate in a troll."  Then I decided to try and work through this logically.  So let me get this straight...They've spent a great many hours going through 11,000 entries to find, and give prize money to, a person who has a new campaign setting that appeals to a portion of their market.  In fact, they feel that the popularity of this search (and perhaps have figures that the many entrants support this) shows that a psionics-heavy setting is what everyone is clammering to buy?  Mind you, I do not recall a plethora of the ones revealed here (or elsewhere) being psionics-oriented, but let's say that all of the ones not revealed were psionics oriented.Regarding older settings, they purposefuly kept only two; Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, the two most popular.  They felt that they did not have the manpower to develop setting material that would appeal to a smaller segment of the market.  Let's not forget that this was back in the day when they had quite a few more employees to throw at their projects and Hasbro wasn't looking over their shoulder at the bottom line.  So they decided (and cleared this with Hasbro) that they would search the fan base for a setting.  The prevailing wisdom, as I understood it, was not that they were going to be looking for something very different and new.  I had thought they they were looking for something along the lines of FR...but not FR.  Something that would be widely popular and reap high profits.  Something "crunch-heavy" because we all know from SKR's mythical scenario that the people in charge wanted to gear things toward crunch.Of the older, undeveloped settings that they tried to license out, all but a few are gone.  The ones that are now being developed outside of WotC are assumably the ones that people have clammored to see.  These were the ones that some folks have felt they would risk their money to develop as outside companies.  How many of these were psionics-heavy?  Is this an indication of how popular a psionics-heavy setting might be?How many other ways does WotC have to figure out how popular psionics might be?  They could check the message boards.  (I've seen threads here on psionics that have some of the best and brightest of psionics game adherents but they seem to be in a relative minority, aren't they?)  They could look to which of the older settings that they chosen not to develop, that also were not the ones that people were stepping up to risk money to purchase, and determine if any of these that were psionics-heavy settings and still had some merit to develop in-house.  (How many older settings were psionics-heavy that weren't licensed out?)  They can look to how third party publishers are selling.  (How many third party settings are psionics-heavy?)  They can look at how prevalent the wish for use of psionics is among the RPGA which is a fairly large group of gamers.  (How many psionics-heavy Living settings are out there?)  They can look at how well the numbers are on sales of the Psionics Handbook.  (What were the print run numbers of the Psionics Handbook?)I grant you that if a second printing of the Psionics Handbook is warranted it certainly makes more sense to include any errata that they may have and add new sections that they either left out of the first or that is new and supports the revised core books.  They'd have to do this or they'd be printing up a slew of books that not many people would purchase, and I say this meaning that most would not re-purchase a book that contained little more than a bit or errata.According to the information being proffered in this thread at least some of that research has suggested that not only one, but two settings should be developed in-house at WotC? ...with their ever-shrinking manpower and resources?I'm a bit skeptical.  If anyone can address the questions I have and give me some solid reasoning why this makes sesne, I would appreciate the insight.</blockquote>

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