This is a general response to Shane's post. I'm not going to quote it to save space.
First, a few of my comments were not aimed specifically at Shane but rather at the general trends I see in designers and in the market. I thought it was a little weird that his email message had been posted here, and wasn't sure if he posted or read this message board.
The issue of a glut v. a culling: this really comes down to personal definitions or views on the subject. To me, a glut isn't a glut until publishers start moving out of the market. We see companies diversifying, but not many pulling completely out of d20. Even then, for every company that drops d20 for something else (PEG) we see others that are jumping into the market (GOO). As long as the same volume of companies are willing to invest in d20 products, I don't see the market as glutted. A glut to me means that supply exceeds demand. When that happens, we should start seeing companies drop out. Now, companies may be moving fewer units of a d20 book, but I'm not convinced the numbers have reached the point that d20 has proven unprofitable.
I think Deadlands is in a unique position: it already has an established fan base and has been around for a few years. I'm not convinced that a d20 version could be a breakout hit, primarily because most people who wanted to play Deadlands already had picked it up. Since you already had a fanbase playing the game, a d20 version may not have been as attractive since people have already learned the rules and built up a collection of sourcebooks. I'd be curious to compare the sales of new d20 games or d20 conversions of recently released games. I'm willing to bet there's a bit more acceptance of them, since you don't have an existing fanbase that has a connection to the game's original system.
I'd be curious to see how WW did compared to non-d20 RPGs released during the same time period. While some fans may have complained about the system, I thought it worked fine. To be honest, I think a lot of designers are a little too worried about deviating from D&D. Players accepted some radical changes to D&D's underlying engine in the changeover from 2e to 3e. My gut read is that as long as the players do not have to learn many new rules, most GMs are willing to learn new rules to run a game that appeals to them.
Shane writes:
They do continue to sell at a steady rate--at least for those top tier publishers. Never said they didn't. But as you know Mike, a mutual friend of ours welll known to this list, and owner of one of the companies I've mentioned above, lamented on the private Delphi forums how preorders for his last book (a beautiful, D20 hardback) were far below what he'd expected. Every retailer he talked to had told him they wanted something new, and he gave it to them. But they still sold far more books on elves and dwarves than they did his.
If it's the book I think you're talking about, I'm not surprised that it isn't moving quickly. d20 books have to have utility for use during a game. If a book is too different from the average D&D campaign, I don't expect many D&D players to buy it. I think the non-d20 v. d20 markets are fundamentally different. Non-d20 players, specifically those who avoid d20, IME tend to collect game books, buy them for reading material, and place more value on novel rather than useful new material. They tend to make up lots of stuff wholesale for their games, including systems, and look at and buy RPGs books as one would purchase fiction. d20 buyers, OTOH, put a lot more value on utility. They buy books to use in their games. A subset buy books solely as reading material, but the majority of them see RPG books as tools to use in their games. If a book doesn't offer any obvious utility that directly translates into their campaigns, they tend to avoid it.
Shane writes:
As recently as Friday, the owner of Gameboard told me how much all of his retailers complained about new D20 products. But again, that's all that's selling right now.
Let's examine that a bit. If retailers are sick of D20, but that's all that's selling, there could be several things going on:
A) Retailers are (mostly) gamers like the rest of us, and have their opinions which they voice incessantly. But D20 sells, so that's what they buy. End of story.
B) D20 is about all there is right now besides GURPs and Hero. But GURPs and Hero are experiencing great sales spikes right now.
Again, draw your own conclusions. I don't have the answer, but if you doubt the truth of my comments, ask around.
I think both of these ideas are true. People who open game stores usually do so to turn their hobby into a something they do for a living. They know a fair bit about gaming and many of them are hardcore gamers. They like the games that say the regular posters at RPG.net like, but those same titles rarely have any commercial success.
Since d20 is drawing more people into gaming and more RPG revenue into store, it makes sense that other titles will also have improved sales. A rising tide carries all ships, as they say.
I don't think that B indicates people are leaving d20. I think that there was one time in this industry's history when D&D was vulnerable to a potential rival: 1989, the release of 2e. Other than that, I don't think a title has ever come close to posing a real threat to D&D's position. However, I do suspect that the market is poised right now for a breakout hit, be it d20 or something else. The industry is overdue for one, and with D&D3 reinvigorating the fan base the timing is right.
Shane writes about designers not liking d20:
No offense Mike, but I know lots of folks and talk to them often, and this *is* the general opinion. Someone said that perhaps I simply have friends who are all anti-D20. My personal gaming group is much that way and I'll freely admit it, but I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the heads of major companies. Again, I won't name anyone because it may hurt their business, and it's really not important anyway. Most of them aren't involved in the actual creation of material anyway--they dictate it to talented freelancers like you who *do* enjoy the material, and put their absolute best efforts forward to make a beautiful, professional product.
Whether this is true or not is immaterial. The intial message made it sound like there were legions of game designers chained to desks, forced to work on d20 material whether they liked it or not. There are designers who enjoy the system, and I'm willing to bet that as the d20 field matures they will grow in number and establish themselves in the business. I didn't have a single word in print until the year 2000. Since then, I've worked on over 50 titles and sold over a million words of work. I'm not alone. Ari Marmell, Patrick Younts, tons of other guys whose names I'm forgetting since it's midnight and I'm brain dead, are all breaking into the scene and now leaving their mark. Just as d20 is new, many of the designers behind it haven't been on the scene for long. But we're out there. Just because we don't post to mailing lists or hang out at the Velvet Room doesn't mean we aren't an emerging force. I suspect that in the next three years, we're going to see a lot of exciting things from these guys. We're writing sourcebooks and supplements right now, but soon we'll all be graduating up to writing complete games (d20 or not) and owning our own companies.
Let me make it clear that I don't think d20 is the be all and end all of gaming. The next game I'd like to run is a Warhamer FRP campaign. But as a software engineer, I think d20 is the first true *system* ever produced as an RPG. It demands work but rewards it. It allows a newbie or casual DM to produce balanced encounters, NPCs who can pose a threat to the characters without overpowering them, and gives him controls to prevent characters from becoming too powerful. It is a system in the sense that all of its parts combine together to form a cohesive whole. Each part is integrated into the system in a logical manner, and the entire thing was playtested on a greater scale than any other RPG ever produced. It's a radical change moving from designing for other systems to d20. You can't just make stuff up. You need to know the entire system to fit new pieces into it. I didn't feel 100% confident designing for the game until a year into my career. But man, does the system reward playing with it, learning it, and understanding its underlying structures. Once you have that down, it's far easier to build stuff for than any other game engine I've worked with as a designer or GM.
I don't think I'm alone in this, and I think the next few years will bear this out.
, but we won't get into that just yet. The d20 liscence allowed hordes of story writers without the necesarry skill set to build GAMES to still create PRODUCT because they could use the d20 system for that, and settle in to what they did best- building worlds, characters, and stories. This brought a lot of new companies/studios into existance right there. Later it became apparent that at least a modicum of mechanical talent was required on a project team to add crunchy bits. 
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