sniff sniff...Do I smell 2nd edition mistakes?

[Virel]

Another time, another place, another D&D game...

I started playing with 1st ed AD&D. I was less than happy with 2e when it appeared. Some of the 2nd ed material was ok, however fairly soon the quality declined as the number of products increased.

Seems that 3.0 is like 1st ed AD&D and 3.5 is at risk of becoming like 2e based on the 3.5 splat books etc I've skimmed over. It seems the time periods are compressed as 1st ed lasted over ten years but 3e for about four years. It took 2e about five years totally self destruct. I think it will take ~1 or 2 more years for 3.5 to implode if the Second Editionization of 3.5 keeps going at the same rate.

From a business point of view why not wreck 3.5? Makes all the more reason to bring out 4e.

BTW - while I still play and DM 1st ed AD&D, I like playing 3e as seems like 3rd AD&D to me, I can't say that about 3.5 as if looks/feels/smells to much like 2ed.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

So the Complete Series' aren't options? Huh? I think you may need to look at those old 2E kits for powercreep btw. A great deal of them were broken beyond all sense of balance.

For all that I am generous with my criticisms of the 3.0 and 3.5 splatbooks, they are all better than the old Options books. IMO.

 

[Breakdaddy]

I always thought it was better to have too many books, then too few.

You must feel that way about a lot of things, judging by your post-count

 

[Breakdaddy]

I started playing with 1st ed AD&D. I was less than happy with 2e when it appeared. Some of the 2nd ed material was ok, however fairly soon the quality declined as the number of products increased.

It took me about a year after the release of 2e before I finally caved and bought the core books for it. When I started playing it I liked it ok, but I still missed 1e. I would have gone back to 1e, but the majority of my players wanted to stick with an in-print iteration of the game, so I was stuck with 2e.

 

[Ranger REG]

One thing I would like to see from 2E days is this: bring back the old campaign settings! Heresy I know, but I'm sure the economics would be OK if each setting had but a single campaign book plus a mega-adventure as happened with Wheel of Time. I would love to see an update to Dark Sun (just not by the Paizo staff... sorry!) and Birthright (I really don't trust the Paizo folks to get this right either).

If you can get 100,000 customers supporting each setting in a two-year period, that would be a good sign for WotC.

Otherwise, small publishers who can fork over a hefty fee for the license have better success.

 

[Crothian]

You must feel that way about a lot of things, judging by your post-count

nope, most things are not good in excess, books are the excpetion

 

[Ranger REG]

It took me about a year after the release of 2e before I finally caved and bought the core books for it. When I started playing it I liked it ok, but I still missed 1e. I would have gone back to 1e, but the majority of my players wanted to stick with an in-print iteration of the game, so I was stuck with 2e.

Dump your friends and join Diaglo.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

If you can get 100,000 customers supporting each setting in a two-year period, that would be a good sign for WotC.

Otherwise, small publishers who can fork over a hefty fee for the license have better success.

If there is, indeed, anything close to the 4+ million D&D players in the US alone that WotC's market research apparently indicates, I don't think 100,000 buyers for a niche setting is at all an out of the ballpark figure, especially if we're just talking about a single setting book rather than a full line. If it's 5 million players with a 4:1 ratio of players to GMs, and only GMs bought the setting books, that would be only 10% of the GMs.

When you consider that TSR at its peak production was putting out an AD&D product almost every month for Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Buck Rogers, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Birthright and Planescape and usually a Mystara product or two for Basic D&D, plus "Core" material like the Complete books, that's clearly over the top. Especially when many of those products were boxed sets with two or three booklets, maps, cardboard standees, and often other peripheral material.

On the other hand, consider WotC's schedule for campaign specific material. They release Realms and Eberron books more like one per quarter, not one per month, and where Eberron's concerned that's despite it being a shiny new setting that needs to stay in the public eye.

I'm not convinced that a Wizards-like schedule couldn't support 3-5 campaign settings as full lines. With three (for purposes of wishful thinking, we'll say the Realms, Eberron and Spelljammer, though that probably wouldn't be the best business decision) at one book per line per quarter, that's still 1/10th(!) the amount of setting-specific content TSR provided.

Plus, since WotC has committed to making their material at least somewhat balanced across setting lines and to avoiding lots of rules exceptions and contradictions, what setting-specific content they do provide is also completely modular. As a GM, I can port a warforged artificer to the Realms with no adjustments needed, or a sun elf Harper Scout to Eberron, or either to my homebrew. As a player, I need only the GM's permission to do the same thing.

Just because about 100 setting specific products each year is too many, or even 50 such products, doesn't mean that 25 such products are necessarily too many.

 

[Estlor]

What I think WotC could safely get away with is produce one-offs for their various old settings. Make a single book around 300 pages that is full of balanced, modular crunch with a healthy frosting of fluff tossed over the top. There's no committment to full production on a setting and people with fond memories of Dark Sun, Planescape, the Known World, or Spelljammer suddenly have semi-complete toolboxes with which to run the setting in 3.5e.

I would probably bite on those books knowing I had no committment to spend money on an ever-growing product line for the setting.

 

[rogueattorney]

During 2e's heyday - say 93-96 - TSR was producing the most product it ever had to probably the smallest audience it ever had after the initial explosion of interest in D&D after 1977. They were trying to get a smaller and smaller group of people to buy a larger and larger group of products. It was corporate suicide, and we all know what happened.

I could say (and have said on a number of occasions) a lot of bad things about WotC. However, I don't think they're repeating the same mistakes of TSR with 3.xe. (They're not putting out any products that I find particularly interesting, but that's a different matter altogether.) They're putting out maybe one big product a month and a couple smaller ones here and there, and supplementing their cash flow with miniatures. It simply doesn't compare to the sheer volume being released by TSR from 93-96. It might seem like a lot more because of all the 3rd party stuff (and that flow has slowed down recently), but that's really not WotC's concern. Whereas TSR's head was on the chopping block for all the esoteric support in the 90's, in today's market, it's the 3rd parties.

I'm skeptical of the long-term benefits of their business model for the hobbey (not necessarily the same as the industry - although I thought the Basic box was a good move). However they seem to be doing fine as a company.

R.A.