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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6558153" data-attributes="member: 22424">As with the &quot;model airplanes&quot; example, the issue is not turning off players as such, but rather turning away certain types of players.A new player who, on coming to the store, is confronted with a big wall of books and especially if there are multiple &quot;Player's Handbooks&quot; (as in 4e) or where they're all labelled &quot;must have!&quot; (many other games) is more likely to be intimidated and just walk away.Conversely, there are the 'dedicated' customers, the guys who are willing to buy a $40 book a month and who always have an appetite for more, more, more! We're not likely to be turned off by a plethora of books, and most of us are quite happy to pick and choose which of the 100 books that are out we want to bother buying.That means you need a different strategy depending on who you want to sell to. If you're happy selling to just the core group of 'dedicated', then by all means put out multiple books, including very specialised ones.But if you want to grow your customer base, you need to attract newbies in large numbers, and the wall of books becomes counter-productive - better instead to have a fixed core offering (PHB/DMG/MM) plus a rotating adventure offering for your current Event (ToD, Elemental Evil...)WotC appear to have adopted the latter strategy, where Paizo are going more for the former.(There is actually a third option available for WotC which would cover both bases: use the DDI to provide materials to the 'dedicated'. That way, the newbies see only the PHB starting point, while those who want more can seek it out. There is a potential issue if a PHB-only player sits down at a table with a group of 'dedicated', but that's not much different from a Basic-only player sitting down with those using the PHB/DMG/MM set.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 6558153, member: 22424"] As with the "model airplanes" example, the issue is not turning off players as such, but rather turning away [i]certain types[/i] of players. A new player who, on coming to the store, is confronted with a big wall of books [i]and especially if there are multiple "Player's Handbooks" (as in 4e) or where they're all labelled "must have!" (many other games)[/i] is more likely to be intimidated and just walk away. Conversely, there are the 'dedicated' customers, the guys who are willing to buy a $40 book a month and who always have an appetite for more, more, more! We're not likely to be turned off by a plethora of books, and most of us are quite happy to pick and choose which of the 100 books that are out we want to bother buying. That means you need a different strategy depending on who you want to sell to. If you're happy selling to just the core group of 'dedicated', then by all means put out multiple books, including very specialised ones. But if you want to grow your customer base, you need to attract newbies in large numbers, and the wall of books becomes counter-productive - better instead to have a fixed core offering (PHB/DMG/MM) plus a rotating adventure offering for your current Event (ToD, Elemental Evil...) WotC appear to have adopted the latter strategy, where Paizo are going more for the former. (There is actually a third option available for WotC which would cover both bases: use the DDI to provide materials to the 'dedicated'. That way, the newbies see only the PHB starting point, while those who want more can seek it out. There is a potential issue if a PHB-only player sits down at a table with a group of 'dedicated', but that's not much different from a Basic-only player sitting down with those using the PHB/DMG/MM set.) [/QUOTE]

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