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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 5059795" data-attributes="member: 40359">At least how I see it:A) This is more like a brainstorming thread for fans to say what they would like to see. In the brainstorming phase of idea generation a lot of naysaying can be counterproductive.B) Constructive criticism is helpful, however. So props for those adding that.C) Personally, I think interpreting the GSL to state that WotC can freely take ownership of your IP is "dodgy" but that's just my opinion.D) The idea that if it hasn't been done in the last year and a half, then it obviously can't be done and make a profit seems wrong to me. Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed didn't come out for 3 years. Speaking of Monte Cook, 1 and half years after 3.0 release, he had only 4 products out. Green Ronin was just starting to talk about Mutant & Masterminds, Paizo was a couple months from even existing. In fact, from viewing archive.org from Feb 2002 (1 and a half years after 3.0 release), it looks Creative Mountain Games was just getting ready to release their first product. So looking at the first 1.5 years of an edition isn't a very good indicator, especially with pretty much all of the big name 3pp moving away from official D&D for various reasons. Just like 3e, other than Goodman, from what I can tell the majority of the 4e support is from small companies, many of them first publishing with 4e. So, claiming that if it hasn't happened yet, it can't, is not a sound argument.I'm certainly no expert and my opinions are only semi-educated, but I think it's a combination of many factors. Yes, the GSL is more restrictive and surely has scared away some, but not all publishers. Especially with WotC seriously dropping the ball on getting the GSL out on time and 3.5 sales plummeting after the 4e announcement (when they were down already), 3pp had to do something to fill the gap and for many of the larger ones, they went to other systems. So in this first year and a half of 4e, other than Goodman, there were no large publishers standing ready to release large products that could get into the distribution chains. Just small PDF/POD publishers and start ups. 3.0 had an incredible upswing in the whole market (for a while there, if it had a d20 logo on it, you were crazy to print less than 1000, and if your company was actually known then print runs in the tens of thousands were standard). Unfortunately, 4e didn't have that same whole market upswing, and I'm not sure it could have no matter what WotC did (other than perhaps wait for a better economic climate or make a worse 3.x system that fewer people would have wanted to stay with). So without that whole market upswing, the small 3pp and start ups have a much slower and tougher climb to profitability and robust product lines. Also, as others have mentioned, the DDI Character Builder does make most player-focused crunch products FAR less appealing to customers. Add in market fracturing between 3.x/Pathfinder and 4e, distributors and stores going belly up in extreme numbers, there are a ton of business realities conspiring against strong 3pp support for 4e.Back onto the original brainstorming, something I would like to see if a book of patrons. Like what WotC has been doing with warlocks, but for all of the classes. And for those classes that aren't open, the power sources still are. So you can have general divine and primal patrons. Heck, I'll have to double check, but I believe the list of all planned power sources are in the SRD, so you can even have shadow patrons and so on.It would be great if it also included information on contacts and minions as well as quests that could be worked into existing adventures. Especially make them kind of templated or with clear points to swap out to easily tailor to whatever PC and adventure. Extra bonus would be a discussion and/or quest ideas for the PCs themselves shaping into patrons through the epic tier.Crud, sounds like a fun book to write. *sigh* Too many ideas, not enough time. Hey, if anyone actually wants to write this, I'd happily contribute some pieces. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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