On a not-unrelated note, I must admit I'm curious what effect the d20 wave is having on those publishers that arent involved in it.
Probably. I think Anthony Valterra (sp?) said a few weeks ago that Wizards has determined that they have won so many gamers over to d20 from other companies that it was no longer cost effective for them to keep trying to do that, so they are changing their stratigy and marketing to people outside the gaming community.
So I would guess that GURPS, Talislanta, and other systems have seen a decline in sales over the past year or so.
As a few other people have mentioned, I also agree that it is way too early in the history of d20 to be talking about its demise. We are only now reaching a point were there is a large amount of common material (swashbucklers, archers, acrobats, medieval campain settings, sci-fi settings, etc.). We haven't even started exploreing the realms of possibilities yet. I have seen only a small amount of truely original material on the d20 market so far.
That's not a bad thing, either. I'm just saying that since this is a new game system, we need rules for all the archtypes and conventions of the past before we can move forward into the future. We need piracy and navel rules. We need competing fantasy settings, and competing sci-fi settings. We need archers and swashbucklers and so on. So, over the past year, we have all been contributing to the basic collection of material we need before we can move forward to the really cool ideas. The Primal Codex is my contibution to that collection of basic material that we need. I don't think there is a lot in it I would call "original," it is based on the stoneage genra and much of the material is derived from real world facts and folklore. Its something obvious and basic that the d20 system needed (IMO).
In the near future however, there will be no more need for new piracy rules, or new swashbucklers or new stoneage rules. There will be a need for something new that doesn't fit into any previously known genra. Something as yet undefined, because it hasn't ever been done before. I think the company that can constantly provide such new, unique ideas and innovative concepts will have the advantage.
That's how I see it, anyway.
