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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mystic Eye" data-source="post: 25814" data-attributes="member: 711">I can see goods points in every post to this thread and want to throw my 2 cents into the hat as well.The bottom line is, and others have said this, there is only so deep the money pool goes. new blood trickles in and old blood flows out.The winners in this race are those that can simply grab their portion of the "market share". This can be done in many ways but I think that those that  focus entirely on generic offerings will eventually suffer regardless of quality becuase they have no hook to create a loyal fan base. Eventually, generic products will have covered all the major topics and the sales will fall off tremendously.Though many of you have only got a taste of it, we, like some others have a unique setting that is filling a niche or two. We have created a loyal fan base apparently. The indicator to this is restocks by distributors as well as fan emails with questions, comments, and praise.It is the guys that create that fan base that will survive in my book. SSS has a loyal following for scarred lands and as long as they continue to make solid products to keep their base in their world they will be fine.Troll Lord is developing a setting specific fan base for Erde. Thunderhead's Bluffside may be easy to add to a campaign world but it is developing a loyal fan base for its city setting and it is not even on the shelves yet.Privateer Press launched with a setting that people liked, or rather, loved. If they can turn up the heat on production they will "Steam" ahead.Dragonstar-fantastic setting in my book. They WILL have a loyal base for this product-no doubt.You get the point.At first, generic was the way to go becuase so much was yet to be covered. There is still room for lots of generic stuff. Not forever though.As far as the d20 crash, it is a self fulfiling prophecy that is not happening to a level that people are suggesting but will happen if people keep saying it will. The only time we experienced a slow down was during our shift over to Osseum while distributors and retailers were trying to find us and word was getting out. Now, restocks are high and all is going strong. We are growing ,steady and well. Will we be rich, heck no, will we be able to keep going, I am confident we will but we will need to be ever more creative.Some of the guys who were once producing massive 10k -30k print runs are the ones being most impacted now. They have had to reduce their print runs and so for them it is a major decline. For us smaller guys, if you can't find 3-5000 loyal people to buy your products on a regular basis we need to rethink your strategy and product offering.Well done adventures will always sell but not in quantities of 10k + and that is just the way it is. Maybe some have a big enough base to pull that kind of number off (Atlas, FFG, WOTC, Kenzer, and a few others) but us mid-range guys won't see that kind of number for adventures unless we find an entirely new channel to sell to.As a personal example (and I find this amazing) our first product- The Pit of Loch-Durnan- is a great adventure and story, flawed in some ways by us being brand new at the time and on a very limited budget (like how most of us start). The amazing thing is that that adventure. now seven months old, still sells around 50 units every single month. Personally, I thought it would be dead by now. It demontrates that there IS still a solid market for adventures. That may not seem like a big number but we have cleared all costs on that book a few times over.To wrap up my long winded post, Those who find their loyal fan base (market share), offer an interesting and creative setting, put out solid products, Continue to have a strong presence in regards to marketing and self promotion, will keep going.Those that do not move away eventually from generic offerings or consistantly put out low quality products will go bye bye (but may stay in a low end PDF market).Also, quit helping to fulfil the d20 demise prohpecy with the doom and gloom and think "half full" for a change. The d20 market is extremely young and has a lot of maturing to do before it fails.My 2 cents, well, more like my dollar, but this is my opinion of this topic.</blockquote>

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