The State of Our Hobby

[Wisdom Penalty]

The one thing that March 2008 has taught me, with all of the various high-profile tributes to Gary Gygax and reporting about the ongoing strength and popularity of role playing is that the hobby remains in great shape today.

If you believe everything that's said in an eulogy.

By people that may or may not be gamers.

Supported by facts that may or may not be anything other than one writer's opinion.

<Add other qualifiers here until it's time for my own eulogy.>


W.P.

 

[jdrakeh]

If you believe everything that's said in an eulogy.

By people that may or may not be gamers.

Supported by facts that may or may not be anything other than one writer's opinion.

<Add other qualifiers here until it's time for my own eulogy.>


W.P.

Better than believing in a position supported solely by speculative, fear-based, conjecture, though, no?

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

Better than believing in a position supported solely by speculative, fear-based, conjecture, though, no?

No. Probably about equal.

 

[Nifft]

No. Probably about equal.

print $RANDOM_d02_JOKE;

Cheers, -- N

 

[jdrakeh]

Seriously, competing with yourself is often a bad idea.

Don't be rediculous! It worked great for TSR! Amassing an entire warehouse of unsold material from the mid-1980s onward, subsequently filing for bankruptcy, and finally being bought out by WotC was indicative of mad financial genius

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OTOH, if they repackaged the various editions to support a unique campaign world or 2, there would be enough product differentiation to just possibly make it work.

Imagine, one of the older editions supporting Blackmoor or Greyhawk, another supporting FR, etc.

Despite my misgivings about 4Ed, I could easily see it supporting some of the more outre settings, like Dark Sun, Eberron or Spelljammer.

 

[Lanefan]

If Hasbro and WotC REALLY wanted to be gutsy, they'd establish design teams and publish material for multiple editions at once.

Wouldn't be too hard to do market research to determine the % of interest among "D&Ders", then produce proportional works for different eras.

Fanciful dreaming there, but what the hell....

Nice to see someone else shares the same dream I've had since 3e came out...

And Nifft, a great many companies do very well by competing with themselves, only you don't always realize the "competition" is all in-house. I don't know about the USA, but here in Canada if you go to any major mall and look at the various clothing stores, they all look different and all seem to be competing with each other...only thing is, about half of them are (probably) owned by the same company. There's two major cell phone carriers here in Canada that "compete" with each other tooth and nail...and are owned by the same guy. And so on.

Lanefan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And Nifft, a great many companies do very well by competing with themselves, only you don't always realize the "competition" is all in-house.

Or, for example, the Big 3 American automotive companies. Each had several lines of cars with tweeked details to appeal to different segments of the market. While the American automakers have been in decline a bit, the Japanese automakers have done the exact same thing.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

OTOH, if they repackaged the various editions to support a unique campaign world or 2, there would be enough product differentiation to just possibly make it work.

Imagine, one of the older editions supporting Blackmoor or Greyhawk, another supporting FR, etc.

Man, that is a cool idea. A great idea. May be a poll buried in there somewhere to find out what campaign setting match best with what rulesets.

For example:

Greyhawk - 1E (yes?)
Darksun - Hmm...2E?
FR - 3E?
Eberron - 4E?
Planescape - True20?

Eh. I'm running out of gas. Anyway, again, that's a very interesting thought - packaging the rules with the setting, and making sure the two mesh elegantly.

Of course, it'd probably splinter the market further, which is what I started to weep about at the outset of this post, but - since I don't think a single person has agreed with my initial statement thus far - I'm starting to realize I'm: a) wrong, and b) paranoid.

Sincerely,
Intelligence Penalty

 

[Ranger REG]

We didn't need third edition either. So, the same could be said about it.

Who's "we"?