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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aberzanzorax" data-source="post: 4837733" data-attributes="member: 64209">Two more things: 1. I read through that thread I mentioned and here is what I think the most helpful responses boiled down to: The d20/3e glut was because supply exceeded demand. Rather than distributors or retailers carefully vetting/researching those products, they overordered and then were stuck holding a bunch of junk. That was bad because they then were very wary about ordering things, so they continued not to vet/research products to see what might be good or might sell, and so they stopped ordering more products, even the good ones.  Basically, it boiled down to multiple levels of the supply chain not knowing what would sell. I'd take this to mean any of these: --They didn't do their research that they clearly could have done (in the case of books like Fast Forward Games where the rules were just wrong all over the place).--They didn't have enough info available (it was a new product by a new company).--They couldn't do their research (because there were too many products to research, they didn't have the resources, or they were just plain lazy or ignorant as to how).    2. It occurs to me that I also haven't heard of "OGL bloat", but have heard "3e glut or d20 glut". I've also heard "rules bloat".  If you're speaking about rules bloat, I take that to mean that there were just too many options, particularly too many "broken" "untested" "imbalanced" options...even moreso when combined with other "broken" "untested" or "imbalanced" options. This came from a constant broadening of the game (by many 3pp as well as WotC solely internally). It appears to also be problematic in 4e, but would be addressible with a model of "compartmentalization' or "modularization' rather than broadening. What I mean by that (and I don't know a ton about White Wolf, so this MAY fall apart) is the example of White Wolf's model. From my understanding, there are two editions of the whole of the World of Darkness setting/system. However, there are a multitude of games within each of those editions...they've been compartmentalized. I could play just Vampire the Masquerade. I could play just Werewolf the Apocalypse. Or I could mix and match them together. The way they modularized it, I think that it has allowed for players/dms to focus on the game they want to play, while making the system as a whole that much broader. Contrast that with Player's handbook II, Complete Champion, all the Races books, etc, and even the setting books. The core was the large part and that got too big and unwieldy. Erratas were not updated well, consistently, or quickly...so the game got out of hand, and much time was spent determining what made sense to use versus just playing.  I agree with what many say, that new editions are inevitable eventually. I think that there are many things that can be done to prevent rules bloat toppling a system. I even think they could have addressed that in a profitable way at the end of 3e's run. However, they instead pressed the "reset" button, which also addressed the problem. I hope they learned from this and have an alternate strategy to avoid the "reset" button of 5e, but the "everything is core" and "a new phb each year" philosophies/plans don't bode well for this IMO.   I'd be happy to be more specific on the second one if that is what you mean, but as it's already long, I'll hold off until you clarify what you mean by "OGL Bloat". The first one I can't really clarify, as I don't understand that as an issue myself.</blockquote>

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