What Would You Want In Future 3.5 Products?
- Thread starter Sykopup
- Start date
Angel Tarragon
Dawn Dragon
Al-Qadim
Arabian Adventures (campaignless sourcebook)
Celestial Codex
Compiled Elite Opponents
Council of Wyrms (Campaign Hardcover)
Greyhawk (Campaign Hardcover)
Dark Sun
Historical Reference Campaign (Hardcover)
Island of Jakandor (Campaign Hardcover)
Marchants & Marketplaces
Ravenloft (Reloaded)
Spelljammer
Ultimate Arms & Equipment Guide
Windriders (detailing those that ride winged mounts, new winged mounts and ecology type refrences to the mounts)
Arabian Adventures (campaignless sourcebook)
Celestial Codex
Compiled Elite Opponents
Council of Wyrms (Campaign Hardcover)
Greyhawk (Campaign Hardcover)
Dark Sun
Historical Reference Campaign (Hardcover)
Island of Jakandor (Campaign Hardcover)
Marchants & Marketplaces
Ravenloft (Reloaded)
Spelljammer
Ultimate Arms & Equipment Guide
Windriders (detailing those that ride winged mounts, new winged mounts and ecology type refrences to the mounts)
Vigilance
Explorer
Arnwyn said:
Yeah I can see that- as I read the OP I'm not 100% sure he's talking about 3rd party products. I initially read it as him asking what 3rd party 3.5 books people would want to see post-4th edition.
So if that wasn't what he was asking, my apologies.
If that was what he was asking, these responses aren't exactly heartening
Chuck
Sykopup
First Post
Vigilance said:Yeah I can see that- as I read the OP I'm not 100% sure he's talking about 3rd party products. I initially read it as him asking what 3rd party 3.5 books people would want to see post-4th edition.
So if that wasn't what he was asking, my apologies.
If that was what he was asking, these responses aren't exactly heartening
Chuck
My bad. The first couple of posts were pretty much the answers I was looking for, then things went off on a tangent about the creation of minis. When things started returning to the main topic, the answers suddenly began to focus mostly on WotC stuff.
Therefore, I shall try to reword my original question so that it is better understood. I apologize for not making myself clearer.
By 3rd party publishers, I am referring to companies like Necromancer, Green Ronin, Mongoose, and the likes. With this in mind, what general, non-campaign specific, material would you like to see for 3E/3.5 once 4E makes its appearance? Would it be new location settings to be dropped into current adventures? Books that focus on class variants, but with a slant different than WotC's?
If this isn't a little bit clearer, please let me know. I know what I'm trying to say, I'm just not sure I'm saying it in the best way. Thanks.
Detailed setting material and adventures. (New races and prestige classes? Get them away from me.)
But people can write and legally publish books in the spirit of those settings, without needing to use any of their proper names. All the would-be 'old school' adventures do this, and I'd love to see Forgotten Realms-style third party materials too.Vigilance said:
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I want more support for a Harry Potter style game. I'm going to finally run a Redhurst game later this year (as opposed to it being part of a larger setting) and want more than splatbooks and one adventure in Dungeon to help with the tone. There's a wee bit of enthusiasm for the franchise, and I'm constantly amazed that D20 publishers haven't tried to tap into that. Where are the Wizard School settings (other than Redhurst) and the Wizard School adventures (I'm going to adapt Dungeon Interludes from Goodman Games) and the Wizard School sourcebooks?
Likewise, where are products that support games similar to all the major popular fantasy works? Other than some support for pirate games, there's been almost none. The only "real world in a fantasy universe" support (Second World) more closely resembles Stargate than Narnia (as does the Atlas Games D20 product that I'm not sure if it ever got off the ground) and it requires D20 Modern. What happens if I just want to run players through a Narnia-like experience, with modern day people moving back and forth through magical portals? The Narnia movie did better than the Stargate film and has a history stretching back decades, yet no one was stepping up with even a modest product -- not even a PDF -- for when the Narnia film was released. Talking animals, heroes from Earth, magic that can change the weather of a nation, gods that walk among mortals as animals; surely at least one of those could have gotten the treatment from publishers. (And hey, it would also be mostly applicable to Alice in Wonderland, Thomas Covenant and a host of other popular franchises.)
I'd like to see some stuff supporting 19th century British fantasy, complete with fairies, flying to the moon and so on. What steampunk products exist for D20 have almost entirely focused on the hardware, when the point of steampunk fiction is how societies change when the technological preconceptions change. (Which makes it kind of a head-scratcher as to what the people writing the D20 steampunk stuff were reading for inspiration.)
Northern Crown is great for what it is (American mythology in the approximate pre-Revolutionary era), but what about a D20 supplement about the Age of Exploration, an immensely portable trope that showed up a lot in WotC's setting search but which didn't really translate into products for the marketplace (although we did get two competing "golden age" settings instead, which I do applaud for rethinking the D&D heir-to-ancient-empires standard setting)?
What about a D20 book statting up all of Grimm's Fairy Tales -- including the ones not touched by Walt Disney and thus bowdlerized and immensely familiar to everyone. Forget hobbits, that's the best-known fantasy in the world.
Likewise, much of the Oz books have fallen out of copyright. These things were the Harry Potter of the turn of the 20th century and go far beyond what the movies nibbled at. There's a setting and sourcebook and monster book just sitting there, waiting for someone to do it.
WotC will still mine that nostalgia vein just fine. But just because something was originally created in 1979 doesn't make it somehow superior to what can be created today, unless you've got a whole weird Bee Gees fetish we need to talk about.
And yes, risk-taking can be a dangerous thing to do in any market, especially one as precarious as the D20 market. But everyone turning out safe works on the same subjects just means the best implementation of that safe work wins and everyone else loses. That's just as big of a risk. The folks in a position to should continue to push at the boundaries before staying on the safe path or retreating from D20 altogether, which seems to be the two main courses taken presently.
Likewise, where are products that support games similar to all the major popular fantasy works? Other than some support for pirate games, there's been almost none. The only "real world in a fantasy universe" support (Second World) more closely resembles Stargate than Narnia (as does the Atlas Games D20 product that I'm not sure if it ever got off the ground) and it requires D20 Modern. What happens if I just want to run players through a Narnia-like experience, with modern day people moving back and forth through magical portals? The Narnia movie did better than the Stargate film and has a history stretching back decades, yet no one was stepping up with even a modest product -- not even a PDF -- for when the Narnia film was released. Talking animals, heroes from Earth, magic that can change the weather of a nation, gods that walk among mortals as animals; surely at least one of those could have gotten the treatment from publishers. (And hey, it would also be mostly applicable to Alice in Wonderland, Thomas Covenant and a host of other popular franchises.)
I'd like to see some stuff supporting 19th century British fantasy, complete with fairies, flying to the moon and so on. What steampunk products exist for D20 have almost entirely focused on the hardware, when the point of steampunk fiction is how societies change when the technological preconceptions change. (Which makes it kind of a head-scratcher as to what the people writing the D20 steampunk stuff were reading for inspiration.)
Northern Crown is great for what it is (American mythology in the approximate pre-Revolutionary era), but what about a D20 supplement about the Age of Exploration, an immensely portable trope that showed up a lot in WotC's setting search but which didn't really translate into products for the marketplace (although we did get two competing "golden age" settings instead, which I do applaud for rethinking the D&D heir-to-ancient-empires standard setting)?
What about a D20 book statting up all of Grimm's Fairy Tales -- including the ones not touched by Walt Disney and thus bowdlerized and immensely familiar to everyone. Forget hobbits, that's the best-known fantasy in the world.
Likewise, much of the Oz books have fallen out of copyright. These things were the Harry Potter of the turn of the 20th century and go far beyond what the movies nibbled at. There's a setting and sourcebook and monster book just sitting there, waiting for someone to do it.
WotC will still mine that nostalgia vein just fine. But just because something was originally created in 1979 doesn't make it somehow superior to what can be created today, unless you've got a whole weird Bee Gees fetish we need to talk about.
And yes, risk-taking can be a dangerous thing to do in any market, especially one as precarious as the D20 market. But everyone turning out safe works on the same subjects just means the best implementation of that safe work wins and everyone else loses. That's just as big of a risk. The folks in a position to should continue to push at the boundaries before staying on the safe path or retreating from D20 altogether, which seems to be the two main courses taken presently.
Particle_Man
Explorer
More stuff for the Warlock, but I guess that stuff is not OGL so you might get sued.
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