booboo
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yah good thing you are never self righteous
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Whatever happened to Necromancer Games?
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
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yah good thing you are never self righteous
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
My understanding is that there is some fairly extensive reformating required for the PoD option that DTRPG is putting out, so unless a publisher is willing to do the reformat or pay DTRPG to do it, that title will not be available in PoD thru DTRPG. That said, I know Bill is doing the last three Necro releases for PoD format, and possibly the whole catalogue (not sure about that last part)
As a follow up on my first post, this morning Bill started a new thread on the Necromancer Games forums"a thought on a new book" asking the fans' opinions about how to release the entire Slumbering Tsar Series (the first adventure of which has been reviewed right here on EN World by Dark Mistress) basically as a subscription pdf system dividing the thing up into manageable hunks over time, a single giant Ptolus-sized book, a combination of both, etc. He is also asking about the game system that would be preferred. Right now it is written as 3.5, but it can be updated to another.
So if you have an interest in seeing something like this from Necromancer Games, I encourage you to head on over and get involved in the conversation or discuss it here. I know Clark and Bill check in here pretty frequently.
So if you have an interest in seeing something like this from Necromancer Games, I encourage you to head on over and get involved in the conversation or discuss it here. I know Clark and Bill check in here pretty frequently.
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JoeGKushner
First Post
From my arm chair perspective...
Clark completely misread the market.
There was a partnership with Paizo that well, essentially has produced nothing. A partnership. No advance look at public rules? To me, that was Clark thinking the GLS was going to come through in a way he could use. Failing to take advantage of Pathfinder because he wanted to only support the official edition of D&D put him behind dozens of other Pathfinder publishers and unlike Green Ronin and other previous d20 publishers, there was nothing else coming out from Necromancer to keep them in the public eye.
Then there was the whole PDF failure. I'm certainly not saying that the last three books are bad, but the price for them is out of line in many comparissions and the PDF market generally doesn't support that type/size/scope of project. Note, during one of the other threads even PDF publishers who were glad to see Necromancer products noted that while the price/page count wasn't terrible, it just wasn't the market for it. Ramming a product out the door in a format few wanted in the first place and in a format that makes it expensive to boot wasn't the way to go.
Bless Necromancer for the ole Tome of Horrors and some great adventurers and I hope that they do manage to do some stuff that works out to their fans benefit.
Clark completely misread the market.
There was a partnership with Paizo that well, essentially has produced nothing. A partnership. No advance look at public rules? To me, that was Clark thinking the GLS was going to come through in a way he could use. Failing to take advantage of Pathfinder because he wanted to only support the official edition of D&D put him behind dozens of other Pathfinder publishers and unlike Green Ronin and other previous d20 publishers, there was nothing else coming out from Necromancer to keep them in the public eye.
Then there was the whole PDF failure. I'm certainly not saying that the last three books are bad, but the price for them is out of line in many comparissions and the PDF market generally doesn't support that type/size/scope of project. Note, during one of the other threads even PDF publishers who were glad to see Necromancer products noted that while the price/page count wasn't terrible, it just wasn't the market for it. Ramming a product out the door in a format few wanted in the first place and in a format that makes it expensive to boot wasn't the way to go.
Bless Necromancer for the ole Tome of Horrors and some great adventurers and I hope that they do manage to do some stuff that works out to their fans benefit.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
In my opinion, the GSL turned out just fine, and Clark got the bulk of what he wanted from the changes.
The sense I got was that one of his partners apparently wasn't enthusiastic about supporting 4e, and Clark was already a bit burnt out by the delay caused by the GSL negotiation, and therefore neither was all that thrilled to go ahead with the 4e projects, and those made up the bulk of the reasons for him to not go ahead with 4e projects.
Clark called out a clause in the GSL that said WOTC could change the GSL on their own, and seemed to make that the focus of his public reasons for not going ahead with the 4e projects.
I suspect that may have played a role, but a smaller role that he seemed to emphasize in his reasoning. Here is why I think that:
1) Most licenses that involve no money coming from the licensee have such clauses. The OGL didn't, but that was an exception rather than the rule. In the "real world", licenses where the licesee pays nothing usually have that clause, and Clark's probably drafted and/or approved of such clauses for his clients;
2) the clause is almost never used and is just an emergency safety measure in case of very rare unexpected consequences of a "Oh My God they published Child Porn with our name on it" nature. In my experience, it's not used to mess with licensees, and there is little to no incentive to do so;
3) even if WOTC ever did change the GSL, it would likely be done in a manner which would have little to no impact on Necro's publishing plans. In addition, there is even plenty of defense to argue that anything already published would be covered by the old GSL anyway;
4) given what Clark knows about how much attention WOTC is paying to the GSL, he probably knows nobody is even thinking about the possibility of changing it, and probably nobody is even assigned the task anymore of thinking about those sorts of things. The GSL is just totally off their radar;
5) Had Necro gone ahead with their 4e plans after the GSL was changed due to Clark's influence, almost all the money they would have made on those titles they would have already made in that year and a half (?), and during that time WOTC never used the clause.
So, I think either the real reasons are more the non-GSL related ones than the GSL issue. Maybe the GSL issue played a small role in his decision, but I bet the bulk of the reason is not related to the GSL, but other matters.
The sense I got was that one of his partners apparently wasn't enthusiastic about supporting 4e, and Clark was already a bit burnt out by the delay caused by the GSL negotiation, and therefore neither was all that thrilled to go ahead with the 4e projects, and those made up the bulk of the reasons for him to not go ahead with 4e projects.
Clark called out a clause in the GSL that said WOTC could change the GSL on their own, and seemed to make that the focus of his public reasons for not going ahead with the 4e projects.
I suspect that may have played a role, but a smaller role that he seemed to emphasize in his reasoning. Here is why I think that:
1) Most licenses that involve no money coming from the licensee have such clauses. The OGL didn't, but that was an exception rather than the rule. In the "real world", licenses where the licesee pays nothing usually have that clause, and Clark's probably drafted and/or approved of such clauses for his clients;
2) the clause is almost never used and is just an emergency safety measure in case of very rare unexpected consequences of a "Oh My God they published Child Porn with our name on it" nature. In my experience, it's not used to mess with licensees, and there is little to no incentive to do so;
3) even if WOTC ever did change the GSL, it would likely be done in a manner which would have little to no impact on Necro's publishing plans. In addition, there is even plenty of defense to argue that anything already published would be covered by the old GSL anyway;
4) given what Clark knows about how much attention WOTC is paying to the GSL, he probably knows nobody is even thinking about the possibility of changing it, and probably nobody is even assigned the task anymore of thinking about those sorts of things. The GSL is just totally off their radar;
5) Had Necro gone ahead with their 4e plans after the GSL was changed due to Clark's influence, almost all the money they would have made on those titles they would have already made in that year and a half (?), and during that time WOTC never used the clause.
So, I think either the real reasons are more the non-GSL related ones than the GSL issue. Maybe the GSL issue played a small role in his decision, but I bet the bulk of the reason is not related to the GSL, but other matters.
Dire Bare
Legend
Nahhh. Market's got nothing to do with it. Clark simply wanted to support the latest edition of D&D. He was able to do it with 3rd Edition, and was excited to do it for 4th Edition. Obviously, things didn't work out.
The GSL not being as friendly as the OGL isn't really a market issue, it's a licensing issue.
Potential sales of 4e-compatible product vs Pathfinder-compatible product would be a market issue. But I really doubt the Pathfinder audience is larger than the 4e audience . . . although perhaps the Pathfinder "3rd Party" audience might be larger than the 4e "3rd Party" audience . . . but that's only true in hindsight, if at all.
And, while I'm sure Clark would have wanted to see lots of copies of whatever products he had planned, he was more interested in simply doing what he wanted rather than "raking" in the bucks. Market concerns seem secondary to this guy (which I like).
Treebore
First Post
I agree, and so does Clark. If you do a little searching on the NEcromancer boards you might find the thread where he and I discussed that very thing.
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