Why did the Scarred Lands fail?

[Nightfall]

Archy,

A while back on another site (I forget where) there was mention of the fact that Vesh (the country of the Vigils) and Darakenee (home to Emperor Klum and the most neutral country around) were going to be done as French sourcebooks. WW apparently let them do that.

To my knowledge there's nothing about Albadia. There is however one on Ankili.

 

[Turjan]

@Nightfall: In one of the other recent Scarred Lands threads here on EN World somebody from France mentioned that the French publisher of the "Terres Balafrées" (as they are called in French), Hexagonal, will first translate further titles into French during 2005, and afterwards they want to continue with their own supplements regarding Ghelspad, like Vesh. They want to try whether this will be economically successful or not.

 

[Nightfall]

Tur,

Thanks for the help.

 

[Archibald Theocliste]

Thanks for the clarification Nightfall.
I'll check the shop's listing about their products for their website is not up to date.

@ Turjan

Yup. As you said Hexagonal told us that they will publish a Sourcebook about Vesh in November 05. As you said if it's successful they'll try to write more products, but that's assuming they get the rights to do so from WW and at the time of the news that wasn't 100% sure.
There will be only 4 scarred Lands releases here in 05 including Vesh, but with the support they give to the setting with their magazine it is probably ok. At least people won't be crushed or suffocate under a mountain of books.

 

[JoeGKushner]

@Nightfall: In one of the other recent Scarred Lands threads here on EN World somebody from France mentioned that the French publisher of the "Terres Balafrées" (as they are called in French), Hexagonal, will first translate further titles into French during 2005, and afterwards they want to continue with their own supplements regarding Ghelspad, like Vesh. They want to try whether this will be economically successful or not.

Damn the French! First they have all those great Hawkmoon supplements and now this!

 

[Estlor]

The downfall of the Scarred Lands can really be attributed to one thing: market oversaturation.

On one hand this was S&SS's problem. They produced an insane amount of products for the setting that, in many ways, rivaled what was seen for Forgotten Realms over a four year period near the end of TSR's life. It's impossible for anyone to keep up with the SL and still follow mainstream D&D releases. What helped slow the bleeding was the diversification of S&SS, mixing in Malhavok, Necromancer, and Firey Dragon products that veered away from the SL line. But, in the end, S&SS spent too much time releasing nothing but SL products. Quality fell, intrest waned, and soon the expense of another product was greater than the offset profits elsewhere. A big warning sign should have been when Relics & Rituals stopped being about SL magic and started being about time period mini-settings.

On the other hand, 3e (and 3.5e) D&D is an aging product. In the beginning there was a limit to available information, but WotC and other D20 companies have covered and recovered most topics anyone concerns themselves with. Lately WotC has made a particular effort in "branding" among D&D products, making sub-lines that detail specific topics and are easily identifiable. It builds repeat purchase confidence. Further, the aura of "official" makes a lot of gamers trust WotC rules over similar D20 rules regardless of which is more balanced or better written. With room for new material under this edition thinning on all sides, it makes it hard to push a bloated, dated, mechanically questionable setting in a market currently defined by a drive to push tools into gamers' hands that allow them to ignore campaign settings entirely.

 

[Turjan]

What helped slow the bleeding was the diversification of S&SS, mixing in Malhavok, Necromancer, and Firey Dragon products that veered away from the SL line.

Well, I won't comment on all of your points, as I take them as an opinion, but here's a tidbit regarding S&SS, a quote from Monte Cook when he was asked about Malhavoc and Sword & Sorcery:

"A nitpicky point. We’re an imprint of Sword & Sorcery, not Sword & Sorcery Studios. S&S is the combined network of Necromancer, Arthaus, us, and S&SS. I know that’s confusing, but S&SS are the guys who make Scarred Lands products, Creature Collection, Relics and Rituals, and so on. Sword & Sorcery [without the ”Studios”] is all of us together." (Quote taken from "D20 Filtered" by Silven Publishing)


@Nightfall, Archibald, Joe: I'm sure that somebody will translate a Vesh addon for the English speaking community, if it sells well in France. It is still a mystery to me why S&SS never considered a Vesh supplement, although they had so many booklets coming out for the Scarred Lands during the last years. The "Vigil Watch" books simply asked for such a supplement. I suppose that S&SS never had trust into the setting itself, peering on the general d20 market when they decided what to publish next. This means they went with the unusual bits of the Scarred Lands that can be plundered for other settings while leaving the core pieces of the SL untouched.

 

[Nightfall]

Probably but also there was a lot of transition going on as Anthony Pryor was, for a time, a developer before they put Joe on. Then Anthony moved out of S&SS, leaving Joe to hold the reins. I don't know much else before that but that was the status quo at the time of SLCS: Ghelspad through the current part of the Scarred Lands era.

 

[Sebastian Francis]

Exactly correct.
SL was a big success.
X-Files was not a failure. They just don't make it anymore.

IMO, both X-files and SL were well ready to not be made anymore.......
But they were both very much a success.

You're assuming, of course, that serial television shows and RPG campaign settings are somehow parallel products, and that what is true of one (TV) is by default true of the other (RPG).

Nonsense.

If Scarred Lands had been popular, it would still be in print. End of discussion.

 

[eyebeams]

You're assuming, of course, that serial television shows and RPG campaign settings are somehow parallel products, and that what is true of one (TV) is by default true of the other (RPG).

Nonsense.

If Scarred Lands had been popular, it would still be in print. End of discussion.

Popular compared to what, exactly? It's safe to say SL outsold most 3rd party settings -- but other companies don't expect the same margins as White Wolf/SSS does and don't have what are potentially better moneymakers to sink dough into either. For something that began as an implied setting for D&D supplements, it grew beyond expectations.

I speculate that we'll see the Scarred Lands come back if D&D4 uses the OGL/D20STL (or something similar), probably using a more centralized series of releases with a big omnibus followed by things where the setting's more implied, like the CC series.

What I think it would be really great for is a video game license. Scarred Lands has very "zone"-like locales, justifications for all kinds of monsters and PC races that are familiar enough to run as is, but different enough to give designers something to play with.