# I think TSR was right to publish so much material



## Silverblade The Ench (Aug 26, 2010)

over years there's been a point brought up often that TSR produced too much stuff for AD&D, and that was bad for the game and cost them money.
I strongly disagree.

A game needs BREADTH of appeal. This requires catering to lots of people with differing tastes, and generating lots of interest.
Having lots of players, attracted by lots of varied things interesting to them, is vital

Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? _Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!_

All this made D&D a very fertile, fun thing to be involved with 

3rd ed kept a good deal of interest by the Open Game licence with many variant folk producing interesting material (Ihave lots of the Slayers Guides for example, and other stuff). 

IMHO however, WOTC _"cut their own nose off to spite their face"_ with the more strict 4th ed system and stopping pdfs.
Sure, piracy and competitors may suck, but, you lose interest of players, they expect and want lots of "stuff", to keep interest high, making a broad fun community.
No one company can create enough content to satisfy a happy "bubbling with excitement" fan base. (This also applies most definately to MMOs said that to them before long time ago, D&D like it or not is in competition with them for folks' spare time)

Hence fan content and competitors are good at keeping the game "bubbling" with excitement, keeping the interest is key, not mere sales income 1st and foremost. The "buzz" will make more money than being a tightwad.
Closed tight control always ends up slowly eroding user base numbers.

TSR failed because of bad financial leadership and foolish investment from what I can gather, not from too much AD&D inventory _per se_. (the dice issue was the biggie, poor relations/oversight with important seller, She Who Must Not Be Named, etc )

Thus would D&D not be best served by making a LOT of varied material and having looser licencing?


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## (Psi)SeveredHead (Aug 26, 2010)

TSR went overboard. There was little quality control, there were too many competing lines, there were lines that should have been allowed to die. This was part of their history of poor management.

More isn't always better. Perhaps WotC swung too far to the other extreme with 4e, but that doesn't excuse TSR's bad business practices.


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## amerigoV (Aug 26, 2010)

If someone has the Ryan Dancey (sp) link about when he went to TSR for due diligence, that would give you some good insight. Its not that producing material was bad, it was they produced material without (1) balancing it to other stuff and (2) without researching what the market would buy. They had warehouses full of unsold stuff.


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## DragonLancer (Aug 26, 2010)

While I agree that TSR made mistakes during that time, I have to agree that as a fan of D&D it was some of the best times with 2-3 new purchases every month for a good few years.


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## Nadaka (Aug 26, 2010)

It definately sucks that there is no longer an official source of PDF's for WotC material both 3e and 4e.

But a large volume of products is only a good thing if they are all being bought. The problem with TSR back in the day was that all those vast numbers of books didn't sell and bankrupted the company. This was due to general waning interest in the hobby, strong competition from the alternative horror/fantas World of Darkness and perhaps even customers that felt overwhelmed by their options.


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## Scribble (Aug 26, 2010)

After hearing the Gencon Upcoming Releases podcast I have to say I'm really excited about the direction WoTC is taking for the first time in a while...

I feel like they kind of got trapped into just releasing the same thing over and over and over... Books with more feats, spells, PRCs... Over and over.  It looked like the same was happening with 4e too.

But now they're releasing new stuff too like board games, new settings/systems like Gamma world- new types of products for the game...

The "brilliant" marketing thing I think though is all of it is designed to be separate, but have some use for your D&D games. Now I can put my money into this other stuff, without feeling like my D&D game will "suffer" for it.


Seems like they're taking the good parts of TSR's strategy and fine tuning it.


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## Greg K (Aug 26, 2010)

amerigoV said:


> If someone has the Ryan Dancey (sp) link about when he went to TSR for due diligence, that would give you some good insight. Its not that producing material was bad, it was they produced material without (1) balancing it to other stuff and (2) without researching what the market would buy. They had warehouses full of unsold stuff.





Ryan Dancey on the Acquisition of TSR


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## darjr (Aug 26, 2010)

I think TSR really hurt themselves. I'm torn because if they hadn't done things that way there might not have been things that I now like.

I know there are a lot of things that came out during that time that I know next to nothing about, but would there have been an Al-Qadim or Darksun?

I also give a lot of credit to Ryan Dancy for saving D&D and for the OGL.


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## Shemeska (Aug 26, 2010)

Scribble said:


> After hearing the Gencon Upcoming Releases podcast I have to say I'm really excited about the direction WoTC is taking for the first time in a while...




There are multiple ways of viewing that release schedule. You see innovation, I see some of that but also infer a sales-driven need to try something very different and see if anything sticks.


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## Celebrim (Aug 26, 2010)

I have no problem with the quantity of material that they produced in that era.  I have a serious problem with the quality of material that they produced in that era.  

The basic problem is that from around 1989 to 1998, TSR produced almost nothing worth owning.  Those few items of quality that they produced were swamped under a ton of garbage with low production values, low density of information (big fonts, wide margins, spurious and repetive artwork, ink bling), limited utility, poor writing, bad editing, and no play testing.  

It's notable that there is almost nothing that is 'classic' from that era.  The very best material from that era was produced right near the end of it as 'Silver Anniversery' fare that basically celebrated the good old days when the products of TSR had been memorable and fun.  There are hints from developers like Monte Cook of what TSR could have been like, and most of the best writers ended up on the team that created 3e, but 2e's biggest problem was that it was a relative wasteland of terrible products.

They drove people from their product.  They weren't addressing the customers actual wants and desires.  They weren't addressing the customers actual complaints with the system or the products.  They had their own agenda, and to a certain extent I'm not sure they were communicating even within the company.  They were completely out of touch and they were arrogant and dismissive of criticism or complaints beginning with the 2e release, which just wrong footed practically every long time player I knew and often for reasons which were completely avoidable.  

It wasn't merely that they were releasing source books for playing D&D in Ancient Rome which practically no one had a need for (and those that did, probably knew Ancient Rome in more detail than the sourcebook covered).  It wasn't the breadth of material that killed TSR alone.  It's that so much of the material was just bad.  Take 'Haunted Halls of Evenstar' and 'Terrible Terrible Trouble at Tragidore'.  Please.  I mean seriously, you can't expect to sell material to DMs when the quality of the material and imagination involved is lower than what they are on average producing themselves.


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## Scribble (Aug 26, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> There are multiple ways of viewing that release schedule. You see innovation, I see some of that but also infer a sales-driven need to try something very different and see if anything sticks.




I kind of doubt WoTC is just randomly tossing ideas out there though.  

Shrug- I see your view as coming from a pessimistic starting point.


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## Klaus (Aug 26, 2010)

TSR tried to support several self-isolating settings in the same intensity, instead of focusing on accessories that could be used with any setting and only a few setting-specific supplements. For isntance, a "core D&D" desert monster supplement could've been used with FR, Al-Qadin, Dark Sun or Greyhawk.


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## Neonchameleon (Aug 26, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> over years there's been a point brought up often that TSR produced too much stuff for AD&D, and that was bad for the game and cost them money.
> I strongly disagree.
> 
> A game needs BREADTH of appeal. This requires catering to lots of people with differing tastes, and generating lots of interest.
> Having lots of players, attracted by lots of varied things interesting to them, is vital




Gaming needs breadth of appeal. This doesn't mean that Dread, My Life With Master, or Spirit of the Century appeals to everyone or even should.



> Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? _Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!_




Who's this "most" you're talking about? Because the impression I have of that period is that it was an utterly incoherent mess with no real focus. Round then I was playing GURPS - which was a coherent mess with a deliberate range of focusses. And even that was ultimately tied into gritty fantasy.



> All this made D&D a very fertile, fun thing to be involved with




Only if you were already involved. From the outside it looked like an incoherent mess that was best avoided.



> 3rd ed kept a good deal of interest by the Open Game licence with many variant folk producing interesting material (Ihave lots of the Slayers Guides for example, and other stuff).




3e did it right. Well, 3e and GURPS. You could tell what was mainline and what wasn't. But 3e collapsed under its own weight.

If you can't tell what's mainline or core and what isn't, then it becomes far too PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) for new people to have a clue where to look.



> IMHO however, WOTC _"cut their own nose off to spite their face"_ with the more strict 4th ed system and stopping pdfs.
> Sure, piracy and competitors may suck, but, you lose interest of players, they expect and want lots of "stuff", to keep interest high, making a broad fun community.




Keeping 4e rules tight has been one of the best advances 4e has made. It means that the DM does not need to supervise every goddamn rulebook to prevent Pun-Pun or the Diplomancer turning up (or just broken spells). It means that there's no longer an intimidating volume of Stuff for e.g. the realms being published. So new players are much more secure playing 4e settings.

On the other hand they've locked down too much. More 4e third party _settings_ and _adventure paths_ would IMO be a good thing. As would 4e Modern (including 4e Pulp, 4e Action Movie, and 4e Spy), 4e Supers, and 4e Space Opera. But I for one don't miss Mongoose's Quintessential series.

As for the PDFs, I agree about the 2e ones. People playing 2e or earlier aren't likely to switch - either they stayed with the old editions or they are having fun going retro. It's money for nothing. (And I'd bring 3.0 pdfs back with Essentials).



> No one company can create enough content to satisfy a happy "bubbling with excitement" fan base. (This also applies most definately to MMOs said that to them before long time ago, D&D like it or not is in competition with them for folks' spare time)




What WoTC does with 4e is the bits I find it hard to do myself. I've never been as keen on DMing as with 4e, and the players bubble with enthusiasm. (As someone else on these boards said "Paizo produces everything I like doing for myself. WoTC produces everything I don't like doing myself. So I go with WoTC." It's an approach that works for me - and most of what TSR was producing was far lower quality than Paizo and was dire when it tried to do what WoTC does.)



> Hence fan content and competitors are good at keeping the game "bubbling" with excitement, keeping the interest is key, not mere sales income 1st and foremost. The "buzz" will make more money than being a tightwad.
> Closed tight control always ends up slowly eroding user base numbers.




Do you have evidence that the game grew in the 2e days?



> TSR failed because of bad financial leadership and foolish investment from what I can gather, not from too much AD&D inventory _per se_. (the dice issue was the biggie, poor relations/oversight with important seller, She Who Must Not Be Named, etc )
> 
> Thus would D&D not be best served by making a LOT of varied material and having looser licencing?




Except that TSR is known to have done no surveys about what the customers wanted, and what would sell. Therefore they ended up with warehouses full of stock with a total value of $0.00


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## Neonchameleon (Aug 26, 2010)

Greg K said:


> Ryan Dancey on the Acquisition of TSR




Excerpts from the article (most relevant points highlighted - things they are turning back on italicised):

*Our customers were telling us that we produced too many products, and that the stuff we produced was of inferior quality?* We can fix that. We can cut back on the number of products we release, and work hard to make sure that each and every book we publish is useful, interesting, and of high quality.

*Our customers were telling us that we spent too much time on our own worlds, and not enough time on theirs?* Ok - we can fix that. *We can re-orient the business towards tools, towards examples, towards universal systems and rules that aren't dependent on owning a thousand dollars of unnecessary materials first.*

Our customers were telling us that they prefer playing D&D nearly 2:1 over the next most popular game option? That's an important point of distinction. *We can leverage that desire to help get them more people to play >with< by reducing the barriers to compatibility between the material we produce, and the material created by other companies.*

Our customers told us they wanted a better support organization? We can pour money and resources into the RPGA and get it growing and supporting players like never before in the club's history. (10,000 paid members and rising, nearly 50,000 unpaid members - numbers currently skyrocketing).

*Our customers were telling us that they want to create and distribute content based on our game? Fine - we can accommodate that interest and desire in a way that keeps both our customers and our lawyers happy.*

...

We listened when the customers told us that Alternity wasn't what they wanted in a science fiction game. We listened when customers told us that they didn't want the confusing, jargon filled world of Planescape. We listened when people told us that the Ravenloft concept was overshadowed by the products of a competitor. *We listened to customers who told us that they want core materials, not world materials.* That they buy DUNGEON magazine every two months at a rate twice that of our best selling stand-alone adventures.


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## wedgeski (Aug 26, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> There are multiple ways of viewing that release schedule. You see innovation, I see some of that but also infer a sales-driven need to try something very different and see if anything sticks.



No viewer bias at all there then. 

I too am watching these releases with interest. Essentials doesn't offer much to my already-long-running 4E game, but there's plenty of other stuff on offer from Wizards over the next year that'll probably be getting my coin.


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## rogueattorney (Aug 26, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> A game needs BREADTH of appeal. This requires catering to lots of people with differing tastes, and generating lots of interest.
> Having lots of players, attracted by lots of varied things interesting to them, is vital




The problem is that the TSR products of the time period you are talking about were each very narrowly tailored to appeal to a very small subset of their fanbase.



> Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? _Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!_




Does anyone really think that?  I thought the common consensus is that 1977-ish to 1983-ish was the Golden Age of O(A)D&D and that the popularity of the D&D brand peaked in about 1984 or 85.  By the accounts I've seen, the D&D game playing population of the mid-'90s was about half that of the mid-'80s


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## Stormonu (Aug 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> The basic problem is that from around 1989 to 1998, TSR produced almost nothing worth owning.  Those few items of quality that they produced were swamped under a ton of garbage with low production values, low density of information (big fonts, wide margins, spurious and repetive artwork, ink bling), limited utility, poor writing, bad editing, and no play testing.




I'd have to go back and look at a catalog for those years, but I know I was buying (lots of) stuff for D&D right up to went TSR went under.  Granted, I haven't been able to read through everything in the mass I own, but I can't remember anything off the top of my head that I'd discard as garbage back from the 2E days - well, except maybe DragonStrike.

TSR was putting stuff out at an unsustainable rate - which was bad for _them_ - and I remember most people had left D&D for WoD games or CCG's, but _I_ was never unhappy with what was being put out.


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## cildarith (Aug 26, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? _Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!_




Umm, no, I'm afraid it was most definitely not the Golden Age.  It was the "age of 90% (or more, in this case) of everthing is crap."

As rogueattorney has mentioned, 1977-1983 was the Golden Age of (A)D&D.

I'm sorry you missed it.


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## Agamon (Aug 26, 2010)

cildarith said:


> Umm, no, I'm afraid it was most definitely not the Golden Age.  It was the "age of 90% (or more, in this case) of everthing is crap."
> 
> As rogueattorney has mentioned, 1977-1983 was the Golden Age of (A)D&D.
> 
> I'm sorry you missed it.




Yeah, 2e was the golden age?  Yikes...I'd rather refer to it as the dark ages.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Aug 26, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> The basic problem is that from around 1989 to 1998, TSR produced almost nothing worth owning.  Those few items of quality that they produced were swamped under a ton of garbage with low production values, low density of information (big fonts, wide margins, spurious and repetive artwork, ink bling), limited utility, poor writing, bad editing, and no play testing.
> 
> It's notable that there is almost nothing that is 'classic' from that era.




Now that I strongly disagree with.
Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape "weren't worth owning"!?
"The Illithiad", "The Sea Devils" you are trying to tell me were crap?! 
Um, no way!! 

Now, you're right that there were definately stinkers at times, but here's a point many folk don't get:
YOUR stinker maybe MY fave! 

now, I'd say the last TSR boxed campaign setting for the Forgotten Realms was really poor quality, IMHO as an example of what you were speaking of, quality wise.
Compared ot the 1st "grey" boxed set, it was awful! lousy illustrations, poor printing/font and layout etc.

And I can well believe TSR didn't calculate production run amounts to what was economically viable (as said it wasn't well run by all accounts)

I foudn many items to be fun, useful or whatever.
"Fun" is important, wish folk would remember that at times like the collectible cards (handy for quick NPCs and generla interest value).
"useful", like the Encounter Cards, that was handy.

"The Illithiad" was outstanding. So they sure could make quality.

What angered me as a customer though were the damn metaplots in novel lines so they could re-write settings so they could sell newer boxed sets after screwing up perfectly damn good settings, GRRR! 


"Too much stuff" well you weren't meant to buy it all, folks!! Didn't this occur to anyone else?


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## Steel_Wind (Aug 26, 2010)

DragonLancer said:


> While I agree that TSR made mistakes during that time, I have to agree that as a fan of D&D it was some of the best times with 2-3 new purchases every month for a good few years.




Without putting too fine a point on it? That's the publication schedule that Paizo Publishing currently has. 

Every month, Paizo releases:

1 x 96 page adventure path book
1 x 32 page/or 64 page campaign or player companion
2 x 16-20 page PF Society Scenarios

In addition to that, the other Gamemastery product line is  good for one of the following: 

1 flip mat/map pack; or,
1 map folio/gamemastery card deck

This is in addition to the larger 64 page books that come about once a quarter and the hardcover releases, also once a quarter, on average.  We'll leave their new fiction line out of the picture for now.

The end result is that by emphasizing adventure and campaign material for one world only and de-emphasizing new rules (at least, compared to the one-hardcover-a-month pace that WotC had for ver 3.5), Paizo currently has as robust a publication schedule as we had in the heyday of 2nd edition. All without the rules bloat that buried 3.5 in a slurry of power creep options, too.

Importantly, Paizo is not releasing multiple world settings which is the one thing probably buried TSR at the relvant time. There is only Golarion in the _Pathfinder Campaign _setting and its many-regional/cultural-analogs-in-one-world approach to world building is what Paizo has placed its bets upon.

Does it work? So far, the products are selling well and Paizo has had its most profitable year to date.

Whether this publication schedule is sustainable over the long haul remains to be seen -- but provided the game is not buried under its own weight in rules  -- there is reason to be believe that this is a sustainable publication pace for now.

Anyways, there seems to be a view that *WotC sets the standard* in terms of publication schedule. While that may once have been the case, I would argue that with Pathfinder, that is no longer the case.

I would also point out that the only reason Paizo can get as aggressive as it is with publication schedules is due to their unique advantage of having subscribers to their product lines which provides Paizo with a level of guaranteed sales on product ship. Much, if not all of Paizo's printing costs are covered by their subscribers on product shipment. On some product lines, like Adventure Paths, it's a robust enough level of a subscriber base that Paizo is in the black on the product _*the moment it ships*_, *every month.*

This is an important business advantage that Paizo has leveraged and developed from their magazine subscriber base and webstore.  It is a method of gaining direct sales, and making the most of their working capital so as to ensure longterm solvency of the company -- all in a manner that no other RPR publisher has ever enjoyed. 

It's what makes the aggressive publication schedule that Paizo has actually work.  If Paizo was having to front the cost of all printing all that inventory and carry it for 6 month or a year before it was profitable? It is unlikely they would have chosen to have such an aggressive publication schedule if that were the case. The subscriber base is what makes it all work for them.


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## Beginning of the End (Aug 26, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> over years there's been a point brought up often that TSR produced too much stuff for AD&D, and that was bad for the game and cost them money.
> I strongly disagree.




By strongly disagreeing with that, you're strongly agreeing that TSR should have gone bankrupt. Because the one is very closely related to the other.



> Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? _Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!_




I'm going to take an educated guess here and say that you're currently 32 years old. Why? Because that would have made you 12 in 1990. The personal golden age for anything tends to be 12 years old.



> No one company can create enough content to satisfy a happy "bubbling with excitement" fan base.




You're contradicting yourself. TSR was even more draconian with its licensing and managed to produce your personal golden age all by itself.



Celebrim said:


> It's notable that there is almost nothing that  is 'classic' from that era.




I also agree that quality was a problem. But I disagree with the verdict that no classics were produced. Off the top of my head: Dragon Mountain. Night Below. Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Gates of Firestorm Peak. A Paladin in Hell. Dark Sun. Al-Qadim. Planescape. 

With all of that being said: I think it's almost certain that WotC did over-react in attempting to correct the course of TSR's misguided ship. Some of these over-reactions (like their decision to largely abandon adventure modules) have been more or less corrected. Others seem to be deepening (like the decision to significantly decrease the depth of support for pre-designed campaign worlds), although that may be in response to their ongoing market analysis.

I understand WotC's desire to sell every product they produce to every single person playing the game. But while that was an attitude that was tolerable when they allowed third party publishers to fill the less prominent niches, it means that interests aren't being served and sales are being left on the table now that WotC has largely pulled everything back in-house. 

It's as if there were only one company making movies, and they insisted that every single movie appealed equally to all demographics. So instead of a nice mix of romances, comedies, and action films, everything needs to be romance-comedy-action film.


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## Stoat (Aug 26, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> "Too much stuff" well you weren't meant to buy it all, folks!! Didn't this occur to anyone else?




From TSR/WotC/Dancey's perspective, this was a problem.  TSR was spending time and money developing products for smaller and smaller sections of its (already relatively small) fanbase.  Folks didn't buy it all, and the company lost money as a result.

Frex:  I played Spelljammer.  I never bought a single Planescape product.  I never bought a single Greyhawk product.  I never bought any Dragonlance stuff.  I bought the Ravenloft "black box" and one or two Ravenloft adventures, but none of the Van Richten's stuff and none of the other boxed sets.  I never bought Maztica.  I never bought Kara-Tur.  I had the Al-Qadim softcover, but nothing else.  I never bought any 2E Forgotten Realms stuff (I had the Grey Box from 1E).  I never bought any of those green splatbooks about playing Vikings or Celts or Roman centurions.  

See all that stuff I didn't buy?  It cost TSR a pile to make, and they had, essentially, no chance of selling it to me.  And all the Spelljammer stuff I bought?  Plenty of folks hated it and wouldn't go near it.

All those groovy product lines divided the player base into little subsections.  Ravenloft people, Forgottren Realms people, Planescape people, Spelljammer People, Red Steel people, etc. etc. etc.  Once you found your preferred setting, there was little incentive to go outside it.  The cost of producing that stuff is more or less fixed, and the amount of money customers are willing to spend is limited.  At a certain point, it seems that TSR passed the point of diminishing returns.  They were making more stuff than they could sell.


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## Alan Shutko (Aug 26, 2010)

True.  On the other hand, in that time I bought all the Mystara stuff that came out.  I buy almost none of the stuff WotC puts out now.  Their production costs are lower, but their potential customer base might be as well.


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## Neonchameleon (Aug 26, 2010)

Alan Shutko said:


> True.  On the other hand, in that time I bought all the Mystara stuff that came out.  I buy almost none of the stuff WotC puts out now.  Their production costs are lower, but their potential customer base might be as well.



Even if it is the case that the customer base is lower (which I doubt), to quote Ryan Dancey again (same link) "I discovered that the cost of the products that company was making in many cases exceeded the price the company was receiving for selling those products. I toured a warehouse packed from floor to 50 foot ceiling with products valued as though they would soon be sold to a distributor with production stamps stretching back to the late 1980s."

In short, they weren't selling what they were producing and even when they_ were_ the marginal lines made a loss.  Carrying customers for obscure games was helping kill them.


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## Philosopher (Aug 26, 2010)

I think it's worth it to draw a distinction between what is good for the game/hobby, and what is good for a company. The sheer diversity of campaign settings produced during the '90s was one of the best things that could have happened for the game, while at the same time being almost the worst thing that TSR did. Now, the two are not completely separate. If companies do poorly all around, then no one would stay in the business of producing gaming material, and the game/hobby would suffer. My point is that the two do not always overlap. There can sometimes be tension.

TSR shot itself in the foot by producing so many settings. Given that WotC ended up saving the game from oblivion, in retrospect I'm glad that TSR did so.



Celebrim said:


> The basic problem is that from around 1989 to 1998, TSR produced almost nothing worth owning.




Another distinction worth making is between game mechanics and flavour. While the 2e core had decent rules (especially for the time - I know, some of you will disagree), the game mechanics of all the expansions were generally not well done. But the _flavour_ from the 2e era (with the exception of removing the names "demon" and "devil") was absolutely fabulous.



Scribble said:


> I kind of doubt WoTC is just randomly tossing ideas out there though.
> 
> Shrug- I see your view as coming from a pessimistic starting point.




I can't speak for Shemeska, but I don't think that randomly tossing out ideas is necessarily a bad thing. As long as there is some reason to think that the products might do well (no company has unlimited resources, after all), it makes sense to try out a few new products in this way. The best market research comes from how products do on the market.


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## GregChristopher (Aug 26, 2010)

Philosopher said:


> I think it's worth it to draw a distinction between what is good for the game/hobby, and what is good for a company. The sheer diversity of campaign settings produced during the '90s was one of the best things that could have happened for the game, while at the same time being almost the worst thing that TSR did. Now, the two are not completely separate. If companies do poorly all around, then no one would stay in the business of producing gaming material, and the game/hobby would suffer. My point is that the two do not always overlap. There can sometimes be tension.




Yes, yes, yes  

This is precisely the problem.


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## Celebrim (Aug 26, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> Now that I strongly disagree with.




Ok.  But I suspect we are just going to have another difference of opinion argument.

Let me take a case in point.

"The Illithiad" is a relatively strong book, but it was also produced in 1998 during the Silver Anniversary flurry of really good stuff that was produced just as TSR was folding.   It was produced by Bruce Cordell who was one of the few good 2e writers, and therefore it falls generally in the class of books I was thinking of when I wrote: "The very best material from that era was produced right near the end."  And, f you'd never bothered to spend much time imagining the Mind Flayers, it was probably a revelatory book.  

However, if you'd been playing since the late '70's or early '80's what you instead got was a book that introduced a new origin and mythology for mind flayers which contridicted much or all that had been previously published in Dragon magazine and elsewhere, and which was not particularly more interesting than what you might have expanded upon using that as a basis.  In essence, it is an example of the very retcons you reject elsewhere as excuses to print new material. 

The Sea Devils contains flashes of useful information, but would be a typical example of exactly the poor production values, poor editting, and unnecessary page bloat jacking up the price that I was complaining about.

I'd like to point out that the Sahuagin and the Mindflayers are Gygaxian monsters.  They aren't new creations.  They are just more detail put into someone else's good ideas.  This wasn't so much expanding the value of TSR's intellectual property as it was cashing in on that IP.

Spelljammer and Dark Sun were met with derision in the groups I was familiar with.  Spelljammer was classified with joke modules as attempts at humor that had gone awry.  I was always of the impression that setting flopped.

Dark Sun seemed moderately more successful, at least if the marketting then and nostalgia now is to be believed, but in the groups I played with the fact that everyone was psionic, play started at 3rd level, and you could play tri-kin caused it to classified generally with the trend toward more and more munchkin settings.  We never got hooked into it, spent most of the time we poured through its contents laughing at it, and rightly or wrongly the adventures and novels tie ins were classified unread as likely to be poorly written railroads along the lines terrible FR dreck being churned out at the time.  I couldn't tell you the name of one Dark Sun module, and I've never seen them repeatedly (or ever) listed when someone at EnWorld asks people to name their favorite adventures.

I admired Planescape as a setting and as an excercise in creative writing, but I never wanted to play there, nor did I ever buy any of the product.  Many people found it very offputting, and while I disagree, I can also easily see why.  



> "...here's a point many folk don't get: YOUR stinker maybe MY fave! "




I get that entirely.



> "The Illithiad" was outstanding. So they sure could make quality.




Yes, they could.  I didn't deny that.  Bruce, Monte, Skip and a few others were doing excellent work especially right near the end.


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## (Psi)SeveredHead (Aug 26, 2010)

Philosopher said:


> I can't speak for Shemeska, but I don't think that randomly tossing out ideas is necessarily a bad thing. As long as there is some reason to think that the products might do well (no company has unlimited resources, after all), it makes sense to try out a few new products in this way. The best market research comes from how products do on the market.




I think I agree. Brainstorming isn't bad, as long as it doesn't cost you too much money. It's essentially a way of taking risks for (possible) gain, something companies do all the time. Unfortunately, TSR seems to have gone too far down that route, expending large amounts of money on lots of copies of product lines that didn't sell, then _continued_ to make _new_ products on the failing lines.


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## Lanefan (Aug 26, 2010)

During the 2e era (about '89 to '96) one had to be careful to sort the wheat from the chaff...and yes, there was a lot of chaff.

The problem I ended up finding with quite a bit of it was even when I'd decided something was worth buying and bought it, 2 years later it would fall apart; and that included the core books!

Right near the end of 2e's run the quality improved, both in material and production (e.g. Spell Compendia) but by then TSR's ship was sinking fast.

At the time, it was too much.  Now, in hindsight and given what's passed since, all that material represents a useful resource to draw from.

Lanefan


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## Alzrius (Aug 26, 2010)

Ultimately, this is all going to come down to various personal opinions about what people liked/didn't like about the 2E era, so I'm not sure how useful that discussion's going to be. But what the hell.

I came into D&D during Second Edition, and while it may just be that nostalgia on my part, I remember loving it intensely. To be fair, I rarely got to actually play in a group - I was simply too young, and didn't know enough people, meaning that usually I had to coax people to play, while being the DM myself, and it never lasted very long - but I still bought the books at a fairly prodigious rate.

Mostly it was because I loved the settings and world development, especially in an interconnected set of campaign world, since that meant a sourcebook for one campaign could conceivably impact another. 

I liked reading Van Richten's treatises on the nature of various monsters in Ravenloft. I liked learning the history of the Sorcerer-Kings on Athas. I liked reading the two-part series of adventures that took you from Castle Spulzeer in the Realms to the domain of Agarath in Ravenloft, or how Orcus was coming back to life in _Dead Gods_ (which even had interludes of fiction for the reader) and what his plan was.

Looking around, I found that Second Edition did this in a way that D&D never had, before or since. First Edition tended to begin at the dungeon entrance, end at the last room, and be near-totally devoid of anything not directly related to the wider world, or even why your characters would be there in the first place. Likewise, Third Edition had so thoroughly embraced the "toolbox to build your own world" mentality that existing campaigns and pre-made storylines were thoroughly abandoned - there was no setting anymore, just puzzle pieces that could be rearranged to form whatever picture you wanted to see.

Was Second Edition actually good gaming? I don't know - I didn't start getting a dedicated group together until college, which was right when Third Edition came out and it was what everybody used - but it was very interesting and highly entertaining, at least for me; I was a good customer, buying stuff for myriad campaign settings regularly. I wanted a holistic world (multiverse, actually) to dig into, and loved that they provided that for me.

I missed it when that went away, and miss it still. A lot of other companies have stepped up, and they've done a pretty good job filling that particular void (Golarion gets more interesting with each passing month) but nothing's quite like the halcyon days of Second Edition's D&D multiverse.


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## Dausuul (Aug 26, 2010)

Dark Sun and Planescape were classics. Not everyone liked them, to be sure--I myself am not fond of Planescape--but I think they won enough of an enduring following that "classic" is an appropriate term.

In general, I would say that the '90s were an era when TSR produced a fair number of great ideas and hid them in a mountain of dreck. Certainly they were not "right" to publish so much material, at least not from a business sense--they drove themselves to the brink of bankruptcy! Still, a gem is a gem no matter how bad the business plan that produced it, and there _were_ some gems in there.


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## ProfessorCirno (Aug 26, 2010)

Pretty much everything int he OP is as hilariously wrong as humanly possible.  I don't even know what else to say.

*Mod Edit:*
Ladies and Gentlemen, what we have here is a classic example of what's known as a "threadcrap" - a wad of disdain and negativity that adds nothing at all to the conversation.  

Don't do this.  It is a flagrant violation of Wheaton's Law.  And more to the point, it'll get you booted from a thread, just like the "Professor" here has been.  Thanks very much for your attention.


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## MrMyth (Aug 26, 2010)

Neonchameleon said:


> Excerpts from the article (most relevant points highlighted - things they are turning back on italicised)




Well, keep in mind that WotC still seems to be regularly having surveys, polling, and doing what they can to figure out the desires of their customers. What people want now may be different from a decade ago; more than that, they may have learned that some things people want aren't profitable or have unintended consequences. 

I mean, I can't say that for sure. But I don't think it likely that WotC have turned away from any of these points without some sort of reason.


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## MrMyth (Aug 26, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> Anyways, there seems to be a view that *WotC sets the standard* in terms of publication schedule. While that may once have been the case, I would argue that with Pathfinder, that is no longer the case.




I would disagree here. Not because of any problems with Pathfinder, but the simple fact that many players aren't interested in adventure and setting material, and that seems the bulk of Paizo's regular releases. Which is exceptional content from all accounts, but not what everyone is looking for, and so I don't think its accurate to claim that a schedule focused around such material is now setting the standard for what to aim for.


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## Greg K (Aug 26, 2010)

I wish I could find the web articles, but I remember TSR employess saying two other factors were big issues;

1.  Not knowing how much they were  actually selling for a line/product.  They simply guessed on the numbers to produce and based it on estimates of D&D players at its peak

2.  Entering the bookstore market.  They were not prepared to receive books back from retailers and they received a lot of returns.


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## deinol (Aug 26, 2010)

I just happened to be browsing through my collection last night and I think I found a perfect example of "producing too much stuff". The Poor Wizard's Almanac. Writing an Almanac for Mystara is not a bad idea. It collected a lot of setting material together into an easy reference guide.

So did we need a new version every year that was slightly updated to represent current events?

I'm 32. I actually skipped most of the 2e era and played WoD, Palladium, Warhammer, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Gurps, and many other games instead. I've since gone back to collect some of the great stuff from the 2e era (Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape, etc.) Much of it is cheap and easy to get because it was so over produced.

Things are looking great as a gamer now. Wizards, Paizo, Fantasy Flight Games, Mongoose, Green Ronin, and many other companies are doing quite well. We have ongoing support for great games like Earthdawn, Shadowrun, Battletech, HeroQuest, Traveller, Mutants & Masterminds, Pathfinder, D&D, Savage Worlds, WoD, and tons more. I like my game companies to be focused and a diversity of companies to keep the industry innovative and growing.


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## Stormonu (Aug 26, 2010)

Okay, can someone provide examples of what they consider "drek" from 2E?  I'm honestly curious, as a lot of people bandy it about as the prime problem with TSR, but I never see examples, or I actually _liked_ what they hated.

I'm not certain of the years on this, but the only items I can think of from around this time that I disliked or would consider "drek" were (I remembered a couple more):

DragonStrike (game was okay - the video, though GAH!)

The Horde (and associated adventures - just too different and unappealing and poorly supported/explained - also, too closely tied to real-world Mongolia Steppes and not fantasy enough)

Maztica (The sound of a campaign set in an Aztec/Maya world sounds great [see Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan], but I feel it was implemented poorly; it tried to be _too_ close to the real South/Central America and not fantasy enough)

Gold & Glory (OSPREY-like books don't interest me)


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## ProfessorCirno (Aug 26, 2010)

To my understanding, the Complete Book of Elves is the only RPG book where the author _apologized _for it.


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## DragonLancer (Aug 26, 2010)

I'm kinda with Silverblade. I think that the early days of 2nd edition were IMO the highlight of D&D. There was some fabulous materials released (Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Complete series...etc) and every month I was buying materials that got a lot of use in my games. Things cut off about 94-95 as I think that's when they started releasing less useful or badly written materials. 1990 to 1994 was perhaps the golden age of 2nd edition. 1st ed's glory days were the early 80s before that version collapsed under it's own weight of hardcover books.


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## Greg K (Aug 27, 2010)

I mentioned  in a earlier post regarding book market and returned books sa factor. I found the following on the TSR Inc. Wiki regarding Random House returning unsold novels.

" These and other factors, such as a disastrous year for its fiction lines in 1996 (over one million copies of tie-in books for various game lines were returned to TSR that year), led to TSR ending accumulating over $30 miillion in debt by 1996, and having to endure multiple rounds of layoffs.[10]"

Edit: and the following on the Lorraine Williams Wiki in the fall of TSR section.

" Despite total sales of $40 million, TSR ended 1996 with few cash reserves. When Random House returned an unexpectedly high percentage the year's inventory of unsold novels and Dragon Dice for a fee of several million dollars, TSR found itself in a cash crunch."

I still wish I could find the orignal source regarding the above.


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## Alzrius (Aug 27, 2010)

ProfessorCirno said:


> To my understanding, the Complete Book of Elves is the only RPG book where the author _apologized _for it.




Citation please.

The author is Colin McComb, and in the forward of an interview with him, Monte Cook calls the book notable (in a good sense), and Colin himself expresses no particular regret in talking about it, that I can see.


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## Dausuul (Aug 27, 2010)

Stormonu said:


> Okay, can someone provide examples of what they consider "drek" from 2E?




_Note: Every sentence in the following paragraphs should be assumed to have *"In My Opinion"* appended to it in giant flashing neon letters._

There were the books about running campaigns in real-world settings like Rome and Viking-era Scandinavia, which tried to be GURPS sourcebooks and succeeded not at all. There were Dragon Dice and Spellfire, both colossal flops. There was the Complete Book of Priests, for those who wanted to play totally ineffectual characters.

There was the entire Dark Sun line after the original boxed set. The original set was the shining jewel of 2E, everything that followed it was utter garbage. There was Spelljammer--I mean, the giant space hamsters and hippo-people were certainly good for a laugh, but to run a campaign there? Not bloody likely. There was Council of Wyrms. I never picked up Maztica, but I've heard bad things.

That's what comes to mind offhand. I'm sure other people can contribute more.


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## AdmundfortGeographer (Aug 27, 2010)

Alzrius said:


> Citation please.
> 
> The author is Colin McComb, and in the forward of an interview with him, Monte Cook calls the book notable (in a good sense), and Colin himself expresses no particular regret in talking about it, that I can see.



I would expect he may have come close to apologizing for the Bladesinger. The closest I have seen was when he popped up over on The Piazza, and in a Q&A thread devoted to him and his work, he explicitly told people to be avoid using the Bladesinger kit.


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## BigWeather (Aug 27, 2010)

I've been playing D&D in some form since almost the beginning (late '70s) and while the golden age is almost undeniably in the early '80s (and yes, I was 12 then, but it really was the golden age) the '90s are a mixed bag in my book.  I appreciated them branching out.  For every bad there was a good to offset it, whether it was Al-Qadim, Birthright, or any number of interesting lines.  It also coincided with my college and early professional years when I actually got real money to spend on things.  And, yeah, I have a complete set of the historical green books...  I like 'em, though you are right that any GURPS book is better.


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## Alzrius (Aug 27, 2010)

Eric Anondson said:


> I would expect he may have come close to apologizing for the Bladesinger. The closest I have seen was when he popped up over on The Piazza, and in a Q&A thread devoted to him and his work, he explicitly told people to be avoid using the Bladesinger kit.




Okay, thanks for the information there. I did some Googling and I think I found what you're talking about over on this thread. He's asked a question about adapting TSR books he worked on so as to be set in Mystara's Thunder Rift. Part of his answer is:



			
				Colin McComb said:
			
		

> _Complete Book of Elves_ could be a valuable resource for the elves of the Rift, but I would caution against relying on it too heavily. I've said it in other places, but I'll do it here, too: Do not use the bladesinger. A role-playing detriment does not balance out a mechanical advantage. Take what you like from the book and ignore the rest.




His stance of a role-playing detriment not balancing out a mechanical disadvantage is something I've heard often before, and while I agree with it in general, I think that if it's handled by a mature player and DM - that is, they're operating on the explicit understanding that the DM will be using the role-playing disadvantage against the PC on a semi-regular basis - it can be made to work.

But yeah, if he's saying not to use the kit, then it's clear he doesn't think too highly of it. The rest of the book doesn't seem to draw any particular condemnation from him, though.


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## Erik Mona (Aug 27, 2010)

I thought the "joke" Castle Greyhawk was a high-water mark!

--Erik


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## Erik Mona (Aug 27, 2010)

Ooh, ooh! 

Also Puppets, Childsplay, and Gargoyles. I heard they were updating all three of those to 4th edition, so the proof is in the pudding. Classics to endure the ages!

--Erik


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## Greg K (Aug 27, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> It's notable that there is almost nothing that is 'classic' from that era.






> but 2e's biggest problem was that it was a relative wasteland of terrible products.






> They drove people from their product.  They weren't addressing the customers actual wants and desires.  They weren't addressing the customers actual complaints with the system or the products.  They had their own agenda, and to a certain extent I'm not sure they were communicating even within the company.  They were completely out of touch and they were arrogant and dismissive of criticism or complaints beginning with the 2e release, which just wrong footed practically every long time player I knew and often for reasons which were completely avoidable.




Different experiences.  Everyone I knew at school and back home liked 2e when it was released and felt it was bettter than prior editions. We all started  with AD&D1e, Holmes or B/X.   However, after a couple of years, we decided the changes had not gone far enough and left.   (note: edited because I had said we went back to to prior editions, but meant started with)

However, we felt that there were many great products and that these products surpassed anything before them:

Al Qadim/Arabian Adventures 
Dark Sun and many supplements (1991+)
Ravenloft and many supplements (1990+)
Complete Thief's Handbook
Other Complete Handbooks (many kits and Complete Humanoids not withstanding)
The green historical books
Faiths and Avatars
Monstrous Compendium
withstanding)
PO: Combat and Tactics
PO: Spells and Magic
T1-T4
many of the FR supplements

Some of my friends would add Planescape and Spelljammer

Hell, the campaign setting stuff we continued to use with other systems.  And, I still use PO: Combat and Tactics, PO: Spells and Magic, and the Handbooks to steal as or inspire house rules for my 3e campaign.



> It wasn't merely that they were releasing source books for playing D&D in Ancient Rome which practically no one had a need for (and those that did, probably knew Ancient Rome in more detail than the sourcebook covered).



As mentioned above, I and several of  the people I know loved the historical books. We thought they were some of the best stuff produced and we integrated them into our campaigns 



> It wasn't the breadth of material that killed TSR alone.  It's that so much of the material was just bad.  Take 'Haunted Halls of Evenstar' and 'Terrible Terrible Trouble at Tragidore'.  Please.  I mean seriously, you can't expect to sell material to DMs when the quality of the material and imagination involved is lower than what they are on average producing themselves.




I and the people I knew never bought modules (outside of the collected/expanded classic modules) so I can't comment.  However, Spellfire and Dragon Dice flopped.


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## Lanefan (Aug 27, 2010)

Stormonu said:


> Okay, can someone provide examples of what they consider "drek" from 2E?  I'm honestly curious, as a lot of people bandy it about as the prime problem with TSR, but I never see examples, or I actually _liked_ what they hated.



Some things I was decidedly less than impressed with, after having bought them:

- most of the "Complete Book of [whatever]" series
- The Seven Sisters (large blocks of this are verbatim reprints of other products)
- the core books, once their bindings gave out under very little use a few years after purchase
- the Forgotten Realms boxed set.  I had the 1e version, I got the 2e version hoping for better maps but to my taste they filled in too many gaps (the 3e hardcover version was even worse).

There was loads of other stuff I didn't buy and have since mercifully forgotten. 

Lan-"Birthright, however, was years ahead of its time"-efan


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## Keefe the Thief (Aug 27, 2010)

My "favourite" bad things from TSR from the early 90s: 

- Amazing engine [amazing stuff not included]. 
- Buck Rogers RPG [it´s pulp! No, it´s realistic - let´s include serious stuff! Holzerhein is a GOOD name for a bad guy! Puppies!]
- Dragonlance SAGA [splendid idea, idiotic backstory ("we need BIGGER dragons!!!1!"), innovative but broken system]. 

Also, far too many adventures that bordered on shovelware.

And don´t let me start on the FR supplements of that time. Many were cool, had high production values - and spells that could break anything. No really. Read the Harpers book. Wizards & Clerics were SHOWERED with broken stuff. And i was a wizard player, mind you. I should have liked it. But it was just embarrasing.


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## Hussar (Aug 27, 2010)

I think the thing that people kinda block out is the MASSIVE VOLUME that 2e TSR was producing.  It's kinda hard to imagine it now, but, TSR was publishing numbers of books and products that look a lot like the 3e publishing bubble for almost ten years.

I recall something like 70 plus BOXED sets, although I might be misremembering and my google-fu is not up to the task.  But, think about that a second.  That's something like a boxed set every other month for ten years.  Never mind the staggering number of rule books and other crap as well.  

There's a bloody MOUNTAIN of stuff out there for 2e.  

There's no way that can be good for the hobby.  How could a hobby store possibly stock it?


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## Dice4Hire (Aug 27, 2010)

Hussar said:


> There's a bloody MOUNTAIN of stuff out there for 2e.




The blood of TSR employees no doubt, seasoned with that of freelancers. 

I remember the TSR days, but I was not in a position to buy much  back then (Strict parents and little disposable money) and in some ways I'm glad there is not that much available now, as I frequently spent more than I should.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Aug 27, 2010)

1) SInce TSR was very damn tight on it's IP, there was very little published for AD&D that was not from TSR
what does this mean?
To keep the community going, to keep things "bubbling" as I said, they HAD to create their own content and lots of it.

No internet (not for 99.99% of folk) so you didn't have ENworld to keep things buzzing and making communities for D&D, 
no scads of 3rd party books on Amazon or pdfs to buy, 
etc
so TSR simply had to create enough material to LINK to people and encourage their "baby"
because D&D isn't simply sales of books, is it people?


Take sports, each major sport has a huge community and associated industries/communities with it. It's not merely the person/persons on the field, is it?
See what I'm saying?  They were trying to make a new genre, befoe the days of the big PC and console MMORPGs etc it was hard to get the "idea" into the public consciousness

Sort of example of this is one big reason why D&D Online has failed: at the end of the day, it didn't have enough content, this made it BORING. Who wants to do the same dungeon all the time?
AD&D had so much variety that it was exciting.

Please also remember folks, not every DM/player out there is hard core Enworld-mega genius, fun, hip, super-dooper 
In otherwords, not every player/DM was hard core or capable of making their own homebrew mega fun adventures, and needed external input, or they'd get bored and not play. 
This seems to be totally forgotten here at times. Not everyone is a hard core fan or skilled.

Yes I know there were some non-TSR magazines, adventures etc in the early days but TSR clamped down on them or they folded by lack of support/profit



2) Hey, don't dis Spelljammer or I'll have Wooly Rupert cheek pouch ya!  
now with Pirates of Caribbean more folk can "grok" Spelljammer, alas too many folk have such closed minds about what is _acceptable _as space travel because of Star Trek/Star Wars kludging up our damn cultureal perceptions, both of which were actually lousy for reality of such if you want to be picky, and SW is NOT scifi to be even pickier, hehe.

Castle Greyhawk was a hoot! ROCK LOBSTER!  
Alas there's a few too many folk who can't laugh at either themselves or our hobby, tsk tsk!



3) 2nd Ed TSR art stomps the butt out of 4th ed art and to lesser extent 3rd ed art. Fred Fields, Jeff Easley, Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Brom etc. Oh to have been there to watch 'em work (those that were in-house), sigh!!!
that was important for DEFINING what AD&D was.
Will folk remember 4th ed art in future? I seriously doubt so.
Lot of the recent artists are fantastically skilled, it just doesn't "grab" folks I talk to, compared to older stuff.



4) Yeah the "Historic" books in 2nd ed were a great idea! 
Agree that _some _of the "Complete" books were sucky for what they gave, but I still treasure my Complete Gladiator and Spacefarer's. I was a DM so I can't say on in-game personally if the Complete books were hot or not, just by my tastes, of course, but I know my players liked a few of the books, alas I can't recall which ones now.



5) I did say TSR had problems with how it was run, Dragon Dice (extra production line?) and book issue.
what's tragic is they BURNED all those stock piled boxed sets, books etc...ye gods....*cry* guess it was tax purposes but oh wow, what tragedy



6) Those carping at 2nd ed...hey, that WAS when the hobby expanded hugely, like it or not. Wasn't perfect, what is in life? I started with 1st ed but still think 2nd ed was best time for the game in terms of innovation, breadth of items, gorgeous art etc.
I have kept _vastly_more 2nd ed stuff than 3rd ed, and I bet that's the case with many other folk, that should tell you something.

7) I agree spellcasters were broken even though I too love playing wizards!
*taps his _nom deplume' _*_"Ench...anter" _
Been playing Baldurs gate2: Time Stop, Spell Sequencer, Chain Contingency...just...ow!! ow!!


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 27, 2010)

I have a deep sympathy with the OP's assertion, but I think the point of disconnect is what is good from a business point of view vs. a fan point of view.

Let's take my all-time favorite 2ed setting: Planescape. I LOVE Planescape. I own everything ever put out for Planescape except for the conceptual artist sktechbook (and that's pretty much a collector corner item). I am even so much of a completionist the I have the entire Ral Partha 11-6XX Planescape miniature series and the four mini box sets.

Now, since I am obsessive about the setting, it would be reasonable from a fan point of view to assume that everyone else is, and that my love of it would translate into a massive win for anything put out in a Planescape theme. Unfortuantely, I am enough of a realist to know that is not true.

Although I would love it if everyone had my same love of Planescape, over the years I have found that actually very few people do. Some don't like the planes as adventuring sites. Some feel that Sigil is to gonzo. Some even hate the whole 'Cager Cant' thing (what yeh flappin yer bone-box over, berk?). Some just plain didn't like it. 

So, although TSR had an excellent customer in me, I doubt there were many like me. At least, not enough to justify all the material they DID produce, like half-a-dozen $40 box sets and scads of $15 suppliment books. So, from a business point of view, it was stupid. From a fanboi point of view, it was sheer Mt. Celestia.

And while I was a fervent fan of Planescape, I didn't care for Dark Sun. Oh, I dutifully bought the intro box set, but the setting didn't gel for me. I didn't like the tropes, and I didn't like the stories. So, even while I was gulping down Planescape, the Dark Sun material got passed right by when I went to the FLGS.

Looking back, I am very glad that TSR put out so much stuff during the 2E days. I am also glad that WotC swooped in and saved the brand from TSR's business stupidity. Now that it is all safely in the past, I can mine all that wonderful 'fluff' at my leisure, and not have to worry that the company that produces it is going down the crappper.

As Charles Dickens once said in the opening lines of _A Tale of Two Cities:_ "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."


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## Hussar (Aug 27, 2010)

Silverblade the Ench said:
			
		

> so TSR simply had to create enough material to LINK to people and encourage their "baby"
> because D&D isn't simply sales of books, is it people?




This does not follow.

1e had nowhere near the material that 2e did.  There are more 2e hardcovers than total AD&D products.  Ok, that's an exageration and probably not true.  But, it is true that 1e had significantly less published material than 2e.  Yet, by all accounts, it was at least equally commercially successful to 2e.  At the very least.

Amount of material =/= healthy hobby.

Heck, look at the number 2 boys  of the time, White Wolf.  Again, fraction of books published (although they did have lots) and they managed to eat away a pretty big chunk of the RPG market.  If you were right, and more books = more players, then there's no way that White Wolf would have been able to compete.  They simply didn't publish enough to not get totally overwhelmed by TSR.

"Let's keep churning out crap" is a piss poor business model.  While it might be nice if everyone got a book just for them, from a business standpoint, it's a losing horse.  You simply cannot make everyone happy.  Can't be done.  Shouldn't be done either.

Stick with what you're good at, make the occassional foray into some new direction, with the proper amount of research beforehand and your business should, barring catastrophe, remain relatively healthy.  

Oh, and let's not forget economics here either.  The cost of pushing a book out the door (never mind those bloody boxed sets) was considerably less in 1994 than in 2004.  Distributors are a LOT more demanding and rigid.  Print costs are fantastically higher.  Shipping costs are significantly higher.  And, lets not forget that production values have risen considerably in the meantime as well.  WOTC can't get away with two color, soft cover books anymore.  They'd get crucified if they tried.

The TSR model might have given fans lots of choices, but it was a very, very bad model for business.  And while the health of the business is not everything, an unhealthy business is certainly not good for the hobby.


----------



## the Jester (Aug 27, 2010)

The problem here is that the OP is confusing what he likes with what was good for the game. Anyone that seriously maintains that TSR did a good thing by releasing stuff that they couldn't make money on suffers from a fundamental lack of understanding on _how business works_. It doesn't matter if you love everything they put out if they don't make the money to keep in business, and that is not good for the game at all.


----------



## Greg K (Aug 27, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> 1) SInce TSR was very damn tight on it's IP, there was very little published for AD&D that was not from TSR
> what does this mean?
> To keep the community going, to keep things "bubbling" as I said, they HAD to create their own content and lots of it.
> 
> ...




By the early to mid-nineties, there was a decent size community online sharing ideas.  TSR had forums on AOL, rec.games. frp. dnd.  There were also other bbs sites and frp sites for downloads as well. 

But TSR also its draconian crackdown on online fan stuff.



> 2) Hey, don't dis Spelljammer or I'll have Wooly Rupert cheek pouch ya!
> now with Pirates of Caribbean more folk can "grok" Spelljammer, alas too many folk have such closed minds about what is _acceptable _as space travel because of Star Trek/Star Wars kludging up our damn cultureal perceptions, both of which were actually lousy for reality of such if you want to be picky, and SW is NOT scifi to be even pickier, hehe.




I love Pirates of the Carribean.  I also like the Sinbad movies and pirate movies. I also like airships.  Spelljammer, for some reasn, just never did it for me, but one of my ex-roommates loved it.  He just could not find anyone else that felt the same way.  The rest of us preferred Darksun, Ravenloft and Al-Quadim.




> 3) 2nd Ed TSR art stomps the butt out of 4th ed art and to lesser extent 3rd ed art. Fred Fields, Jeff Easley, Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Brom etc. Oh to have been there to watch 'em work (those that were in-house), sigh!!!
> that was important for DEFINING what AD&D was.




Yep, I am a big fan of Parkinson, Caldwell and Easley.  I also liked Elmore (except for the eyes of his characters) and Brom (for Darksun).



> 6) Those carping at 2nd ed...hey, that WAS when the hobby expanded hugely, like it or not. Wasn't perfect, what is in life? I started with 1st ed but still think 2nd ed was best time for the game in terms of innovation, breadth of items, gorgeous art etc.
> I have kept _vastly_more 2nd ed stuff than 3rd ed, and I bet that's the case with many other folk, that should tell you something




Despite prefering 3e mechanically,  there is a lot of 2e stuff that I would rather have than 3e WOTC material.  Then again, there are few WOTC 3e supplements that I consider worth owning. Of the few non core books that are, Unearthed Arcana and Fiendish Codex 1 top the list.  Stormwrack and Heroes of Horror follow next as do both MM2 and Fiend Folio (for some of the monsters missing from the MM1), Lords of Madness, and BovD (as a DM sourcebook) .


----------



## Greg K (Aug 27, 2010)

the Jester said:


> The problem here is that the OP is confusing what he likes with what was good for the game. Anyone that seriously maintains that TSR did a good thing by releasing stuff that they couldn't make money on suffers from a fundamental lack of understanding on _how business works_. It doesn't matter if you love everything they put out if they don't make the money to keep in business, and that is not good for the game at all.




I agree that releasing stuff they are not going to make money on is bad.  However, there are several steps they could have taken to improve things for the company.

1.  kept better records on their sales for the different settings.  Then, they could have controlled the print runs based upon hard data rather than basing sales on guesses of how many people were playing D&D and buying their stuff.
2.  Reduced the number of products sold as boxed sets if they are more expensive to produce
3.  Smaller print runs of their novels
4.  not buying a needlepoint company
5. determining if their fans wanted products like Dragon Dice, Amazing Engine, and Buck Rogers.
6. not suing people and partners left and right
7.  Allowing their people to playtest material.


----------



## Hussar (Aug 27, 2010)

STE said:
			
		

> 3) 2nd Ed TSR art stomps the butt out of 4th ed art and to lesser extent 3rd ed art. Fred Fields, Jeff Easley, Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Brom etc. Oh to have been there to watch 'em work (those that were in-house), sigh!!!
> that was important for DEFINING what AD&D was.




I missed that one the first time around.

Wow.  Really?  You're going to put up 2e books against 4e books in terms of art?  Open your 2e PHB and then open a 4e PHB.  Tell me which one is prettier.  

While I'm not happy about the recycled art in 4e, I'm pretty willing to say that the 4e books have been pretty darn pretty.  There's some very, very high quality art there.

2e had great pieces too.  Don't get me wrong.  But it was just so bloody hit and miss.  Do we really want to go back to the black and white line art for the Monster Manual?  Remember, the Monstrous Manual didn't come out until 93, about five years after the release of 2e.  There were all those loose leave binder pages first.  Blech.


----------



## the Jester (Aug 27, 2010)

Greg K said:


> I agree that releasing stuff they are not going to make money on is bad.  However, there are several steps they could have taken to improve things for the company.
> 
> 1.  kept better records on their sales for the different settings.  Then, they could have controlled the print runs based upon hard data rather than basing sales on guesses of how many people were playing D&D and buying their stuff.
> 2.  Reduced the number of products sold as boxed sets if they are more expensive to produce
> ...




Sure. However, the OP seems to be arguing that TSR's model (RELEASE MORE!!) was better than the WotC model (release what people will actually pay for!). That's all I'm disputing. 

That said, I do think there were a ton of products that TSR released that they lost money on every print of, even if they sold them all. This is according to my recollection of the Dancy discussion.


----------



## Erik Mona (Aug 27, 2010)

Since we are extolling the virtues of 2e art, let us not overlook those gorgeous blue clip art offerings from the genius of JEM. Those things were the pinncale of D&D art. Say what you will about Brom or Larry Elmore. 

My money is in JEMs!

--Erik


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## Greg K (Aug 27, 2010)

the Jester said:


> Sure. However, the OP seems to be arguing that TSR's model (RELEASE MORE!!) was better than the WotC model (release what people will actually pay for!). That's all I'm disputing.
> 
> That said, I do think there were a ton of products that TSR released that they lost money on every print of, even if they sold them all. This is according to my recollection of the Dancy discussion.




I do think breadth is good in settings is a bad thing. And, I think the idea that it is not was based on Slavisek's claim about "multiple buckets" trying to catch the same amount of rain.  Slavisek based that on his claim that people buy one setting and stick to it and then divide themselves up by setting rather than D&D players.  The gamers I know tend to like two or three different settings.

Still, even if tpeple by one setting and stick to it,  had TSR controlled their print runs better, I don't see why that should be a problem?  You have a smaller initial print runs and base supplements and print runs on the sales numbers for each setting while putting out some general material as well.   And, if multiple settings is so bad, why are we seeing them under 4e now? Slavisek is still the guy in charge.  What makes multiple settings a better idea now than before?


----------



## Marius Delphus (Aug 27, 2010)

Greg K said:


> And, if multiple settings is so bad, why are we seeing them under 4e now? Slavisek is still the guy in charge.  What makes multiple settings a better idea now than before?



Because, in essence, we're only seeing one at a time, they've been designed to appeal more broadly to the player base, and they're not being "supported" with a heaping pile of products nobody but completionists want to buy.

JMHO.

As to the OP, it depends on your criteria. TSR *clearly* was not "right to publish so much material," because doing so destroyed the company. WOTC isn't interested in making the same mistakes. But it must be remembered, as amply mentioned above, that TSR created a lot of stuff that a lot of people loved (in addition to the stuff hardly anyone [except perhaps Erik Mona!] liked).


----------



## Celebrim (Aug 27, 2010)

Hussar said:


> I missed that one the first time around.
> 
> Wow.  Really?  You're going to put up 2e books against 4e books in terms of art?  Open your 2e PHB and then open a 4e PHB.  Tell me which one is prettier.




Sure, the 2e one hands down.

I suspect this is a matter of taste.  I detest the style of the 4e art.  Fourth edition has adopted, as best as I can tell, the same unified art direction found in MtG.  This produces a very consistant product.  If you like the style encouraged/mandated by the art director/conceptual artist, then you are extremely happy.  If you don't, then you are very unhappy.

Hense, the fact that 4e artwork pretty strongly divides people.  Some people really love it.  Some people really loath it.  I'm in the latter.  I believe is hands down the worst art ever attached to the D&D product.  

That's an opinion of course, but my thinking is something like this.  If I published a fantasy novel, there is hardly a peice of 4e artwork that I would be willing to have grace the cover.  I would feel that such artwork would negatively enhance my sales with my intended audience (because lets face it, people do judge a book by its cover).  Without going into detail about what I believe it targets, I believe that the art targets too narrow of a slice of the fantasy market and that D&D 4e is ill-served by such artwork.


----------



## Dausuul (Aug 27, 2010)

Greg K said:


> Still, even if tpeple by one setting and stick to it,  had TSR controlled their print runs better, I don't see why that should be a problem?  You have a smaller initial print runs and base supplements and print runs on the sales numbers for each setting while putting out some general material as well.




One word: Overhead.

It costs money to design a setting, to edit it, to set up each print run, to plan marketing and release. It takes up space on bookstore shelves. These expenses make up a substantial chunk of the overall cost.

Two more words: Opportunity cost.

A company only has so much talent on hand at any given point. Obtaining more requires time (to find new talent) and money (to pay it); in the meanwhile, you have to pick and choose what you're going to do with what you've got, and every designer working on a niche product is a designer not working on a product with broader appeal.



Greg K said:


> And, if multiple settings is so bad, why are we seeing them under 4e now? Slavisek is still the guy in charge.  What makes multiple settings a better idea now than before?




It's a question of quantity and quality, not an absolute "make multiple settings or don't." WotC is releasing new settings at a measured pace, and it's not dumping massive resources into setting-exclusive products. A quick comparison:

4E currently has the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun settings. Next year it looks like we get Ravenloft. Each one gets a couple of setting books, a few adventures, and some DDM figs, and that's it.

2E had Forgotten Realms proper, Maztica, Al-Qadim, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara proper, Hollow World, Savage Coast, Dark Sun, Ravenloft proper, Masque of the Red Death, Planescape, Spelljammer, Council of Wyrms, Birthright, Thunder Rift, and probably some others I missed. (I had to go to Wikipedia to come up with that list; 2E made so many settings I can't even remember them all.) Many of these had extensive lines of sourcebooks and adventures made purely for them.

See the difference?


----------



## Swedish Chef (Aug 27, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> It's a question of quantity and quality, not an absolute "make multiple settings or don't." WotC is releasing new settings at a measured pace, and it's not dumping massive resources into setting-exclusive products. A quick comparison:
> 
> 4E currently has the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun settings. Next year it looks like we get Ravenloft. Each one gets a couple of setting books, a few adventures, and some DDM figs, and that's it.
> 
> ...




I'm not a 4e player, so WotC isn't going to make any money off of me, but this plan seems to be the way to keep the game alive and healthy. 

My heyday was late 80s, early 90s. I was in my teens and had some disposable income for the game. But I was still picky about what I bought for 2ed. I had the player's and DM's books, and bought only the Monstrous Manual when it was finally released in hard cover, and I owned the Complete Ninja's and Complete Thief's Handbooks. The rest of my group had smatterings of the other Handbooks.

Boxed sets? I think we had the 1e Forgotten Realms. I wound up purchasing the Al-Qadim stuff, but no one in the group ever wanted to play, so it still gathers dust on my shelves to this day. The boxed sets were just too darned expensive for us. Mind you, the exchange rate in Canada was horrendous. A $30 boxed set in the US would come in at $50C. Some went as high as $70 on initial release. I had some disposable income, but not that much!

Having said all that, though, we all wanted to buy many of the products that were advertised. What we found was that after perusing them in the stores, they weren't worth our meager funds. So they got passed by.

I agree with many posters here: there were some gems in the pile of crap they shoveled out. Sadly, not enough to save TSR as a company. 

I am happy with what WotC has done with 3.x and to a lesser degree with 4e. Our group bought the 3.x stuff, and we've decided we're happy with what we have and are not going to go with 4e. I suspect that has more to do with the fact that we're all in our late 30s or early 40s now and can't be bothered to hand out cash for the latest and greatest than it does with quality or quantity. But I do feel that if WotC (and Paizo, Mongoose, etc) can continue to innovate and produce quality products that enough fans are requesting, then the game should survive well into an 8th or 9th edition 20 or 30 years from now.


----------



## Shemeska (Aug 27, 2010)

Marius Delphus said:


> Because, in essence, we're only seeing one at a time, they've been designed to appeal more broadly to the player base, and they're not being "supported" with a heaping pile of products nobody but completionists want to buy.




Here's a question from me: why would you buy an unsupported, fire-and-forget setting in the first place? If a setting is going to be put out there and then for all intents and purposes abandoned, why invest my time and money in it versus something that's in print, supported, and by that support I'm more likely to find players who know about it and are seriously interested in playing within that setting?


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## MrMyth (Aug 27, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> Here's a question from me: why would you buy an unsupported, fire-and-forget setting in the first place? If a setting is going to be put out there and then for all intents and purposes abandoned, why invest my time and money in it versus something that's in print, supported, and by that support I'm more likely to find players who know about it and are seriously interested in playing within that setting?




Because you like the setting? I prefer a setting like Dark Sun or Eberron more than one like Forgotten Realms or Golarian, just because the more unique approaches in the former appeals to me more than the classic fantasy of the latter.

More than that, for my purposes, I _prefer_ making one purchase that fills out the setting rather than needed dozens of products to fill me in. Mainly due to my DMing style - I prefer to create my own adventures rather than using existing ones, for example.


----------



## TerraDave (Aug 27, 2010)

I have xped the posts that say what I don't need to...

BUT, I think it may be hard for people really to understand just the sheer volume of stuff that came out from ~87-97. Hundreds of products. 

What we need is a list....


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## billd91 (Aug 27, 2010)

MrMyth said:


> Because you like the setting? I prefer a setting like Dark Sun or Eberron more than one like Forgotten Realms or Golarian, just because the more unique approaches in the former appeals to me more than the classic fantasy of the latter.




That may work for you when the setting is freshly out. But once it's out of print and harder to find, lack of support can reduce the number of players interested in it. They'll have a harder time finding the materials for their own libraries unless they too happened to buy it when it first came out.

I'm not saying that should override preferences, but I think it may be a factor in the long-term ability to find like-minded players or recruit new ones into the setting.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Aug 27, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> players who know about it



You say that like it's a good thing.


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## Marius Delphus (Aug 27, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> Here's a question from me: why would you buy an unsupported, fire-and-forget setting in the first place?



Why would *I* do so?

Had I but world enough, and time, I'd develop my own setting, replete with plot hooks, NPCs, places to explore, and whatnot. In lieu of that, a "bare bones" setting seems like it could be a good alternative. It'd give me some of what I'd want to spend time on while leaving me room to spend what time I have left expanding in directions that wouldn't necessarily be supported by the publisher even in a "well-supported" setting until much later.

But I haven't done either yet.


----------



## Echohawk (Aug 27, 2010)

Hussar said:


> I recall something like 70 plus BOXED sets, although I might be misremembering and my google-fu is not up to the task.



Woot! An excuse to post a link to this graph


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## Echohawk (Aug 27, 2010)

TerraDave said:


> What we need is a list....



Okey-dokey. A list it is then... 

*1987 releases*
[sblock]Ochimo the Spirit Warrior
Skarda's Mirror
Needle
The Wrath of Olympus
City of the Gods
Egg of the Phoenix
The Book of Lairs II
The Endless Stair
The Grand Duchy of Karameikos
Adventure Pack I
Desert of Desolation
Five Coins for a Kingdom
In Search of Adventure
Manual of the Planes
The Bloodstone Wars
The Duchy of Ten
Anauroch Poster Map
Blood of the Yakuza
The Emirates of Ylaruam
Forgotten Realms Campaign Set
Realms of Horror
The Best of Intentions
The Principalities of Glantri
Dragonlance Adventures
Waterdeep and the North
Bestiary of Dragons and Giants
Crown of Ancient Glory
Legacy of Blood
Moonshae
Talons of Night
The Book of Wondrous Inventions
The Kingdom of Ierendi
The Shattered Statue
Under Illefarn[/sblock]
*1988 releases*
[sblock]Castle Greyhawk
Empires of the Sands
The Elves of Alfheim
Tales of the Outer Planes
Swords of the Iron Legion
The Dwarves of Rockhome
Throne of Bloodstone
The Magister
Mists of Krynn
The Northern Reaches
Ruins of Adventure
City System
Greyhawk Adventures
The Five Shires
The Savage Frontier
Dungeon Master's Design Kit
Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms
The Minrothad Guilds
Dreams of the Red Wizards
World of Krynn
Mertwig's Maze Gamefolio[/sblock]
*1989 releases*
[sblock]Lords of Darkness
Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claw
The Orcs of Thar
In Search of Dragons
Fate of Istus
Hall of Heroes
The Republic of Darokin
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Preview
Curse of the Azure Bonds
Gargoyle
Player's Handbook
Shadowdale
The Great Khan Game
Dungeon Master's Guide
Cities of Mystery
King's Festival
Monstrous Compendium Volume One
Tantras
Dawn of the Emperors: Thyatis and Alphatia
Dungeon Master's Screen
The City of Greyhawk
Western Countries Trail Map
Character Record Sheets
Child's Play
Dragon Magic
Eastern Countries Trail Map
Monstrous Compendium Volume Two
World of Krynn Trail Map
Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space 
Tall Tales of the Wee Folk
The City of Waterdeep Trail Map
Waterdeep
Dragon Keep
Puppets
Queen's Harvest
Time of the Dragon
Battlesystem Miniature Rules
Kara-Tur Trail Map
Monstrous Compendium Volume Three: Forgotten Realms Appendix
The Bloodstone Lands
The Complete Fighter's Handbook
The Complete Thief's Handbook
Top Ballista
The Golden Khan of Ethengar[/sblock]
*1990 releases*
[sblock]Vale of the Mage
Wildspace
Old Empires
The Sea People
Thieves of Lankhmar
Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide
Dragon Dawn
Falcon's Revenge
Forgotten Realms Adventures
Lost Ships
Monstrous Compendium Dragonlance Appendix
Arena of Thyatis
Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Appendix
Otherlands
Storm Riders
The Castle Guide
Dragon Knight
Ronin Challenge
Skull & Crossbows
The Complete Priest's Handbook
The Shadow Elves
Falconmaster
Monstrous Compendium Kara-Tur Appendix
Ravenloft: Realm of Terror 
The Complete Wizards's Handbook
Black Courser
Greyhawk Ruins
Hollow World Campaign Set
Legends & Lore
Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix
Legions of Thyatis
Test of the Samurai
The Horde Barbarian Campaign Setting 
Wonders of Lankhmar
Crystal Spheres
Draconomicon
Dragon's Rest
Dragonlance Classics: Volume I
Feast of Goblyns
Castles: A 3-Dimensional Game Accessory
Dwarves Deep
Flames of the Falcon
Halls of the High King
Nightwail
Blood Charge
Nehwon
Nightrage
Ninja Wars
Vecna Lives![/sblock]
*1991 releases*
[sblock]Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix
Realmspace
The Complete Psionics Handbook
Dungeon Master's Screen
Nightstorm
Ruins of Undermountain 
Ship of Horror
Five Shall Be One
Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix II
New Beginnings
Prince of Lankhmar
Dungeons & Dragons Game (black box)
Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix
Nightmare Keep
Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
Horde Campaign
Tome of Magic
Tree Lords
Under the Dark Fist
Drow of the Underdark
Eye of Traldar
Practical Planetology
Tales of Lankhmar
AD&D Trivia Game
Arms and Equipment Guide
Darklords
Maztica Campaign Set 
Sons of Azca
Battlesystem Skirmishes Miniatures Rules
Fires of Zatal
Oaklords
The Atruaghin Clans
The Legend of Spelljammer 
Book of Crypts
Dark Sun Boxed Set 
Endless Armies
Howl from the North
Kingdom of Nythia
Rules Cyclopedia
The Complete Book of Dwarves
Touch of Death
Anauroch
Goblin's Return
Greyhawk Wars
The Dymrak Dread
Wild Elves
Freedom
Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix
Van Richten's Guide to Vampires
1991 Trading Cards Factory Set (750 cards)
Character Record Sheets[/sblock]
*1992 releases*
[sblock]Fighter's Challenge
Quest for the Silver Sword
Slave Tribes
Strongholds
Taladas: The Minotaurs
Wizard Spell Cards
Heart of the Enemy
Monstrous Compendium Dark Sun Appendix: Terrors of the Desert
Night of the Walking Dead
Patriots of Ulek
Pirates of the Fallen Stars
Arabian Adventures
City of Gold
Road to Urik
The Complete Bard's Handbook
The Dragon's Den
War Captain's Companion
Assault on Raven's Ruin
Dune Trader
Islands of Terror
Monster Mythology
Monstrous Compendium Fiend Folio Appendix
Deck of Priest Spells
Dragon Kings 
Haunted Halls of Evening Star
Monstrous Compendium Al-Qadim Appendix
Thunder Rift
Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts
Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog
Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
The Goblin's Lair
Treasures of Greyhawk
Wizard's Challenge
Arcane Shadows
Land of Fate 
Magic Encyclopedia, Volume 1
Rary the Traitor
Rock of Bral
Tales of the Lance
Wrath of the Immortals
Dungeons of Mystery
Knight's Sword
Sword and Shield
The Great Glacier
The Milenian Empire
Thoughts of Darkness
1992 Trading Cards Factory Set (750 cards)
Golden Voyages
Menzoberranzan
Night Howlers
The Haunted Tower
Veiled Alliance
Astliclian Gambit
Celts Campaign Sourcebook
Flint's Axe
Forbidden Lore
From the Ashes 
Hordes of Dragonspear
Poor Wizard's Almanac & Book of Facts
Slayers of Lankhmar
The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook
A Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook
From the Shadows
Gold & Glory
Greyspace
The Milenian Sceptre
Treasure Maps
Valley of Dust and Fire
Character & Monster Assortment
Rogues Gallery
The Complete Book of Elves
Volo's Guide to Waterdeep
Dragon Quest Game[/sblock]
*1993 releases*
[sblock]Assassin Mountain
Creative Campaigning
Dungeon Master Screen
Krynnspace
Magic Encyclopedia, Volume 2
The Marklands
Thief's Challenge
Unsung Heroes
Dragon's Crown
The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings
The Knight of Newts
The Murky Deep
The Ruins of Myth Drannor
Van Richten's Guide to the Lich
A Dozen and One Adventures
Black Flames
Creature Catalog
Deck of Magical Items
Dragonlance Classics: Volume II
Iuz the Evil
Swamplight
Dragon Mountain 
Rage of the Rakasta
Roots of Evil
The Complete Book of Humanoids
The Shining South
Jungles of Chult
Space Lairs
The City of Skulls
The Created
The Ivory Triangle
Cardmaster Adventure Design Deck
City of Delights 
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (New Edition) 
In the Phantom's Wake
Monstrous Manual 
The Complete Gladiator's Handbook
Web of Illusion
Border Watch
City State of Tyr
The Astromundi Cluster 
Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts
House of Strahd
Merchant House of Amketch
New Tales: The Land Reborn
Player's Guide to the Dragonlance Campaign
Tales of Enchantment
The Code of the Harpers
Book of Artifacts
Castles Forlorn 
Champions of Mystara: Heroes of the Princess Ark
Cleric's Challenge
Doom of Daggerdale
Earth, Air, Fire and Water
Dalelands
Elves of Athas
Lankhmar: City of Adventure 
Secrets of the Lamp
The Glory of Rome Campaign Sourcebook
Dwarven Kingdoms of Krynn
Marauders of Nibenay
Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix II: Children of the Night
Player's Guide to the Forgotten Realms
Poor Wizard's Almanac II & Book of Facts
Volo's Guide to the North
Dark of the Moon 
The Complete Ranger's Handbook
1993 Trading Cards Factory Set (495 cards)[/sblock]
*1994 releases*
[sblock]Book of Lairs
Cormyr
Deck of Encounters, Set 1
Ruined Kingdoms
Van Richten's Guide to the Created
Black Spine
The Ruins of Undermountain II: The Deep Levels
Treasure Chest
Adam's Wrath 
Age of Heroes Campaign Sourcebook
Elves of Evermeet
Fighter's Challenge II
The Complete Sha'ir's Handbook
First Quest: The Introduction to Role-Playing Games
Forest Maker
Planescape Campaign Setting 
The Complete Book of Villains
Cities of Bone
Marco Volo: Departure
Ravenloft Campaign Setting
Temple, Tower & Tomb
The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game
The Complete Paladin's Handbook
The Eternal Boundary
Council of Wyrms
Deck of Encounters, Set 2
Fighter's Screen
Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix 
Priest's Screen
The Will and the Way
Thief's Screen
Wizard's Screen
City of Splendors
Corsairs of the Great Sea
Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure
Marco Volo: Journey
Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix 
Planes of Chaos 
Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead
City by the Silt Sea
Fighter's Player Pack
Priest's Player Pack
The Awakening 
The Complete Druid's Handbook
Thief's Player Pack
Wizard's Player Pack
Dragonlance Classics: Volume III
Elminster's Ecologies
Hour of the Knife
Rogues in Lankhmar
Well of Worlds
Wizard's Challenge II
Caravans
Deck of Psionic Powers
Hail the Heroes
In the Abyss
Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales
Night of the Vampire
Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendix III: Creatures of Darkness 
Red Steel Campaign Expansion
The Crusades Campaign Sourcebook
Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume I
Marco Volo: Arrival
Poor Wizard's Almanac III & Book of Facts
The Deva Spark
Book of Lairs
City Sites
Howls in the Night 
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume One [/sblock]
*1995 releases*
[sblock]Dungeon Master's Survival Kit
Planes of Law 
Player's Survivial Kit
The Complete Barbarian's Handbook
The Moonsea
Cutthroats of Lankhmar
Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr 
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume II
Fires of Dis
When Black Roses Bloom
Elminster's Ecologies Appendix I: The Battle of Bones & Hill of Lost Souls
Glantri: Kingdom of Magic
Ruins of Zhentil Keep
The Complete Book of Necromancers
The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga
Thri-Kreen of Athas
Dungeon Master Guide (black cover)
Player's Handbook (black cover)
Player's Primer to the Outlands
Red Steel Savage Baronies
The Seven Sisters
Van Richten's Guide to Fiends
A Light in the Belfry
Circle of Darkness
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume III
In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil
The Sword of the Dales
Beyond the Prism Pentad
Castle Sites
Chilling Tales
Combat & Tactics
Mark of Amber
Spellbound
The Factol's Manifesto
Thief's Challenge II: Beacon Point
Birthright Campaign Setting
Blood Enemies: Abominations of Cerilia 
Harbinger House
Labyrinth of Madness
Player's Secrets of Roesone
Skills & Powers
The Secret of Spiderhaunt
Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani
Volo's Guide to Cormyr
Player's Secrets of Endier
Avengers in Lankhmar
Chronomancer
Dungeon Master Option Rulebook: High-Level Campaigns
Giantcraft
Player's Secrets of Medoere
Sword and Crown
The Complete Ninja's Handbook
The Evil Eye
Elminster's Ecologies Appendix II: The High Moor & The Serpent Hills
Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II 
Player's Secrets of Tuornen
The Return of Randal Morn
Country Sites
Dark Sun Campaign Setting Expanded and Revised
Dungeon Master Screen & Master Index
Pages from the Mages
Player's Secrets of Ilien
The Nightmare Lands 
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume IV
Joshuan's Almanac & Book of Facts
Night Below: An Underdark Campaign 
Planes of Conflict 
Player's Secrets of Talinie
Shaman 
The Gothic Earth Gazetteer: A Masque of the Red Death Accessory
Wizards and Rogues of the Realms
Cities of the Sun
Cleric's Challenge II
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Two 
Neither Man Nor Beast
Player's Secrets of Ariya
Warlock of the Stonecrowns
Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs
Introduction to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Game[/sblock]
*1996 releases*
[sblock]Forged of Darkness
The Silver Key
The Wanderer's Chronicle: Mind Lords of the Last Sea
Warriors and Priests of the Realms
Player's Secrets of Binsada
Something Wild
The Book of Magecraft
The Sword of Roele
Bleak House: The Death of Rudolph van Richten 
Den of Thieves
Faiths & Avatars
Uncaged: Faces of Sigil
Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendices I & II: A Chilling Collection of Ghastly Creatures
The North: Guide to the Savage Frontier
Treasure Tales
Player's Secrets of Baruk-Azhik
Player's Secrets of Halskapa
Spells & Magic
The Rjurik Highlands 
The Vilhon Reach
Undermountain: The Lost Level
Death Unchained
Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas
Eye of Pain
Hellbound: The Blood War 
I, Tyrant 
Volo's Guide to the Dalelands
A Hero's Tale
Death Ascendant 
Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar: The New Adventures of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser
Heroes' Lorebook
Naval Battle System: The Seas of Cerilia
Sages and Specialists
A Guide to Transylvania: A Masque of the Red Death Accessory
Legends of the Hero-Kings
Player's Secrets of Khourane 
The Planewalker's Handbook
The Rod of Seven Parts 
Undermountain: Maddgoth's Castle
Core Rules CD-ROM
Eye of Doom
On Hallowed Ground
Psionic Artifacts of Athas
Requiem: The Grim Harvest 
Volo's Guide to All Things Magical
A Guide to the Astral Plane
Netheril: Empire of Magic
The Gates of Firestorm Peak
Wizard's Spell Compendium, Volume One
World Builder's Guidebook
Children of the Night: Vampires
Doors to the Unknown
Havens of the Great Bay
How the Mighty are Fallen
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Three
Player's Secrets of Tuarhievel
Player's Secrets of Stjordvik
Eye to Eye
Undermountain: Stardock
Complete Starter Set[/sblock]
*1997 releases*
[sblock]Domains of Dread
King of the Giantdowns
Powers & Pantheons
Tale of the Comet
The Sea Devils
Evil Tide
Faces of Evil: The Fiends
Lands of Intrigue
Castle Spulzeer
Of Ships and the Sea
The Forgotten Terror
The Great Modron March
Wizard's Spell Compendium, Volume Two
Dead Gods
Four from Cormyr
Night of the Shark
The Book of Priestcraft
Children of the Night: Ghosts
Prayers from the Faithful
Sea of Blood
Tribes of the Heartless Waste[/sblock]


----------



## TerraDave (Aug 27, 2010)

echohawks graph is the awesome, and makes the point...

But since I have went to this trouble, here is a sample. This is most everything for D&D between 88-98, but its not everything, and 'cause of the way I did it, there is some other random stuff in there. (It also has two bits, each roughly chronological). 

Its over 600 items and 12 pages or so long. 

*LOL, its the ultimate in ninjaing...oh well.* 

Greyhawk Adventures
Dungeon Master’s Guide
Players Handbook
MC1 Monstrous Compendium Volume 1
MC2 Monstrous Compendium Volume 2
MC3 Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix
MC4 Monstrous Compendium DragonLance Appendix
Forgotten Realms Adventures
MC5 Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Appendix
Legends and Lore
MC7 Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix
PHBR1 The Complete Fighters Handbook
PHBR2 The Complete Thieves Handbook
DMGR1 Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide
PHBR3 Complete Priests Handbook
DMGR2 Castle Guide
PHBR4 Complete Wizards Handbook
MC6 Monstrous Compendium Kara-Tur Appendix
PHBR5 Complete Psionics Handbook
MC8 Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix
MC9 Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix 2
Tome of Magic 
MC10 Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix
DMGR3 Arms and Equipment Guide
PHBR6 The Complete Dwarves Handbook
MC11 Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix 2
Al-Qadim Arabian Adventures
PHBR7 The Complete Bards Handbook
DMGR4 Monster Mythology
MC13 Monstrous Compendium Al-Qadim Appendix
CGR1 The Complete Spacefarers Handbook
PHBR8 The Complete Elves Handbook
MC14 Monstrous Compendium Fiend Folio Appendix
DMGR5 Creative Campaigning
PHBR9 The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings
PHBR10 The Complete Book of Humanoids
PHBR11 The Complete Rangers Handbook
Lankhmar: City of Adventure
Book of Artifacts 1st ed.
Book of Artifacts 2nd ed., black cover
Book of Artifacts 2nd ed., softcover
Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix 2: Children of the Night
MCC1 Monstrous Manual 1st ed., white cover
MCC1 Monstrous Manual 2nd ed., black cover
Encyclopedia Magica Vol. 1
PG2 Player’s Guide to the Forgotten Realms
PG1 Player’s Guide to DragonLance
DMGR6 Complete Book of Villains
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume 1
CGR3 The Complete Sha’ir’s Handbook
The Complete Paladins Handbook
The Complete Barbarians Handbook
Players Option: Combat and Tactics, hardcover
Players Option: Combat and Tactics, softcover
The Complete Druids Handbook
DMGR7 The Complete Book of Necromancers
Encyclopedia Magica Volume 2
Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix 3
Players Option: Skills and Powers 1st ed., Hardcoverr
Players Option: Skills and Powers 2nd ed., Softcover
The Complete Ninja’s Handbook
Dungeon Master’s Option: High Level Campaigns
Encyclopedia Magica Volume 3
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume 2
Players Handbook
Dungeon Master’s Guide
Encyclopedia Magica Volume 4
Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendices 1 and 2
Players Option: Spells and Magic, hardcover
Players Option: Spells and Magic, softcover
Sages and Specialists
Wizards Spell Compendium Volume 1
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume 3
AD&D CD-ROM Volume 1, Core Rules
Wizards Spell Compendium Volume II
Of Ships and the Sea
Monstrous Compendium Annual IV
Domains of Dread
Wizards Spell Compendium Volume III
AD&D CD-ROM 2.0
Wizards Spell Compendium Volume IV
Dark Sun Boxed Set
DS1 Freedom
The Prism Pentad 1, The Verdant Passage
The Prism Pentad 2, The Crimson Legion
DSR1 Slave Tribes
MC12 Monstrous Compendium Dark Sun Appendix
DSQ1 Road to Urik
DSR2 Dune Trader
Dragon Kings, hardcover
The Prism Pentad 3, The Amber Enchantress
DSQ2 Arcane Shadows
DSR3 Veiled Alliance
DSQ3 Asticlan Gambit
DSR4 Valley of Dust and Fire
The Prism Pentad 4, The Obsidian Oracle
The Prism Pentad 5,The Cerulean Storm
DSE1 Dragons Crown
DSM1 Black Flames
The Ivory Triangle
CGR2 The Complete Gladiator’s Handbook
DSS1 City State off Tyr
DSM2 Merchant House of Amketch
DSS2 Earth, Air, Fire, and Water
DSS3 The Elves of Athas
DSM3 Marauders of Nibenay
The Tribe of One Trilogy 1, The Outcast
The Tribe of One Trilogy 2, The Seeker
The Tribe of One Trilogy 3, The Nomad
DSE2 Black Spine
Forest Maker
The Will and The Way: Psionicists of Athas
City by the Silt Sea
Monstrous Compendium Dark Sun Appendix 2
The Chronicles of Athas 1, The Brazen Gambit
The Chronicles of Athas 2, The Darkness Before the Dawn
The Chronicles of Athas 3, The Broken Blade
Thri-Kreen of Athas
Dark Sun Revised and Expanded Campaign Setting
The Wanderer’s Chronicles: Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs
The Chronicles of Athas 4, Cinnabar Shadows
Beyond the Prism Pentad
The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King
The Wanderer’s Chronicles: Mindlords of the Last Sea
Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas
Psionic Artifacts of Athas
Mystara Karameikos
Monstrous Compendium Mystara Appendix
Hail of Heroes
Dragonlord of Mystara
Red Steel
Poor Wizard’s Almanac III
Dragonmage of Mystara
Night of the Vampire
Player’s Survival Kit
Glantri: Kingdom of Magic
Dungeon Master’s Survival Kit
Mark of Amber
Dragonking of Mystara
The Mighty Argos (unreleased)
The Iron Ring (unreleased)
Joshuan’s Almanac
Dark Knight of Karameikos
The Black Vessel
Savage Coast Campaign Book (Online Exclusive)
Orc’s Head (Online Exclusive)
Monstrous Compendium Savage Coast Appendix (Online Exclusive)
Planescape Campaign Setting
The Eternal Boundary
Monstrous Compendium Planescape Appendix 1
Planes of Chaos
Well of Worlds
In the Abyss
The Deva Spark
Planes of Law
Fires of Dis
In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil
A Players Primer to the Outlands
The Factol’s Manifesto
Blood Storm (unreleased)
Monstrous Compendium Planescape Appendix 2
Harbinger House
Planes of Conflict
Blood War Trilogy 1, Blood Hostages
Blood War Trilogy 2, Abyssal Warriors
Blood War Trilogy 3, Planar Powers
Something Wild
The Planewalker’s Handbook
Hellbound: The Blood War
On Hallowed Ground
Uncaged: Faces of Sigil
A Guide to the Astral Plane
Doors to the Unknown
Pages of Pain (HC & SC)
The Great Modron March
City of Doors, released as “Faction War”
Faction War
The Fiends: Faces of Evil
Dead Gods
Tales from the Infinite Staircase
A Guide to the Etheral Plane
The Inner Planes
Monstrous Compendium Planescape Appendix 3
AM1 Amazing Engine Core Rules
AM2 For Faerie Queen and Country
AM3 BugHunters
AM4 Magitech
AM5 Galactos Barrier Supplement
Amazing Engine Core Rules/For Faerie Queen and Country
Amazing Engine Core Rules/ BugHunters
Alternity Ltd. Ed. Preview Players Handbook, only 2600 printed
Alternity Players Handbook, 1st ed., hardcover
Alternity Game Masters Guide, hardcover
Star Drive
The Lighthouse
Alien Compendium: Creatures of the Verge
Black Starfall (TSR Gold)
Red Starrise (TSR Gold)
Campaign Kit
Arms and Equipment Guide
Starrise at Corrivale
Dataware
The Last Warhulk
On the Verge
Threats from Beyond



H3 Bloodstone Wars
I12 Egg of the Phoenix
I13 Adventure Pack 1
OA4 Blood of the Yakuza
M4 Five Coins for a Kingdom
DA4 The Duchy of Ten
C6 The Official RPGA Tournament Handbook
IM3 The Best of Intentions
GAZ3 Principalities of Glantri
S1-4 Realms of Horror
CM9 Legacy of Blood
AC10 Bestiary of Dragons and Giants
N5 Under Illefarn
FR1 Waterdeep and the North
M5 Talons of Night
GAZ4 The Kingdom of Ierendi
SX1 The Islandia Campaign (Not Released)
FR2 Moonshae
X13 Crown of Ancient Glory
DA5 City of Blackmoor (Not Released)
AC11 Book of Wonderous Inventions
DQ1 The Shattered Statue
WG7 Castle Greyhawk
GAZ5 The Elves of Alfheim
FR3 Empires of the Sands
OP1 Tales of the Outer Planes
I14 Swords of the Iron Legion
GAZ6 The Dwarves of Rockhome
H4 The Throne of Bloodstone
FR4 Magister
GAZ7 The Northern Reaches
DL15 Mists of Krynn
GAZ8 The Five Shires
FR5 The Savage Frontier
Dungeon Master’s Design Kit
FR6 The Dreams of Red Wizards
GAZ9 Minrothad Guilds
DL16 The World of Krynn
FRC1 Ruins of Adventure
FRC2 Curse of the Azure Bonds
REF5 Lords of Darkness
GAZ10 The Orcs of Thar
OA5 Mad Monkey vs. the Dragon Claws
DLE1 In Search of Dragons
DLE2 Dragon Magic
DLE3 Dragon Keep
GAZ12 The Golden Khan of Ethengar
FRE1 Shadowdale
FRE2 Tantras
FRE3 Waterdeep
GAZ11 The Republic of Darokin
WG9 Gargoyle
FR7 Hall of Heroes
WG8 The Fate of Istus
PC1 Tall Tales of the Wee Folk
PC2 Top Ballista
OA6 Ronin’s Challenge
OA7 Test of the Samurai
The Jade Hare
B11 King’s Festival
B12 Queens Harvest
FR8 Cities of Mystery
REF1 Dungeon Master’s Screen
REF2 Character Record Sheets
WG10 Child’s Play
The Battlesystem Game
FR9 Bloodstone Lands
WG11 Puppets
WG12 Vale of the Mage
DDA3 Eye of Traldar
DDA4 The Dymark Dread
SJA1 Wildspace
FR10 Old Empires
DLA1 Dragon Dawn
LNA1 Thieves of Lankhmar
PC3 Sea People
DLR1 Otherlands
WGA1 Falcons Revenge
SJR1 Lost Ships
FRA1 Storm Riders
LC2 Inside Ravens Bluff
LC1 Gateway to Ravens Bluff (?)
DDA1 Arena of Thyatis
DLA2 Dragon Dawn
SJA2 Skull and Crossbows
GAZ13 The Shadow Elves
WGA2 Falconmaster
FRA2 Black Courser
DLC1 DragonLance Classics Vol. 1
WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins
MAGIC1 The Magic Encyclopedia Vol. 1
DLA3 Dragon’s Rest
LNR1 Wonders of Lankhmar
DDA2 Legions of Thyatis
FOR1 Draconomicon
RA1 Feast of Goblyns
SJA3 Crystal Spheres
FR11 Dwarves Deep
FA1 Halls of the High King
WGA3 Flames of the Falcon
HWA1 Nightwall
FRA3 Blood Charge
LNA2 Nehwon
GAZ14 Atraughin Clans
FROA1 Ninja Wars
DDREF1 Character Sheets
WGA4 Vecna Lives!
HWA2 Nightrage
HWA3 Nightstorm
SJR2 Realmspace
SJR3 Spelljammer Dungeon Master’s Screen
DLS1 New Beginnings
LC4 Port of Raven’s Bluff
LC3 Nightwatch in the Living City
WGS1 The Five Shall be One
LNA3 Prince of Lankhmar
DLS2 Tree Lords
FR13 Anauroch
RA2 Ship of Horrors
HR1 Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
HR2 Charlemagne’s Paladins Sourcebook
FR12 The Horde Campaign
SJA4 Under the Dark Fist
FOR2 Drow of the Underdark
DLS3 Oak Lords
SJR4 Practical Planetology
LNR2 Tales of Lankhmar
HHQ1 Fighter’s Challenge
RR1 Darklords
HWR1 Sons of Azca
FMA1 Fires of Zatal
DLS4 Wild Elves
Battlesystem Skirmishes
RR2 Book of Crypts
WGS2 Howl from the North
RA3 Touch of Death
HWR2 Kingdom of Nithia
FMA2 Endless Armies
FA2 Nightmare Keep
Quest for the Silver Sword
SJS1 Goblin’s Return
DLR2 Taladas: The Minotaurs
RR3 Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires
FOR3 Pirates of the Sea of Fallen Stars
SJQ1 Heart of the Enemy
RR4 Islands of Terror
FMQ1 City of Gold
Assault on Raven’s Ruin
FR14 Great Glacier
RQ1 Night of the Walking Dead
GR1 Strongholds Foldups
FRQ1 The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar
RR5 Van Richten’s Guide to the Ghost
CR1 Wizard’s Spell Cards
Thunder Rift
Aurora’s Whole Realms Catalog
HHQ2 Wizard’s Challenge 2
WGR2 Treasures of Greyhawk
SJR5 The Rock of Bral
CR2 Priest Spell Cards
Character and Monster Assortment Pack
RQ2 Thoughts of Darkness
GR2 Dungeons of Mystery Fold Ups
ALQ1 Golden Voyages
PC4 Night Howlers
FRQ2 Hordes of Dragonspear
HR4 Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook
LNQ1 Slayer’s of Lankhmar
AC1010 Poor Wizards Almanac I
FR15 Gold and Glory
SJR6 Greyspace
RQ3 From the Shadows
HR3 Celts Campaign Sourcebook
GR3 Treasure Maps
HWQ1 The Milenian Sceptre
Volo’s Guide to Waterdeep
REF6 Rogues Gallery 3rd ed.
DLQ1 Knight’s Sword
DLQ2 Filnt’s Axe
DLR3 Unsung Heroes
HWR3 Milenian Empire
WGQ1 Patriots of Ulek
WGR3 Rary the Traitor
Sword and Shield
FR16 the Shining South
FRM1 The Jungles of Chult
FOR4 Code of the Harpers
FRQ3 Doom of Daggerdale
FRS1 The Dalelands
Volo’s Guide to the North
DLC2 DragonLance Classics Vol. 2
DLT1 New Tales - The Land Reborn
DLT2 The Book of Lairs (DragonLance)
WGR4 The Marklands
Ivid the Undying (not released)
WGR5 Iuz the Evil
TM3 Krynn Trail Map
TM4 Waterdeep Trail Map
TM5 Kara-Tur Trail Map
TM1 The Western Countries Trail Map
TM2 The Eastern Countries Trail Map
WGR6 City of Skulls
WGM1 Borderwatch
CR4 Deck of Encounters: Set 1
HR6 Age of Heroes Sourcebook
SJR7 Krynnspace
Cormyr
SJR8 Space Lairs
RR6 Van Richten’s Guide to the Lich
RM1 Roots of Evil
RM2 The Created
RM3 Web of Illusion
RR7 Van Richten’s Guide to Werebeasts
Van Richten’s Guide to the Created
RM4 House of Strahd
RM5 Dark of the Moon
HHQ3 Thief’s Challenge
MAGIC2 The Magic Encyclopedia Vol. 2
GA1 The Murky Deep
CR3 Deck of Magical Items
GA2 Swamplight
HR5 The Glory of Rome Campaign Sourcebook
Treasure Chest
Fighters Challenge II
GA3 Tales of Enchantment
HHQ4 Cleric’s Challenge
FOR5 Elves of Evermeet
ALQ2 Assassin Mountain
ALQ3 A Dozen and One Adventures
ALQ4 Secret’s of the Lamp
The Knight of Newts
Rage of the Rakasta
In the Phantom’s Wake
DMR1 Dungeon Master’s Screen
DMR2 Creature Catalog, 2nd ed.
Adam’s Wrath
Ruined Kingdoms
AC1011 Poor Wizard’s Almanac II
CR5 Deck of Encounters: Set 2
Marco Volo: Departure
Temple, Tower, and Tomb
Corsairs of the Great Sea
Marco Volo: Journey
Van Richten’s Guide to the Ancient Dead
The Awakening
DLC3 DragonLance Classics Vol. 3
Wizard’s Challenge II
Marco Volo: Arrival
Hour of the Knife
Fighter’s Screen
CR6 Deck of Psionic Powers
Caravans
Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast
Rogues in Lankhmar
Priest’s Screen
Thief’s Screen
City Sites
Book of Lairs (Forgotten Realms)
Howls on the Night
Cities of Bone
Wizard’s Screen
HR7 The Crusades Historical Reference
Cutthroats of Lankhmar
The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga
Jakandor: Island of Legend
The Moonsea
FOR6 The Seven Sisters
When Black Roses Bloom
Van Richten’s Guide to Fiends
Thief’s Challenge II
Castle Sites
Avengers in Lankhmar
Country Sites
Cleric’s Challenge II
The Sword of the Dales
The Secret of Spiderhaunt
Volo’s Guide to Cormyr
FOR7 Giantcraft
FOR8 The Return of Randal Morn
Elminster’s Ecologies I: Battle of Bones
Elminster’s Ecologies II: High Moor
Pages from the Mages
Wizards and Rogues of the Realms
Circle of Darkness
A Light in the Belfry
Chilling Tales
Van Richten’s Guide to the Vistani
The Evil Eye
The Gothic Earth Gazetteer
Neither Man Nor Beast
Red Steel, Savage Baronies
Red Steel, Orc’s Head
Red Steel Campaign Themes (unreleased; music on CDs)
Labyrinth of Madness
DM Screen and Master Index
Chronomancer
Shaman
The Silver Key
FOR10 Warriors and Priests of the Realms
Forged of Darkness
Jakandor: Isle of War
Jakandor: Isle of Destiny
Children of the Night: Vampires
Den of Thieves
Faiths & Avatars
Heroes of Defiance
Treasure Tales
Undermountain Trilogy I: The Lost Level
Vilhon Reach
I Tyrant
Eye of Pain
Death Unchained
Volo’s Guide to the Dalelands
Heroes’ Lorebook
Death Ascendant
Undermountain Trilogy II: Maddgoth’s Castle
A Guide to Transylvania
Eye of Doom
Four from Cormyr
World Builder’s Guidebook
Gates of Firestorm Peak
A Hero’s Tale
Volo’s Guide to All Things Magical
Eye to Eye
The Forgotten Terror
Undermountain Trilogy III: Stardock
The Sea Devils
How the Mighty Are Fallen
Servants of Darkness
Evil Tide
Heroes of Sorcery
Castle Spulzeer
Prayers from the Faithful
Heroes of Hope
FOR11 Cult of the Dragon
College of Wizardry
Night of the Shark
Wings of Fury
Villain’s Lorebook
Citadel of Light
Children of the Night: Ghosts
Dungeon Builders Guide Book
The Fall of Myth Drannor
Champions of the Mists
Sea of Blood
Empires of the Shining Sea
Hellgate Keep
Powers & Pantheons
The Bestiary
Saga Fate Deck
A Saga Companion
Moonlight Madness
The Illithiad
A Darkness Gathering
Masters of Eternal Night
Dawn of the Overmind
The Lost Shrine of Bundashatur
For Duty and Deity
(LC7) The City of Ravens Bluff
Return of the Eight
Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins
A Players Guide to Greyhawk
The Star Cairns
Crypt of Lyzandred
The Doomgrinder
Vecna Reborn
Children of the Night: Werebeasts
Reunion
Demihuman Deities
A Paladin in Hell
Seeds of Chaos
Palanthus
Calimport
(LC8) Kidnapped!
L3 Deep Dwarven Delve
FOR12 Demihumans of the Realms
ALT: Starships
MSH: Fantastic Four Roster Book
The Shattered Circle
The Vortex of Madness
Return to the Keep on the Borderlands
ALT: SD: Planet of Darkness
AD&D/SAGA: DL: The Sylvan Veil
Wrath of the Minotaur
The Accursed Tower
ALT: SD: Outbound: An Explorer’s Guide
Axe of the Dwarvish Lords
Skullport
DragonLance Classics 15th Anniversary Edition
Priest’s Spell Compendium Volume I
Children of the Night:  The Created
Warriors of Heaven
Chaos Spawn
Eye of the Wyvern
The Scarlet Brotherhood
Road to Danger
Destiny of Kings
Carnival
Council of Wyrms Setting
Reverse Dungeon
Sea of Fallen Stars


----------



## MrMyth (Aug 27, 2010)

billd91 said:


> That may work for you when the setting is freshly out. But once it's out of print and harder to find, lack of support can reduce the number of players interested in it. They'll have a harder time finding the materials for their own libraries unless they too happened to buy it when it first came out.
> 
> I'm not saying that should override preferences, but I think it may be a factor in the long-term ability to find like-minded players or recruit new ones into the setting.




Sure, though I think it a different question then was asked. Shemeska's "fire-and-forget" comment seemed to be in regards to WotC's recent setting policy of releasing only a few books, and then just having occasional setting support in DDI, etc. 

Not having a regular release of existing books is a different thing from letting the setting books that do exist go out of print. The goal instead for these settings is to release the books, and have them remain current as the books for that setting for the life of the edition.


----------



## wingsandsword (Aug 27, 2010)

Lanefan said:


> At the time, it was too much.  Now, in hindsight and given what's passed since, all that material represents a useful resource to draw from.




I agree.  At the time it was a sea of questionable products at a rate that was too high to keep up with.

In retrospect, TSR made some genuinely outstanding products made in the 1990's: Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, Faiths & Avatars (and it's companion volumes), The Illithiad, Dark*Matter, several of the Van Richten's Guides (off the top of my head).

They also made tons of junk that is largely forgotten on the dustbin of history.  

So, from a business perspective it was suicidal for TSR to split its customer base like that, but over a decade later it provides a bonanza for fans to pick through for excellent material.  So it was a mistake, but one that proved beneficial later on.


----------



## billd91 (Aug 27, 2010)

MrMyth said:


> Sure, though I think it a different question then was asked. Shemeska's "fire-and-forget" comment seemed to be in regards to WotC's recent setting policy of releasing only a few books, and then just having occasional setting support in DDI, etc.
> 
> Not having a regular release of existing books is a different thing from letting the setting books that do exist go out of print. The goal instead for these settings is to release the books, and have them remain current as the books for that setting for the life of the edition.




I suspect that most of these books won't have more than one or two print runs, then they're out of print. So, I think the difference between WotC coming out with a couple of books for a setting and then not returning to them and "fire and forget" is minimal. I think Shemeska's of the same opinion.


----------



## DragonLancer (Aug 27, 2010)

wingsandsword said:


> Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue




I so agree. I still have the copy I bought and it is soo dog eared because every session the players would flick through and find something they had to have. Every campaign that book was in demand.


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## Greg K (Aug 27, 2010)

TerraDave said:


> echohawks graph is the awesome, and makes the point...
> 
> But since I have went to this trouble, here is a sample. This is most everything for D&D between 88-98, but its not everything, and 'cause of the way I did it, there is some other random stuff in there. (It also has two bits, each roughly chronological).
> 
> Its over 600 items and 12 pages or so long.




Yeah, looking at the list, it is definitely not all D&D, but I would not call  some of it other random stuff.  On first glance, I see other rpgs (and their supplements) including:

Amazing Engine
Alternity
Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game
Dragonlance SAGA


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## Celebrim (Aug 27, 2010)

For me, the important thing to do is to look at something like the 1995 release schedule, go over it, and then release that there is literally one thing for that whole year that should have gone to the publisher.  

Most of the material is forgettable and not done to a sufficiently high level of quality.  But more importantly, none of those books had a high demand associated with it.  The best thing that they put out that year was Birthright, which was done to a very high quality, but represented a huge risk because it was yet another setting and didn't sufficiently distinguish itself from prior settings enough to make it worth publishing even if they weren't already supporting a dozen or so settings.  If you trim out the crap that wasn't going to sell, what you realize is that they were banking the entire year more or less on the acceptance of an additional setting.

Honestly, if I was the brand manager looking at that list, I would have been tempted to scrap the whole year and looked to see if we had anything at all that was making money that we could possibly do another print run of or simply just let it ride, because its utterly clear to me as a gamer that you'd make more money not printing any of that stuff than printing it.  It's conceivable that a couple of the setting support books could have made money with very small print runs, but really, are you going to find 50k buyers for "Planes of Law" or "The Gothic Earth Gazetteer"?  Maybe, but only if those settings are selling strongly (which they probably weren't) and your player base isn't so swamped with choices that there buying power gets too spread out. 

That one thing that should have been released: Night Below.  The entire focus of the year should have been on making that cool and desirable.  A tenth of the schedule that they did print would have made as much or more money.


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## Banshee16 (Aug 27, 2010)

Klaus said:


> TSR tried to support several self-isolating settings in the same intensity, instead of focusing on accessories that could be used with any setting and only a few setting-specific supplements. For isntance, a "core D&D" desert monster supplement could've been used with FR, Al-Qadin, Dark Sun or Greyhawk.




I'm not convinced.  A core D&D desert monster supplement could have *some* creatures usable with all of those settings.

But some of those settings (particularly Al-Qadim and Dark Sun) had very specific feels to them, and the monsters couldn't easily be made to fit between the two.

Could you imagine a silt runner, mul, gaj, kaisharga, or some other similar creature from Dark Sun going into Al-Qadim?  Yeah, they're both desert settings, but they're very, very different.

Or, how about taking a tasked genie, simurge, silat, or one of those mermaid creatures (begins with a P) going into Dark Sun?  Heck, they don't even *have* a sea.

Sometimes it's detrimental to try to fit everything into everything else.

Banshee


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## Klaus (Aug 27, 2010)

Banshee16 said:


> I'm not convinced.  A core D&D desert monster supplement could have *some* creatures usable with all of those settings.
> 
> But some of those settings (particularly Al-Qadim and Dark Sun) had very specific feels to them, and the monsters couldn't easily be made to fit between the two.
> 
> ...



The archetypal Dark Sun race, the thri-kreen, first appeared in the Forgotten Realms MC Appendix.

Could you fit every DS or AQ monster in there? No, of course not. And maybe AQ should be rolled together with Kara-Tur for a "real world" monster book.

But most of you could find in Dark Sun would fit right in the Anauroch (FR) or the Sea of Dust (GH). The Dark Sun Campaign Setting itself lists creatures from other MC appendixes that could be used in Athas! Also, the city states of the Tyr region already mimicked several real-world cultures. I could easily see a tasked genie or some other Al-Qadim creature going about.

So instead of catering competing products to each specific setting, roll together similar premises and you'll increase your consumer base.


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## rogueattorney (Aug 27, 2010)

Klaus said:


> The archetypal Dark Sun race, the thri-kreen, first appeared in the Forgotten Realms MC Appendix.




Actually, they're about a decade older than that.  The Thri-Keen were one of about half a dozen new monsters introduced in the four sets of D&D Monster Cards in 1982.  They and the other new monsters were then included in the Monster Manual II in 1983.


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## Philosopher (Aug 27, 2010)

Klaus said:


> So instead of catering competing products to each specific setting, roll together similar premises and you'll increase your consumer base.




That's an example of something that I think would be a great idea from the point of view of a business. As a person who likes trying out different settings with different flavours, however, I'd be disappointed in this. The settings would have less to differentiate them.


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## hafrogman (Aug 27, 2010)

Echohawk said:


> *1992 releases*
> 1992 Trading Cards Factory Set (750 cards)



Still have this one.  I loved those cards

I imagine for every item on the list you can find some people who'll fight to defend the validity of publishing it.  But in the end, the sales just didn't justify the production, printing and shipping costs.  And that's how you know it wasn't "right" to do so.  Without the out-of-nowhere success of M:tG in those years, WotC would never have been in a position to buy D&D, and who knows where or in what shape it would have ended up.


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## the Jester (Aug 28, 2010)

Greg K said:


> Still, even if tpeple by one setting and stick to it,  had TSR controlled their print runs better, I don't see why that should be a problem?  You have a smaller initial print runs and base supplements and print runs on the sales numbers for each setting while putting out some general material as well.




First of all, I wasn't speaking specifically about settings so much as the glut of crap products in general. But, since you brought it up- 

Because it costs just as much money to produce a quality setting product even if only 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/10 of your customer base buys it.

Basically, in any kind of production business (including printing and bookmaking), there is an economy of scale. You want to print one copy of a book, it might run you $75. You want to print 100 copies, they might each run you $20. You want to print 10,000 copies, and you might pay $3 each. And I'm not talking about the cost of developing, playtesting or anything other than the printing and binding.

If it costs $25000 to develop a setting product (I made that number up, I have no idea but I'd bet my guess is way on the low end) and you have to pay $20 each to produce them and you sell them for $40, you need to sell 1250 copies to break even on development and printing costs. If you are producing four settings, you need to sell 1250 each to break even on each one. If one flops... that's $25K (or whatever) down the tubes.

Then look at stuff like shipping to stores, overhead of the office, etc....

All that said, how many people bought Council of Wyrms? Jakandor? The Rome supplement? How many products did TSR produce that it had to 'make up' for the cost of creating with other products, especially during the years when they kept churning out crappier and crappier stuff and product after product aimed squarely at a subset of a subset of an already-small customer base?

"If you play Forgotten Realms in this ONE TINY CORNER, you MUST HAVE this product!" 

Great, except that product cost money to produce outside of all proportion to the income it generated. And of the 150 guys playing in that one tiny corner of the world, only 30 are going to buy it.


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## Erik Mona (Aug 28, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> Honestly, if I was the brand manager looking at that list, I would have been tempted to scrap the whole year and looked to see if we had anything at all that was making money that we could possibly do another print run of or simply just let it ride, because its utterly clear to me as a gamer that you'd make more money not printing any of that stuff than printing it.  It's conceivable that a couple of the setting support books could have made money with very small print runs, but really, are you going to find 50k buyers for "Planes of Law" or "The Gothic Earth Gazetteer"?  Maybe, but only if those settings are selling strongly (which they probably weren't) and your player base isn't so swamped with choices that there buying power gets too spread out.




It's interesting that you single out the Gothic Earth Gazetteer. In my first year on the staff of the RPGA (1999), we put together prize support boxes filled with unsellable "dead" product from the later part of the period dicussed in this thread. There were lots of those slim Al Qadim boxed sets, a WHOLE LOT of Elminster's Ecologies 2, and box after box after box of the Gothic Earth Gazetteer. 

The room that all this stuff was in could have fit a giant family van with enough room left over for a Volkswagon Bug. And it was filled wall to wall with product that was good only for giving away. 

When we finished packing up box after box after box of convention support, the leftovers (thousands of products) were simply thrown away.

--Erik


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## Klaus (Aug 28, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> It's interesting that you single out the Gothic Earth Gazetteer. In my first year on the staff of the RPGA (1999), we put together prize support boxes filled with unsellable "dead" product from the later part of the period dicussed in this thread. There were lots of those slim Al Qadim boxed sets, a WHOLE LOT of Elminster's Ecologies 2, and box after box after box of the Gothic Earth Gazetteer.
> 
> The room that all this stuff was in could have fit a giant family van with enough room left over for a Volkswagon Bug. And it was filled wall to wall with product that was good only for giving away.
> 
> ...



Heresy, I say!

<--- Proud owner of the Gothic Earth Gazeteer (and A Guide to Transylvania)


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## AdmundfortGeographer (Aug 28, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> It's interesting that you single out the Gothic Earth Gazetteer. In my first year on the staff of the RPGA (1999), we put together prize support boxes filled with unsellable "dead" product from the later part of the period dicussed in this thread. There were lots of those slim Al Qadim boxed sets, a WHOLE LOT of Elminster's Ecologies 2, and box after box after box of the Gothic Earth Gazetteer.



I got some of those Elminster's Ecologies from the RPGA. I sent them back out to the world by eBay a couple years later.  I kept the anniversary Ravenloft mod though.

Then they killed LG and I stopped doing anything with the RPGA . . .


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## Baphomet (Aug 28, 2010)

I dont know about a flood of product like back in the TSR days, as that would certainly be bad for business... but I would most definetly like to see more campaign specific material being released than campaign guide, players book and one adventure.

There has to be a way to support a campaign setting more than that...


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## Silverblade The Ench (Aug 28, 2010)

1) I know TSR blew it, business wise, or WOTC would never have taken over. I'm not talking about their "business", folks, I'm talking about what was good for the community and for D&D 
(D&D is not who owns it)

Too many # of items manufactured when they didn't need os many _copies of that specific item_, not checking which ones sold, and the damn Dragon Dice and book debacle' were what torpedoed 'em from what I recall.
etc etc.

2) They put out so much stuff they helped build our current community, fact whether ya like it or not 
Folk saw stuff they as _individuals _liked, they bought, they played, they cared. You cannot produce a narrow line and generate that much interest back then of a very fringe product. 
D&D is now know in some way by most folk in the West.

It was not a very culturally accepted thing to do nor was it "reblliously sexy", the reverse in fact, it was for "geeks" at best. 
Now I'd say it's even more unacceptable in the UK than back then! 
Reverse in US though, but I'd say in UK back then it was more a case of no one really cared, now though, youngsters have absuredly narrow limits on what their cultures accept, strangely enough

BBS and other online things were for a VERY small elite back then, do not kid yourself, majority of the world did not have any such, hell in 1988-89 it cost me over £1000 on ISP dial up Net charges 'cause they charged BY THE MINUTE in the UK. _Uuuuuugh _

3) Art:
Hussar
4th ed are brilliant for practical useable layout, they have got that down great 
for artwork...um, no, not ONE major piece I have seen in 4th ed is "classic".
Some of the 4th ed Dark Sun ones and a few others have been memorable, but do not hold a candle to 2nd ed days.

As said, some of the 4th ed artists  have fantastic skills  For example, Wayne Reynolds does amazing detailed work he has tremendous skill, but I do not like the style one bit versus Elmore, Caldwell etc 
I've got Easley, Caldwell, Brom and ELmore posters, prints or art books, but not one of the 3rd/4th ed artists. Again not saying they arne't skilled, just the style blows for me :/

The big covers and internal artwork in 2nd ed, holy heck , they had amazing pieces!

Erik Mona,
Don't you dare post blue Rorschach flumphs!! Damn that would be like the Far Realm in RL! 

4) Hey I KNOW how much stuff they came out with back then, I still have some of the TSR Catalogues 
AD&D A4 folders, pencil tins, you name it.
they missed a possibility in breaking out into D&D condoms, though!
_"The Burning Balrog!"..."The Blue Bulette!"..."The Wriggly Womb Wyrm!"..."The Rampant Remorhaz!"_
ahem


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## Dausuul (Aug 28, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> 1) I know TSR blew it, business wise, or WOTC would never have taken over. I'm not talking about their "business", folks, I'm talking about what was good for the community and for D&D
> (D&D is not who owns it)




D&D may not be the one who owns it, but when the one who owns it goes broke and shuts down, it's very bad for D&D.



Silverblade The Ench said:


> 2) They put out so much stuff they helped build our current community, fact whether ya like it or not




The big expansion of the D&D community took place in the mid-'80s, not the '90s. It was OD&D and 1E that put the game on the map, probably helped along by the Satanism scare--no such thing as bad publicity and all that.

Most of the '90s was a time when D&D was losing market share to other RPGs, White Wolf especially. It didn't help that TSR was widely viewed as _very_ hostile to the nascent Internet gaming community; it was a popular joke at the time that the initials stood for "They Sue Regularly."

It's possible that the number of D&D players was still growing as an absolute--I don't know what their sales figures were like--but certainly the expansion was nothing like the 1E days.


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## Greg K (Aug 28, 2010)

Celebrim said:


> That one thing that should have been released: Night Below.  The entire focus of the year should have been on making that cool and desirable.  A tenth of the schedule that they did print would have made as much or more money.




I am glad you weren't the brand manager.  I, definitely, would have scaled back. However, my list would have been:

Combat & Tactics
Shaman
The Complete Barbarian's Handbook
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume II
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume III
Encyclopedia Magica, Volume IV 

Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Two 

Dark Sun Campaign Setting Expanded and Revised
Beyond the Prism Pentad
Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr 

Pages from the Mages
The Moonsea

Glantri: Kingdom of Magic

Birthright Campaign Setting
Blood Enemies: Abominations of Cerilia
Player's Secrets of Ariya
Player's Secrets of Endier
Player's Secrets of Ilien 
Player's Secrets of Medeore
Player's Secrets of Roesone
Player's Secrets of Tuornen

The Gothic Earth Gazetteer: A Masque of the Red Death Accessory
Van Richten's Guide to Fiends

(I am not a Planescape fan, but I would have included the following)
Planes of Conflict 
Planes of Law
Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II


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## Orius (Aug 28, 2010)

amerigoV said:


> If someone has the Ryan Dancey (sp) link about when he went to TSR for due diligence, that would give you some good insight. Its not that producing material was bad, it was they produced material without (1) balancing it to other stuff and (2) without researching what the market would buy. They had warehouses full of unsold stuff.




This was the big reason.  TSR wasn't just producing too much, they didn't know what was seeling, or what people would buy.  Then on top of that, there are tons of settings designed to sell big like Dragonlance, but when a setting doesn't sell as much as hoped, there's no research or adertising done, but rather another setting is churned out.  



Klaus said:


> TSR tried to support several self-isolating settings in the same intensity, instead of focusing on accessories that could be used with any setting and only a few setting-specific supplements. For isntance, a "core D&D" desert monster supplement could've been used with FR, Al-Qadin, Dark Sun or Greyhawk.




Lots of crossover stuff would have been cool.  And it didn't help the rules were different in the different settings.  So while FR essentially didn't go much beyond the core rules, you had stuff like Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Birthright that had their own unique rules that had to be followed. That made stuff more difficult to import into the setting and export out of the setting, while FR stuff could easily be yoinked at will.  



Neonchameleon said:


> Do you have evidence that the game grew in the 2e days?




Sure do, I started playing in 1993, and I bought a good chunk of my D&D library in 1995 and 1996.  Of course, at the time I was more of an exception than a rule it would seem, and I feel that WotC released stuff that was markedly better than what TSR was doing.






Hussar said:


> While I'm not happy about the recycled art in 4e, I'm pretty willing to say that the 4e books have been pretty darn pretty.  There's some very, very high quality art there.
> 
> 2e had great pieces too.  Don't get me wrong.  But it was just so bloody hit and miss.  Do we really want to go back to the black and white line art for the Monster Manual?




D&D has always had recycled art to some degree, at least ever since I've been playing.

I like the full-color art of 2e better than what was produced for 3e and a lot fo the 4e art.  But then, the first half of 2e used a lot of black and white interior art because color printing was still fairly expensive.  The PHB and DMG were two color, and we got a lot of black and blue line art inside, the full color stuff in the hardcovers and splats were individual plates.  The 1995 printings of the core books and PO books were the first to go full color. 



Celebrim said:


> For me, the important thing to do is to look at something like the 1995 release schedule, go over it, and then release that there is literally one thing for that whole year that should have gone to the publisher.
> 
> ...
> 
> That one thing that should have been released: Night Below.  The entire focus of the year should have been on making that cool and desirable.  A tenth of the schedule that they did print would have made as much or more money.




A better example might be 1996, because 1995 was the redesign of the core books.  So that likely drew a good chunk of focus away from other stuff.  And much of the core focus at the time was on the Player's Option books too.  That I think was the big thing for 1995.  I don't remember exactly, but the new core books were released around the spring, while PO was released in late summer or autumn.  That doesn't mean Night Below should have been skipped or ignored, but it probably should have been part of the marketing.  Something like pushing it as a big adventure to break in the new books.  




Silverblade The Ench said:


> they missed a possibility in breaking out into D&D condoms, though!
> _"The Burning Balrog!"..."The Blue Bulette!"..."The Wriggly Womb Wyrm!"..."The Rampant Remorhaz!"_
> ahem




Oh yeah, that's certainly a form of birth control, alright...


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## Wik (Aug 28, 2010)

Gah.  I remember these days.  Looking back upon the mid nineties, I can now think of them as "the golden days of gaming"  But, if I want to be really honest, they were actually the days of "Thank God I didn't have a good internet connection at the time or I would have realized just how damned poor I was".

Seriously.  I would get funds here and there, and put them towards D&D products (and, let's face it, other things teenage boys bought in the late 1990s - alcohol, bad music, and more alcohol).  While I had the core books, I never amassed much of a collection. 
See, while D&D was our game of choice, when we had spare gaming money, it was put towards non TSR products.  The problem being that TSR products often required other TSR products to play, while at the same time could not be used for every D&D product.  So, you'd be taking a shot in the dark about whether or not you'd have a product you could "completely" use.

An example that is really clear in my memory, more than a decade later.  I got something like a hundred bucks for christmas one year, and went down to my FLGS on boxing day when they do a big discount (you'd roll 3d10, and that was the percentage off on your purchase!)  On that day, I got the revised Dark Sun boxed set, the Player's Option Skills and Powers, and a big pad of character sheets.  I loved all three.  EXCEPT...

I couldn't use skills and powers with Dark Sun.  And I couldn't use the character sheets for either, without making modifications (and that kind of defeats the purpose of premade character sheets, doesn't it?).  Each product was mutually exclusive.

And oh god, it got worse.  We all loved the Dark Sun setting - it was (and is) my favourite setting of all time.  However, at the time, we didn't have the psionics handbook (the one I bought got stolen - I've had my 2e psionics book stolen TWICE now).  We didn't have the monster book, and Dark Sun has a shortage of monsters if you lack that book.  I couldn't get my hands on either book, either, due to my own funds shortage.  

So, I wound up trading my Dark Sun books for the Forgotten Realms boxed set, because at least I could USE that with what I had.

And this was why we didn't bother with TSR.  It was much better to buy FASA games* - one core book as opposed to three, and every book you bought stood alone.  If I bought a weapons book, or a cyberware book, I could use ALL of it (sure, there were hints to buy other products, but that's different).  

TSR made some good products, and it made some bad ones (I actually liked Gargoyle! though).  So has WotC (remember Ghostwalk?  Or the book of Vile Darkness?  Or the first 3E splatbooks?).  The problem, in my mind, is that TSR produced products that often linked up in strange ways, and scared away those consumers who could not afford to be completionists.  

* Except BATTLETECH, which tended to reference other Battletech books.  But we generally didn't mind, because it was one of those games where we could play without a DM, and that made it special.


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## Shemeska (Aug 28, 2010)

Wik said:


> However, at the time, we didn't have the psionics handbook (the one I bought got stolen - I've had my 2e psionics book stolen TWICE now).  We didn't have the monster book, and Dark Sun has a shortage of monsters if you lack that book.  I couldn't get my hands on either book, either, due to my own funds shortage.




I feel your pain. I've had my Pathfinder Campaign Setting book loaned out and never returned once, and its replacement loaned out and damaged. And while waiting for the revised reprint to come out, it's up on amazon and ebay for $200 on average. And I find myself in -need- of the book for a project right now. Thank God for pdfs.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 28, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> I feel your pain. I've had my Pathfinder Campaign Setting book loaned out and never returned once, and its replacement loaned out and damaged. And while waiting for the revised reprint to come out, it's up on amazon and ebay for $200 on average. And I find myself in -need- of the book for a project right now. Thank God for pdfs.




Holy crap!  Rilly?

_Runs to put copy on eBay_


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## JohnRTroy (Aug 28, 2010)

It's okay to pontificate back and forth about what TSR should have done.

But what we really need is to get a historical perspective on it.  People who worked at TSR should be interviewed, people who were major retailers should be interviewed, people who acquired the company should be interviewed.

Only by sifting through interviews and facts can we get a good picture.  Ryan's statement is a good start, but it doesn't ascertain the whole picture.  (And I think Ryan's not the best person to check business accumens--he was wrong about several things such as organized play and I think the OGL may not have been a smart long-term business move--no human being is perfect).

So, somebody should do the research.  We need a good book or documentary about TSR/WoTC, something akin to the 40 years of GenCon book, a very good book that really shows the history of the con without going into to many biased viewpoints.


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## Hussar (Aug 28, 2010)

That graph, back a couple of pages was eye opening.  WOW.  Six HUNDRED products?  Sure, they weren't all D&D, but SIX HUNDRED?!?!?!  That's insane.

And, no, I don't think it was good for the hobby.  There's simply no way you could maintain anything resembling coherent quality control when you're banging out that much material that fast.  

And it showed too.  Compare a cleric made from the PHB, to one made using the Complete Priest Guide to one made using Faiths and Avatars.  They weren't even close.  Someone really, really hated clerics when they put out the CPG.  Hrm, let's take a fairly innocuous class (cleric's weren't that powerful in AD&D) and cut off both its feet and shove it back out the door.

Hey, it's not roleplaying if your character is actually effective.  :/

As far as the art goes, again, totally agree that there were some great images in 2e.  There should have been, infinite monkeys and all that.  But, like I said, I'll stack up the 4e PHB against the 2e PHB any day of the week.

If we're bringing in 3e, I'll stack up the 3e Tome of Magic against ANYTHING.  That's one seriously pretty book.


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## Zil (Aug 28, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> So, although TSR had an excellent customer in me, I doubt there were many like me. At least, not enough to justify all the material they DID produce, like half-a-dozen $40 box sets and scads of $15 suppliment books. So, from a business point of view, it was stupid. From a fanboi point of view, it was sheer Mt. Celestia.




Heh, there were a few.  I also have every Planescape book and box set (multiple copies of some things like the Planewalker's Handbook).   I also have just about every Al-Qadim, Ravenloft and Darksun 2E product.  I regret not picking up any Birthright but a fellow member of our gaming group was collecting those for a game he never ran.  I also have most of the 2E Forgotten Realms stuff although I didn't buy much of that - I inherited it from a fellow gamer who bought everything Forgotten Realms.  Sadly I also have most of the complete series which for the most part I didn't really care for because of the game breaking effects some of the "kits" introduced.  

So while I could have done with less Forgotten Realms (especially the Seven Sisters and related stuff) and the Complete Series books from 2E, I am grateful for the flood of more imaginative settings material that came out in that era.


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## Greg K (Aug 28, 2010)

Hussar said:


> And it showed too.  Compare a cleric made from the PHB, to one made using the Complete Priest Guide to one made using Faiths and Avatars.  They weren't even close.  Someone really, really hated clerics when they put out the CPG.  Hrm, let's take a fairly innocuous class (cleric's weren't that powerful in AD&D) and cut off both its feet and shove it back out the door.
> 
> Hey, it's not roleplaying if your character is actually effective.  :/




eh. To each their own. The people I knew liked the  Complete Priest's Handbook. It became the starting point for clerics in our homebrews.  Faiths and Avatars became the basis for fleshing out the information.  I'll still take it over most things published by WOTC.


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## Celebrim (Aug 28, 2010)

Greg K said:


> I am glad you weren't the brand manager.  I, definitely, would have scaled back. However, my list would have been:




Hmmm...first, I notice that you list doesn't contain 'Night Below' which is the one thing on the list that has stood the test of time, still garners very loud acclaim, and which would be expensive to now procur via ebay or Amazon (suggesting it could be profitably reprinted).



> Encyclopedia Magica, Volume II
> Encyclopedia Magica, Volume III
> Encyclopedia Magica, Volume IV




Only in a very small print run, and only if Encyclopedia Magica, Volume I sold well.  If I remember correctly, the idea behind these was ok (compile all spells), but the execution was pretty bad as they used a book format uncommon in RPG books and I think most people found the Quarto(?) format not particularly useful.



> Birthright Campaign Setting
> Blood Enemies: Abominations of Cerilia
> Player's Secrets of Ariya
> Player's Secrets of Endier
> ...




The Birthright setting was probably the most creative and best written thing that they published that year.  It also, quite unsurprisingly, flopped.  Simply put, 2e could not afford to support another setting at this time.  The market was saturated, and Birthright was a niche setting at that.



> The Gothic Earth Gazetteer: A Masque of the Red Death Accessory




I love the Gothic Earth setting, but can't help but feel that there just wasn't alot of demand for it.  The basic problem here is that the majority of Planescape and Ravenloft material is cross compatible with other settings and with most generic homebrews.  Von Richeten's Guides for example can be sold to DMs that run normal fantasy games but want more detail and variaty in their classic monsters.  So who is the market for the Gothic Earth Gazetteer?  Only DMs running a Gothic Earth campaign.  That's a tiny number.  You can sell a few to those that just like to read RPG books, but this is not something to bank the company on.  Still, I would have liked to have done one or two releases per year of all new material for each setting, and this might well have been one of those for Ravenloft.  

I probably would have also wanted a Dark Sun release, but that woudl have required completely rethinking what material to expand on because Dark Sun was a badly mismanaged product by this point.  Ditto Forgotten Realms. 



> Planes of Conflict
> Planes of Law




I'd be inclined to want to release only one of these and put the other off until the next year, but if there was some indication of strong sells in the Planescape setting I might have done both.  Mostly at this point you are selling to setting completionists.  These are books that are going to see very little use in most campaigns, but Planescape is nice in that most campaigns at least have a multiplanar universe in theory even if no one much ever goes there.

I'm torn on the moster supplements.  On the one hand, monster books tend to sell well.  On the other hand, they were putting out tons of monster supplements at this point and by then, they'd really soured people on the quality of the monstrous supplements and they were feeling very forced and slapdash.  I think that

I think I would have taken the Night Below project and expanded on it.

a) Release a crunch centered revised 'Dungeoneer's Survival Guide'.
b) Release a fluff centered 'Night Below' generic campaign setting.  The thing about the Underdark is that most campaigns have one.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of the 'Boxed Set' format.  You are paying for an expensive box and you can't look at the content to see if you'd really want to buy it.  I'd prefer either a thick soft cover or a some sort of cheaper packaging for a bundle of books.  I notice that the format didn't last much past TSR folding.
c) Release the Night Below campaign as a 4 part module series possibly also with an option to buy all four in a single bundle.  
d) Release a monstrous supplement that was Underdark centric as the annual monstrous supplement.


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## AdmundfortGeographer (Aug 28, 2010)

Wik said:


> . . .On that day, I got the revised Dark Sun boxed set, the Player's Option Skills and Powers, and a big pad of character sheets.  I loved all three.  EXCEPT...
> 
> I couldn't use skills and powers with Dark Sun.  And I couldn't use the character sheets for either, without making modifications (and that kind of defeats the purpose of premade character sheets, doesn't it?).  Each product was mutually exclusive.



You know, those were the days when I re-typed the Dark Sun books for my own use with player's option modifications in mind. I was determined! I still have those files on my hard drive (in the obsolete Pagemaker format).

I then went and found every single arcane spell in all TSR products that could conceivably fit Dark Sun's themes (as I understood them) and typed them all up in a single document. I actually got TSR's Jim Butler's approval to post this AD&D document online for other fans to download from the official Dark Sun fansite. I believe it is still hosted on Athas.org today.

The days when timeless youth boredom led to roleplaying productivity!


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## Hussar (Aug 28, 2010)

Celebrim - The Encyclopedia Magica books were the magic item books not the spells.  I actually bought all four of these and loved the everyloving crap out of them.

But, I can totally see people not wanting these.  

GregK - how did you manage to use both Complete Priest and Faiths and Avatars in the same game?  Complete Priest cut clerics down to three or four spheres (if you had anything approaching a standard cleric's combat abilities) whereas the Faiths and Avatars were a powergamers dream.  These two books were pretty much the polar opposite to each other mechanically.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Aug 28, 2010)

Hussar
Oh! Spell Compendium, 3rd ed, I knew there was one Wayne Reynolds pic that I liked just couldn't think what it was, alas think I Ebyaed that book off (ran out of room had to get rid of 1/2 my collection, _aieeee _the pain!! )

The painting of the War Forged Titan vs the goblin riders in 3rd ed was damn good, probably only one I'd want a print of from that edition, that's the one I recall 
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/spellcomp_gallery/92194.jpg

the books I liked in 3rd ed were the "environment" and "critter" ones: Forstburn, Stormwrack, Sandstorm, and Draocnomicon, book onthe abyss and one on the hells who's name I can't recall, Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness.
thsoe were well done and the thing is, _a well done book of that nature SHOULD be able to span game editions!_ 

Magic Item and Spell Compendiums of 2nd ed were FANTASTIC!!
"Z"..was there a cutlass that turned into a small ship?? and a magic _biscuit _udner Z, too? hehe

JohnRTroy,
yeah that'd be a good idea, though surprised if their wasn't a book released on such?

Orius,
well, lots of folk have sugegsted that D&D is a form of birth control all itself... 
well any hobby is



> Significant Other looks all doe-eyed and suggestive at Hubby!
> Hubby fails Passive Insight Check!
> Hubby goes off to play D&D, watch football or play golf!
> S.O. goes in a huff and scarffs down lots of chocolate!
> ...


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## AllisterH (Aug 28, 2010)

Encyclopedia Magica was the one with the faux leather cover and the nifty silk style bookmark.

In terms of production value, it was incredible (one of the few 2e books that has never fallen apart on me compared to say Faiths & Avatars that fell apart after 1 year) and in terms of content, it blew the Magica Encyclopedia out of the water (now THERE was a useless product -- all it did was reference where you could find items and didn't even have all items).

EM had full descriptions of EVERY item ever created in TSR products at that time including Dungeon and Dragon!!

The EM on the other hand even though it used full colour recycled art actually went to the trouble to MATCH pictures with the category and the black and white art was seviceable in depicting specific items when appropriately described in the text.

Great product and I consider EM as one of the "essential" items for any 1e/2e DM playing group (and I've seen similar praise for it on dragonsfoot and r.g.f.d).

That said, it was a money loser in that I distinctly remember TSR officials mentioning that they lose money on each book sold since the quality of the book itself was way above average.

Conversely, the Spell Compendium actually made money but it's production value could not even come CLOSE to EM. Hell, even the paper quality of EM was at least a grade higher than the type found in typical TSR products of the time.


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## Greg K (Aug 28, 2010)

Hussar said:


> GregK - how did you manage to use both Complete Priest and Faiths and Avatars in the same game?  Complete Priest cut clerics down to three or four spheres (if you had anything approaching a standard cleric's combat abilities) whereas the Faiths and Avatars were a powergamers dream.  These two books were pretty much the polar opposite to each other mechanically.




The format on clerics of different deities not the powers.


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## billd91 (Aug 28, 2010)

The Encyclopedia Magica was *exactly* the type of product I wanted at that stage in my D&D playing (and running). Same with the spell compendia. It's sad that the former may have lost money because I'd give a freakin' medal to whomever came up with the idea for and provided oversight on these products.


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## the Jester (Aug 28, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> EM had full descriptions of EVERY item ever created in TSR products at that time including Dungeon and Dragon!!




Not quite, actually. There were several items from the Dragon module _Chagmat_ that weren't included, for instance (_oil of transparency_ is the only one I can recall off the top of my head).


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## AdmundfortGeographer (Aug 28, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> EM had full descriptions of EVERY item ever created in TSR products at that time including Dungeon and Dragon!!



It even went as far as converting every BECMI magic item into AD&D.


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## Odhanan (Aug 28, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D.



Really?! Because I'm certainly not one of them! 2nd Ed AD&D is certainly NOT my idea of a "Golden Era" for D&D. I would reach much farther back in time for that. From OD&D to Pre-UA First Ed AD&D, roughly.


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## Wik (Aug 28, 2010)

You know, thinking about this more, I realize we're forgetting a few pieces of the puzzle.  

1.)  TSR has had huge success, and now has a buttload of money. 
2.)  TSR sees itself as the top dogs of the company, and therefore should be leading the way.  As "top dogs", there is no way they can fail, right?
3.)  They go to cons and talk to a couple of guys who likes Rome-centred games.  They fail to realize that these guys are a fringe "hardcore" gamer group, and that the population of GenCon and the gamer friends of the designers do not make up the mainstream gamer population.
4.)  Our designers can think of ten or twelve people they know who would LOVE a Roman-centred game, and so write the book, figuring that if they personally know twelve people who want it, obviously every second person on the planet actually wants the book.
5.)  There is no widespread internet at the time (this is big).  This means that TSR sees as part of its job to cover the whole of gaming, and that it needs to cover every niche demographic.
6.)  Of course, because TSR takes on this mantle, they go after anyone who tries to use D&D rules to cover a niche TSR hasn't gotten to yet ("We already have a psychic bugs versus vampire gnomes space game in the works!  WE'RE GONNA SUE!")


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 28, 2010)

billd91 said:


> The Encyclopedia Magica was *exactly* the type of product I wanted at that stage in my D&D playing (and running).




Encyclopedia Magica is a fantastic product. It remains very browsable, even by non-gamers. It's still fun to drag out a volume of it and just read.


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## Alzrius (Aug 28, 2010)

ColonelHardisson said:


> Encyclopedia Magica is a fantastic product. It remains very browsable, even by non-gamers. It's still fun to drag out a volume of it and just read.




Indeed, I loved having such an all-inclusive product, and especially liked how it covered things like the costs of different systems in different game worlds (e.g. Athas's ceramic bits, or Krynn's steel coins). It even sneaked a few brand new items in there (mostly stuff by Prismal, and that gigantic roving steamroller artifact).

I also liked that the Wizard's and Priest's Spell Compendiums kept the world references for spells, and noted the rarity of spells - that was great for helping to decide how often the PCs should come across the new spells in those books.


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## AllisterH (Aug 28, 2010)

The only reason why Encyclopedia Magica failed IMO was because of the quality of the actual product itself was too high given the low price point of said product.

Like I said, notice the difference in the actual physical quality of EM compared to Spell Compendium. Spell Compendium itself in terms of content was just as good as EM IMO but really comparing the two, it really is lightyears in difference.

Now, the Magical Encyclopedia...THERE'S a product I spit on.


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## Lord Captian Tobacco (Aug 29, 2010)

Sorry I’m late guys. Please, don’t get up. It’s ok…
Ahem.

Like Klaus stated much earlier, there was too much focus on realm specific products. 
Soat pegged it exactly; once your group had chosen what the setting was you didn’t often get outside of it. 
Dark Sun, Planescape, Red Steel, Maztica, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim. Never seen any of these played outside of conventions. 

Spelljammer, Birthright, Ravenloft. RL: Mask of the Red Death. Limited in use. People loved it or hated it. I really liked the MotRD; most did not.

Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk. Holdovers from the ‘old school’ most of us were hoping for a more dynamic timeline to show change over time but then gnashed our teeth when the latest product jacked with our campaign.
Love’em. Hat’em. Doesn’t matter that way. The real problem was not tailoring the product for the public but closer matching of the production runs to the demand. I can’t begin to count the number of times I found a copy (in wrap) of the reprint Palace of the Silver Princess or Quagmire or Curse of Xanathon (or however it is spelled) in the Bargain Bin of KB toys years after TSR closed up on those products. 

That was even before KB and the Game Keeper closed for much the same reason. Too much diversification for too few interest groups. Nod to Jester for stating the obvious but here’s another look at the same issue:
The problem really looked like a bad pizza party. Imagine inviting 40 people over for a house party. You provide/pay for/order: 5 cheese, 5 pepperoni, 5 meat lovers, 5 ‘Hawaiian’, 5 anchovy, 5 ‘veggie’ (mushroom, olives, bell peppers (red and green), 5 chicken and garlic, and 5 ‘barbeque’. Throw in 20 packets of red peppers, 30 extra cheese ‘stuff’ topping, and 10 mini-cups of dipping sauce. In theory, each person can grab a full pizza and the condiments of their choice during the course of the party. In practice, you can guess the results. Some pizzas get inhaled. Some last an hour or two. A few of these you’ll have for breakfast because you paid for it. A closer attention to what the majority would consume and maybe only one or two of the more specialized tastes would have been the better choice. 

Should there have been the same size production run for Birthright as the Greyhawk or the DragonLance HB book? Maybe. But not all products were written in equal quality, but they (at least the main boxes) were mass produced in numbers which were probably far in excess of the demand. Some books proved to be impossible to find only a year after release (2ed Kara-Tur.) But the question of which products were purchased was based on need, interest, cash flow. Most people were very critical (as they should be) of what it is and how useful a product is before they buy it. 

Regrettably, the same was for so many supplements and adventures. Looking at my shelf from here I can see a great number of products that have never been played as is; but most of them had an idea or two lifted from them. So I guess that in the end the real question is this: is the cost of that supplement worth the few ideas adopted/incorporated into your game?

And this is what toppled a production company which based its income on controlling the creative imaginations of people who were, on the whole, were smarter than those running the company.


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## Obryn (Aug 29, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> Here's a question from me: why would you buy an unsupported, fire-and-forget setting in the first place? If a setting is going to be put out there and then for all intents and purposes abandoned, why invest my time and money in it versus something that's in print, supported, and by that support I'm more likely to find players who know about it and are seriously interested in playing within that setting?



That's all I did in 3.5, too.  I bought the Eberron and Forgotten Realms campaign guides, and zero extra material.  The only one I bought more of was Arcana Evolved - and that I regretted, because the added material actually made the game _worse_, not better.*  

I buy settings so I can get some ideas and run games in them.  Buying additional setting material is generally antithetical to how I run my games; added detail doesn't help me - it bogs me down and actively hurts my preparation.  I want just enough to riff off of; enough that I can get an idea of what makes the setting tick.  I want overarching themes, awesome features, important NPCs, and hooks.  For me, anything past that is basically just fanfiction.  So, I love the original boxes of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.  (Though Greyhawk could have spent more time on the locations and a lot less on giving us the gods' stats.)  I really like the 4e Eberron book.  And the Dark Sun 4e book is damn near perfect for the kind of thing I want to dig into.

-O



* Spell Treasury was powercreeptastic, given how spellcasters worked.  Transcendence had some parts I used - the evolved attribute classes - but the "replacement levels" were bookkeeping nightmares and were promptly banned.  Mystic Secrets was unhelpful at best and more crap to keep track of at worst.  And my game was already too-high-level for the published ruins.


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## Hussar (Aug 29, 2010)

Obryn - I can totally get behind that.

About the only setting that I did invest heavily in was Scarred Lands.  And, quite frankly, 99% of the material I'll never use.  I'm really tired of buying books just so they can sit on my shelf and gather dust.

So, for me, a fire and forget setting is perfect.  The core books for the setting, presumably, are going to see lots of use.  Anything beyond that is just extra bells and whistles.  Most of the time it doesn't even save you any work, just makes more work to try to incorporate later books into the setting.

If I'm going to have to do the lions share of the work developing a campaign in a given setting anyway, why do I really need fifteen books, twelve of which likely don't even deal with what my campaign is about right now anyway.

To me, it's not, "why get into an unsupported setting" it's, "Why bother with a bunch of books I'm never likely to use anyway.

Most of the "support" for settings is just reading material anyway.  I don't buy gaming books for reading material.  I buy novels for that.  If a gaming book isn't usable at the table right now, I'm not going to buy it anymore.


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## Henry (Aug 29, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> Here's a question from me: why would you buy an unsupported, fire-and-forget setting in the first place? If a setting is going to be put out there and then for all intents and purposes abandoned, why invest my time and money in it versus something that's in print, supported, and by that support I'm more likely to find players who know about it and are seriously interested in playing within that setting?




From my perspective:

1) Because what I write for the setting won't be contradicted by later material causing any setting purists who know about the discrepancy to scoff. There's less fuss if there isn't any setting info to contradict, say, if Lord Winter turns out to be a 1000-year-old shapeshifter in human form.

2) Eventually, most campaigns die, due to either changing schedules, a burned-out DM, or simply interest in a new game system or campaign setting. A select few have multi-year campaigns running, but for most average gamers, why buy reams and reams and reams of material if, a year from now, you probably won't be playing it, and likely won't return for another two or three years?

3) Players need to usually be hooked into a setting in just a few paragraphs. If you want a new player to be invested in a setting, handing them a whole gazetteer is a strong way to turn them off from a setting. In most cases I've ever seen, the only people in D&D who want to read tons of setting material are the DMs, and usually DMs who spend more time reading the material than actually prepping or gaming with the material.

Now, that said, there definitely IS a place for huge involved settings - When prepping for my Eberron 4E games, I still like reading older books for ideas, even if I don't strictly need it to make a fun game session. However, from a business standpoint, it's VERY hard to get a larger number of players interested in supporting a game setting line for more than a half dozen products in it. Paizo has a subscription base, which helps them out. However, they're also not supporting anything but Golarion. They're sticking with one setting, its rule support, and little else. personally I'd be kind of bored with playing one setting for years on end, which leads into my point #2, above. After about six to eight months of playing one campaign, I'm ready to wrap it up and move on, using just a mini-arc from 1 to 10, or 5 to 13, etc.


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## Stormonu (Aug 29, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> Here's a question from me: why would you buy an unsupported, fire-and-forget setting in the first place? If a setting is going to be put out there and then for all intents and purposes abandoned, why invest my time and money in it versus something that's in print, supported, and by that support I'm more likely to find players who know about it and are seriously interested in playing within that setting?




Yeah, I got to go with the others.  Having bought a load of books for FR, Planescape and other campaign worlds back in 2E that are just collecting dust, I'd rather just get a book (maybe two) and be done with the setting.


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## Ariosto (Aug 29, 2010)

There is probably more profit to be made from one "dungeon module" that sells 100,000 copies than from 10 modules that sell 10,000 copies each.

If the difference in profit per unit were, say, 2:1, then it could be a wash if your 10-module line doubled sales to 20,000 each. However, that seems unlikely if -- even before accounting for economies of scale in printing, etc. -- you're putting in 10 times as much in development costs.

Unless development has become so much more efficient, cutting costs generally means cutting quality.

If each of 100,000 DMs buys 10 modules, and there are only 10 modules for sale, then each module sells 100,000 copies. If each DM still buys only 10 modules, but there are 20 equally popular modules for sale, then each sells only 50,000 copies. 

If you have a sufficiently growing market of new DMs and players, then you can keep selling 10 old modules. However, to get old DMs to buy an 11th module (if they will at all) you probably need a new module (rather than expecting them to buy the same thing again).

Likewise, if you are going to sell to new customers who don't like some of your 10 old modules, then you need some new ones to get them even up to 10 apiece.

Somewhere in all this is as close as you're going to get to maximizing profits. I suspect that TSR could have done well even with a very suboptimal solution in this aspect, if not for serious problems elsewhere.

My impression is that WotC's directors are more interested in maximizing corporate profits. I don't think Hasbro does a lot of "micro-management", but such big and globally mobile financial capital tends not to have much reason not to go wherever there is the most money to be made.


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## Orius (Aug 29, 2010)

Wik said:


> I couldn't use skills and powers with Dark Sun.  And I couldn't use the character sheets for either, without making modifications (and that kind of defeats the purpose of premade character sheets, doesn't it?).  Each product was mutually exclusive.
> 
> And oh god, it got worse.  We all loved the Dark Sun setting - it was (and is) my favourite setting of all time.  However, at the time, we didn't have the psionics handbook (the one I bought got stolen - I've had my 2e psionics book stolen TWICE now).  We didn't have the monster book, and Dark Sun has a shortage of monsters if you lack that book.  I couldn't get my hands on either book, either, due to my own funds shortage.




I think there was a Dragon article around that time that did Skills and Powers for Dark Sun, though naturally if you didn't have access to the magazine, it wouldn't do you any good.  At the very least, you'd probably need to use that issue and Skills and Powers to hammer out some house rules on it, and maybe use stuff from Spells and Magic too, since it had an optional magic system based on defiling.



Celebrim said:


> I'm torn on the moster supplements.  On the one hand, monster books tend to sell well.  On the other hand, they were putting out tons of monster supplements at this point and by then, they'd really soured people on the quality of the monstrous supplements and they were feeling very forced and slapdash.




I have two of the 95 monster suppliments, the second Annual and the second Planescape book.  I think they're both good, lots of interesting variety in them, and the PS has monsters that can be used even in a regular campaign (some eventually ended up in the 3e MM).  Didn't buy the Dark Sun one, but I think some of those monsters were put in the next year's annual. 

 I liked the Annuals for the most part, they had a good collection of monsters from a variety of sources, as well as updated stuff that had been OOP for a while.  YMMV vary on this though, since the 2e Annual was the one that reprinted the flumph for 2e.    IMO the worst annual was the third, there wasn't really any theme to it (unlike the last one which included a nice chunk of aqautic monsters), and a lot of setting specific stuff was just copied and pasted without any attempt to make it useful for a generic campaign.



> I think I would have taken the Night Below project and expanded on it.
> 
> a) Release a crunch centered revised 'Dungeoneer's Survival Guide'.
> b) Release a fluff centered 'Night Below' generic campaign setting.  The thing about the Underdark is that most campaigns have one.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of the 'Boxed Set' format.  You are paying for an expensive box and you can't look at the content to see if you'd really want to buy it.  I'd prefer either a thick soft cover or a some sort of cheaper packaging for a bundle of books.  I notice that the format didn't last much past TSR folding.
> ...




You know, I bught Night Below thinking that this is what it was.  Being relatively new to D&D, I was hoping for a nice big set of material on the Underdark.  All I got was a big boxed adventure.  Not a bad adventure, but not as helpful as I was hoping.



Hussar said:


> Celebrim - The Encyclopedia Magica books were the magic item books not the spells.  I actually bought all four of these and loved the everyloving crap out of them.
> 
> But, I can totally see people not wanting these.




I managed to collect all the Compendia.  The first EM was released just as I was starting to get into D&D, and I saw a copy at B. Dalton and flipped through it.  I thought all those magic items were amazing.  There's all kinds of cool stuff in that volume, and it just goes to D.  There's 3 more filled with all kinds of stuff like that.  Naturally, they were one of the first products I tried snapping up.  For a novice player like me, it was a great source of stuff, though I hadn't mastered placement of magic items, so there was a lot of stuff I thought was cool finding its way into the dungeons I was fleshing out.

The spell compendia were similar, in fact the first indication I had of TSR's troubles was when I was waiting for the second spell compendium to come out in 1997, I was ordering stuff from a local comic shop by then, and the owner kept telling me the distributor didn't have it.



> GregK - how did you manage to use both Complete Priest and Faiths and Avatars in the same game?  Complete Priest cut clerics down to three or four spheres (if you had anything approaching a standard cleric's combat abilities) whereas the Faiths and Avatars were a powergamers dream.  These two books were pretty much the polar opposite to each other mechanically.




I can't speak for him, but I used them together with the Player's Option books to custom create specialty priests.  So say I was creating a war god.  I'd look at the powers and spheres given to priests of Tempus and the like in F&A and the war priest setup in the CPH, and write them all down.  Then, I'd go into Skills and Powers and Spells and Magic, and use the point based system to assign powers to the custom class from the list I'd created.  



AllisterH said:


> Encyclopedia Magica was the one with the faux leather cover and the nifty silk style bookmark.
> 
> In terms of production value, it was incredible (one of the few 2e books that has never fallen apart on me compared to say Faiths & Avatars that fell apart after 1 year) and in terms of content, it blew the Magica Encyclopedia out of the water (now THERE was a useless product -- all it did was reference where you could find items and didn't even have all items).
> 
> ...




I can't completely agree, the binding on at least the first EM have cracked open on me, along with the pages in F&A falling out.  The bookmarks were a nice touch, and I have some of them marking important pages, for example, the last volume has the ribbon at the start of the tables, because it's just too convenient not too put it anywhere else.  And I'd say it's an excellent resource for any retro D&D game, all the stuff is compiled for convenience which is good for some settings if you don't have some of the suppliments (including material from a Spelljammer product that never went to print), there's a huge pile of stuff to pick from, there's the artifact power tables from the Book of Artifacts, and there's several random tables that let you make lots of custom stuff.  

It's a shame that it was sold at a loss, but later WotC reprints were similar to the Spell Compendiums, IIRC.  So while it didn't have those nice covers and book marks, it was still being printed.



Alzrius said:


> I also liked that the Wizard's and Priest's Spell Compendiums kept the world references for spells, and noted the rarity of spells - that was great for helping to decide how often the PCs should come across the new spells in those books.




The spell rarity rules quickly became one of my standard house rules, and I continued to apply a simplified version of them them into 3e.  Here's how I do it:

Common spells: Any spell from any edition of the PHB, except those superceded by new rules (eg: _friends_ from the 2e PHB is replaced by _eagle's splendor_, _find familiar_ from the 2e PHB is dropped because it's a class skills for sorcs/wizards, the _extension_ spells are replaced by metamagic feats, etc).

Uncommon spells: spells from sources like 1e UA, 2e Tome of Magic/Wizards Handbook/Spells and Magic, 3e Defenders of the Faith/Tome and Blood/Complete Divine/Complete Arcane/etc.  Also the spells from WotC web articles like the Spellbook.

Rare spells: stuff from other splats or campaign specific material, generic spells that appear in products other than caster-based splats or major optional rules. Spells from WotC's  Far Corners of the World articles also fall here, and probably I'd include anything in Frostburn, Stormwrack, and Sandstorm.

Very Rare: anything else.  Mostly stuff from Dragon and Dungeon, spells that are unique to a single spellbook, anything else I find on the web that looks good, etc.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 29, 2010)

Zil said:


> Heh, there were a few. I also have every Planescape book and box set (multiple copies of some things like the Planewalker's Handbook). I also have just about every Al-Qadim, Ravenloft and Darksun 2E product. I regret not picking up any Birthright but a fellow member of our gaming group was collecting those for a game he never ran. I also have most of the 2E Forgotten Realms stuff although I didn't buy much of that - I inherited it from a fellow gamer who bought everything Forgotten Realms. Sadly I also have most of the complete series which for the most part I didn't really care for because of the game breaking effects some of the "kits" introduced.
> 
> So while I could have done with less Forgotten Realms (especially the Seven Sisters and related stuff) and the Complete Series books from 2E, I am grateful for the flood of more imaginative settings material that came out in that era.




Oh don't get me wrong. I am thrilled they did put out so much stuff. I am a fanboi after all. I should have also mentioned in my original post that I waited until the 3e era to pick up about 50% of the pieces of my collection, so in effect, TSR didn't get any cash for them. I did the same with Spelljammer and Ravenloft over the last decade through bargain hunting.

Were there completionists? Sure! There was you and me, and I'm sure hundreds (maybe thousands) of others. But even then, I couldn't keep pace, so I only bought what I needed (I thought) at the time to run my game. My assertion was that even the hard core had a hard time buying all the products they were sending out.

I did buy all the Planescape box sets , but there were other settings they were pumping out mass suppliments and box sets for that I either had little interest in besides the 'core' setting (Dark Sun/Ravenloft/Greyhawk) or never even got one piece for ( FR/Hollow Earth/Birthright/Dragonlance). Heck, I just found out about an interesting 2e setting I'd never even heard of not a week ago when I started a thread about favorite settings! (Jakandor).

I am glad all that info is out there, but at the time, barring winning the lottery, I wouldn't have gotten everything for even my most favorite setting. And I think that TSR's business suffered by developing/producing/publishng all that stuff, even though I think a lot of it was very good quality. I mean, remember the green series of historical campaign settings? I LOVE those books! They are a gold mine of info on converting a setting to a historical theme. But there were SIX of them, all @$15. I got mine off eBay in 2000. 

Contrast this to 3e. A hardcover every month, roundabouts. I could do that. I even got the Forgotten Realm HC that time around =). It was a lot easier to keep abreast of things.

It costs money to produce gaming material. And it demands a profit on the investment. As a fan, I love that they did produce it, but I will still shake my head sadly at the descisions businesswise to do it. There was just too much in too short a window (IMO).


----------



## Hussar (Aug 29, 2010)

I'd be curious to see what difference there is between the amount invested in a given title by TSR in, say, 1993 and WOTC today, even accounting for inflation.

I know what my gut says and that's WOTC invests a heck of a lot more in a given title than TSR did, but, that's just my gut talking.  And I at poutine tonight in a restaurant in Japan.  So, my gut is also going to be talking out my petoot pretty soon.  

In another thread around here, people are saying 12-18 month lead times for WOTC titles.  Anyone have any idea what hte lead time was for TSR?


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## Desdichado (Aug 29, 2010)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> Most of us consider the late 80s early 90s the "Golden Era" of (A)D&D. Why? _Huge volume of items, so even if some were bad or not to your taste, it was guaranteed some WERE to your liking!_



No we don't.  You're off by five to ten years.  In either direction, depending on your taste.


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## Echohawk (Aug 29, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> I mean, remember the green series of historical campaign settings? I LOVE those books! They are a gold mine of info on converting a setting to a historical theme. But there were SIX of them, all @$15. I got mine off eBay in 2000.



Seven of them!

HR1: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
HR2: Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
HR3: Celts Campaign Sourcebook
HR4: A Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook
HR5: The Glory of Rome Campaign Sourcebook
HR6: Age of Heroes Campaign Sourcebook
HR7: The Crusades Campaign Sourcebook

If you only have six, then you're missing one


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 29, 2010)

In regards to the premise that the late 80s/early 90s was the "Golden Age" of D&D...there _was_ a lot of really good stuff. But to call it the "Golden Age" of D&D? No way. I'd say Ars Magica's system for portraying the life cycle of a covenant of wizards is more suitable.

Spring was OD&D - The beginning, with lots of fertile new ideas and concepts bursting forth from the soil of wargaming.

Summer was AD&D1e until Gygax's ouster from TSR - ideas and concepts had matured, activity and creativity was at its height both at TSR and, most importantly, among gamers.

Autumn was from Gygax's departure from TSR until the company began to collapse (1996-97?) - The game had matured, there was a lot of activity, it looked like D&D was more popular than ever, and TSR's financial success seemed to be at its height...but there were signs that the end had already begun. The sheer excitement that accompanied the game at its beginning was now gone. People still loved the game, but many left gaming or turned to other games. TSR produced a massive amount of material to draw in new and lapsed gamers, and even non-gamers with the fiction lines (which, as we may remember, was one of the big causes of TSR's collapse). They couldn't keep up that kind of output, and the foundations of the company were being eroded out from under it.

Winter came suddenly. Products stopped shipping, most notably Dragon magazine. TSR was effectively dead now, frozen in place.

The cycle seems to have repeated again, maybe a couple of times. Spring came again just as quickly, with WotC buying TSR and the "Countdown to 3e" articles in a revivified Dragon. Summer came with the release of the 3e PHB. A new Autumn started with 3.5. In my own opinion, I'd say WotC managed to skip Winter and start a new Spring with 4e, though it's been a pretty stormy Spring, and Summer has shown no signs of coming anytime soon.

Eh, but what do I know?


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## AllisterH (Aug 29, 2010)

Echohawk said:


> Seven of them!
> 
> HR1: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
> HR2: Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
> ...




You know...I totally ignored these but I've heard great things about them from the people who actually bought them....

That said, one of my friends who did buy one said that the comparable GURPS sourcebook would be a better choice if you were given a choice...not that the green books were bad or anything..just tha the GURPS books were better...

BTW, what era is Age of Heroes supposed to represent and does't A might Fortress overlap with Age of Charlemage and The Crusades?


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 29, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> You know...I totally ignored these but I've heard great things about them from the people who actually bought them....
> 
> That said, one of my friends who did buy one said that the comparable GURPS sourcebook would be a better choice if you were given a choice...not that the green books were bad or anything..just tha the GURPS books were better...




I disagree with that, a lot. The GURPS books are good, but are much more crunch-heavy than TSR's books. I think TSR's books go into much greater and better detail on their respective eras than their GURPS counterparts. GURPS has vast library of such books, though, covering just about everything, so they have TSR beat in that respect...but not in quality.



AllisterH said:


> BTW, what era is Age of Heroes supposed to represent




Ancient Greece.



AllisterH said:


> and does't A might Fortress overlap with Age of Charlemage and The Crusades?




No, not really. A Mighty Fortress is more the Renaissance era and a bit after.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 29, 2010)

Echohawk said:


> Seven of them!
> 
> HR1: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
> HR2: Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
> ...




Nope, I misremembered.  Thought there was six.  Teach me not to Google my facts and try to depend on my memory


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## Ariosto (Aug 29, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:
			
		

> I should have also mentioned in my original post that I waited until the 3e era to pick up about 50% of the pieces of my collection, so in effect, TSR didn't get any cash for them.



TSR may have got cash for them before you got a chance to see them. In the game trade, it works like this:

Publisher -> Distributor -> Retailer -> Customer


It can even work like this:

1) Publisher floats product ideas to distributor 
2) Distributor solicits orders from retailers
3) Distributor tells publisher what distributor wants
4) Publisher creates products
5) Distributor buys products from publisher
6) Distributor sells products to retailers on credit
7) Retailers try to sell products to customers

In the book trade (a separate distribution network, so, e.g., Barnes & Noble but probably not Joe's Comix & Hobbies) retailers traditionally have a right of return. It may (to save on shipping) entail sending back only the covers and reporting the books as unsold and destroyed.

That usually _does_ go back to the publisher, and so to the author (who is probably getting robbed of royalties when a book is sold without the cover).

I don't know the usual window of opportunity for returns, or how the shift of ownership from TSR to WotC affected things. I suspect that the option had passed if you bought 2e books at a book store in the 3e era, that the store had already paid for and owned them. If prices were marked down, then I think that is especially likely.


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## Odhanan (Aug 29, 2010)

Echohawk said:


> HR1: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
> HR2: Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
> HR3: Celts Campaign Sourcebook
> HR4: A Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook
> ...



I need to get a hold of those at some point. Thanks for listing them for us.


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## Wik (Aug 29, 2010)

Odhanan said:


> I need to get a hold of those at some point. Thanks for listing them for us.





OF them, I can honestly recommend all of them except for "A Mighty Fortress", which attempts to portray the renaissance.  It's definitely a little bland, and a bit broad in focus.

The others, though, are all great.  I especially like how you can tie a few of them together to make one super campaign - Age of Heroes + Celts + Glory of Rome + Vikings make an amazing mix.  

Glory of Rome is my personal favourite, with the Vikings book coming a very close second.  The others, while portraying interesting time periods, didn't catch my attention as much... and this is coming from a guy who (outside of D&D) is fascinated by Celtic and Greek culture and doesn't really care much for Vikings.  

The trick is to look at them as starting places, and not necessarily as campaign sourcebooks that will force you to run non-magic games.  You can take that Roman book and create a highly fantastic campaign out of it - lord knows I have.


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## Klaus (Aug 29, 2010)

I have Vikings and The Crusades, and I love 'em!


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 30, 2010)

I have all of them, and the one I consider my favorite changes fairly regularly. The Viking book was my favorite for a long time, followed by the Celts. Recently I've been favoring Charlemagne's Paladins and The Crusades. All of them have ideas that could be adapted for use in just about any edition - the Celts book, for example, has some heroic feats that would fit into 4e as powers with some fiddling.


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## Lord Captian Tobacco (Aug 30, 2010)

Best of luck finding those books. They have been gone a long time. 

Though I own each, using them has been 'hit and miss'. 
The crusades and Rome gave a wealth of ideas for my Birthright game.
Viking information seems to creep into every barb character. 
The Greeks didn't get much attention until after the movie 300 fired them.  

But the most use was the Mighty Fortress. I sat down with three players for a three day weekend. (In the military during peace there is plenty of time after hours.) We ended up with three gentlemen of fortune, an Englander, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard. each with a different style of swordplay, each with a different religion, and each convinced of the supremacy of their nation. the fighting was limited to outsiders and the only barbs these guys threw at each other was the bar bill. The whole thing turned into a remake of Rosecrans and Guilderstern are dead complete with one-upmanship and verbal sparing. It was funny. It was crude. It was Tasteless. 
And when the weekend was over we never went back. It was too good to mess with by not meetingthe bar we had set before.
I wonder what fun we have missed out on...


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## wingsandsword (Aug 30, 2010)

I also loved the HR series books, really regretted that they never made a historic sourcebook for 3.x, instead going far more into pure fantasy for that edition.  I was always disappointed they went to 4e without treading on that ground for 3e.  One of the first things I did when 3e came out was make my own homemade conversions of the kits from some of those books into PrC's, and creating new feats based off of some special proficiencies (like the techniques listed in the Celts sourcebook, Gae Bolga became a high-level feat with a pile of pre-reqs that a fighter could take as a bonus feat).

I ran a long-running campaign set during the 3rd Crusade using those sourcebooks, and another not-quite-as-long running campaign with the Rome/Celts/Vikings combination of books listed here.


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 30, 2010)

wingsandsword said:


> I also loved the HR series books, really regretted that they never made a historic sourcebook for 3.x, instead going far more into pure fantasy for that edition.  I was always disappointed they went to 4e without treading on that ground for 3e.




Green Ronin made a series of fantastic books in their Mythic Vistas line that were along the lines of the HR books, and were as good as anything WotC made for 3e. The Medieval Players Manual is a particular favorite; it was written by one of the better designers for Ars Magica. There was also a book on Rome, one on Greece, one for the age of piracy in the Caribbean, and Testament, which covered the Biblical era. All of them are worth having if one is a d20 player. Necromancer Games produced a book centered on Mesopotamia, which is not quite as faithful to the source material, but which is pretty fantastic and has a feel quite a bit like something you'd find in Conan's Hyboria.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> I suspect that the option had passed if you bought 2e books at a book store in the 3e era, that the store had already paid for and owned them. If prices were marked down, then I think that is especially likely.




Actually, most of the pieces were picked up on eBay and the used book marketplaces, so yeah, TSR got something for them originally, but I didn't buy them 'Mint in Box' as it were.  The original point was that even though I loved several of the settings TSR was creating stuff for, I was unable to justify picking up everything produced as it came out in the Nineties.  So although I have had time to fill in the gaps of my collection, that really doesn't do TSR any good at this point.  Especially since the company hasn't existed for over a decade.

Heck I just put in an order for the three Jakandor books from a used book seller.  Their sale probably isn't helping TSR's balance sheet now =P


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## Orius (Aug 30, 2010)

Hmm, the historics are actually considered good?  I was under the impression they were considered rather poor.  I mananged to snag copies of Vikings, Celts, and Heroes myself, but never got Rome or Fortress.  They're not bad, but I'm not really sure the D&D rules are a great match for the real world.


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## Philosopher (Aug 30, 2010)

According to _30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons_, they had some more of the historical books planned. The reason they cancelled the line was because they never sold well. (So, apparently, TSR made _some_ reasonable business decisions at the time. Who knew?) There was supposed to be one focusing on Arabia as a companion to the Crusades book. There was supposed to be books on the Rus, the Balkans, and Arthurian England. I wish more of them saw print.


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## DragonLancer (Aug 30, 2010)

The only historicals I picked up were the Age of Heroes and the Vikings ones. I thought both were pretty good as a jumping off point for using that sort of campaign or campaign elements. 

A friend of mine who is an absolute expert on ancient Rome picked up the Roman book and said that despite some obvious historical inaccuraces it wasn't a bad one.

I think this line of books gets a bad rep for some reason.


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## eyebeams (Aug 30, 2010)

Trends seize company cultures all the time, and build up ideologies to defend them. Then there's some kind of regime change and motive for people to look innovative by trashing predecessors. This is understandable because that regime change happens because the current one isn't meeting success standards.

For TSR, you have to remember that it built one of the most successful IP collections ever used for fiction from the ground up. There was probably a time when Drizzt Do'Urden -- that single character -- was more valuable then the rest of D&D-related stuff over the same period.

People like to make stupid statements that game designers are frustrated fiction writers because that gets plenty of play with fans (though in many cases, it's actually industry folks saying it manipulate fan opinions through social marketing) but for TSR, a model where RPGs served as a place to experiment with properties for fiction and promote them to early adopters probably made a hell of a lot of sense. And while it had its misses, there's a reason a TSR setting got the nod again in Dark Sun.

And honestly, WotC seems to lack the institutional talent to bring original, tightly integrated game settings out. By "institutional talent" I mean that something about the culture (and not necessarily individuals, who can be really talented even though they're not always allowed to be) makes the company bad at it. 

Looking at recent openings in the D&D team, I have the feeling that they don't take settings that seriously and treat "softer" creative aspects pretty cheaply, since the jobs are all about wearing a business development hat as well. Basically, the company doesn't look like it cares enough about settings to have a settings guy. And if they don't care, why should you care?

This is not an new problem. I was chatting with a fellow who opined (and was in a position to possibly know) that WotC-Eberron (not Keith Baker's Eberron) as a sort of trash heap for setting ideas from the old days, just as the Realms had previously been able to accept all kinds of odds and ends from other games (like Kara-Tur). This is the kind of thing that people who care about "synergies" develop, instead of creative leads actually interested in the intrinsic values of what they're working on. 

Certainly, 4e represents system innovations that could never be achieved in TSR's culture. It's awesome stuff. Same with 3e. But 3e also featured the dawn of an empty aesthetic over the idea that D&D was something to be embedded in a definable world -- and ironically, it did this by providing enough of a sketch (a few gods, vague history) to let DMs fake it, instead of guiding them to create worlds as a core part of the game. It feels like this is about as much as the company is interested in, even in its own efforts.

Unless WotC understand that the Realms are important as the Realms and its other settings have intrinsic value instead of just being content delivery platforms, they're going to feel weak. And they do. It's time for the company to show gamers that the people in charge of the worlds they like actually like the worlds for themselves, and to find a third way to develop interesting settings again with the idea that the company should see making them as a real part of their business. At the same time, it needs to avoid bloat. I think there's room for balance, though not the will to look for it.


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## AllisterH (Aug 30, 2010)

Orius said:


> Hmm, the historics are actually considered good?  I was under the impression they were considered rather poor.  I mananged to snag copies of Vikings, Celts, and Heroes myself, but never got Rome or Fortress.  They're not bad, but I'm not really sure the D&D rules are a great match for the real world.




My impression was that  
a) not a lot of D&D players were actually interested in those settings. Relating to the thread, with the amount of stuff being produced, it was MUCH MUCH easier for good products to escape notice. 

One of the reason why 2e has fewer "classics" imo has nothing to do with the quality of the books, as Celebrim alludes to, but my belief that a classic only becomes one when EVERYONE was playing it.

2e' blistering pace of material (thanks Echohawk for those graphs...still have them from last time) pretty much meant that unless you were rich, you missed out a lot

(I for example, think I must've bought a new D&D book at least once every fortnight and many a time it was closer to once a week during the 2e era and I don't have any of the green softcovers and I think only one or two of the blue softcovers - never got Jakandor either for example)

b) systems like CORPSm GURPS et al were much better suited for historical type games.

D&D frankly has never been my first choice for any type of "historically accurate" game.


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## Hussar (Aug 30, 2010)

I'm almost embarassed to admit this, but, what is Jakandor?  That's a totally new one to me.  hoh:

Eyebeams - I think the ship has sailed on that, tbh.  Paizo seems to have the setting mavens market sewn up pretty tightly.  And they're doing a fantastic job of it, let's not understate anything.  The Golarian setting is a great setting, extremely well supported.  But, it is also their flagship product, so of course it's getting lots and lots of loving from very talented people.  

WOTC isn't really directing D&D towards that kind of gamer though.  The kind of gamer that obsessively reads and rereads every piece of material about a given setting, spends hours and hours discussing the setting and whatnot.  WOTC doesn't seem to be directed towards that level of gamer.  They've more focused on the casual gamer, who really isn't all that interested in reams and reams of setting material.  All the casual gamer wants is enought to "fake it" to borrow your phrase.

I'm not sure if there is a middle ground here to be honest.  If you take the middle position, where you're going to continuously support a setting, but at a very slow rate, I think you'll wind up with a small core of hard-core setting fans, but, most of the rest will quickly lose interest.  It's more of a "go all the way or forget about it" proposition.  At least in my mind.


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 30, 2010)

DragonLancer said:


> The only historicals I picked up were the Age of Heroes and the Vikings ones. I thought both were pretty good as a jumping off point for using that sort of campaign or campaign elements.
> 
> A friend of mine who is an absolute expert on ancient Rome picked up the Roman book and said that despite some obvious historical inaccuraces it wasn't a bad one.
> 
> I think this line of books gets a bad rep for some reason.




I think part of the problem is that they erred on the side of being safe. They seemed to go to pains to avoid power creep, but ended up dispensing with a lot of what appealed to gamers about D&D. I think they could have afforded to concentrate a bit more on the fantastical elements of their respective settings.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> I'm almost embarassed to admit this, but, what is Jakandor? That's a totally new one to me. hoh:





Hey man, don't feel bad. I've been playing for 31 years, I have a ton of material and I was active when it was released, and I STILL just learned about the setting last week. But, a lot of folks called it out as their favorite setting over on the 'what D&D campaign world did you most enjoy most' thread, and the three books on it were dirt cheep on the used book markets, so I figured: What the hell?

The fact that two people obviously fairly heavily invested in a hobby never heard of an entire setting kinda brings us full circle on the original argument. From what I can see and the kudos it has garnered in the other thread, Jakandor is obviously a setting that could have been very successful if it had been more supported by TSR. Yet, they had so much going on (and I think they were in the midst of imploding when this setting came out in 1998) that big fans of the game never even heard of it.

That's stupid business right there. Still, as a fan I am happy I have yet another setting to yoink from


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 30, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> Hey man, don't feel bad. I've been playing for 31 years, I have a ton of material and I was active when it was released, and I STILL just learned about the setting last week. But, a lot of folks called it out as their favorite setting over on the 'what D&D campaign world did you most enjoy most' thread, and the three books on it were dirt cheep on the used book markets, so I figured: What the hell?
> 
> The fact that two people obviously fairly heavily invested in a hobby never heard of an entire setting kinda brings us full circle on the original argument. From what I can see and the kudos it has garnered in the other thread, Jakandor is obviously a setting that could have been very successful if it had been more supported by TSR. Yet, they had so much going on (and I think they were in the midst of imploding when this setting came out in 1998) that big fans of the game never even heard of it.
> 
> That's stupid business right there. Still, as a fan I am happy I have yet another setting to yoink from




I've been playing the same length of time, so it's good to see another old-timer who started in '79; sometimes REAL old-timers act like we're dilettantes instead of allowing us the grognard status we're due  

I heard of Jakandor and saw one or two of the books when they were released, but never saw all of them. Other than not promoting it well-enough, I think TSR did something right with Jakandor - they started out with the intention of only doing three books, and stuck to the plan. I wish they'd done that with more of their settings; I'd much rather be left wanting more than to get sick of something due to how much of it I got.


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## Fifth Element (Aug 30, 2010)

DragonLancer said:


> The only historicals I picked up were the Age of Heroes and the Vikings ones. I thought both were pretty good as a jumping off point for using that sort of campaign or campaign elements.
> 
> A friend of mine who is an absolute expert on ancient Rome picked up the Roman book and said that despite some obvious historical inaccuraces it wasn't a bad one.
> 
> I think this line of books gets a bad rep for some reason.



I agree. I loved those books dearly. I'm a serious fan of Earthy pastiche settings, and these books were enablers of that.


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## Jan van Leyden (Aug 30, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> The fact that two people obviously fairly heavily invested in a hobby never heard of an entire setting kinda brings us full circle on the original argument. From what I can see and the kudos it has garnered in the other thread, Jakandor is obviously a setting that could have been very successful if it had been more supported by TSR. Yet, they had so much going on (and I think they were in the midst of imploding when this setting came out in 1998) that big fans of the game never even heard of it.
> 
> That's stupid business right there. Still, as a fan I am happy I have yet another setting to yoink from




First things first: Jakandor: Island of War, the first of this mini series, is copyright 1997; not exactly the time in which TSR acted in a thoughtful, planned way.

Then, let me quote the back cover text:

_A new, self-contained campaign arena conceived by Jeff Grubb, the ODYSSEY (TM) setting can be placed within any ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS world. New barbarian character kits, new forms of magic, and the opportunity for new styles of role-playing make_ Jakandor: Island of War _a fresh experience for all players, novices and veterans alike._

It was never intended to be a campaign world in its own right, but to be slotted into any other world or be run as a one-off.

Maybe TSR saw the problem with their too many worlds and tried to garner the support of fans of different settings - though how an island setting should be interesting for Dark Sun folks eludes me - maybe they were frantically testing new approaches. But at least they prominently TradeMarked the name Odyssey, hoping to start a long line of successful supplements with it.


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## Echohawk (Aug 30, 2010)

ColonelHardisson said:


> Other than not promoting it well-enough, I think TSR did something right with Jakandor - they started out with the intention of only doing three books, and stuck to the plan.



I seem to remember that TSR/WotC had originally planned to release *four* Jakandor books, but scrapped the last one. (I can't recall a source for this recollection though, sorry.) If that's right, then they didn't so much stick to the plan, as accidentally do something right


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 30, 2010)

ColonelHardisson said:


> I've been playing the same length of time, so it's good to see another old-timer who started in '79; sometimes REAL old-timers act like we're dilettantes instead of allowing us the grognard status we're due




LOL. Quite true. Old enough to be grognards, not old enough to be pioneering grognards! 



ColonelHardisson said:


> I heard of Jakandor and saw one or two of the books when they were released, but never saw all of them. Other than not promoting it well-enough, I think TSR did something right with Jakandor - they started out with the intention of only doing three books, and stuck to the plan. I wish they'd done that with more of their settings; I'd much rather be left wanting more than to get sick of something due to how much of it I got.




Actually, when I was researching the setting after I heard about it, the wiki page on it says there was a planned fourth book that never got published (The upcoming release of 3e might have squashed it) LINK. 

I think the problem is that TSR tried to be everything for everybody. The problem is that splitting an already small hobby into competing sub-genres just didn't work. Believe me, I wish it did. By trying to keep everything 'in house' they ended up spreading themselves too thin.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 30, 2010)

Jan van Leyden said:


> First things first: Jakandor: Island of War, the first of this mini series, is copyright 1997; not exactly the time in which TSR acted in a thoughtful, planned way.




Yep. Kinda what we are discussing  Sorry to get the date wrong, I don't actually have the books (yet).



Jan van Leyden said:


> Then, let me quote the back cover text:
> 
> _A new, self-contained campaign arena conceived by Jeff Grubb, the ODYSSEY (TM) setting can be placed within any ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS world. New barbarian character kits, new forms of magic, and the opportunity for new styles of role-playing make_ Jakandor: Island of War _a fresh experience for all players, novices and veterans alike._
> 
> ...




Fair enough. But the point I was trying to make, whether Jakandor was a setting, a one-off, a new way to sell RPG material, or whatever, was that I never heard of it until last week. And apparently, neither did Hussar above until I metioned it. Whatever Jakandor was, its marketing was strictly fail.


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 30, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> I think the problem is that TSR tried to be everything for everybody. The problem is that splitting an already small hobby into competing sub-genres just didn't work.




The thing about this is that those competing games and settings were appealing to people, otherwise they would not be competing, and wouldn't be fondly recalled today. I don't know if TSR's demise was brought about by too many settings, but rather by way too many books for those settings. Plus, it wasn't that it was splitting the _hobby_, but rather it was splitting _TSR's resources_. This seemed to be exacerbated by TSR throwing good money after bad by continuing to pour out books for settings that should have just been one or two books or a boxed set, or at least a much shorter line of products. Gamers who might have been fully satisfied with the first year or so of releases for Ravenloft, for example, ended up seeing a huge number and variety of books that, by the end, weren't appealing to anyone.

I asked this elsewhere, but as I recall, the triggering event for TSR's collapse, the straw that broke the camel's back, was the return of a mountain of books from the fiction side of things. I know that TSR produced way too many game books, but I wonder how much the fiction had to do with its demise? That is, how long would TSR have survived if they didn't have the fiction lines, or if the fiction lines had been much smaller?


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## Marius Delphus (Aug 30, 2010)

IMO, not much longer than they did. TSR was leveraged up the yin-yang (Ryan Dancey spoke of not being sure WOTC could rescue the D&D IP from all the various creditors that had a stake in it), and the house of cards didn't have long to stand. There seems to have been an air of "waiting for the next big hit, and everything would be all right again." Witness Spellfire (attempt to cash in on CCGs) and Dragon Dice (attempt to create a brand new collectible category). TSR seems (to me) to have been a sinking ship even without the book trade returns.


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## AllisterH (Aug 30, 2010)

Echohawk said:


> I seem to remember that TSR/WotC had originally planned to release *four* Jakandor books, but scrapped the last one. (I can't recall a source for this recollection though, sorry.) If that's right, then they didn't so much stick to the plan, as accidentally do something right




Are you sure you're not thinking about Al-Qadim?

I'm 100% positive that I read in DRAGON from TSR that Al-Qadim had a two year lifespan that they extended to 3 because of fan demand....

re: ODYSSEY line

I *REMEMBER* that hazily...wasn't that tied into Gates of Firestorm Peak module (ironically one of the few modules that could be considered a 2e classic since it seems like EVERYONE has played it)?


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## Jan van Leyden (Aug 30, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> Fair enough. But the point I was trying to make, whether Jakandor was a setting, a one-off, a new way to sell RPG material, or whatever, was that I never heard of it until last week. And apparently, neither did Hussar above until I metioned it. Whatever Jakandor was, its marketing was strictly fail.




Fair enough, but I know that I was really looking forward to Jakandor, even pre-ordering the first volume from a mail-order shop. Please don't ask me why. *That* I don't recall...


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## Jan van Leyden (Aug 30, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> re: ODYSSEY line
> 
> I *REMEMBER* that hazily...wasn't that tied into Gates of Firestorm Peak module (ironically one of the few modules that could be considered a 2e classic since it seems like EVERYONE has played it)?




As far as I recall (don't have GoFP handy right now) *this* was tied to the Skills & Powers line, what with the floorplans and monster chits. Did it also have a Odyssey tag line?


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## Dausuul (Aug 30, 2010)

ColonelHardisson said:


> I asked this elsewhere, but as I recall, the triggering event for TSR's collapse, the straw that broke the camel's back, was the return of a mountain of books from the fiction side of things. I know that TSR produced way too many game books, but I wonder how much the fiction had to do with its demise? That is, how long would TSR have survived if they didn't have the fiction lines, or if the fiction lines had been much smaller?




Since the fiction lines were, for quite a while, bringing in far more money than the games, I doubt it would have helped--they wouldn't have had the crisis with all those returned books, but the gaming side would have crashed that much faster.


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## JohnRTroy (Aug 30, 2010)

> I asked this elsewhere, but as I recall, the triggering event for TSR's collapse, the straw that broke the camel's back, was the return of a mountain of books from the fiction side of things. I know that TSR produced way too many game books, but I wonder how much the fiction had to do with its demise? That is, how long would TSR have survived if they didn't have the fiction lines, or if the fiction lines had been much smaller?




It could be one or two over-ordered books that caused that problem.

If I remember correctly, one of the key things that hurt GDW in a big way was a huge order that was returned.  EGG told me that it was just one product, and while he didn't identify the product, I believe that one product was something called the Desert Storm Fact Book, a folio that cashed in on the first Iraq war, and the mass return of books really hurt GDW.

So can anybody think of a book that TSR could have taken a big hit on?


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 31, 2010)

ColonelHardisson said:


> The thing about this is that those competing games and settings were appealing to people, otherwise they would not be competing, and wouldn't be fondly recalled today. I don't know if TSR's demise was brought about by too many settings, but rather by way too many books for those settings. Plus, it wasn't that it was splitting the _hobby_, but rather it was splitting _TSR's resources_. This seemed to be exacerbated by TSR throwing good money after bad by continuing to pour out books for settings that should have just been one or two books or a boxed set, or at least a much shorter line of products. Gamers who might have been fully satisfied with the first year or so of releases for Ravenloft, for example, ended up seeing a huge number and variety of books that, by the end, weren't appealing to anyone.




Oh I absolutely agree. When I mentioned the hobby splitting into subgenres, I didn't mean to infer these subgenres were inferior. On the contrary, I still posit that the 2e era saw some of the best 'fluff' writing, as evidenced by some of the testimonials on this very thread. In fact, I still use much of my 2e material for inspiration. I even run a straight pre-Faction War 2e-themed Planescape game using the Pathfinder engine. 

I think your word, _resources_ is a much better descriptor. TSR spread its resources thinly. It put out a lot of great stuff, 'classics' if you will, but the sad fact is if you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. 

As the straw that broke the camel's back, I have no idea. My first whiff of trouble during that time was when my _Dragon_ Magazine stopped showing up at my barracks' mailroom.

Again, I LOVE all the stuff they put out during that period. But for TSR it was a bad business move. Still, alls well that ends well, eh?


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## Hussar (Aug 31, 2010)

Heh, LurkMonkey and ColonelHardison - we're actually of an age I think.  I started about 79/80 myself.  "Old enough to be grognards, not old enough to be pioneering grognards!" - I like that.



> That is, how long would TSR have survived if they didn't have the fiction lines, or if the fiction lines had been much smaller?




I think it's fair to say that the fiction lines were considerably larger than the RPG lines.  While I realize there was a fair bit of return on the fiction lines, I thought it was the returns of RPG's that was the big problem.


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 31, 2010)

JohnRTroy said:


> If I remember correctly, one of the key things that hurt GDW in a big way was a huge order that was returned.  EGG told me that it was just one product, and while he didn't identify the product, I believe that one product was something called the Desert Storm Fact Book, a folio that cashed in on the first Iraq war, and the mass return of books really hurt GDW.




I had that book. For that matter, it may still be hidden away in my parents' garage. I'll have to check sometime. I recall it being ubiquitous for a while, and I still occasionally see it show up in bargain bins and used bookstores.


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## AllisterH (Aug 31, 2010)

It would have to be a book that 

a) was ubiquitous in 2ndhand book stores and 

b) a book that TSR was giving out for free through the RPGA. What were those products Erik Mona mentioned as being in stacks of when he wa sin the RPGA?


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## WayneLigon (Aug 31, 2010)

JohnRTroy said:


> So can anybody think of a book that TSR could have taken a big hit on?




I seem to remember that one of the major straws that broke the camel's back was the Buck Rogers license. TSR put out a jack-ton of stuff on it without apparently knowing or caring that it was a dead-weight IP.


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## Orius (Aug 31, 2010)

ColonelHardisson said:


> I think part of the problem is that they erred on the side of being safe. They seemed to go to pains to avoid power creep, but ended up dispensing with a lot of what appealed to gamers about D&D. I think they could have afforded to concentrate a bit more on the fantastical elements of their respective settings.




I feel the same way.  The historics for the most part feel a bit too mundane, there's not enough legend and folklore mixed into it for my taste.



ColonelHardisson said:


> I heard of Jakandor and saw one or two of the books when they were released, but never saw all of them. Other than not promoting it well-enough, I think TSR did something right with Jakandor - they started out with the intention of only doing three books, and stuck to the plan. I wish they'd done that with more of their settings; I'd much rather be left wanting more than to get sick of something due to how much of it I got.




Jakandor kind of comes off as partially a prototype of WotC's current setting strategy; release a setting book, and then let the DM develop it at will.  Also it was kind of modular, you just plugged it into your own campaign world anywhere you wanted it, Council of Wyrms and Tale of the Comet seemed to be based on a similar principle (Tale of the Comet was also released under the Odyssey label), though Wyrms was more of a mini-setting, while Comet was a big module.

Or conversly, instead of being a new approach, it could be seen as a throwback to the old World of Greyhawk, which had just the main setting book and was supported through modules rather than boxed sets.


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## LurkMonkey (Aug 31, 2010)

WayneLigon said:


> I seem to remember that one of the major straws that broke the camel's back was the Buck Rogers license. TSR put out a jack-ton of stuff on it without apparently knowing or caring that it was a dead-weight IP.





 I do remember wondering WTF they were doing when they were pimping that tired property out.  I'm sure that cost them a pretty penny.


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## JohnRTroy (Aug 31, 2010)

I'm not sure if the Buck Rogers property would have been a hugely returned item, as I think bookstores have to make returns in the first year or so.  It would have had to been sold in bookstores.  Was it a novel?  Was it something bookstores might have bought like Spellfire?

The Buck Rogers game is probably the only property that would cause a question mark in ethical accountability.  Lorraine was a member of the Flint Dille trust, and was basically licensing her own property, both getting flat fees, and any royalty payments.  (And they didn't just stop with one game but then came out with another game) But using such resources for a property of questionable long term value is a bit tough to swallow, and regardless of anything else positive or negative you can say about Ms. Williams, this would have been considered a conflict of interest or an ethics violation in most other companies, and had TSR been a public company with shareholders and stakeholders involved there probably would have been action taken against this.


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## AllisterH (Aug 31, 2010)

Personally..I would actually defend Buck rogers as a license.

Buck Rogers, prior to the rise of Trek & Wars _WAS_ what sci-fi meant to the general masses.

The problem I think with Buck Rogers was that it came too late AFTER the tv show..it should've been on store shelves the same year the show was on....


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## Dausuul (Aug 31, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> The problem I think with Buck Rogers was that it came too late AFTER the tv show..it should've been on store shelves the same year the show was on....




Well, yes. Of course, Lorraine Williams wasn't involved with TSR back then. More to the point, Buck Rogers should have been treated like any new venture; you test the waters with the first product and support it if it catches on. It didn't, but TSR flogged it like mad for 8 years; Wikipedia lists 39 Buck Rogers XXVc products, including ten novels, ten comics, and nineteen RPG books.


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## keterys (Aug 31, 2010)

I actually remember enjoying the Buck Rogers SSI computer games when I was a kid (like all of those gold-box style games, let's be honest), but I'm not sure I ever saw anyone playing it.

And they later put out a whole 'nother box set version of it too. I remember a game store giving it to me in a grab bag of random RPG products.


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## ColonelHardisson (Aug 31, 2010)

In general, I actually liked the Buck Rogers XXVc game, but boy did they produce way too many supplements for it. That said, I really liked some of those supplements - No Humans Allowed is one of my favorite critter books from TSR. Anyway, yeah, Buck Rogers is often pointed to as one of the things that helped contribute to TSR's fall, and I'd be interested in seeing some numbers on that.

I'm glad they didn't tie it into the TV show, which was garbage. I don't know how successful that would have been, anyway; there weren't a lot of successful media tie-ins at that time, and the TV show struggled to stay on for the two seasons it existed. Instead, they reached back to the old comic strips and serials of the 30s for inspiration, putting a more "modern" view of the future on it. I think the property could be the basis for a nice sourcebook for Gamma World, but after what happened with it at TSR I'd guess it's considered poison.


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## Riley (Aug 31, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> It would have to be a book that
> 
> a) was ubiquitous in 2ndhand book stores and
> 
> b) a book that TSR was giving out for free through the RPGA. What were those products Erik Mona mentioned as being in stacks of when he wa sin the RPGA?




Virtually every single book and box in the Planescape, Dark Sun, and Birthright series (as well as a decent number of Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, and of course all those Buck Rogers boxes) were available in large numbers at Half Price Books stores in Milwaukee during the massive warehouse purge.

I picked up half my D&D collection that way, and I wish I'd picked up more.


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## JohnRTroy (Aug 31, 2010)

Actually, if this paragraph (which isn't sourced well) from Wikipedia is correct, it might explain a few things.



> However, problems grew in the company's business practices. After the emergence of collectible card games, TSR released several new collectable game lines: Dragon Dice and Spellfire. Neither found great success in the market place. Their inventory control became virtually nonexistent, and their warehouse became packed full of unsellable product. At the same time, TSR began retaliating against fan fiction and other creative work derived from TSR intellectual property, which angered many long-time customers and fans. Other new entrants into the RPG genre introduced competing fantasy worlds, which fragmented the RPG community, further reducing TSR's already wilting consumer base. TSR itself introduced no fewer than six campaign settings over the 1990s (Al-Qadim, Birthright, Council of Wyrms, Dark Sun, Planescape and Ravenloft, in addition to the traditional five settings of Mystara, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Spelljammer), diluting its own fan base and creating competition between its expensive boxed campaign sets. Some campaign boxed sets (particularly Planescape) actually sold for less money than they cost to make. These and other factors, such as a disastrous year for its fiction lines in 1996 (over one million copies of tie-in books for various game lines were returned to TSR that year), led to TSR ending accumulating over $30 million in debt by 1996, and having to endure multiple rounds of layoffs.[10]




It says the fiction line in 1996 was disastrous for returns.  What was published in 1996 in the fiction line.  I suspect a lot of the fringe tie-ins (those less popular settings) might have had some poorly selling novels.  Does anybody have the novel list from 1995 to 1996?


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## AllisterH (Aug 31, 2010)

JohnRTroy said:


> It says the fiction line in 1996 was disastrous for returns. What was published in 1996 in the fiction line. I suspect a lot of the fringe tie-ins (those less popular settings) might have had some poorly selling novels. Does anybody have the novel list from 1995 to 1996?




Paging Mr. Echohawk

"we have a request for STATS!!"


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## Echohawk (Aug 31, 2010)

JohnRTroy said:


> Does anybody have the novel list from 1995 to 1996?



Sure, although there were a lot of them...

[size=-1]*1995*
American Knights (Endless Quest #7)
The Kagonesti (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #1)
Rogues to Riches (First Quest #1)
Test of the Twins (paperback reissue) (Dragonlance - Legends #3)
The Darkness Before Dawn (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #2)
The Giant Among Us (Forgotten Realms - Twilight Giants #2)
The Second Generation (paperback) (Dragonlance - Second Generation)
Time of the Twins (paperback reissue) (Dragonlance - Legends #1)
War of the Twins (paperback reissue) (Dragonlance - Legends #2)
The Unicorn Hunt (First Quest #2)
Baroness of Blood (Ravenloft)
Knights of the Crown (Dragonlance - Warriors #1)
Night of the Tiger (Endless Quest #8)
Shadows of Doom (Forgotten Realms - Shadow of the Avatar #1)
Once Around the Realms (Forgotten Realms anthology)
King Pinch (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #1)
Pawns Prevail (Quest Triad #1)
The Broken Blade (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #3)
Son of Dawn (First Quest #3)
Cloak of Shadows (Forgotten Realms - Shadow of the Avatar #2)
Death of a Darklord (Ravenloft)
The Irda (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #2)
Cinnabar Shadows (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #4)
Dragonking of Mystara (Mystara)
Galactic Challenge (Endless Quest #9)
Maquesta Kar-Thon (Dragonlance - Warriors #2)
Masquerades (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #10)
Siege of Darkness (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Legacy of the Drow #3)
Suitors Duel (Quest Triad #2)
The Seventh Sentinel (Dragonlance - Defenders of Magic #3)
Bigby's Curse (Endless Quest #10)
The Titan of Twilight (Forgotten Realms - Twilight Giants #3)
All Shadows Fled (Forgotten Realms - Shadow of the Avatar #3)
Dark Knight of Karameikos (Mystara)
Knights of the Sword (Dragonlance - Warriors #3)
The Dargonesti (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #3)
War in Tethyr (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #2)
Curse of the Shadowmage (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #11)
Summerhill Hounds (First Quest #4)
The 24-Hour War (Endless Quest #11)
The Iron Throne (Birthright)
Elminster - The Making of a Mage (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Elminster #1)
Realms of Magic (Forgotten Realms anthology)
Scholar of Decay (Ravenloft)

*1996*
Blood Hostages (Planescape - The Blood Wars #1)
Land of the Minotaurs (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #4)
Escape from Undermountain (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #3)
Greatheart (Birthright)
Immortal Game (Quest Triad #3)
King of the Dead (Ravenloft)
Theros Ironfeld (Dragonlance - Warriors #4)
Realms of the Underdark (Forgotten Realms anthology)
The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas #5)
The Veiled Dragon (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #12)
Sword Play (Forgotten Realms - Netheril #1)
The Dragons at War (Dragonlance - Dragon Anthologies #2)
Abyssal Warriors (Planescape - The Blood Wars #2)
Silver Shadows (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #13)
The Gully Dwarves (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #5)
The Hag’s Contract (Birthright)
Knights of the Rose (Dragonlance - Warriors #5)
Murder in Cormyr (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Mysteries #1)
Dragonmage of Mystara (Mystara)
The Black Vessel (Mystara)
The Mage in the Iron Mask (Forgotten Realms - Nobles #4)
Daughter of the Drow (paperback) (Forgotten Realms - Starlight & Shadows #1)
The Dawning of a New Age (Dragonlance - Dragons of a New Age #1)
The Spider’s Test (Birthright)
To Sleep With Evil (Ravenloft)
Stormlight (Forgotten Realms - Harpers #14)
The Dragons (Dragonlance - Lost Histories #6)
Dangerous Games (Forgotten Realms - Netheril #2)
Dragons of Summer Flame (paperback) (Dragonlance - Second Generation)[/size]


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## Dausuul (Aug 31, 2010)

Cross-posting from a spin-off thread, this link is instructive.

Notice the sales figures across time. Dragon Magazine, for example, shot up like a rocket in the three years from '79 to '82 (circulation increasing more than sevenfold in that brief interval), but seems to have peaked out around '84; the print runs for '84 and '92 are virtually the same. Adventures in the 1980s are quoted as selling 50K to 150K copies, compared to 7K-15K (!) in the 1990s. Yes, you read that right... adventure sales, on a per-adventure basis, fell by an order of magnitude. You're supposed to _increase_ economies of scale as your company grows, not go the other way!

This strongly supports the contention that the real D&D boom took place in the early '80s. That was the Golden Age*. The early to mid '90s I would characterize as more of a Silver Age; TSR cranked out loads and loads of stuff, and there were, as I said earlier, bound to be some gems in that pile. Call it reverse Sturgeon's Law--if 90% of everything is crud, there's still 10% of everything which isn't. Nevertheless, everything I've read about the era suggests that TSR's approach was harming the community more than helping it, and from a business perspective it was merely squandering the fruits of the Golden Age's successes.

[size=-2]*Note: I started gaming around 1987 and didn't get really into it until 1989 or so. Nostalgia is not tinting my view of the early '80s here.[/size]


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## Echohawk (Aug 31, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> Paging Mr. Echohawk
> "we have a request for STATS!!"



Must... resist... urge... to... create... graph...

Arrrgh... here's a comparative plot of the number of D&D RPG products versus the number of D&D novels/gamebooks released each year, up to 2009.


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## Erik Mona (Sep 1, 2010)

JohnRTroy said:


> Only by sifting through interviews and facts can we get a good picture.  Ryan's statement is a good start, but it doesn't ascertain the whole picture.  (And I think Ryan's not the best person to check business accumens--he was wrong about several things such as organized play and I think the OGL may not have been a smart long-term business move--no human being is perfect).




Your lousy view of the OGL is of course a matter of public record here on EN World, but I'm curious what you mean by Ryan Dancey being wrong about organized play.

Could you be a bit more specific?

--Erik


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## Piratecat (Sep 1, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> ...I'm curious what you mean by Ryan Dancey being wrong about organized play.
> 
> Could you be a bit more specific?



My guess (and it's only that) is that he's referring to Ryan's purchase of Living City, which foundered even as Living Greyhawk took off.


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## Erik Mona (Sep 1, 2010)

AllisterH said:


> b) a book that TSR was giving out for free through the RPGA. What were those products Erik Mona mentioned as being in stacks of when he wa sin the RPGA?




I'm operating off of ten-year-old memories here, but all of the books I mentioned earlier in the thread were still in their production cases, so none of them had been returned from retailers.

I think it wasn't just one book. My impression is that retailers returned tons and tons of books (many of them novels) to their distributor, who sat on them for a long time. When finally the distributor returned all of their backstock to TSR, it was the avalanche that destroyed the camel's back (and the camel).

--Erik


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## Erik Mona (Sep 1, 2010)

Piratecat said:


> My guess (and it's only that) is that he's referring to Ryan's purchase of Living City, which foundered even as Living Greyhawk took off.




Well, that's my guess too. Ryan's company was Organized Play (note the caps), and John didn't capitalize the words in his post, suggesting maybe he was talking about the concept of organized play in general.

Which is why I asked. 

--Erik


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## JohnRTroy (Sep 1, 2010)

I was actually quoting from one of the threads critical of Ryan's ability to predict trends...goes to Google...

Ah, here's where KingOfTheOldSchool makes that statement.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/other-...edicts-pathfinder-rpg-06-a-5.html#post4155089

To be honest, I was going my memory and that thread has several samples, I could have used another.

And as far as a "lousy view" of the OGL, well, I feel there is validity in critiquing an open license--I won't apologize for having a conservative viewpoint when it comes to things like owning your own creative works or criticizing things that might not make a lot of long-term economic success.  It certainly wasn't the big success or filled the entire vision Ryan himself had of it.  It's obviously a success for some people, including your own game company, but at minimum I see the flaws as well as the benefits.


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## Orius (Sep 1, 2010)

So how many of those novels from 95-96 were any good?  I can't comment too much, because I've read little of it, but most of it looks forgettable.  I'm not going to count the reprints of the classic Dragonlance novels, but a lot of the Dragonlance books from that year look like they cover some really minor stuff from the setting.  The only execption would be Dragons of Summer Flame and the lead-in anthology The Second Generation which both cover the main metaplot for the setting and are fairly good for D&D fiction.  

Much of the rest of the stuff looks like a big pile of dreck intended to make money off the various settings.  Maybe some of those books are good, but I really don't know.  I will say right off that the Blood War trilogy for Planescape was crap, and not in a good way.  The story sucked, and it broke the setting's rules 



Spoiler



(one of the main characters created planer portals, which according to setting rules couldn't be done by PC types, there was also the big battle scene at the end of the second book where fiends and celestials flew into Sigil from the top of the Spire, which also goes against setting rules)


.  It was so bad I forced myself to finish the second horrid book and never bothered to read the third.


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## Hussar (Sep 1, 2010)

Echohawk - that's interesting.  It looks like novels and game books were booming throughout much of 3e as well.  From that graph, the period from 04 to 08 saw just as many novels and game books as the peak of 2e.  However, the fact that WOTC was producing a fraction of RPG books in a comparative period I think says volumes as well.

It certainly looks a lot healthier anyway.


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## AdmundfortGeographer (Sep 1, 2010)

Orius said:


> So how many of those novels from 95-96 were any good?



The Black Vessel, the single novel set in the Savage Coast (aka Red Steel), was by far the best Mystara novel. Still, it was never fated to be a major seller being a sub-setting of a third-tier setting. It's actually not too bad game fiction. But maybe Mystara's novels were poor enough that it's not a stringent benchmark.


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## Echohawk (Sep 1, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Echohawk - that's interesting.  It looks like novels and game books were booming throughout much of 3e as well.  From that graph, the period from 04 to 08 saw just as many novels and game books as the peak of 2e.  However, the fact that WOTC was producing a fraction of RPG books in a comparative period I think says volumes as well.



Yeah, the higher number of novels from 2005-2007 surprised me too. Sufficiently so that I went back and double-checked my numbers. In 2006, WotC released a whopping 60 novels, although 15 of those were reprints of previously released books (and the graph doesn't include those, it only counts new releases).

Here's how the 45 new titles for 2006 break down:

13 Dragonlance titles
11 Eberron titles
14 Forgotten Realms titles
1 Mixed-world anthology (Dragons: Worlds Afire)
6 Kids books (Knights of the Silver Dragon series)

Comparing that to the 2009 novel release schedule is interesting:

5 Dragonlance titles
3 Eberron title
13 Forgotten Realms titles
3 Kids cooks (Dragon Codex series)

plus a whopping 21 releases in 2009 that were reprints of previous releases or omnibus editions collections previous trilogies.


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## JohnRTroy (Sep 1, 2010)

Were the Birthright or Ravenloft novels best sellers?  

I can see a lot of that stuff being returned, especially if it was a new product and turned out not to "turn into gold" like many FR or Dragonlance novels did.  Plus you have the a-tier authors,  (Greenwood writing for his setting, Hickman and Weiss for Dragonlance), and the b-tier, and it looks like they may have been spreading things too thin.

Plus, were the Quest (aimed at younger audiences) line successful?  It wasn't the early 80s and D&D seemed to lose a lot of the audience it gained at its peak.


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## Wicht (Sep 1, 2010)

LurkMonkey said:


> I do remember wondering WTF they were doing when they were pimping that tired property out.  I'm sure that cost them a pretty penny.




I seem to recall reading somewhere that Lorraine Williams aggressively pushed the Buck Rogers line because her family got money for each book regardless of how well they sold.


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## Dausuul (Sep 1, 2010)

Wicht said:


> I seem to recall reading somewhere that Lorraine Williams aggressively pushed the Buck Rogers line because her family got money for each book regardless of how well they sold.




Her family did indeed get money for each book. TSR under her leadership aggressively pushed the Buck Rogers line.

You would not be alone in inferring a causal relationship.


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## Erik Mona (Sep 1, 2010)

JohnRTroy said:


> And as far as a "lousy view" of the OGL, well, I feel there is validity in critiquing an open license--I won't apologize for having a conservative viewpoint when it comes to things like owning your own creative works or criticizing things that might not make a lot of long-term economic success.  It certainly wasn't the big success or filled the entire vision Ryan himself had of it.  It's obviously a success for some people, including your own game company, but at minimum I see the flaws as well as the benefits.




I certainly wasn't expecting you to apologize for your viewpoint. 

I appreciate the link and the clarification.

--Erik


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## JohnRTroy (Sep 1, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> I certainly wasn't expecting you to apologize for your viewpoint.
> 
> I appreciate the link and the clarification.
> 
> --Erik




But just to also clarify, I think the reason why I brought up that note about Ryan was not to specifically criticize his viewpoint, but to emphasize that it's important to get other viewpoints, as many as you can, to portray an accurate history.  The only reason I mentioned that "he's been wrong" is to emphasize that he, like many other people, make mistakes or miscalculations or don't predict everything.

Ryan's notes was taken from a company outsider (to TSR) trying to do an objective analysis on the failure of TSR, so it has a lot of good points and it doesn't suffer from a usual bias you'd find from the person who makes the decisions.  But I would also think it would be prudent to hear from others, especially those who actually worked there, as well as people who would be involved such as the people who might have been buying the TSR stuff for the book industry.

I wish somebody would interview all the people (who are still alive) involved with TSR and WoTC and someday to a really good history of the company.  If they could do as good a job as the 40 Years of Gen Con book, I'd buy that in a heartbeat.


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## Beginning of the End (Sep 2, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> Adventures in the 1980s are quoted as selling 50K to 150K copies, compared to 7K-15K (!) in the 1990s.




To play devil's advocate (while agreeing with the assessment that D&D's biggest boom time was clearly the late '70s and early '80s), a title-to-title comparison of adventure sales isn't useful because:

(a) Dungeon Magazine completely changed the adventure market.
(b) The number of available modules exploded.

I'm guessing, based on the figures I've seen, that the total D&D supplement market in '92 was probably pretty close to the total D&D supplement market of '82. It was just being smeared across 5x as many products.

My gut would also say that the market for core rulebooks had probably decreased. But, OTOH, there is the former TSR employee who claimed that they sold 1,000,000 Basic Sets in 1989. If that's true, then D&D's popularity was much more than an early-'80s fad that lasted for a couple of years. Its growth peaked, but that level was sustained for at least a decade.

I still maintain that the loss of a true Basic Set that wasn't a pay-to-preview product in '91 was a major problem for the brand. One which, sadly, the Essentials line still isn't remedying. Maybe some day...


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## Erik Mona (Sep 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> But, OTOH, there is the former TSR employee who claimed that they sold 1,000,000 Basic Sets in 1989. If that's true,




I don't think that's even close to true. 

--Erik


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## Votan (Sep 2, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> I don't think that's even close to true.
> 
> --Erik




What would be a more realistic estimate?


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## Dausuul (Sep 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> To play devil's advocate (while agreeing with the assessment that D&D's biggest boom time was clearly the late '70s and early '80s), a title-to-title comparison of adventure sales isn't useful because:
> 
> (a) Dungeon Magazine completely changed the adventure market.
> (b) The number of available modules exploded.




I agree that one shouldn't infer a collapse of the adventure market from the drop in sales per title. But when sales per title fall by _a factor of ten_, that's not a healthy sign.



Beginning of the End said:


> I'm guessing, based on the figures I've seen, that the total D&D supplement market in '92 was probably pretty close to the total D&D supplement market of '82. It was just being smeared across 5x as many products.




Agreed. Mainly I was getting at the OP's claim that the late '80s/early '90s was a boom time for D&D, and I don't think the data supports such a claim. The boom time was the early '80s when the game's popularity exploded. The '90s were more of a Red Queen's Race, with TSR cranking out ever more material just to stay in the same spot, meanwhile alienating fans and business partners alike with boneheaded decisions.


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## Erik Mona (Sep 2, 2010)

Votan said:


> What would be a more realistic estimate?




I suspect the number is closer to 50,000.

My best information suggests that the 2e Player's Handbook (pre-black border edition) sold less than 2 million copies over its entire lifetime. The Red Box did much more than this over its lifetime, but that was very near the end in 1989.

--Erik


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## rogueattorney (Sep 2, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> I suspect the number is closer to 50,000.
> 
> My best information suggests that the 2e Player's Handbook (pre-black border edition) sold less than 2 million copies over its entire lifetime. The Red Box did much more than this over its lifetime, but that was very near the end in 1989.
> 
> --Erik




If the red box was so successful in 1989, one has to wonder why they canceled it in 1990 and went a different direction in 1991.  A direction which ultimately would end in the cancellation of the D&D line by 1994.  

Rank stupidity is a possible explanation.


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## Erik Mona (Sep 2, 2010)

Another possibility is that 50,000-some units wasn't seen as all that impressive by TSR standards (based on the previous decade).

--Erik


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## Beginning of the End (Sep 3, 2010)

Erik Mona said:


> I suspect the number is closer to 50,000.
> 
> My best information suggests that the 2e Player's Handbook (pre-black border edition) sold less than 2 million copies over its entire lifetime. The Red Box did much more than this over its lifetime, but that was very near the end in 1989.




That certainly sounds like a more believable figure. Thanks for issuing a correction. That cite on Acaeum gets trotted out way too much and it's nice to have it debunked.



rogueattorney said:


> If the red box was so successful in 1989,  one has to wonder why they canceled it in 1990 and went a different  direction in 1991.  A direction which ultimately would end in the  cancellation of the D&D line by 1994.
> 
> Rank stupidity is a possible explanation.




Possibly. But hindsight is 20-20.

The real question would be what the sales on the Expert, Companion, and Master sets looked like in 1989. If the sales on those products were flagging to a point where reprinting them was beginning to look like a questionable proposition, then TSR's decision to switch to a rebooted Basic + Cyclopedia model makes sense.

I think the root of their mistake remains the pay-for-preview nature of the post-1991 Basic Sets: Pay us $20 or $30 for a product which is designed to sell you a different product. And once you buy that product, the Basic Set will never be used again.

This has three effects:

(1) When a new player joins an existing group, that group is not going to be using the _Basic Set_ and the new player is probably going to be told to skip buying it. This means that you're creating a segment of your potential audience which is skipping the product.

(2) Savvy customers are going to skip the pay-to-preview product and just buy the full rules. At best they will feel like the company was trying to pull a fast one on them. At worst, this will sour them on the idea of trying the game and/or confuse them so that they end up not making the purchase.

(3) Customers who end up buying the pay-to-preview product had a high probability of feeling like they got ripped off when they figure out that they bought the "wrong" book.

Anyway, long tangent short: D&D experienced its largest success when it had an accessible, all-in-one box that _wasn't_ a pay-to-preview product. It would be nice if WotC seriously considered marketing the game that way again.

(The Essentials line arguably makes it all worse. You now have three different entry points to the game all labeled with an identical trademark: The Basic Set, the Essentials Compendium + Heroes trilogy, and the core rulebook trilogy. For a product line which is ostensibly about making it clearer to the consumer what books they're supposed to be buying, this looks like a complete failure to my eye.)


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