I agree wholeheartedly. I like to read rpg books as much as or sometimes even more than I enjoy playing. Slogging through rules and character options bores me to no end. The current line is that setting fluff is not in demand and buyers want to consume rules.
If you think about it with the exception of perhaps Legend of the 5 Rings and Golarion there is a notable lack of campaign worlds that are supported with more than two or three supplements.
Hellfrost from Savage Worlds has some meat.
I'm saddened by the move to rules! rules! rules! at least character upgrades and feats. The rules I want to see..... kingdom building....resource management.... are not in demand as of yet. I see evidence that is starting to change thankfully.
The problem with extended printed campaign support is that you start to tread in TSR territory. They did go broke, after all.
If I make four books for Forgotten Realms, only people who like FR are going to buy them. If they're niche books, I've just cut the market down even more.
The basic idea with 4e campaign releases is to shy away from worlds that were so full that DM's couldn't actually stretch out and play them. You have two books with the basics and neccessities with a double scoop of potential plot lines.
I also have to say that I like they way the 4e settings, location and creature books are layouted. It's much easier to get an overview than with the respective 3e books, and it doesn't get quite so lost in details...
Frankly this seems odd, if you can only think of three campaign worlds getting regular support. There's far more than that.
I honestly can only think of a few. Golarion is the most developed followed by Hellfrost (even this is slim), L5R, and you're right Runequest and Glorantha have some support. I do have Runequest Empires but I wasn't that impressed with it.
What other big expansive campaign worlds are there?
Warhammer fantasy has switched to more of a player option/rules production line.
I think the 40k FFG lines are doing an admirable job.
I know the current logic is that if you produce multiple campaign worlds your company will collapse due to a fragmented customer base but sometimes I get the feeling that someone posted that TSR argument and everyone just kept reposting it blindly.
Yea, TSR went bankrupt but they had a long long run.
WEG had some great campaign worlds....Torg and tons of development for Star Wars.
What are the big campaign worlds receiving regular print support in your eyes?
WotC seemed happy enough pumping out setting book after setting book for 3.5 Forgotten Realms and only slowed down towards the end of the life of the system. Paizo put out a lot of setting books for Golarion and they seem to be doing pretty darn well too. So I don't think it's true that providing ongoing support to a campaign world is in itself a bad idea.
I don't have any links or proof of ~*~insider information~*~ but I recall reading that the extended books of FR and even of Eberron weren't big hits and generally got more flak then praise.
The thing with Golarion is that it's one world. With D&D you have far more then just one.
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I am a bit in the middle, I think WotC got it just right with teh Eberron line for 3.5.
The core campaign setting book
15 campaign supplements
Four scenarios that can be linked
A campaign adventure
Its enough to have a fully fleshed out setting, but not so much that you couldn't read it all.
I was actually pleased when WotC said for 4e Eberron would only get a Players Guide, a Campaign Guide and a scenario, because to be honest I prefer 3.5 to 4e, have all the 3.5 books for fluff and so didn't want to rebuy a load of books - but I am also a completionist and knew I woudl buy the 4e stuff too. So I got to buy the 4e Eberron stuff without having to buy loads of books. However, if all WotC had put out for Eberron during its 3.5 run was three books I wouldn't have felt sated.
Golarion on the other hand has for me past the point of setting bloat. There is so much out there that I couldn't possibly get it all and have a chance to read it and still spend time on other RPGs.
If PF was all I wanted to play and Golarion the only setting, then it may be okay, but its not. Also I believe it would always irk me that the setting material is split between 3.5 and PF RPG.
And with me I am a bit of completionist, so its all or the bare minimum (and in the case of the latter it won't be my preferred setting).
So for Golarion I have bought the Gazateer, and then just buy the odd PDF that interests me - Guide to Absalom (due to it featuring heavily in PFS), Guide to Dark Moon Vale (as my main PFS character comes from there) and I just read the Osirian Player Companion (as my second PFS character comes from there). I don't plan to buy the campaign guide or really any more Golarion stuff and I don't plan to play in the setting other than for PFS.
I am a bit in the middle, I think WotC got it just right with teh Eberron line for 3.5.
The core campaign setting book
15 campaign supplements
Four scenarios that can be linked
A campaign adventureIts enough to have a fully fleshed out setting, but not so much that you couldn't read it all.
I was actually pleased when WotC said for 4e Eberron would only get a Players Guide, a Campaign Guide and a scenario, because to be honest I prefer 3.5 to 4e, have all the 3.5 books for fluff and so didn't want to rebuy a load of books - but I am also a completionist and knew I woudl buy the 4e stuff too. So I got to buy the 4e Eberron stuff without having to buy loads of books. However, if all WotC had put out for Eberron during its 3.5 run was three books I wouldn't have felt sated.
Golarion on the other hand has for me past the point of setting bloat. There is so much out there that I couldn't possibly get it all and have a chance to read it and still spend time on other RPGs.
If PF was all I wanted to play and Golarion the only setting, then it may be okay, but its not. Also I believe it would always irk me that the setting material is split between 3.5 and PF RPG.
And with me I am a bit of completionist, so its all or the bare minimum (and in the case of the latter it won't be my preferred setting).
So for Golarion I have bought the Gazateer, and then just buy the odd PDF that interests me - Guide to Absalom (due to it featuring heavily in PFS), Guide to Dark Moon Vale (as my main PFS character comes from there) and I just read the Osirian Player Companion (as my second PFS character comes from there). I don't plan to buy the campaign guide or really any more Golarion stuff and I don't plan to play in the setting other than for PFS.
It's a little off topic, but I'd really recommend city of strangers - it's a fantastic setting book.
I'm not sure I agree that that's the logic. I think that the idea is that publishing a lot of material that most of your customers aren't interested in is a bad idea.
And that is where my gripe is! I'm a person on the Internet, so naturally I feel my way is best. At one point and time I believe people enjoyed fluff as part of their game world and were very interested in purchasing fluff centric products.
Yes, TSR went under, but they sold a bundle of boxed sets chronicling a score of vibrant, well developed settings. The reason given for their failure was that they fragmented their customer base. Ravenloft people bought Ravenloft and so on and so forth. But each of these settings had die hard fans that consumed all of the fluff available for their respective worlds.
Now the logic is customers aren't interested in fluff.
Why did this change? I have to believe that at one time customers were interested in fluff. In theory Forgotten Realms died under the weight of its fluff. People still wax reverently over Greyhawk and Dark Sun.
Why is fluff no longer viable?
I feel people switched to this rules! rules! mentality and in the process the game lost something.
I'm not sure I agree that that's the logic. I think that the idea is that publishing a lot of material that most of your customers aren't interested in is a bad idea.And that is where my gripe is! I'm a person on the Internet, so naturally I feel my way is best. At one point and time I believe people enjoyed fluff as part of their game world and were very interested in purchasing fluff centric products.
Yes, TSR went under, but they sold a bundle of boxed sets chronicling a score of vibrant, well developed settings. The reason given for their failure was that they fragmented their customer base. Ravenloft people bought Ravenloft and so on and so forth. But each of these settings had die hard fans that consumed all of the fluff available for their respective worlds.
Now the logic is customers aren't interested in fluff.
Why did this change? I have to believe that at one time customers were interested in fluff. In theory Forgotten Realms died under the weight of its fluff. People still wax reverently over Greyhawk and Dark Sun.
Why is fluff no longer viable?I feel people switched to this rules! rules! mentality and in the process the game lost something.
I think people are plenty interested in fluff!
But I think it makes more sense to have generalized fluff like Plane Above then to have setting specific books.
Yes, TSR went under, but they sold a bundle of boxed sets chronicling a score of vibrant, well developed settings. The reason given for their failure was that they fragmented their customer base. Ravenloft people bought Ravenloft and so on and so forth. But each of these settings had die hard fans that consumed all of the fluff available for their respective worlds.Now the logic is customers aren't interested in fluff.
Why did this change? I have to believe that at one time customers were interested in fluff. In theory Forgotten Realms died under the weight of its fluff. People still wax reverently over Greyhawk and Dark Sun.
Why is fluff no longer viable?I feel people switched to this rules! rules! mentality and in the process the game lost something.
The argument was that it was never viable, as a separate market, to begin with - that's why a titan like TSR could die. Purportedly each setting box did great (which is why TSR kept pumping them out) but after that there was never enough demand to pay for the follow on products - worse yet the 'generic' D&D products began to suffer because the customer base wanted specifically Ravenloft or Darksun and Dungeon Level #3 of the Endless Crypt of Penultimate Doom would not sell because it had no place in Dark Sun or Ravenloft.
It does not matter how die hard the fan base** is, what is really needed is lots of customers. Its worth noting that during the 3.x era WotC was willing to license out places like Ravenloft, but with the exception of Dragonlance, few where interested in licensing these worlds, the general feeling among the 3rd party publishers was that they would not make money...not even enough money to satisfy a small d20 publisher.
** there is an exception to this - Matrix Games sells computer games, mostly war games. Usually they are based on newish but not anywhere near bleeding edge technology...and they sell some of these games, Like their massive Pacific War game for $100 dollars a pop (and you download them to boot). The games are unbelievably detailed...for the hard core purist only and in this way they can make money. Their die hard fans are willing to shell out three times what a computer game normally goes for in order to play these games - its boutique computer gaming basically. Hence if Ravenloft fans where so hard core that there where willing to shell out $120 dollars for a book that, if it where some other RPG product would go for $40 then there would be a market. At this point the belief is that trying to sell Ravenloft Hardcovers for $120 a pop would be an utter failure.
I don't really know anything about it, but the story I heard that made sense to me was that what really pushed TSR over the edge was an unsuccessful push into the mainstream. As I heard it, all of their RPG product lines were doing at least okay - but they banked on massive sales of softcover novels which never eventuated. In addition, there is a 'standard clause' in book distribution deals where the big distributors buy stacks of your product provided you agree to buy back what they can't sell at the end of the year.
As I understood it, TSR had demand for their various sourcebooks, they just ran out of cash due to suddenly have to buy back several truckloads of softcover novels which hadn't sold. So they were left with a bunch of unsellable stock and no cash nor remaining credit to produce the various boxed sets, campaign supplements and so forth for which there was still demand.
That was all from 'some guy on the internet' of course so who knows how true it is. I remember thinking that the account he gave (which was far more complete) made a lot of sense - certainly more than the popular alternative which seemed to be that TSR just blithely continued as they had always done, churning out more and more product lines and 'fracturing their market' whilst they slowly ran out of money.
I'm saddened by the move to rules! rules! rules!I very much agree. As much as I enjoy the Pathfinder RPG it's really the attention that they have paid to Golarion which got me hooked on Paizo. I've never really gotten into L5R despite having some friends mad on it, but I picked up Hellfrost recently after seeing it recommended on these boards. I haven't had a chance to read through in great detail yet, but I've definitely liked it so far.
Shadowrun always had a great game world too I thought. Though I haven't bought anything from the line for some time and it's a bit of a different genre.
Hellfrost is a great setting, I think it's an amazing setting, rich in flavor and style. What's great about it is that you can buy the gazetteer and not have to worry about mechanics at all. It's completely system free so you would have everything you need to Hellfrost your 4e, PF, fantasy-RPG-system-X, etc.
I like to think of Hellfrost as the Golarion of Savageworlds and Tripleace Games as the Paizo. Not that Pinnacle is anything like Wizards (after all, they do damn good flavor and fluff in their products, ooh diss :P), but the whole 3rd party company thing, TAG seems to be the best 3PP for Savage Worlds in my not so humble opinion.
I don't really know anything about it, but the story I heard that made sense to me was that what really pushed TSR over the edge was an unsuccessful push into the mainstream. As I heard it, all of their RPG product lines were doing at least okay - but they banked on massive sales of softcover novels which never eventuated. In addition, there is a 'standard clause' in book distribution deals where the big distributors buy stacks of your product provided you agree to buy back what they can't sell at the end of the year.
As I understood it, TSR had demand for their various sourcebooks, they just ran out of cash due to suddenly have to buy back several truckloads of softcover novels which hadn't sold. So they were left with a bunch of unsellable stock and no cash nor remaining credit to produce the various boxed sets, campaign supplements and so forth for which there was still demand.
That was all from 'some guy on the internet' of course so who knows how true it is. I remember thinking that the account he gave (which was far more complete) made a lot of sense - certainly more than the popular alternative which seemed to be that TSR just blithely continued as they had always done, churning out more and more product lines and 'fracturing their market' whilst they slowly ran out of money.
TSR was pushed over the edge by the hater that was 'she who must not be named'.
TSR was pushed over the edge by the hater that was 'she who must not be named'.
Look, LW isn't freaking Voldemort.
She's also the one that saved D&D when it was being looted by the Blume family; people tend to skip that little factoid over.
Removed some posts and their replies. Please post civilly and respectfully.
I'm just curious as to whether anybody else feels this way?
Reading D&D fluff is alright if I have nothing else to read, but I like full novels for my fiction fix. And since I tend to write my own gaming fluff anyway, fluff is a low priority when I'm buying game books.
That said, I can see how 4e books would be a disappointment to a game-fluff-lover. (That sounded vaguely inappropriate, but I can't say why...) 2e books put later game fluff to shame; in fact Planescape is the only published setting I've ever been gaga about.
So, you could download or find hard copies of earlier fluff books. You could also check out the blogosphere for the huge quantity of unofficial game fluff.
And with that shameless plug, I bid you adieu!