Re: Offtopic - "4DVENTURE"

On Aug 26, 2007, at 12:08 PM, Steven wrote:

> 3rd ed has been player paradise, with just about everything for
> them.

Yes. Munchkin Land.  :)

> But, fluff is hard to sell: who uses it? If it's only DMs, that's less
> of the market....

Now this I find hard to believe... Honestly. Who on this list  
considers themselves ONLY a "player" and therefore never buys any  
fluff or "for the DM's eyes only" products? The distinction of "DM"  
and "Player," insofar as who buys what material, I find to be  
somewhat outdated. They don't ask you for your DM's license when you  
buy campaign material at a hobby shop. For my part, I like to buy  
campaign settings and modules just to read on their own, as outside  
of the gaming setting they do make for fun reading (which only a true  
gamer can appreciate).

The very idea that DMs automatically equal a smaller part of the  
market is therefore not realistic. Anybody who's not a casual game  
player is probably equally as likely to buy a crunch book as a book  
of setting detail. More casual players are less likely to buy  
anything at all, and just mooch off the books, dice and character  
sheets provided at a gaming session. Besides which, the drastic  
imbalance in terms of the "player" material being published, as  
opposed to the dearth of "DM" material, should be a much more serious  
concern to WotC than worrying about "who uses [fluff]".

If Wizards honestly believes that setting detail is worth less of the  
market than the scads of rulebooks that have been dumped into the  
market... well, it certainly is an explanation for the lack of  
setting material they've generated to date. It speaks to a general  
underestimation of their core constituency, or maybe an  
overcompensation for earlier TSR excesses (with little regard for the  
quality that was put out with that excess).