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In addition to everything else, the consumer can assume (or ought to be able to assume) that a giant RPG book is going to be a pretty solid investment in entertainment for at least the next few years.
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May 7, 2015 00:00
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jivjov posted:I think the "costs too much" complaint is mostly coming from people new to the hobby Also, lines like this from grognards.txt quote:The price of the new Runequest books adds to the same reason I have skipped on the remakes of Paranoia and Warhammer Fantasy.
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May 7, 2015 00:06
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JerryLee posted:In addition to everything else, the consumer can assume (or ought to be able to assume) that a giant RPG book is going to be a pretty solid investment in entertainment for at least the next few years. I've been making the worst investments ever, then, if you count all the books I bought and never got to play.
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May 7, 2015 00:06
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D&D insider was 7.99 a month, or like 70 bucks if you bought a year at once, IIRC. So it really was cheaper than buying the books. On the other hand, -way- more people bought into insider than would ever buy the books anyway, so...
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May 7, 2015 00:07
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Not to mention that during the time of the offline builder there were people who would subscribe for a month when new content came out, download it, and then cancel their subscription until the next major release.
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May 7, 2015 00:09
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Toph Bei Fong posted:$15 /month x 12 months = $180/year That's also being generous and assuming that people are using the month-to-month subscription, rather than the discounted 3-/12-month subscription options. Edit: new page, oops
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May 7, 2015 01:05
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:That's also being generous and assuming that people are using the month-to-month subscription, rather than the discounted 3-/12-month subscription options. True but physical books mean every purchase is an active decision. I think a fascinating metric would be average days between last active use (say more than 1 login a month) and Insider subscription cancellation.
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May 7, 2015 01:31
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Toph Bei Fong posted:$15 /month x 12 months = $180/year I will admit to being out of touch with D&D, but are you saying Wizards only puts out 4 D&D books a year? Is Onyx Path, which is literally three people managing a swarm of freelancers and selling entirely online, outproducing WotC?
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May 7, 2015 01:41
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unseenlibrarian posted:D&D insider was 7.99 a month, or like 70 bucks if you bought a year at once, IIRC. So it really was cheaper than buying the books. On the other hand, -way- more people bought into insider than would ever buy the books anyway, so... Yeah typically one book per group. Yet subscriptions could be per player.
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May 7, 2015 01:45
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Pope Guilty posted:I will admit to being out of touch with D&D, but are you saying Wizards only puts out 4 D&D books a year? Is Onyx Path, which is literally three people managing a swarm of freelancers and selling entirely online, outproducing WotC? I think they meant like the yearly allotment of "Player Option: A Bunch More Psionics Pt 2" or whatever, as opposed to, say, "Actually a Pretty Good Dark Sun Campaign Guide, but with only like two mechanics widgets in it that typically drive player sales."
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May 7, 2015 01:55
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inklesspen posted:I've been making the worst investments ever, then, if you count all the books I bought and never got to play. Me too, quite frankly, but at that point it's on us. 
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May 7, 2015 02:07
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Now that electronic distribution is more of a thing I don't feel any guilt about my hoarding tendencies. Though I do miss the theoretical game where I bring a stack of Vampire supplements as tall as I am to the table.
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May 7, 2015 02:13
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When I was playing 4e, I had a D&D insider subscription (even though I used and greatly preferred the offline character client and DM tools), and I also bought a bunch of books. Just about the only books that my Insider subscription led me to not buying, were the treasure & equipment books, because I don't give a crap about the fluff descriptions for pieces of loot (I always made up my own anyway). I canceled my subscription when they canceled support for the offline client. I tried the online client and it crippled my ability to implement custom/house rules, and also took away my ability to make and manage characters when I wasn't on a wifi connection with Internet access (which was often, back then). Wizards promised a lot with the original D&D insider tools. The tabletop 3d map/virtual game tool was promised on release day, and they even had preview tools of it. As far as I know, it never materialized, right? The decision to switch to a web client was idiotic not only because it was a regression of functionality, but also because it represents a massive waste of money - all of the money spent developing the desktop client. Software is really expensive, and they must have paid multiple developers for a good long while to do each of the two client projects. That represents at least many hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. You can't directly compare book sales to D&D insider sales. D&D insider provided a lot more than what you got in books (so people who preferred hardback books still had good reasons to pay for it), while hardback books usually provide advantages over D&D insider (some people will always prefer physical books; the books allow a GM to ban the use of electronic distraction-devices at the game table; books do not go down for maintenance; etc.). PDFs/eBooks give you a third option, one with a lot less overhead and per-item costs. Probably the biggest drawback to moving to an eBook & online subscription model, is that you are cutting out the FLGS's profit source for your game. You need to give those outlets good reasons to carry your products, promote your game, etc. It's a tough call, though, because if you believe that your online/electronic offerings reduce book sales at all, then not only are you potentially undercutting your own retailers, you're also increasing the per-unit cost of your physical books. It still cost you just as much to write, edit, typeset, etc., but you are also paying more per book to print and distribute them if you're selling a lower volume. There's plenty of evidence that a hybrid online+print model of publication is the "best" in terms of giving your customers the most opportunities to give you their money, while also making them happy. But it's not as simple as it might seem to just go for that model whole-hog. The way Wizards handled D&D after a couple years of Insider/4e was not great, and their handling of their product since then has not improved.
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May 7, 2015 02:23
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WotC's D&D branch is basically a long line of continuously taking genies out of bottles and then desperately trying to stuff them back in.
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May 7, 2015 03:05
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well anyone that would actually be able competently design TT game/run a TT business is already busy being successful in a more profitable industry....
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May 7, 2015 03:11
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Pope Guilty posted:I will admit to being out of touch with D&D, but are you saying Wizards only puts out 4 D&D books a year? Is Onyx Path, which is literally three people managing a swarm of freelancers and selling entirely online, outproducing WotC? Currently, Wizards doesn't make ANY D&D books. Except for the core three books, every D&D 5e product has been outsourced, as far as I can tell.
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May 7, 2015 03:13
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Tendales posted:Currently, Wizards doesn't make ANY D&D books. Except for the core three books, every D&D 5e product has been outsourced, as far as I can tell. So it's the OGL era again, only with WotC's share of the market being even smaller?
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May 7, 2015 03:14
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Pope Guilty posted:So it's the OGL era again, only with WotC's share of the market being even smaller? Well, not exactly. In the OGL era, anyone could make officially D20 branded stuff, no need to ask permission or anything. What we have now is just plain old contract work. Mearls writes down some notes on a piece of paper, sends it to some random studio that can actually turn in their homework on time, gets the docs back in a while, stamps it with WotC branding and it's off to the Hasbro publishers for printing. So, really, it's more like the Palladium publishing model, tbh.
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May 7, 2015 03:21
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FMguru posted:Also, lines like this from grognards.txt [INFLATION INFLATION!] I still think it is a stupid point and not worth making, mind you.
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May 7, 2015 03:26
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Quarex posted:I know this is a strange thing to think, but I -almost- see what he is trying to say ... I mean, I remember I, or rather of course whoever was paying for me as a li'l kid, paying $39.99 for the PC game Centurion in 1990. That evidently works out to ~$75 today. But obviously a modern PC game like Centurion would cost $40, like, at MOST today, and possibly much less...but somehow the idea that $40 is a reasonable price to pay for a game still seems right, so in that sense $35 then is $35 now. That is some ridiculously tortured logic.
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May 7, 2015 03:31
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Thinking $35 dollars in 1988 is the same as $35 today is perfectly understandable if you continue to live with your parents and they pay all your bills.
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May 7, 2015 03:34
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Kai Tave posted:That is some ridiculously tortured logic. Same logic as my balking at $10-12 paperbacks because they used to be $4-6 when I was growing up. It's not a good way to see things, but it's definitely not uncommon. Ninja edit: That being said, I still pay for novels because the authors I like deserve money even if my gut reaction says they're asking too much.
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May 7, 2015 03:35
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What it actually means is that PC game prices have gone down. And yeah I do the same thing with book prices. 
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May 7, 2015 03:37
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Kai Tave posted:That is some ridiculously tortured logic. It... seems relatively straightforward to me? He's using two different things as an example of how the price in dollars can stay roughly the same or even go down despite inflation, because there are more things than inflation that affect the price (like the state of the art making it cheaper to create and distribute things). You can argue that it doesn't apply to elfgame books (ideally providing specific reasons) but that doesn't make the logic tortured.
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May 7, 2015 03:41
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Well it's not like wages have increased so clearly costs shouldn't have
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May 7, 2015 03:47
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JerryLee posted:It... seems relatively straightforward to me? He's using two different things as an example of how the price in dollars can stay roughly the same or even go down despite inflation, because there are more things than inflation that affect the price (like the state of the art making it cheaper to create and distribute things). You can argue that it doesn't apply to elfgame books (ideally providing specific reasons) but that doesn't make the logic tortured. "A top of the line computer game in 1980 cost $40 and therefore if a computer game released in 2015 using 1980s standards for quality costs just $40 then inflation must not be that big a deal" isn't a train of logic that makes that grogpost's argument any less dumb.
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May 7, 2015 03:48
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Kai Tave posted:"A top of the line computer game in 1980 cost $40 and therefore if a computer game released in 2015 using 1980s standards for quality costs just $40 then inflation must not be that big a deal" isn't a train of logic that makes that grogpost's argument any less dumb. Well, it might not have been what they said, but it's not like you can't also get games released to 2015 standards for $40.
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May 7, 2015 03:50
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JerryLee posted:Well, it might not have been what they said, but it's not like you can't also get games released to 2015 standards for $40. Hell, you can get them for cheaper on a Steam sale, but the existence of something like Steam sales doesn't mean that inflation isn't kind of a big deal when comparing purchasing power and relative pricing of goods between 1980 and 2015.
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May 7, 2015 04:01
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Kai Tave posted:Hell, you can get them for cheaper on a Steam sale, but the existence of something like Steam sales doesn't mean that inflation isn't kind of a big deal when comparing purchasing power and relative pricing of goods between 1980 and 2015. Actually that grog.txt post was from me and I still pretty much stand by it. But thanks dude that said I clearly live in my basement. As opposed to owning my own paid for home and making pretty decent money. Inflation is kind of true AND false all at the same time plus perception and age. I am 40. 20 bucks to me is gonna feel different than 20 bucks to someone graduating High School this year. Obviously it goes a lot less further generally, even if I went from 5 bucks an hour at my first job out of the Navy in 96 to 28 or so now. (Gas has practically doubled but it was a 1.40 in 96, down to a buck in 98, about 4.50 or so in mid 00s, now around 2.80.) Hell, snacks at the work vending machine were like 65 cents in 98 and now they are .85-1.00. poo poo goes up in price and wages go up but generally not remotely to the same level. Plus as one gets older things like savings, home improvement, medical, ect take up more and more money as opposed to most of my paycheck being for stupid nerd crap. (Not even getting into space to store it, and time to properly utilize it all!) And you know, I am pretty much cheap as poo poo. I don't mind spending money but I want value out of it. Why buy a 4-5 dollar comic book that is maybe 15 minutes of entertainment when that same amount gets me a game on Steam or IOS? (Speaking of a thing that has rapidly outpaced inflation. I was doing some inflation stuff for laughs and giggles in my Game Collection posts: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2015/04/operation-game-collection-dungeons-and.html by my calculations comics should be under 2 bucks as opposed to Secret Wars issue 1 being five dollars. Marvel and DC books were 2 bucks back in the mid-late 90s. Given how comics are kind of in the same niche market as RPGs it is kind of appropriate but to be fair if you do look at inflation hobby gaming has generally kept closer pace with inflation, with 1977 vintage era White Box OD&D being 38 dollars in now money. Iron Kingdoms Unleashed starter box is 45 MSRP, though its cheaper online. More GOODIES in the box but it isn't remotely as complete a game as ODnD was.) I look at how much crap I have and honestly I don't need or have much use for as much so price will matter. Once you add in all our modern tech and the fact you can get good products both old and new for free or under 10 bucks in a digital only format and it really does make these huge rear end inconvenient loving 60+ dollar coffee table monster RPG corebooks look a lot less attractive to longer term gamers or newbies who compare them to other products that on the surface seem similar. (Like comparing Games Workshop model kits to what Bandai, Fine Molds, Kobo., Tamiya, ect are doing. GW doesn't come close in either quality or value.) I mean I am planning on running a play by facebook post campaign because a friend who moved to the rear end end of nowhere W.Va wants me to run something. I ended up choosing Basic Fantasy because the rules are all free PDFs and even Lulu or Amazon printed versions are sub 10 bucks. (5 for core rules in softcover. I spent 10 for spiral bound because it is easy to use and keep open. They are GAME BOOKS. Spiral bound is fantastic for reference work.) Grab some Ravenloft modules from my collection and we have a campaign! Though it seems like most folks want full color busy rear end massive doorstops of RPG core and expansion books. I am still happy with black and white sub 128 page count ones. poo poo, even for modern games I sometimes would rather just grab a PDF, edit the fluff out, and make a more useful and portable book out of it that fits on my ipad and won't give me a hernia! Maybe I am just part of the problem because I don't want to spend stupid amounts compared to other forms of entertainment that are easier and cheaper even if hobby games stuff should maybe cost more than it does. I also irritate retro gamers because I don't think spending 100 bucks for a loose N64 Conker is anything other than loving ridiculous. Hell, I got my copy when it was on clearance racks for 10 and only kind of feel it was worth that. I generally get gas station coffee over Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts because its like a third of the price. I am a cheap bastard and kind of proud of it! Though I bet some of the extenuating reasons I am cheap would make a Therapist slaver in delight...  And since I have so much of this silly nonsense I just don't need to pay 60 bucks for Deathwatch core or whatever Call of Cthulhu 7th is since I am happy with 5th even if it doesn't remotely look as pretty as the newer release will. Edit: (In response to Leperflesh) If you noticed that link I posted I have in fact eased up a bit in ALL OR NOTHING DURR 88 SAME AS WHENEVER I WROTE THAT. I don't completely disagree with my original statement but don't totally agree with it now either. Its someplace in between as my above writing says. Inflation is a tricky thing. And honestly in nerd hobbies (or poo poo in general) lots of people both want to spend shitloads of money and feel good about spending it. Someone not praising their economic peacocking makes some people mad. For some folks its buying Rolexes and Tag Heuer watches they never actually look at for the time instead of their iPhone they upgrade on a yearly basis. For others its owning every Neo Geo AES cartridge. For others I guess it involves buying fancy Elfgame books. Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 04:55 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 04:32
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Kai Tave posted:"A top of the line computer game in 1980 cost $40 and therefore if a computer game released in 2015 using 1980s standards for quality costs just $40 then inflation must not be that big a deal" isn't a train of logic that makes that grogpost's argument any less dumb. What this actually illustrates is that, in 1980, computers (and everythign for them) were for relatively wealthy people. The vast majority of people could not or would not pay for a 1986 PC. An IBM PC with 1 MB of RAM and an 8086 processor and a 10 or 20 MB hard drive and two floppy drives and a monitor would cost you upwards of three thousand dollars. In 1986 dollars. It was about half the price of a cheap car. My copy of Fantasy Gamer #1 (issued August/September 1983) includes a list of announcements for games to be debuted at Detroit Origins 1983. These include: The Palladium Role-Playing Game (retail $19.95). Microcomputer Games (Avalon Hill) announces Paris in Danger, a 48K Atari disk simulating Napoleon's 1814 campaign in France... for $35. Steve Jackson Games annoucnes the Car Wars Reference Screen, retailing "between $4 and $6). Chaosium will release Superworld, formerly the superhero module of Worlds of Wonder, to retail at $20. And FGU announced Lands of Adventure, a fantasy RPG by Lee Gold designed for modular worlds, to include two "culture packs" - for Homeric Greece and medieval England - for $12-$15. Using a Purchasing Power calculator, US$19.95 in 1983 is $47.40 in 2014 dollars. And that Atari grognard game at $35 in 1983 cost $83.20 in 2014 dollars. Yikes! For you brits, according to my copy of White Dwarf #77 (issued May 1986), Magic Mushroom Games in Northantshire, the AD&D PHB cost £11.95, the DMG cost £12.95, and the MM1 cost £10.95. Using the same purchasing power calculator, the PHB cost £31.27 in 2014 pounds. Just some data points for the discussion. e. to address Captain Rufus. I am 40 too! The thing is, you're muddling and conflating several factors. First is price perception; old folks' concept of "what is a dollar" lags inflation, sometimes badly. This is made worse by the fact that, for most people, as they age their wages rise; so it becomes difficult to compare "how much does this cost" as a percentage of your paycheck. Second is the difference between the nominal exchange rate value of a dollar, vs. it's purchasing power. Inflation, consumer price indexing, purchasing power parity, marginal utility, all give different results when comparing monetary value across time, between earners in different wage brackets, and (especially) across currencies. That's because prices change not only in accordance with the money supply, but also in accordance with shifting factors of supply, demand, cost of manufacture, taxes, quality, and so on. An RPG book from 1983 was a hand-typeset black & white affair, full of awful amateurish artwork, printed on basic to poor quality paper. A modern RPG book is professionally typset, usually full-color, with a glossy cover, etc. etc. But the costs to manufacture either book today are different than they were back then, too; and the total size of the market for RPGs was different. And the distribution channels were different, and the costs associated with those channels. Those are all worth pointing out, and they all muddy the waters. But what is definitely not going to fly, is some kind of blanket assertion that $35 in 1985 is "the same" - in any sense - as $35 today. Today, $35 is less money, no matter how you measure it. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 04:49 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 04:33
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Captain Rufus posted:Actually that grog.txt post was from me and I still pretty much stand by it. you know you don't need to defend an unsourced quote of yours right? like no one was demanding you come in here and talk more
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May 7, 2015 04:43
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Terrible Opinions posted:Do you count a Paizo subscription? I was thinking more "subscription to online tools/content" and less "Columbia House but for RPG books."
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May 7, 2015 04:57
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Pope Guilty posted:Aaron Diaz promised that if his Patreon hit 4K/month he'd put out a comic every two weeks, but that turned out to be every bit the lie that every other time he's claimed he was going to start regularly putting out comics was. I was wondering how he was going to manage that, mystery solved.  Leperflesh posted:Those are all worth pointing out, and they all muddy the waters. But what is definitely not going to fly, is some kind of blanket assertion that $35 in 1985 is "the same" - in any sense - as $35 today. Today, $35 is less money, no matter how you measure it. Generally speaking entertainment is ridiculously cheap compared to what it was thirty years ago... but necessities (food, gas, utilities) have jumped up hugely for the most part, which is a much, much larger problem than what you're spending on elfbooks.
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May 7, 2015 05:58
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Misandu posted:I was thinking more "subscription to online tools/content" and less "Columbia House but for RPG books." Granted, but it does still give you copies of the pdfs for each book and their online tools are free anyways. If WotC actually integrated all the stuff they promised with Insider (I only used it for the first year or so) then it'd be the equivalent of and srd, herolab, and roll20 in a single application but i never remember it being more reliable or cost effective than just using those three things separately.
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May 7, 2015 06:07
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There's also a Baumol's cost disease argument that the relative price of RPGs will keep rising. There have been some productivity gains on the production end, but it still takes roughly the same amount of man-hours to design and playtest content, and since real wages are rising RPG costs have to go up as well.
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May 7, 2015 06:10
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Nuns with Guns posted:you know you don't need to defend an unsourced quote of yours right? like no one was demanding you come in here and talk more Captain Rufus will find you
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May 7, 2015 14:57
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Plague of Hats posted:I think they meant like the yearly allotment of "Player Option: A Bunch More Psionics Pt 2" or whatever, as opposed to, say, "Actually a Pretty Good Dark Sun Campaign Guide, but with only like two mechanics widgets in it that typically drive player sales." Yeah, I meant this. It was a silly thing for WotC to bungle, because it was easy steady and guaranteed revenue coming in every month. Subscriptions like that are a great bet for companies chiefly because folks forget about them; I pretty much never think about the fact that I'm paying a monthly fee for Netflix and Spotify. Distributing the cost over the course of the year also hides that it can end up costing more than buying the paper books you'd actually use. The few vocal folks who were gaming the system and subbing every month or two for updates aren't going to be the vast majority of your players. Compare and contrast with the targeted book purchasing model. Only a certain subset of folks are going to be interested in Primal Power. This is a different subset than those interested in Divine Power, Martial Power, etc. If they are exclusively players, odds are they won't buy the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, but maybe the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide if they think Swordmages or Gensai are cool or they like the setting. The profit on one of the books is slightly more than the monthly fee on Insider (thanks for correcting me on the amount, BTW), but the overall purchasing is going to be less. This is the same sort of problem that TSR got into, where they expected to sell a lot of copies of Thri-Kreen of Athas, which is a completely baller supplement, but also about a niche a product as I can imagine and was never going to sell as much as The Complete Fighter's Handbook or even The Complete Book of From a player and DM perspective, there are arguments for both. I used to use Insider, but the Silverlight update was horrendous so I dropped it and used the Goonmade CBLoader to keep the old one updated instead, but also bought most of the 4e books, some new some used. But on the business end, they did the old "get more blood from the stone, we will make the buyers do things our way" move, and managed to gently caress themselves on a revenue stream that would have kept generating even if they had moved Dragon to a bi-monthly schedule, and kept paying a very lousy $0.05/word rate. It's very similar to the "We won't offer downloadable versions, because people will just pirate them!" argument. You end up loving yourself, because regardless of whether or not you're selling indexed pdfs, they show up as  within a day or so anyways because folks have scanners at home. You'd rather make a bit of money than none at all, right?
Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 15:33
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I think part of the problem too is that D&D is trapped in this idea that the fanbase needs more books at a steady pace, which of course is good in the short run but in the long run just leads to a splintered consumer base (nobody except people who like setting X will buy setting X books) and rules bloat. And yet, there are people who'll still want more even though there's more official content for a game than you could realistically use. Even today I saw people talking about how they want a game to be "supported", like it becomes unplayable if the company's not putting out something every few weeks.
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May 7, 2015 15:54
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Evil Mastermind posted:I think part of the problem too is that D&D is trapped in this idea that the fanbase needs more books at a steady pace, which of course is good in the short run but in the long run just leads to a splintered consumer base (nobody except people who like setting X will buy setting X books) and rules bloat. And yet, there are people who'll still want more even though there's more official content for a game than you could realistically use. I definitely agree with you, but I can also see where the companies are coming from. If they aren't putting out product, they aren't making money. For example, I bought a hard copy of FATE because I like physical objects and I like supporting my local game store. After buying it, I need not ever spend money on another RPG ever again, as it includes a framework and rules for playing literally every possible game one can imagine. This is great for me, because until I get sick of it, I can keep playing FATE even if the (very well made) book falls apart and I have to rebind it, because the paper isn't going to disintegrate within my lifetime. This kinda stinks for Evil Hat, because they might not ever see any more money from me. It's a business, not a charity, after all, and the odds of my signing up to tithe to them are slim to none. I don't need to buy a 2nd copy (maybe as a gift for a friend? Not sustainable sales in any case), I don't need more than 4 Fate dice, I don't need a GM's screen, etc. So, supplements - they can make house rules for me, they can give me ideas I might want, systems I can bolt on, campaigns to run if I'm feeling lazy and don't want to put in the effort. Sometimes it's much easier to be creative when you have a starting point, or have some established setting limitations. Evil Hat can also put out other games that aren't FATE so if my friends and I aren't feeling it this week, we can play something else. Does this suck for D&D? No question, especially given how their game was structured. Having to sort through 2,000+ feats was abominable, especially when 98% of them were garbage. It's shocking that they couldn't get buy in from the very people making the game and keep them on target, that they couldn't make a "model sheet" like in animation and stick to those guidelines and principles when it came to design. But then the D&D branch is so small and so ignored by the folks who view it as an IP farm that it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise. This publishing phenomenon is related to how authors keep writing new books: the odds of writing the next To Kill a Mockingbird are basically zero. There are some perennial favorites, and some sustainable authors with large back catalogs, but usually you have to keep pumping out a new book or so per year to keep your name in the market and your revenue coming in.
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May 7, 2015 17:10
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Toph Bei Fong posted:This kinda stinks for Evil Hat, because they might not ever see any more money from me. It's a business, not a charity, after all, and the odds of my signing up to tithe to them are slim to none. I don't need to buy a 2nd copy (maybe as a gift for a friend? Not sustainable sales in any case), I don't need more than 4 Fate dice, I don't need a GM's screen, etc. So, supplements - they can make house rules for me, they can give me ideas I might want, systems I can bolt on, campaigns to run if I'm feeling lazy and don't want to put in the effort. Sometimes it's much easier to be creative when you have a starting point, or have some established setting limitations. Evil Hat can also put out other games that aren't FATE so if my friends and I aren't feeling it this week, we can play something else. That's the thing, though: Evil Hat has more than one game line. Yeah they put out a lot of Fate stuff, but they have non-Fate games too, not to mention some board games. Fate may be their number one property, but they're not beholden to it. WotC never steps outside the D&D pool. The most they did was Gamma World, which got a lot of positive response, but they barely did anything with it. WotC's so focused on keeping the D&D crowd happy they won't try anything new (and probably don't have the talent to try anyway).
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May 7, 2015 17:24
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