While working on
Pirates of the Bronze Sky, I came up with this little thought. I have to think that "No, it would have not" is the correct answer to my question. While and exciting and interested setting, there were several other of the setting that made it to the semifinalist round and were released to smaller RPG companies but never went ANYWHERE.
DawnForge and
Morningstar are excellent examples of that. Does that mean
Eberron was only good because
Wizards of the Coast and their marketing budget made it successful not the actual quality setting and material itself? If
Wayne Reynolds had not done the covers, would it have done as well? There are 24 RPG products, 40 novels, 1 comic book and two video games based off of the material in
Eberron. Is
Eberron that good or is
WOTC great at just marketing anything no matter the real quality level of the products they will sell? Any setting that
WOTC makes and would consider "niche", could support a small RPG company for years, if not a decade. Just something to think about next time you are putting together a setting for you RPG Company. Talk to you later...
Funny, I thought, and some attest to it, that WotC's marketing of 4th Ed was a fiasco. So I'm not sure if their marketing is all that.
ReplyDeleteI do think they're the 300 pound gorilla and that helped Eberron. Otherwise it would have been another d20 pdf on DriveThruRPG for $10. I dunno.
Sean
Funny thing is, I thought Dawnforge was a far superior setting. Much more flavorful and it had really interesting things. The only interesting thing about Eberron was the Warforged. And I thought they didn't do enough with them.
ReplyDeleteI will reserve any comments on WotC.
From a marketing point of view it was a great idea. How much press did it get them on the setting that they paid only $100K to get knowing they would make MILLIONS and MILLIONS on it. Quality of the setting really had nothing to do with it, but the marketability of it had everything to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI think Eberron has great merit as a setting.
ReplyDeleteBetween the release of 3.5, and burnt offerings by Paizo, I purchased seven WotC products, total. Each, and everyone, was an Eberron. In that time period, WotC simply wasn’t putting out anything else that interested me. It was a setting that seemed to me,to encourage a very different way of playing DnD, to the many terrible experience i'd had through the years. It took Rise of the runelords to really break me out of buying almost exclusively white wolf(along with their massive slow down of production), but i think it was Eberron which made it possible for me to consider buying rise of the runelords, when it came onto the scene.
Ben