Goodman Games

I think part of my problem with the assumption is that so far it seems to be more about a whole book of this, a whole book of that, etc. This is why I prefer the Annual approach, where you could potentially get a nice, varied selection of such material in a single book. You get more content, but you don't get deluged with extra volumes in the process. Folks who want whole volumes dedicated to these topics can pick up third party books, all of which are personally vetted by Joseph, by the way.

Part of the reason I'm not keen on the idea of a complete bestiary book in particular is that you're simply going to end up with a bunch of new monsters that, given a short period of time, become "standard", and having a lot of "standard" monsters is something DCC seems to want to avoid. It then doesn't take long before folks want another monster volume, because they've used the first to the point that much of it is old hat. I'd much rather see baseline creatures/templates (including normal animals), and a bunch of cool tables to then randomly customize or select from as needed, supported by a moderate selection of weird critters to demonstrate its utility. Just like the RECG.

Colin

The market seems wide open for independent publishers. I can easily see a Monster book, a Spell book, etc.
Brave Halfling did very well with his adventure series Kickstarter. ($18k ! )
A Patron, Angel, Demon book on Indiegogo near 2K.

Yep. And there's a Monster book already in the works too. Tortog is already working on the Critters, Creatures, and Denizens.

Really? I must have missed the Monster & Spell book. I like to support projects like this. Do you have a link?
The Creature Catalog sounds interesting. I have the old one. Im not so interested in set Campaign settings.

Click on the link in my edited post above. The CC has been renamed Critters, Creatures, and Denizens. The Transylvanian Grimoire was what I thought would be a Spell book, but apparently that's more of a replacement spell system for more subtle magic.

Colin

There is a lot of "bizarre fantasy world" in the modules at present (3pp and GG ones alike!), and there is a lot of "bizarre fantasy world" in the patrons sourcebook I am doing some writing for. If you want more spells, I will point out that, if a given patron adds three spells, and there are X patrons, there are also 3X spells. You can see a sample (including spells) on [url=my blog]http://ravencrowking.blogspot.ca/2012/07/patrons-projects-ii-sample.html[/url].

I don't think you can be true to Appendix N and not have a lot of "bizarre fantasy world"!

NobleDrake is correct on this, and it was a little annoying but also exciting. I was running OD&D at the time (okay, so we just called it D&D back then) and when the Monster Manual came out we just kept up the OD&D game and added more monsters. It wasn't until the Player's Handbook came out that we started thinking about two seperate game lines, and the DMG finished the set. If you look at all of OD&D, white box plus supplements, you can see that most of the core ideas had been done before AD&D revised the whole thing. At the start AD&D was seen as mostly a reorganization of OD&D with some added details thrown in, but now it's seen as a totally different game.

Remember that all third-party products need to go through Goodman Games' standards. This means that all DCC products are kind of "official" no matter who does the actual development and printing.

I appreciate the desire for more usable material, especially for those without the time to create their own. Many of the requests noted in this thread are already under consideration for the first annual. My primary criteria is playable material. There is a lot of gaming material that is never played. DCC RPG is meant to be played! Much of what has been suggested here is, conveniently, very playable subject matter.

I personally appreciate this distinction, and I am a big fan of GG's quality control.

Thanks for hearing us out!

One book is fabulous. I too applaud this approach.

I lived through the slow release of 1st edition, and I have to disagree with the notion that it reflected the sort of problem with multiple rulebooks we've seen since then. The incremental release of that game came from the problems a small company like TSR-in-1978 faced in publishing hardbacks of that scope in a pre-computerized world. No one pretended the game was complete until the DMG came out, and the amount of "revision" they did in the MM-->PHB-->DMG progression was extremely minimal. The PHB didn't 'expand' the monster stats, and the DMG didn't 'expand' the chargen and spells set forth in the PHB. And when that DMG did come out, the product was solid. We were loaded for bear and those rules were enough to entertain us for years.

It wasn't until years later, when UA was released, that the bloat set in...though they seemed intent on making up for lost time with that thing. If anything that product highlights the potential perils of even one "official" expansion.

PF has the opposite problem. As originally published it was a fine game in its way (by my lights; apologies to the many who differ), but its relentless rules expansions are killing it through bloat. Personally I refer to this problem as "Car Wars Syndrome", as this was one of the earliest games to be rendered nearly unplayable through expansions.

Bloat?

I simply don't use them. I have only a small number of 3rd Edition books in light of what they put out. My rule of thumb for any given campaign/adventure-cycle is to use the three core books, and one other for extra 'flavor' -- if needed.

In the olden days, I only ever added the Deities and Demigods book to my collection. I guess in the 2nd Edition days, I had three or four of those books with all the kits in them, but again, that was always a 'one-book-only' type add on...

Never had trouble with bloat.

...But I am happy that DCC is a one-book game.

I fed into the bloat back in the day. It was until I was an older DM before I said enough.

Since I paid for the games, I play em' however I want. If I didn't like something, I didn't buy it. The core rules were always the ONLY thing i considered necessary to play any game. Dice are convenient, but I learned to play D&D with the chits from my first box set.

The CAR WARS reference is a good one! I was OBSESSED with Car Wars for years. As all the Supplements came out, I bought the ones that seemed cool, and ignored the rest. I remember people saying things like "Boat Wars?! They're RUINING Car Wars!!!" How? Don't buy it. They make rules changes you don't like? Use the old rules. They still work! I like to take the pieces I like from everything and create the best game I can out of them. Like a big Buffet of gaming.

Just curious ... white box or blue box? The only D&D that I can recall with chits included was the blue "Holmes" version.

I fall into this trap all of the time. I never played CAR WARS, but I have this habit of buying a game then buying supplements before I ever actually get my full play out of the original, then more supplements before I get to use the supplements I own already, and so on.

I agree that 2E is where real "rules bloat" happened, and it's been an issue with every edition since. Expansions are often released just a few months after the main rules and it's like the companies don't want to sell a complete game and are working on expansions at the same time as the core. I'm glad that GG isn't planning on this.

The other end of the spectrum, by the way, is Amber Diceless. The main rulebook came out in 1991 and first expansion in 1993. Fans have been begging for additional expansion books for 19 years and counting. There was one expansion that went into preorder then vanished, and several which were promised but never even got as far as preorder, but fans were left with money in hand and no product to buy.

I think that GG has chosen a fine line in the middle. One core rulebook, several modules ready for release early on, steady product support thereafter, third party license for folks who want to add onto the game, and potential annual supplements with expansion material at a slow release rate. (Although there is so much fine 3pp support at the moment, one has to wonder what GG will put into an annual.)

This. Thanks for hearing us out!

One further point: if each yearly contains new content of the same type, it'd be harder to manage references. You need a Flumph? What book is that in? Yearbook 1 or 2?
So I'd vote for year one book as a monster manual type, for example. So if I need monsters, I always have just one book to go to. I need a spell, always go to the spell book.

I've been thinking that as well. Frankly, maybe CRAWL! is DCC's Strategic Review, and ought to be turned into a real magazine, like Dragon.

Will be cool in 20 years... "Dude, you have the first 10 issues of CRAWL! in pristine condition?! holy sh*t!" "Oh yeah? That's nothing. I wrote three articles for <DCC Magazine> Issue 1." /smug smirk

I would subscribe to a full color DCC mag. I bet a lot of others would too. Content generation might be tough to keep up, though. Anyone have any sales figures on Dragon? Was it a big cost pit for TSR or did they make money on it?

This works great as an individual player, but when you bring a group together I find it harder to keep things under control. If I run a game I always have players that want to bring in a feat, skill, weapon, spell from some other book outside of the core rules. Players spent their money and want to use the rules they have access to - regardless of my thoughts.

Granted I can run a core only game, but there will still be people that *want* to bring in additional rules and bloat to the game.

I agree with this in regards to Pathfinder. I really, really liked Pathfinder when it was just the core rules and even with the APG. From there on though it has just become more cumbersome to keep up. Joining an organized play Pathfinder Society Game is crazy with all the character classes, feats, special abilities, etc. Very hard to keep up with and starts making the game feel more like homework than a game.

Still a Pathfinder fan, but DCC feels so much more light and refreshing at the moment.

I only own the core PF books and allow nothing else. I think I downloaded Ultimate Magic for PFR because I wanted a feat. Otherwise, core-only.

To anyone asking GG to release more stuff, I highly recommend you sit down and put your own stuff together. You'll notice the longest part of the process is concept. Concept, in my opinion, is everything in this game. A solid concept is easy to stat out, whereas something vague isn't going to feel right.

Seriously, give it a try.

I hear you loud and clear -- and that bit was me talking as a GM.

As for my players at the time, I encouraged them to keep things simple, and was blessed with players that weren't inclined to pull pieces from 18 different books when putting together a character. And what they did pull together seemed reasonable; a couple guys were perfectly happy with the PHB and nothing else.

I have seen players in Con games or elsewhere that have done that Frankenstein's Monster approach, and it is truly a monster. Had I had someone of that inclination at the table, I'd have had to set some kind of stricter guideline, like "use no more than two books beyond the PHB to make your character". But thankfully, I didn't have to do that.

Most of my players are pretty cool individually. An item or two from a book here or there. Nothing too crazy. Taking the players as a whole though means even though each player might only stray from core for one book or two, multiply by number of players and the amount as a GM that I need to be passingly familiar with rises.

I should probably just be more restrictive in my sources at the start of a game!

Either way, I like the way DCC RPG is headed!



Yeah - I have seen that in some PFS games. Some of those characters get crazy.

In many ways I already view Crawl! as DCC's Strategic Review, which is one reason I've written so many articles for it already. I'd love to see it eventually expand, and believe me, I don't think there'll ever be a problem of thinking of articles to submit to it. I've got a list of about half a dozen more I want to write, I've submitted about a dozen already, and I've got some ideas for more as well, and I'm just one contributor.

Colin

I guess it was what's called the Blue Box. It was a full color box, there was a red dragon on the front, and I believe a Knight and a Wizard. The Rulebook inside was indeed blue. A blue halftone of the box cover art.

The core book is 469 pages, how many more pages of rules do you need? I say leave the rest to the 3PP, stick with what matters: great adventure modules.

Mr Goodman hasn't steered us wrong yet