Le date in ogni caso non corrispondono.
La mia idea sul trand generale è questa:
dal 2001 hanno visto un po' tutti che pagava la politica a "supplementi collezionabili"
Il "supplement treadmill" inizia nel 1983-84, quando la TSR a rischio bancarotta moltiplica la produzione di moduli.
Questo è un pezzo di un post più lungo che avevo postato anni fa su The Forge su come nasce il suplement trwadmill: (è in inglese, scusate...)
[....] the shifting point were:
1) the first AD&D modules written by Tracy Hickman, more "stories" than dungeons, start to sell well in the early '80s. I am thinking about the cycle of adventures in the "desert of desolation" series, and Ravenloft. When I first began playing (1986) they were considered the very best AD&D adventures ever written, while the old Gygax dungeons were openly mocked.
(some more details: you can find the list of Hickman modules here:
http://www.trhickman.com/my-works/tracy-laura-games/tsr-role-playing-adventures/I don't know if there were others that produced similar "story-modules" like him at the time, I am singling him out not because I have any reason to believe he was the first or the worst, but because he was the most successful and that success changed the hobby.
He went to work for TSR in 1982, after having self-published a couple of modules in 1979 (it seems that every revolution in rpgs is from self-publisher, for better or worse...). TSR republished his modules (one was the first of the Desert of Desolation series, "Pharaoh"). In 1983 concluded his Desert of Desolation series with "I5: The lost tomb of Martek". It will be reprinted in an updated form in 1987, I am familiar with (and played) that version. The following book in the "I" series is from him, as well: "Ravenloft" (1983)
Every one of these modules was more successful than the previous one, but the big success was Dragonlace in 1984...)
2) TSR was searching for anything that could sell. Gygax was on the way out of TSR, the TSR was on the verge of bankrupt a few years before and was saved by publishing a hastly-written mishups of new rules and characters for AD&D (Unearthed Arcana) and increasing the rate of publication of new books and modules (I counted some times ago the number of books published by TSR in the early eighties, and the increase is really noticeable. When D&D was selling millions and millions of copies everywhere, TSR published a handful of slim booklets with dungeons every year. Almost nothing. When D&D sales started dropping, AD&D goes in a few years from a set of 3+some oddmwents volumes - the basic 3, Legend and Lore, and some other - to a half-shelf long line of books about every AD&D "universe", monsters, new rules, etc., with very long adventures published every month or more often.
(I did check more details about this, too.
A history of TSR
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_History.asp1984 is the year D&D sales plummet and TSR gets in trouble:
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539197p4.html :
and Gygax leave in 1985:
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539197p5.htmlThe date of Lorraine Williams "reign" is important because she is the one that start the "no playing at work" policy. From that moment D&D products are in practice only read, not playtested. TSR become the biggest producer of unplaytested crap on the market. That level of crappyness become the norm. The idea that the GM should make the adventure works anyway because "rules doesn't matter" is fueled by this
This list of D&D products from Grognardia is not the one I remember reading, but it will do. These are the numbers:
- 1980: 1 hardback (deities and demigods), 5 accessories (geomorphs, logs, etc), 5 adventures (slim booklets of 32 pages each). Less than 200 pages of adventures. In a year.
- 1981: 1 hardback (fiend foglio), 2 boxed sets (Basic and Expert D&D), 10 adventures. 2 adventures are reprints and collections of older booklet, and they are the only long ones. Only 7 new adventures. No rules added in 3 years. No new setting.
- 1982: no hardback, no boxed sets, 9 adventures. This means that there was an average of 40 days between any new offer from TSR and they were thin booklets that sold for $6.95. And this is most successful D&D year in history, with million of copies sold of the corebooks.
- 1983: the sales begin to slow down. TSR hastly print another Monster Manual (II), produce a new edition of the Basic and Expert set (Mentzer) and the Greyhawk boxed set. And 16 adventures.
- 1984, the year of the crisis, 75% layoffs, TSR print a new boxed set (companion D&D) and 29 adventures. 5 of them are Dragonlance.
I don't think that the Dragonlance series was caused by the crisis. It was two years in development. They simply saw that "story-modules" sold well and they thought of tying together novels and adventure modules. But right at the time the corebooks sell less and less and there is risk of bankrupt, this series (and the tied novels) are best-sellers and bring a lot of money... It doesn't take much to add two and two and understand what they had to produce to make more money...
- 1985: TWO hardbacks (Oriental Adventures and Unearthed arcana), the Battlesystem Rules, TWO boxed sets (expert D&D and Lankhmar) 21 adventures (6 of them are Dragonlance) . Unearthed Arcana most of all is a big change: a "must have" corebooks with the rules that change the game. The first one in SIX YEARS. until that, there was the idea that AD&D was "definitive" and all the added rules in the Dragon were not-official. The first one in six years. And it was a list of unbalancing overpowered new character class and new game rules and spells that clearly were not very well thought off, let alone playtested (Gygax later admitted that he had to publish SOMETHING , anything, in an hurry, to save the company)
The number of adventures is lower, but don't be deceived: the page count is higher. TSR begin to print new adventures (not reprint) with more than 100 pages.
- 1986: 2 hardbacks (the survival guides) , a boxed set (Immortal D&D), 3 accessories (creature catalog and Book of lairs and character sheets) , and 23 adventures. (3 are dragonlance)
- 1987: 2 hardbacks (manual of the planes and Dragonlance) , 2 boxed sets (kara-tur and Forgotten Realms), 9 accessories (6 of them are setting modules, 2 for Forgotten Realms and 4 for the D&D world), 22 adventures.
The number of adventures is becoming stable, but I would like to point out that in this single year, TSR publish corebooks for THREE "new D&D worlds": Dragonlance (that goes from the setting of an adventure to a general D&D setting for a lot of adventures), Forgotten Realms and Kara-tur, + 2 expansions for Forgotten Realms (one of them, Moonshae, was originally a new celtic setting, that was added to the Forgotten realm patchwork like Kara-tur), + 4 new "nation setting" fo D&D. 9 new products that are simply settings books.
- 1988: 1 hardback (Greyhawk) , 1 boxed set (waterdeep), 12 accessories (10 are geographic modules, 1 is a GM design kit and one is Lord of Darkness, a compilation of adventures), and 8 adventures.
It's clear the transition from a corebook-based business model to a inflation of adventures, and then (seeing that adventures are "optional" by nature) to a inflation of "accessories", and "geographic modules" and "new universes", that most fan consider (at least at this time) must-have items.
It's interesting to see these changes seen by a old-school point-of-view:
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/09/thoughts-on-d-chronology-part-i.htmlhttp://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/09/thoughts-on-d-chronology-part-ii.htmlVery different point-of-view (I can't stand the most of the OSR, the only value I give them is the increased interest n the hobby's true root and not in propaganda), but most of the same conclusion.
The supplement treadmill was not a business model for sustained business. It was, from the start, the desperate move of a failing company to get more money by squeezing its fans with quickly-written inferior products.And the industry followed this "grasping at people's money in desperation" business model for twenty years... it's any wonder that less and less people continued to buy role-playing products? Even I, with my newbye faith in "the quality of D&D", by 1989 was seeing the evident drop in quality and by 1991 stopped buying anything by TSR...)
3) To fill thousand of pages of "must-buy" material to sell to the fans, TSR goes for Universe Inflation (Forgotten Realms - the idea of a "fantasy game world" that a 8-years old could have - and in fact Ed Greenwood was 8 when he created it, I think, and TSR got the rights for some potato chips or something like that) and even before that, stories sold as gaming product. Hickman & Weis sells? Why don't make them write a set of 16 gaming "modules", and novels, and then calendars, merchandising, etc? And Dragonlance is born, and dragonlance sells even better. Teaching people in the industry that rules don't mean shit against "stories", and that a fan of some fantasy character can spend really a lot of dough for anything with that character on it.
4) TSR goes bonkers with AD&D 2nd edition, with shit rules. Really, I noticed at the time that they were completely broken from a first read. And I was a hardcore D&D fan at the time! I played them anywhere with some houseruled patch... and then after a couple of years they published a lot of these patches on Dragon Magazines. Did it took them years to note that some spell list were insane? Did they ever played the game? The answer, I did learn a few years ago, was "not". The published a long list of playtesters, but in reality AD&D 2nd edition was never playtested in a serious manner. But who cares? The book openly says to GMs "write your story, rules are for bad GMs". Because they saw that stories made more money.
5) At this time, everybody else, with very few exceptions, jump on te bandwagon and go for "story".
I thought that Shadowrun and Vampire vere only the consequence of these commercial choices made by TSR. [...]
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Dunque, il boom e l'espansione di nuovi moduli inizia nel 1983-84, all'inizio con moduli avventura e regole supplementari (in pochissimi anni il numero di HC di AD&D triplica) e poi con scatole di setting.
Il 2001 è piuttosto l'anno in cui la WotC si rende conto che le vendite di molti suplementi (moduli avventura, per esempio) non li rendono più convenienti, e l'operazione "open license" per il d20 serve a delegare la produzione di moduli d20 a terze parti, che hanno costi minori e che soprattutto, se falliscono.. non costano una lira alla WotC.
vuoi che siano diventati più polli gli acquirenti, vuoi che alle nuove leve piaceva pagare di più per avere un gioco più "pouua"
è che a un certo punto hanno fatto il passo più lungo della gamba con le edizioni spenna polli, le edizioni in tiratura limitata con copertine in pelle umana e hanno perso diciamo se non proprio consenso sociale quell'aura carismatica per cui se non usavi il regolamento originale, con l'ambientazione canonica eri un pezzente
Il periodo delle "ambientazioni" nasce anche quello a metà degli anni 80: la TSR lancia in pochissimi anni il Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Kara-tur, Ravenloft, quella arabeggiante che non mi ricordo come si chiama, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, Mystara, Hollow World, etc, oltre a Nehwon sotto licenza. GURPS pubblica una valanga di supplementi che in pratica delineano ambientazioni storiche, pseudo-storiche, o fantastiche. Nascono ambientazioni non legate a sistemi tipo Harn. C'è il boom degli Splatbook (l'idea deriva dal Glorantha, sviluppata su Ars Magica e poi spremuta fino all'osso da Vampire e C), il boom dei moduli geografici (la TSR ne pubblica decine, su ogni buco possibile del Forgotten Realms o di Mystara)
Davvero, se pensi che negli ultimi anni ci sia stato un boom di ambientazioni... negli anni 90 saresti fuggito terrorizzato dal negozio! I moduli ambientazione coprivano intere pareti, con scatole su scatole, moduli su moduli di ambientazioni. Pareti intere dedicate praticamente solo a quelle, con qualche manuale base qua e là ogni tanto....
questo perché le case, ad esperienza mia, non hanno più il carisma di una volta
Anche perchè gran parte sono fallite... :-)
Il fatto che si persa la "venerazione" per il materiale "ufficiale" della "grande casa editrice" è una cosa molto positiva. Quella venerazione è ciò che ha fatto partire la corsa a spremere i giocatori negli anni 80. I giocatori si sono fatti più intelligenti quando hanno smesso (alcuni, almeno) di guardare al marchietto invece che alla qualità del prodotto.
Negli anni 80 era facile, pubblicavi una boiata fatta in fretta e furia senza playtest e centinaia di migliaia di fans fanatici te la compravano lo stesso giurando che era la cosa migliore mai pubblicata (senza averla giocata e spesso senza averla manco letta). Solo che a furia di fregature su fregature, il pool di questo tipo di acquirenti è calato nel corso degli anni.
