eldritch wrote: Specifically the Ravenloft players handbook and Ravenloft 3rd edtion (setting rulebook), and the Denizens of D. books.
I would consider 4 out of 20 many. that is 20% of the products!
Well, actually it would be 2 out of twenty as you don't count the originals. That's 10%. And there were 21 products so it's actually a little less than that.
midnightcat wrote: eldritch wrote: in contrast, if you consider the black and red boxes, a major event (the grand Conjunction) happened and much new information added and some was corrected. Domains of Dread was not at all a replacement product rather an updated timeline and more new information, and again corrected some faults. It is considered by many to be the best of the three products. (rather than a nearly identical reprint.)
The reprinting of the Monstrous Compendiums 1&2 was necessary because of the long run of the Ravenloft line and a valuable (nearly essential) product had gone out of print, and the reprinting of Van Richten's guides was hardly superfluous in my opinion because they too had gone out of print and were valuable resources to the DM and they included new information such as commentary by the Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins and a new guide to witches!!
You seem to make excuses for 2nd editon. Arthuas had to recover things for newer player who had never seen a 2nd editon product. Why did TSR have to re-publish the Van richten's guides? They were avaliable, and so were the Ravenloft monster compenduim 1 and 2. as for that matter why reprint all the basic books again for 2nd editon? the the item like the reprinted fighters's handbook ect..were lesser quality. The Red Box set was Needed, but that was becuase the Black Box set, was missing sooo much information.
Actually, the VRGs were mostly out of print by the time the compendiums were released. Out of print but still readily available in most used gaming stores. And the Compendiums were re-printed like the Monstrous Manual because of the shift away from loose leaf monster books.
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I really favour the 3.X line. Not just for rules but for quality as size and content. Look at the page count of most of the new books. They're easily two to three times the size of 2E books (120-ish pages minimum compared to 64). Plus they focus on the land, natives, players and themes opposed to just the darklords with a couple lines on the rest.
Most of the first few adventures and supplements focused entirely on the darklords, most were just single-use adventure hooks for outlanders. The setting was almost entirely set-up for weekend in hell games (come, meet the darklord, kill him/her/it, leave) or escape campaigns. Five-page adventures in Dungeon magazine often had more useful and lasting content than some supplements. The products almost always focused on new lands rather than expand on the many, many already published lands. Adventures occasionally expanded the lands but still tended to focus on outlanders or killing lords.
It took years for the setting to really develop.