Micro Expansions

Discussion on the Earthdawn game line, errata, and feedback not related to playing or GMing.
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The Undying
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Micro Expansions

Post by The Undying » Mon Jun 05, 2017 1:20 am

ED has always followed the standard RPG model of large source books. I'm curious, is there an appetite - both among the player base and in the corporate line development - to go the micro-expansion route?

I've started running Shadows of the Demon Lord, and I have to say, I'm a big fan of this approach. It creates tighter turns on bringing things to market, allows focused purchasing and rule use in the community, and allows the system to correct more quickly to player interests, concerns, etc. It is definitely a digital-focused approach - generating 4-10 page micro-expansions is not something that supports print well at all, and it creates a bit of a bookkeeping nightmare and the micro-expansions pile up. It can support print in a longer term (once Page-Count-X in micro-expansions is released, create book "Compiled Expansions Book X" and make it available; or, once enough micro-expansions are available for Topic X, create "Topic X sourcebook ~ a printed compilation of A,B,C micro-expansions").

I see two ways this could make a big impact: expanded systems where people want more crunch, and low-cost official "fixes" ahead of some hopeful ED4R in the future. The impetus for this post was actually the other thread on summoning. "Summoning" is enough of a thing that there may be interest in a micro-expansion adding some other interesting variants to the system while also adding some stock pre-generated spirits. Alternatively, if this is a system worthy of a "fix" (not saying it is), then a low cost micro-expansion with the "fix" information, and maybe some more flesh for value, would be far preferable to a "fix" in the nebulous future that is the new "Magic" supplement.

Slimcreeper
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Joined:Mon Nov 28, 2016 11:44 pm

Re: Micro Expansions

Post by Slimcreeper » Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:04 am

While not necessarily for summoning or other rules fixes (I tend to just house rule stuff like this), I might be interested in dropping a few dollars at a time on something like a little adventure or an expanded weapon list or Urupa Rogue's Gallery or something.

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