How Often Should An RPG Company Publish Supplements?

My question is: how often do you, the role-playing game consuming public, want to see supplements for your game of choice published?

I am just curious what my readers think about this issue. Some companies, ie. Wizards of the Coast or Paizo, routinely publish new supplements monthly. Many smaller RPG publishers publish only once a year, sometimes less.

To my thinking, there are two schools of thought on this issue. First is that more supplements equals more exposure and sales. Therefore, you can never publish too much product/content. The other school believes that too many supplements produce “supplement fatigue.” Crippled by a tyranny of choice, gamers buy little or nothing because they cannot “keep up” with all the product. I personally fell victim to this in the 1980s and early 1990s with flood of product from TSR. So many box sets, so little money….

I am assuming of course that both methods produce quality product. Obviously producing dozens of terrible products versus one great one is not a fair comparison. This is just a thought experiment about what is the optimal rate for supplement publication. Let us leave the quality issue aside for the time being.

What say you? A flood or a tantalizing trickle of new content?

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

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trask

Trask is a long-time gamer, world traveler and history buff. He hopes that his scribblings will both inform and advance gaming as a hobby.