Now with that out of the way, let's talk about how to avoid splatbook fatigue. I think that it's inevitable but there have been a lot of events that games (D&D especially, which we will use as a case study) that push up the timetable. If you want to make the product last as long as possible, you need to do these things:
- Avoid putting filler material in actual books. What do I call filler material? Anything that no one can be reasonably expected to use or want but increases word count anyway. Song and Silence and Draconomicon (all editions) are perfect filler books. If you absolutely have to have filler in the game, save that shit for Dragon and Dungeon content. Even when 4E was pumping out material like crazy fans were still starved for content, even crappy content. People feel cheated getting filler all in a block such as in a book, but not doled out to tide them over.
- For God's sake, if you had something that appeared in a playtest that people complained about, fix it in the goddamn book. Few things frustrate people more than game designers pretending to want input and then discarding it.
- If you're introducing a new subsystem or a revision to a core system, you have exactly one chance to fix it. If you fuck this up, leave it fucked up. Additional fixes, even if they do fix the problem, only reduce the audiences' faith in you and confuses people.
- Unless the material is blatantly gamebreaking, don't publish errata for material for stuff that has recently come out in a book. It pisses people off and makes them feel like the rug was pulled from under them and causes them to lose faith in published material. If you issue errata at all, wait for at least two years so that people will be focused on the shiny new stuff and to avoid halting sales of the material in its tracks.
- In fact you want to avoid errata for as much as possible anyway, but I already made a thread about that. Moving on.
- Splatbooks should have a little something for everyone or at least most of everyone. Books like Martial Power 2 and Complete Mage are horrible, awful ideas because it limits your audience. Granted you want to have enough material so that people don't just skim and go 'oh, nothing I want' but whenever you publish any book the first question you should ask is 'how do I get Joe Blow newbie to buy this book?'
- If you release campaign setting books, do it at the beginning of the edition. Campaign settings have a much harder time breaking in the longer you wait because games have settled down by that.
- The further you go into the edition, the more you'll have to pad the book with artwork and comics. Coming up with good ideas for pictures is easier than good game mechanics and you'll have likely tapped the well long before that.
- I hate to be this cynical, but you need to plan for an edition revision somehwere in the lifespan of your product. 4E Essentials came too early and changed too much stuff (while simultaneously not shaking up peoples' old positions) but 3.5E was just perfect naked grab for money that it was. Assuming a planned lifespan of 8 years, you should plan for a revision at the four year mark. This will also give you enough time to gather up all of the complaints and fix them.
