Quote from: Old GeezerI think your ACTUAL question is "Why do consumers buy that way"?

Yes. By market, I meant the customers.

Another example to illustrate my point:

How often do you see a newbie who plans to start a campaign of X for his group ask what people recommend as the next book he should get after the core book? And how many times is the answer a splat book?

For example, I've seen a lot of newbie GMs on RPGNet and the Ars Magica forum ask what they should buy after the Ars core book. Setting aside the unhelpful fanboy answers ('get them all, you won't regret it!'), you usually get a list of the magical order splat books.

Now, maybe I'm just a dimwit, but when I look at the Ars Magica core book, with its highly involved politics, myriad of options, dense rules, and elaborate system, I'm not thinking 'you know what I need before I can possibly run my first session of Ars - I need a couple books going into tremendous detail on the backgrounds of the magical orders the new PCs will belong to. Oh, and some new spell options and systems too - because the 160 pages in the rules aren't enough to get me started.'

There's only one guy on the Ars forum, the only one who seems to grasp how daunting the core game itself is, who steps in and suggests some concrete aids to setting up covenants and creating adventure hooks.

It seems that a lot of today's hardcore RPGers have trouble distinguishing between what new players need to play the game, and what jaded hardcores want to play around with the game.

So maybe that newbie Ars Magica GM really needs a book that gives him some maps, NPCs, faerie regios, and story hooks to run the first few sessions for his newbie buddies. But the system dabblers and readers who dominate the discussion boards scare him away and end up driving the product lineup to all splats, all the time. In the end, you have a self-perpetuating model feeding a shrinking band of devotees who do a lot more talking about the game than playing it.

Quote from: James McMurrayAdventures are repackaging things that already exist. You take monster X, give it motivation Y, and send the PCs after; or however your standard adventure runs. But almost uniformly an adventure is created with mechanics that are already in place.

Not the ones I enjoy. They give me places, people, and plots that do not exist in the core book. And if the designer is really good, they give me places, people, and plots that I couldn't think of myself. And even if could channel Clark Ashton Smith as well as the author does, it would take me dozens of hours to come up with the material in Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia. Instead, I spent $25 and got enough ready-to-play material to run 15 to 20 sessions of D&D without any work between sessions.

And some of my favourite setting material is virtually mechanics & stats free (ie the Wilderlands). I just picked up the Scarred Lands Ghelspad gazetteer on the weekend and it's great. No stats or mechanics - just 40 or so pages of cool-ass ideas that could serve as the foundation for an entire campaign. It's not a repackaging of anything.

Maybe my favourite setting book of all is the Scaum Valley Gazetteer for the Dying Earth RPG. It's a detailed description of the communities and wilderness along the broad Scam River. You have excellent, detailed maps, descriptions of every town and settlements, desciptions of all the named NPCs and interesting characters, entries for all the marvelous places of note, all knitted together with hundreds of plot threads, agendas, and scams. Best of all, every word has utility at the ground-level of the game. There is no background in the conventional sense, only descriptions of what people you meet are doing now and what agendas they will try to enveigle the PCs into. And nothing is railroaded - it's all sandbox.

I could run a Dying Earth campaign for a year with nothing but the core book and Scaum Valley Gazetteer open on the table. No prep at all. To me, that's a valuable product.

Quote from: HaffrungNot the ones I enjoy. They give me places, people, and plots that do not exist in the core book. And if the designer is really good, they give me places, people, and plots that I couldn't think of myself. And even if could channel Clark Ashton Smith as well as the author does, it would take me dozens of hours to come up with the material in Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia. Instead, I spent $25 and got enough ready-to-play material to run 15 to 20 sessions of D&D without any work between sessions.

Which is great, and it's people like you that keep companies producing settings and adventures. But, at least according to market trends, you're an outlier.

QuoteAnd some of my favourite setting material is virtually mechanics & stats free (ie the Wilderlands). I just picked up the Scarred Lands Ghelspad gazetteer on the weekend and it's great. No stats or mechanics - just 40 or so pages of cool-ass ideas that could serve as the foundation for an entire campaign. It's not a repackaging of anything.

To me that sounds like a book that creates work rather than does it for me, and I'd never buy it. I've already got way more ideas than I'll ever be able to use. I don't want to spend my time fleshing out someone else's ideas when mine are so much cooler (to me at least).

QuoteI could run a Dying Earth campaign for a year with nothing but the core book and Scaum Valley Gazetteer open on the table. No prep at all. To me, that's a valuable product.

You must be very good at improvising. Most GMs aren't.

QuoteTo me that sounds like a book that creates work rather than does it for me, and I'd never buy it. I've already got way more ideas than I'll ever be able to use. I don't want to spend my time fleshing out someone else's ideas when mine are so much cooler (to me at least).

Indeed. I do not need any setting. I just read about the new Pit Fiend (for 4E) that can grant wishes all 99 years. I guess, when I start running 4E ninety-nine years are just over.

Give me tidbits of setting that can work with myself. And please give me the stats, too, because making up numbers is just tiresome.



Another factor is that the 90s praised stories that were made for the characters. Premade adventures require random characters who then walk through them.

Games like Vampire and many contemporary games discourage such universal adventures. (Of course, it still works fine in D&D.) Instead adventures are to be constructed from the PCs' wants and backgrounds and stuff. You cannot write adventures for such games.

Quote from: HaffrungI suspect that a hefty portion of today's RPG market either does not play at all, or plays occassionally and spend a lot of time between sessions writing backstories, planning feats to level 20, etc. That's why a game can have a thriving community, a steady of supply of supplements, and see no adventures published in all that activity. You only need adventures for actual play.

Yes and no. People get system obsessed, cruise the forums, create elaborate homebrew rules and settings, and sometimes even publish games largely to fill the gap.

But that's not why rules books sell and adventure books don't (at least in DnD's sense). I've heard complaints from old-schoolers about a period of heavy railroading (according to some, this logic applies to all published adventures). For new-school gamers... we learned to play without them, and having done so can't imagine why we'd need them. WotC's been publishing more in the way of adventures lately, it seems... but it's my understanding that they're doing a poor job of it. I wouldn't know. I don't buy 'em. Partly because I'm not currently running (started playing again for the first time since GenCon recently). Partly because if I was running I don't know that I'd use them or that they'd help if I did.

So yeah... when setting is this impossible to break Faerun supplement line and adventures were nonexistent until now and of dubious quality even now... system's gonna trump all.

Quote from: estarThe splatbooks succeed because everyone buys them (player and GM). Everyone uses them again and again unlike most adventures. However I believe that adventures can succeed if they a) priced right, b) truly save the GM time, and c) written well. If you can make it useful beyond the presented plot then that is a bonus (like a village or town you can reuse.

The Dungeon Crawl Classics succeed because of a,b and c. When you buy a DCC product you know what you are getting as far as quality goes.

I agree about most of this. Splatbooks do have the advantage of being targeted at both players and GMs. Setting books are GM specific, but at least get repeated use. Adventures... well... I see that they have much potential. Especially if they have the a, b, and c that you listed.

If I were to go about all this, I'd probably just put out a book with a whole lot of adventures with sparse but useful details. Plot hooks to get you into it. The premise and a quick run-down. Then advice for follow up. Save the GM time with full stats for anyone that might show up and maps for them that need 'em. Seriously, you could cram fifty of these in a big book and I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

What makes me iffy about buying adventures is that there's just one. If it turns out not to be your thing, it's unusable. If you use it, you only get to do so once. I think a big book for 30 bucks would be good.

Quote from: flyingmiceI do see lots of people downloading multiple copies of the free light version of the rules, which only makes sense if they are giving them out to players.

Eh... are you telling us that you found a system to make PDF downloads fit into "spell memory slots" and once they are printed or viewed they are gone?

Killer DRM Wizardry!

Quote from: Smilin_JackHeh - this is why I'm thinking of taking the SR4 system (and the updated melee rules in arsenal) and stripping out the setting so I can use it with anything.

I'm tired of flipping through book after book (or PDFs or hopping on my computer to search online) - I want something with a moderate amount of crunch but fully extensible... and most importantly all in one book (or at most 2 books)! :rant:

They exist. They really do. At least a few.

Ironically the one I personally use is derived from SR**, albiet an earlier one but they actually got to a similar dice mechanics place to SR4 before FanPro did.

And extensible, to evoke a particular setting? It was pretty straightforward to adjust from it's late-medieval fantasy default to run a 10 session extestential horror in Victorian England. The custom magic system took a bit of work but now it's out there for anyone to pick up (and is effectively era, and mostly setting independant). *shrug*  It felt more like it was in Lovecraft's world than CoC. The PCs packed heat but only one of them fired a gun once in the entire run of "by the skin of [there] teeth" sessions, right at the end (and then only in a defense deterent way to keep from getting killed, not to kill). Not because the game or the rules said so suppose or anything but because the it was a natural feel for the setting.

** Although it's actually in 3, albiet small, books that would probably fit into 1 large format book under 200 pages, maybe under 150 pages.

BTW once you realize that "crunch" about characters is about the setting because characters are part of and about the setting this market for character classes and spell books and such becomes far more understandable.  These are really setting books, or setting parts books if you will.

Sales of individual adventures are actually the one that I don't get so much, those seem like the target for someone with a lack-of-ideas. *shrug* But it also can represent a lack of time for games that are easier with a lot of GM prep work. Or a lack of familiarity with the system, which is why it made sense that early on d20 sales were all about the adventures (plus those were likely the easiet to knock out first).

Quote from: blakkieBTW once you realize that "crunch" about characters is about the setting because characters are part of and about the setting this market for character classes and spell books and such becomes far more understandable.  These are really setting books, or setting parts books if you will.

Only if your players quickly grow dissatisfied with the classes and spells included in the core rules. Granted, it seems that this is the case with most players today. But none of the players in my group have ever complained that they wanted more options for classes or spells. One of my guys has played D&D for 28 years and never run anything but a fighter, ranger, or paladin.

If someone wanted a new class, I'd just spend an hour or two and make one up. Much faster and easier than writing an adventure. So to me, splat books have little value.

Quote from: blakkieSales of individual adventures are actually the one that I don't get so much, those seem like the target for someone with a lack-of-ideas. *shrug* But it also can represent a lack of time for games that are easier with a lot of GM prep work.

Depends on what you mean by adventures. I don't buy [insert character here] railroad stories (which is what a lot of people mean by 'adventures']. I buy discrete settings - usually dungeons. We generate the stories in play.

Now, I can write a better dungeon, ruin, or outdoor region than 95 per cent of the published material out there. However, I've also run or read some outstanding published adventures: Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Tomb of Abysthor, Night's Dark Terror, Ancient Kingdoms Mesopotamia, Scaum Valley Gazetteer, the City of Zothay.

Furthermore, for me adventure settings are greatly enhanced by maps. And while I'm a decent hand at drawing maps, I find it quite arduous and time-consuming - especially for a multi-level dungeon, city, or large wilderness region. So a well-written adventure setting with imaginative challenges, vivid foes, and nice maps is a very appealing product. And at $20 or so for a book that will provide the raw material for 5-15 sessions of play, good value as well.

Quote from: HaffrungOnly if your players quickly grow dissatisfied with the classes and spells included in the core rules. Granted, it seems that this is the case with most players today. But none of the players in my group have ever complained that they wanted more options for classes or spells. One of my guys has played D&D for 28 years and never run anything but a fighter, ranger, or paladin.

That still happens today. I've played with people that never play anything but a fighter, a wizard, etc. My current group has a guy that plays some version of a ninja (as in sneaky and deadly, not necessarily Japanese and face-masked) or a wizard in every campaign, and usually alternates between the two.

Quote from: HaffrungOnly if your players quickly grow dissatisfied with the classes and spells included in the core rules.

Ding! If anyone tells you that the D&D Ranger (or Paladin, or in a lot of ways Fighter) class is setting neutral they are:
1) lieing through their teeth
2) clueless
3) insane
4) don't know what a 'setting' is
5) don't think more than narrow class of settings exist
6) two or more of the above :keke:

So someone wants a different setting, they want a character that does something different. And they are willing to do something about it...but not willing, or sometimes not allowed by the others at the table, to write up the fidgity bits for it to work within the overall rules. What do they do?

QuoteIf someone wanted a new class, I'd just spend an hour or two and make one up. Much faster and easier than writing an adventure. So to me, splat books have little value.

Because you posses the inclination and ability [to your satisfaction] to do so and are allowed to to by others that you play with. This is not as common as you seem to think.

QuoteFurthermore, for me adventure settings are largely about maps.

My emphasis. You you are buying setting parts. Yeah, it's the purchase of the canned storyline that comes with "adventures" that I don't really get so much.