Really, probably the easiest way to make money is to make things Christian related.  You can have garbage, but if it's for God, then there will be people who buy it.  Especially if it's a Christian knock off of an already established product.

Like the Bible themed Cards Against Humanity set I just saw.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;806733Really, probably the easiest way to make money is to make things Christian related.  You can have garbage, but if it's for God, then there will be people who buy it.  Especially if it's a Christian knock off of an already established product.

Like the Bible themed Cards Against Humanity set I just saw.

Lol, I don't know if that helped Dragon Raid.

Quote from: RunningLaser;806734Lol, I don't know if that helped Dragon Raid.

Oh, I wasn't talking specifically about rpg products.  That's sort of an uphill battle anyway.  More like, if you're making a fantasy card game, or a board game, make it religious based and you'll probably sell a lot more.*



*more being anything more than the minute amount you'd normally sell, so not a high bar

Quote from: Sacrosanct;806736Oh, I wasn't talking specifically about rpg products.  That's sort of an uphill battle anyway.  More like, if you're making a fantasy card game, or a board game, make it religious based and you'll probably sell a lot more.*

I wouldn't bet on that, myself. What that is is basically a subset of affinity marketing- people buy your product to express their ideas about who they are and the kind of things they value. That works for a lot of products because the default American buying audience has a lot of Christians in it. The buying audience for RPGs and other geek paraphernalia has a much less pronounced Christian component, so you've got fewer people eager to tell themselves that they're the kind of people who buy that sort of thing. If you wanted to use affinity marketing to move geek gear, you'd flatter Science!, social libertarianism, freethinking, and a carefully-selected basket of college liberal causes. Basically, whatever gets their smug going.

Quote from: David Johansen;806379Having used GURPS Lite with newbies a fair bit over the last three years I hate to say that it's an even worse point of entry than the basic set.  It's phenomenally condensed and as such dense.

It is dense, yep.  It's also the rules-light version of a system that really isn't for unguided beginners.  Honestly, someone who can't hack GURPS Lite is likely someone who can't hack any other iteration of GURPS either.

I'm okay with that.  I can handle a system that takes a little more effort than a cursory 90-second glance, and I recruit like-minded players.

The huge marketing mistake SJG made, I've thought from BSIII forward, was to not make GURPS Lite the first few chapters of the corebook, tagged in giant red letters:

"These are all the rules you need to play GURPS!  If you'd like more meat on the bones, keep reading after page 65, but if you prefer to stick to the basics, more power to you!"

Or some such.

I agree but I think it would be good to decompress it a bit, maybe doubling the page count with expanded examples and explanations and good old fashioned white space and illustrations.  You don't know how many times I've had to direct people to write the name the weapon as the skill rather than "Melee Weapon."

The skill cost system also gives people more trouble than I can comprehend.  Time and again it comes up as a problem and I couldn't begin to tell you what is difficult or complex about it.

And don't even think about showing anyone a template.  They cause cerebral hemorages and strokes from what I can tell.

But yes, please make GURPS Lite the core of the system and make everything else if not optional then at least not in the core.

To be fair, I think J Arcane might have suffered a bit of a "Where you're sitting in a sandbox, all you see is sand" syndrome - as a regular here and not anywhere else (well, at least suggested by a certain amount of, hm, prohibitions), he designed for OSR, thinking it much bigger than it actually was. If he tried his hand at pushing out adventures for Wizard, Paizo, Savage Worlds or perhaps even Chaosium, he might've been much more successful.

Quote from: Ladybird;806725Indeed.

He's a nice chap who I'd probably enjoy a game with, but incredibly sensitive (Like, for example, his complaints that BGG was racist because it's posters preferred Euro-style boardgames to American-style).

This post just turned me into a teenage girl, because I don't even.

Quote from: Rincewind1;806901he designed for OSR, thinking it much bigger than it actually was. If he tried his hand at pushing out adventures

See, that's the thing.  J likes writing games, not adventures.  Had he cranked out a bigass derelict spaceship adventure or planetfall hexcrawl for Hulks & Horrors, people might've picked it up to use with SWN as well (or DCC for that matter).

Quote from: VectorSigma;806972See, that's the thing.  J likes writing games, not adventures.  Had he cranked out a bigass derelict spaceship adventure or planetfall hexcrawl for Hulks & Horrors, people might've picked it up to use with SWN as well (or DCC for that matter).

There's a certain truth to that, but here's the thing: I'm of that same inclination, and yet (in spite of never having published an adventure yet), I feel like I've made a very decent amount of money off of RPGs, even after splitting profits with my publishers.

Quote from: RPGPundit;807336There's a certain truth to that, but here's the thing: I'm of that same inclination, and yet (in spite of never having published an adventure yet), I feel like I've made a very decent amount of money off of RPGs, even after splitting profits with my publishers.

1) You charge more than he did, and,

2) there's a significant portion of people who routinely buy rule sets they never plan to run long-term campaigns in.  So you're making money off of a lot of people who are using your rule set (essentially) as a supplement to other games, or as simple reading material for entertainment.

Quote from: EOTB;8073392) there's a significant portion of people who routinely buy rule sets they never plan to run long-term campaigns in.  So you're making money off of a lot of people who are using your rule set (essentially) as a supplement to other games, or as simple reading material for entertainment.

That wouldn't surprise me at all; I'm sure lots of people bought AoI and use it for their OSR games but to supplement their play with other rulesets.
I have zero problem with that, on the contrary, I wanted to it to be useful in that way.

Of course, I've used Hulks & Horrors in the exact same way. Never run a game of it, but its random scifi-dungeons are awesome for my DCC campaign.

Quote from: RPGPundit;807716That wouldn't surprise me at all; I'm sure lots of people bought AoI and use it for their OSR games but to supplement their play with other rulesets.
I have zero problem with that, on the contrary, I wanted to it to be useful in that way.

Of course, I've used Hulks & Horrors in the exact same way. Never run a game of it, but its random scifi-dungeons are awesome for my DCC campaign.

I don't have any problem with it either - it blows my mind that people will pay money for page count in OSR games that is material they've already bought 15 times before - but I'm glad people can spend their money as they wish.

Myself, I only buy modules or supplemental material that looks interesting.  That's the economic advantage of finding a game you like, and sticking with it.  I bought a copy of Joe Bloch's A Curious Volume of Forbidden Lore off a Lulu sale for $7 shipped.  I'm not going to spend $70 plus shipping to buy 3 core rulebooks for Adventures Dark & Deep that are 60% thinly rewritten 1E.

So authors make their decisions.  Some just want to skim the cream and make high dollar sales to fewer people, and some want to put out a greater variety of products that appeal to a larger percentage of the market and diversify their revenue stream.  

But it doesn't look like the author in question did either.  He put out rule sets that weren't supported with a full product line, but charged very little for the rule sets.  Which is great, except if you want to earn a living doing that, I guess.

This is sad news. J Arcane is a solid author. Hulks & Horrors is great stuff and I highly recommend giving it a whirl.

If you are a WoW fan, check out his Drums of War RPG.
http://drumsofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Drums_of_War_Wiki

BTW, anyone know WTF is he doing in Finland???

I thought his wife was Finnish.

Quote from: EOTB;807720it blows my mind that people will pay money for page count in OSR games that is material they've already bought 15 times before

A thousand times, this.  But apparently that's where we are.