Suppose someone writes an interesting adventure module (for generic OSR), and that you are willing to buy it because you heard good about it. So we suppose the content is good, and you are willing to pay for it.
My questions are:
1) Apart from the GM relevant maps and player-handout-maps, is art really necessary in an adventure module?
2) Number of pages a module should have? (I mean: a standard adventure for one or two gaming sessions of 6 hours each) Too many pages may become a chore to read, but too few may require you work on the module you paid for. So what approximately seems a good and honest (since it is a for-sale module) number of pages?
3) Assuming the number of pages is okay, what price seems honest to you when it comes to a module for purchase?
(BTW: for those who wonder I have no intent writing adventure modules right now, but in a distant future, who knows?)
1) If I'm paying for it, I expect art. Art shows me things that the text may not convey, assuming the author chose art that matches their vision of the material. Art-less, text-only adventures are all over the internet for free. Some are very good. I am much more inclined to buy modules that have art as handouts, like C1.
2) Two six-hour sessions is a pretty small module. The 8-10 page Advanced Adventures modules normally take more than two six-hour sessions. It isn't so much the number of pages in the module - G1 has very few pages - but the density of useful gaming information in the module. Again, I point to G1. In those few pages EGG put in more useful gaming content than a lot of 32-page products that have tons of filler text. But in general my sweet spot would be 16 pages or so.
3) If I had a 16-page or larger module (that rocked) with small illustrations in the mod text and with a separate 8+ page art book/player handout, I would pay good money. $20+. I will pay for quality. If it's a text-only so-so module, I won't buy. If it's a text-only good module that people I trust say is better than most of what's available for free, I might pay up to $2 for a PDF and print it myself, but wouldn't buy a dead tree version.
1) I think so. Didn't you buy a ton of stock art for your game? Use that. That's good enough, I think. Original art is best, but I don't think that can be justified for most OSR adventures unless you do a KS to pay for it.
2) Whatever feels right for the adventure. Some adventures should be short, some adventures should be long.
As EOTB said, page count doesn't always give an indicator of adventure size. Again, as mentioned, some Advanced Adventure are only 12 pages, yet can last for 4 (or more sessions, The Witch Mounds in particular which is almost entirely dungeon, no background material), while others only last one (The Secret of Callair Hills, which is almost all background material and almost no dungeon)
3) I have spent from $2 to $10 on an adventure module (in PDF) and 3x that for print..
$5 is pretty much the sweet spot for 50 or so page adventures. I just bought two of those, The Beast That Waits (excellent module) and The Folio 1: Beneath Rosloff Keep (not so excellent).
Also, I've published 3 generic OSR adventures on DTRPG.
So far in that limited data set, the best selling one (by far) was my longest. However, it was also based on HP Lovecraft, so that might have skewed things.
http://osrnews.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-self-publishing.html
It actually wasn't the longest in terms of module, but it had a lot of extra material.
Short module (4 pages) - 240 downloads (25 paid) in 3 months, medium module (15 pages) 210 downloads (25 paid) in 2 months, larger module (20 pages) 260 downloads (40 paid) in 2 weeks.
I should release a longer module (80 rooms plus village, 30 pages), early next month, so will have more data then.
Excellent, thanks for your answers!
Damn right you don't plan to do an adventure just now. Not till Albion is out!
(just kidding with you, dude! Actually, given what I've seen about your creativity and how you helped out with the dungeon-scenarios in the Albion book, I bet you'd do really great adventure modules)
In fact some time ago I outlined a synopsis to play a science-fiction adventure. With various possible introductions, so people who run a fantasy campaign could use it for a one shot within the fantasy campaign. Dungeon crawls are replaced with crashed-spaceships crawls, and things that do not belong to fantasy but obviously belong to sci-fi are featured: airless environments, low-gravity planet, etc. Of course, this will have to wait after the two current projects (1. Dark Albion, and 2. Bestiary).
I also have an idea for an adventure module set in Dark Albion. The idea comes directly from a dream I made one night.
Quote from: Turanil;821100I also have an idea for an adventure module set in Dark Albion. The idea comes directly from a dream I made one night.
Cool! I look forward to hearing about that!