Quote from: HinterWeltNow, I do not know if I agree that it spells the end of the industry (I personally believe such marketing is self correcting) but it will be painful when companies realize the mistake (i.e. some companies will shut down).

It is only a mistake if you overestimate your sales and make something that doesn't turn a profit when it is sold.  Now do those sales cannibalize their other sales. In Monte Cook's case not really I think, but in other situations they easily could.

The good thing about them is that they won't reduce the overall money present in the market by their full price.  So in a wierd way they might actually boost total market revenue figures a bit. But there is definately a limit to that as there certainly is a limit to how much the market will bear of boutique products.

P.S.  Such foresight as yours in hitting on a market potential is why I think that RPGs, and ones that people actually will want to buy and play, will continue to be produced.

EDIT Incidentally is Squirrel Attack! your bestseller in $ too or just units?

Quote from: Zachary The FirstHuh.  I always thought RI and Shades of Earth were #1-#2 for you guys.  Live and learn!

RI was number 1 and now is number 2. It still sells well and I think we will continue once I get off my but and finish Britannia. SA! just was a run away hit for us. I think part is the alternative marketing I used but a big part was the ease of play and low price point. People could pick up a humorus read if nothing else.

And yes, Shades is number 3 now. I had always thought that one would take off. Go figure.

Bill

Quote from: blakkieIt is only a mistake if you overestimate your sales and make something that doesn't turn a profit when it is sold.  Now do those sales cannibalize their other sales. In Monte Cook's case not really I think, but in other situations they easily could.

The good thing about them is that they won't reduce the overall money present in the market by their full price.  So in a wierd way they might actually boost total market revenue figures a bit. But there is definately a limit to that as there certainly is a limit to how much the market will bear of boutique products.

P.S.  Such foresight as yours in hitting on a market potential is why I think that RPGs, and ones that people actually will want to buy and play, will continue to be produced.

EDIT Incidentally is Squirrel Attack! your bestseller in $ too or just units?

Not yet. SA! is at about 900 sales at 12.99. RI is arounf 750-800 at 39.99. So, dollar wise, RI is leading but we are still selling around 100 per month but I expect those figures to slack off soon. Strangely enough, about 1/3 to 1.2 of those sales come from outside distro and generate a lot more revenue. RI sells much better in distro and thus nets us less.

Bill

Quote from: YamoEven better, write a game about anime adventures exploring said Grave.

Touche'

D&D is only as hard to prep for as you want to make it. If you want to use lots of NPCs with class levels and prestige classes, sure, it can take a lot of time.

OTOH, if you just use creatures out of the book it takes minutes of mechanics work to put an adventure together. Figuring out treasure can take some time, but the random tables (or simply giving the PCs piles of gp and letting them simply buy what they really want) cuts down on time.

On top of that, you can always just buy issues of Dungeon and run adventures out of them.

D&D is perhaps the most expensive game to get into it, and even then the amount of money you put out compared to the amount of use you get out of stuff is crazy.

Core Rulebooks: $90
Steel Sqwire Flip Mat and Dry Erase Markers: $15
DM's Screen: $15
Let's go crazy and throw in a set of counters or Cardboard Heroes: $25
Let's assume you don't have time to write adventures: $20 for 3 copies of Dungeon

$165 buys you everything you will ever need to run D&D, assuming you don't want to actually do any work yourself, for about a year. Pay another $25 per year, and you have adventures to last the rest of your life.

If you improvise miniatures and write your own adventures, you can cut that cost down to about $100.

Almost every other RPG out there costs about half that for the corebook and an adventure. WoD is around $90 for the core book, Vampire, Werewolf, or whatever, and maybe a sourcebook to get the game rolling.

Yeah, this is a preaching to the choir moment. I find myself buying less books because in the end they are becoming too hefty ruleswise, and then kinda pricey up front. I hope that soon I'll be able to just kick back with my home revised RC D&D, have some PCs gird weapons and kick ass for loot and fame. It'll be cheaper and faster.

In Brazil, you can buy the complete core rules of some games (3D&T) for less than 5 dollars. They use staple binding, a comic book format, and are available in most news stands.

Just a thought.

Quote from: Zachary The FirstYou know, without invoking a Blood War for mentioning their name, Palladium has long had a strategy of keeping their printed book prices lower than the rest of the industry.  Yeah, they're black & white, but they've got solid bindings, and they're cheap enough where they're even in a kid's price range (pdf is a whole other story, I'll just leave off there).

This is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant things Palladium does, and one of the examples the rest of the industry should strongly consider following.

RPGPundit

Quote from: mearlsD&D is only as hard to prep for as you want to make it. If you want to use lots of NPCs with class levels and prestige classes, sure, it can take a lot of time.

This sort of thing is relative, but today I just played the "Temple of Elemental Evil" module, using RC D&D. Each player made two full characters right at the startup. It took 20 minutes.
How long does it take to make a full character (assuming you do know the system at a moderate, though not expert, level; and thus need the DM to walk you through it; and that you have some idea of what kind of character you want, but not a full one) in D&D 3.5 using the 3 core rulebooks? Certainly not 10 minutes per character.
How long would it take the DM to walk 3 players through making 6 characters?

The time gap between the time it takes to make a 1st level character with red box D&D, and with 3.5 D&D is a gap of untold numbers of people saying "this takes too much time to be worth bothering playing".

QuoteD&D is perhaps the most expensive game to get into it, and even then the amount of money you put out compared to the amount of use you get out of stuff is crazy.

Core Rulebooks: $90
Steel Sqwire Flip Mat and Dry Erase Markers: $15
DM's Screen: $15
Let's go crazy and throw in a set of counters or Cardboard Heroes: $25
Let's assume you don't have time to write adventures: $20 for 3 copies of Dungeon

$165 buys you everything you will ever need to run D&D, assuming you don't want to actually do any work yourself, for about a year. Pay another $25 per year, and you have adventures to last the rest of your life.

"cost" is also a very relative concept. Many of the people who wouldn't want to pay $165 dollars for a lifetime of gaming WOULD want to pay $10-20 per month for a lifetime of gaming, buying affordable entertaining but not necessarily gorgeously collectable RPG books on a regular basis.

A kid with an allowance of $50 a month can't get "everything he'll ever need to run D&D", but he can certainly buy a $20 palladium book every month if he wants to. Wizards could do some pretty good business with these kids, and hook them on RPGs for life.

I really wouldn't give a fuck if people were making the Wierdly Named Giant City in a beautiful full-colour hardcover for $400 or The World's Largest Forest  in a slip-case of pure gold for $1400; if it wasn't for the fact that there's practically fuck all being done to hook the 13 year olds.

Wizards seems to grasp the concept of small affordable packages really well with the miniatures, why doesn't it get that it could make an RPG line the same way?

RPGPundit

QuoteI really wouldn't give a fuck if people were making the Wierdly Named Giant City in a beautiful full-colour hardcover for $400 or The World's Largest Forest in a slip-case of pure gold for $1400; if it wasn't for the fact that there's practically fuck all being done to hook the 13 year olds.

Spot on.

Quote from: RPGPunditWizards seems to grasp the concept of small affordable packages really well with the miniatures, why doesn't it get that it could make an RPG line the same way?

I suspect that's why the smaller packages of info, or however it was worded, made it into that rumour about D&D 4e.  It was understood/hoped/believed that WotC was picking up on that.

I think there are some out there already. But you are right in that WotC isn't coming through on that lower price point yet. Which is bad because they are the ones in the best position of marketing clout and distribution to reach outsiders.  They did at least price the initial run(s?) of 3e $10 cheaper which was a nice leader.  But that was many years ago and aimed, I think, at their existing and prior AD&D customers.

I do think $100 of books is kinda a high barrier. That's one reason I like the 'very playable with one book' model.  Of course to feed the beast WotC is going to follow up with serialization, and that's where it gets delicate with them trade-offing capability of the core of the game up front to encourage purchase of the serialization.


P.S. Monte Cook seems to have understood the $/month angle because apparently Ptolus was available pre-ordered on a monthly payment plan.  It is also going to get released serially in PDF.

Quote from: RPGPunditmonstrosities like Ptolus

I almost agree with all you're saying, but you seem almost pathologically against Ptolus in and of itself. It isn't Ptolus, or high-end products like it, that will be the doom of the hobby. It's the fact that the entry-level products for RPGs are so damned expensive now across the board.

Ptolus stands alone, almost a nonesuch, with only the World's Largest Dungeon to compare with it. Those are niche products, tailored to people with more disposable income or the foresight to preorder so it isn't such a big bite. They shouldn't be held as examples of what's wrong with the long-term economic feasibility of RPGs.

Many other hobbies have big-ticket items - take model-building as an example; it's a pretty niche-y hobby. A kid can buy a fairly cheap model that is snap-together and requires no painting, and he can get hooked into the hobby fairly easily. But there are some pretty damned expensive models out there, way more than $100, and which need many, many hours to complete. These high-end models don't discourage beginners, because there are plenty of less-expensive choices out there, which can fit just about any budget and level of devotion to the hobby.

Trouble is, RPGs are getting to the point that the least expensive books are about $30 now. There are fewer and fewer books that fit tight budgets. Add to that the likelihood that many RPGs leave out important aspects of the game from the entry-level book, necessitating that one buy more $30+ books to play all aspects of the game. Card and minis games are open-ended and subject to the "booster pack" syndrome, but at least the boosters are generally not as expensive per pack as a new splat book or the like. And, importantly, they're not that complex, and can be easily learned.

It's the high entry-level cost of RPGs, coupled with the often-by-design open-endedness of the game, that is the problem. Complexity is a problem if there are no less-complex alternatives. There are very, very few entry-level, self-contained, inexpensive RPGs out there.

So, it's not high-end stuff like Ptolus that's the problem. There aren't enough books like it for them to have made that kind of impact. It's the fact that the entry level for RPGs is complex and expensive in general. Back in the day, one could buy a $12 boxed set and have a complete game, but, and this is especially true for D&D, one could take a step up in complexity (and expense) if one felt so inclined - AD&D. Now, there is almost nothing for a newb to do but to take that "step up" immediately just to get into the hobby. Sure, there are more and more basic sets and "lite" or "fast play" rules sets out there now, but it seems that they are too little, too late, and many of them seem like "crippled" or demo versions of the main game, rather than games in and of themselves.

In essence, I agree that the RPG industry, such as it is, is doing the same thing that the comics industry did - it focused on making products for an aging fan base to the exclusivity of bringing in new customers. It's not that the expensive stuff is causing the problem. It's that the low-end of the spectrum has been abandoned - to other hobbies like cards or minis, I presume. Why RPG companies have done this isn't entirely clear - the guys who can afford the investment (of money and time) for the big-ticket items will still be there, regardless if the companies also try to cater to the low-ticket end of the spectrum.

Quote from: RPGPunditI really wouldn't give a fuck if people were making the Wierdly Named Giant City in a beautiful full-colour hardcover for $400 or The World's Largest Forest  in a slip-case of pure gold for $1400; if it wasn't for the fact that there's practically fuck all being done to hook the 13 year olds.

Wizards seems to grasp the concept of small affordable packages really well with the miniatures, why doesn't it get that it could make an RPG line the same way?

RPGPundit

OK, so it seems you and I are grokking the concept similarly. I just think that criticizing upper-tier items is pointless. It's natural for there to be an upper tier. What's unnatural is for the lower tier to be dropped like a hot potato.

Quote from: HinterWeltStrangely enough, about 1/3 to 1.2 of those sales come from outside distro...

What is your hunch about what this means for the different profile of the customers?  Do you think maybe you're not getting good shelfspace or draw in the stores because of the smaller format, or the subject matter is leading to odd placement in stores?  Or do you think you are selling this book to people outside of the industry?

Quote from: ColonelHardissonOK, so it seems you and I are grokking the concept similarly. I just think that criticizing upper-tier items is pointless. It's natural for there to be an upper tier. What's unnatural is for the lower tier to be dropped like a hot potato.

To me it's all symptomatic. It goes something like this:

(1) The CCG boom [1993-1998 or thereabouts] breaks the distribution structure by forever alterting distributor's expectations and methods. At this point, the industry is fatally wounded and must spiral away.
(2) There are certain hardcore people who will, even after the curtains close, still be waiting around and wondering where their monthly fix of "support" titles are coming from. There aren't a lot of these people (they're by no means the general RPG buying public), but they can support a reasonable print run of certain kinds of things. In the downward spiral caused by (1), this group provides a kind of bedrock beneath the shifting and less-predicable layers of general fandom above.
(3) Any title aimed at the tastes and print-run scale implied by (2) can be a safe investment, with any sales to the more general public being a bonus. Toss in some d20 ties and you can boost that minimum print run to somethng much more respectable.
(4) Given the shrinking scale of most other parts of the industry, things like the titles generated by (3) become more and more attractive with the passing of time, and titles with less-certain fates (those aimed higher above the hardcore bedrock, into the shifting fortunes of general or even [gasp] newcomer fandom) look riskier and riskier at any kind of scale.

On a more personal note ... As I've mentioned earlier and elsewhere, I'm currently GMing for a group that were, a year or so ago, total 100% newbies to gaming. These are younger folks of the videogame era. They had heard of D&D. They were very curious about D&D. They bought a stack of WotC core hardcovers and got a group of their friends together (a nice mix of smart folks) ... and were bewildered by them. They shelved the books to gather dust and decided that paper gaming sucks ... until they met me.

Now, runs of D&D, Gamma World, Savage Worlds and many others later, they're looking to be eager lifers.

Those who dislike what this implies can very reasonably discard it on the grounds that it's anecdotal. Those who agree strongly with what it implies can embrace it as if it were typical. From the inside I know it's neither, but it isn't without lessons: price-point isn't the only matter when it comes to snagging younger gamers. I don't advocate "rules-light" for newcomers, not at all ... But I do think there's also a "rules-heavy" threshold as well, and a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, a sweet spot that the TSR games were much closer to than the WotC one.

That also said, I do feel that the industry (by which I mean the three-tier traditional one) is fatally wounded, and has been for years, and is currently limping along mostly on d20 life-support. Nothing has come along to cauterize the wound, let alone heal it. Right now there's just a thumb in it, and one that may well go away sometime depending on WotC's course in the next couple of years.

I have no faith in WotC as a healer of that hole. It wouldn't be in their interests; it isn't central to their model and it isn't their job to do so. So big-dog or not, they can help the industry limp along but they won't actually revitalize it. I haven't the foggiest idea what would. In matter of full disclosure I don't personally care if anything does. Even if everything shrinks to the point where I can no longer cover my time with Cumberland titles, I'll just switch to fontmaking to buy the groceries and keep cranking out RPG freebies. I'm in it for the gaming and the industry's output is increasingly irrelevant to my gaming table, so it's all win-win for me.

Also, and on a sunnier pro-WotC note. I think WotC's low-price starter box-sets (especially the cheaper 3.0 one) were a nice go. I'm not sure how my current group would have fared had they found one of those instead of the hardcovers: it may well have been sufficiently friendly to hold their interest, because they went into their personal D&D quest with a LOT of interest ... so much that it took WotC corebooks to defuse it.