Natural 20 Press - Supreme PDF Publisher?

[Numion]

Congrats to Natural 20 for snatching top 4 in the PDF category in the reviews section. Reviews of your products are better than, for example, Monte Cooks Malhavoc's publications - which for some are the benchmark of d20 PDFs.

I was just wondering.. how much of this is in due to relation between ENWorld and Natural 20? It just seems odd that the very varied d20 PDF publishing landscape is so clearly ruled by one company. And I'm suprised that your products are superior to Monte's; he's pretty good I. (And he's Monte! )

And could you clear up what the relation between ENWorld and Nat 20 really is? I'm not saying that the reviews are part of some conspiracy or somesuch, just wondering how this is possible..

[tensen]

Thank you for pointing out that list. Because it means I can screen capture it and see that Death: Guardian of the Gate is rate #1 there. I feel proud of that one. Although it is only number #45 in sales on rpgnow. It did get a lot of positive feedback in reviews.

Top in reviews doesn't really equate to the best product however. If you look at the number of reviews in PDFs, you'll see there are only a trickle. The list only shows those that got at least 5 reviews. Not even all of the Natural 20 Press products have gotten 5 reviews.

And while Malhavoc doesn't use rpgnow as their sole sales point for rpgnow, you'll notice there:

Natural 20 Press
#1 Tournaments, Fairs and Taverns
#4 Wild Spellcraft
#7 Elements of Magic
#11 Four-Colors to Fantasy

Malhavoc
#2 Book of Eldritch Might 2
#12 Book of Hallowed Might
#14 Book of Eldritch Might

[Tyrant]

Never underestimate the power of advertising. Not that Nat20's books aren't interesting (I have Tournaments and EOM) but I think Nat20s principle success can be attributed to being advertised long and hard on Enworld's Main Page. That opening page is seen by thousands of people every day. I'd love to have that kind of exposure... lol

BTW, My new game will probably incorporate a lot of EOM's magic system in it when it comes out this fall.

Eric Price

[Morrus]

Originally posted by Numion

And could you clear up what the relation between ENWorld and Nat 20 really is?

Not sure what's unclear. Nat 20 is part of EN World.

If I'm honest, I'm sure that the reviews are affected by that fact to a certain extent. And I also imagine that some people, at least subconsciously, hold Monte Cook to a higher standard than, say, Rangerwickett or myself, and are therefore less forgiving with their reviews. However, I dare say that most people do think that [most of] Nat 20's products are pretty good.

Plus, as has been pointed out, a product needs 5 reviews to appear on that list, which means that a lot of products don't make it on there. Nat 20 being one of the highest selling PDF publishers will naturally tend to dominate the list, since more sales = more reviews.

EN World staff reviewers, as you may have noticed, do not review Nat 20 products.

[trancejeremy]

The Natural 20 products have the mininum needed to qualify for the chart, which is 5. Monte Cook's stuff, at least some of them, have a lot more reviews.

Generally, the more reviews, the lower the score will be. That fact that one of his products has a score of 4.5 and has 15 reviews is extremely impressive.

Secondly, unless you're someone who likes writing reviews, those who write reviews either really liked a product (and want to praise it), or really hated a product (since when you feel ripped off, one of the ways of feeling better and letting off steam is writing a review saying how you feel. See the Crunchy Frog section for examples).

Since very few people write a review if they found a product just so-so or average, Natural 20 products will probably only get ratings of 5 or 4. (Same with Monte's stuff, but he probably gets more 4s, simple because there are more reviews. And some people do count the pages, which I think tend to be fairly small).

It's actually too bad people couldn't vote on a rating for an item without having to write a review. That would presumably be more accurate of how people feel (since more people would do it).

Thirdly, what Natural 20 might lack in ability and professionalism (I say might, I'm not saying they do), they make up for in effort and enthusiasm. That tends to appeal to the people who frequent EN World, who for the lack of the better word, tend to be the blue collar gamer. This is also why companies like Mystic Eye tend to also be rated higher - their stuff can be lacking in places, but they clearly love what they are doing.