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Why the lack of 3rd party adventures
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<blockquote data-quote="carpedavid" data-source="post: 2884797" data-attributes="member: 6971"><p>I think there are two reasons why adventures aren't strong sellers:</p><p></p><p>1. Every adventure is written to a specific power level; you might write it for a small range of levels, or you might include scaling information, but you're still targeting a very narrow window. In order for people to be interested, their group has to be at the right level.</p><p></p><p>2. An adventure has to fit into an existing campaign. Most adventures are written with a strong backstory or a specific flavor that makes them difficut to integrate into an existing campaign. If your characters are in the middle of the wilderness, an urban adventure doesn't do you much immediate good, and vice versa.</p><p></p><p>The intersection of these two problems is what keeps most people, I'd wager, from extensively using published adventures.</p><p></p><p>To use an adventure I recently published as an example: Diamond Gulch is an adventure that involves steam trains, dinosaurs, and a wild west feel, for a party of 5-6th level.</p><p></p><p>As you can see, I'm first targeting a small subset of possible gamers: GMs with a 5-6th level party.</p><p></p><p>Second, of that significant subset, I'm targeting people running a wild-west themed fantasy setting.</p><p></p><p>As you might expect, the intersection of those two audiences is pretty tiny.</p><p></p><p>I think the "Dungeon does it better" argument is really a minor factor in 3rd party adventure sales. I used to subscribe to Dungeon, but I found that I was having exactly the same problems with their adventures as I was with 3rd party ones - which are the problems I listed above.</p><p></p><p>The "GMs prefer to roll their own" argument carries more weight, I think - but I feel like there's a chicken and egg scenario here. I think that one of the reasons that GMs are used to "rolling their own" is that it's difficult to integrate already published adventures. If you're going to spend as much time adapting someone else's work, you might as well create your own.</p><p></p><p>I would certainly use published adventures if I thought they'd fit - they just often don't.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="carpedavid, post: 2884797, member: 6971"] I think there are two reasons why adventures aren't strong sellers: 1. Every adventure is written to a specific power level; you might write it for a small range of levels, or you might include scaling information, but you're still targeting a very narrow window. In order for people to be interested, their group has to be at the right level. 2. An adventure has to fit into an existing campaign. Most adventures are written with a strong backstory or a specific flavor that makes them difficut to integrate into an existing campaign. If your characters are in the middle of the wilderness, an urban adventure doesn't do you much immediate good, and vice versa. The intersection of these two problems is what keeps most people, I'd wager, from extensively using published adventures. To use an adventure I recently published as an example: Diamond Gulch is an adventure that involves steam trains, dinosaurs, and a wild west feel, for a party of 5-6th level. As you can see, I'm first targeting a small subset of possible gamers: GMs with a 5-6th level party. Second, of that significant subset, I'm targeting people running a wild-west themed fantasy setting. As you might expect, the intersection of those two audiences is pretty tiny. I think the "Dungeon does it better" argument is really a minor factor in 3rd party adventure sales. I used to subscribe to Dungeon, but I found that I was having exactly the same problems with their adventures as I was with 3rd party ones - which are the problems I listed above. The "GMs prefer to roll their own" argument carries more weight, I think - but I feel like there's a chicken and egg scenario here. I think that one of the reasons that GMs are used to "rolling their own" is that it's difficult to integrate already published adventures. If you're going to spend as much time adapting someone else's work, you might as well create your own. I would certainly use published adventures if I thought they'd fit - they just often don't. [/QUOTE]
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Why the lack of 3rd party adventures
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