Pathfinder 1E Business models from TSR, WotC and Paizo

[Henrix]

On the face of it, selling only to DMs is bad business.

Not necessarily. It's certainly not as lucrative as selling a copy to all the players, naturally.

But Paizo can not hope for that - at least not at first.

It's natural that WotC wants to expand their sales to all the players (they already sell stuff to all the DMs), but for Paizo it is enough to sell to more DMs in order to expand their sales.

In short, for a smaller business (than WotC) it is enough to sell to the DMs.

 

[hewligan]

Was Dragonlance the first real adventure path? There were certainly sequential adventures before that, but was that the first full campaign series (level 1 - max) linked by a single plot?

You may be right, although it was more a multi-part rail-road rather than a long sequence of connected adventures.

In response to roguerouge: I LOVE Paizo stuff, don't get me wrong. It is just that I can only DM over the web using the play-by-forum format due to me having 2 young kids, a manic job, and not being in a big city. As such, each part of an adventure takes a long time to play. As an example, it took my players 12 months to complete Burnt Offerings (Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords, Part 1). We are not about 2/3rds of the way through Skinsaw Murders (Part 2), with about 6 months spent so far and I guess another 3 to go.

Given that I really want to DM Age of Worms at some point ... well, I will probably be dead before I finish Rise of the Runelords, Age of Worms, Savage Tide, and Shackled City. I do think I will probably complete my collection of the second Pathfinder AP, simply because I hate incomplete collections.

 

[Treebore]

Was Dragonlance the first real adventure path? There were certainly sequential adventures before that, but was that the first full campaign series (level 1 - max) linked by a single plot?

Intentionally? I think you are right, but as has been pointed out many times Temple of Elemental Evil, or The Slave lords modules, combined with the Against the Giants, Vault of the Drow, and Queen of the Demonweb pits series certainly works well as a AP.


As far as a business plan, I don't think TSR had an official one. They tried various things, saw what worked and didn't, and repeated what worked. Gary was definitely not a fan of having many splat books, he said it many times, and in several Dragon editorials.

In their 2E days there definitely was not a business plan, or if there was it sucked or was not followed. If anything it was, "Lets throw tons of stuff out there, and see if it makes us a profit." Apparently it did, for a few years at least, but it did eventually bite them back.

WOTC, in their 3E years, did a cost benefit analysis, and apparently saw that the most consistent selling, and therefore profitable, products were the rule books, and source setting books. Modules were either a loss, or not enough of a profit margin to be worth producing. I would suspect the latter, because modules can always be marketed at a profit at WOTC's scale of business.

For 4E they still saw that the "rule" books sell the best, so they came up with their new model of new core books every year, that expand upon what hasn't been covered yet, and adding in new stuff based on the new rules sets. However, they also realized that modules not only can be done profitably, but also help drive sales of the rule books. So they started off 4E with modules, and unlike in 3E, will continue with modules to not only drive sales of the original core books, but to drive sales of their successive rule books, with the new rules, classes, etc... added in.


Obviously much more than this goes into true business plans/models, but I think that I have covered the basics of what their business plan built on.

 

[Intense_Interest]

Well I can see that you have a big problem or fault in your comparison here- only two of the companies there are international. Its really an apples-to-oranges problem.

Piazo, for all its allusions to greatness- such as hiring (in)famous D&D designers and unleashing fat and impressive rulebooks full of product- is a small, boutique printing company.

TSR and WotC (and Hasbro) are international companies. I have yet to hear any words about full-product support for, say, Dutch from the Piazo camp. With that full-product support comes language translation, international bureaucracy, and legal support in every individual country/language. That is beyond the scale of our "little company that could".

 

[Treebore]

Well I can see that you have a big problem or fault in your comparison here- only two of the companies there are international. Its really an apples-to-oranges problem.

Piazo, for all its allusions to greatness- such as hiring (in)famous D&D designers and unleashing fat and impressive rulebooks full of product- is a small, boutique printing company.

TSR and WotC (and Hasbro) are international companies. I have yet to hear any words about full-product support for, say, Dutch from the Piazo camp. With that full-product support comes language translation, international bureaucracy, and legal support in every individual country/language. That is beyond the scale of our "little company that could".

True. Paizo probably sells in the thousands, to tens of thousands of units, where as, at least with their core rule book set, WTOC sells hundreds of thousands of sets.

 

[roguerouge]

According to the WotC market research posted by SKR, DMs spend much more money than players do. "Just" selling to the DMs is actually viable, because you're selling to a big chunk of the market.

 

[teitan]

Was Dragonlance the first real adventure path? There were certainly sequential adventures before that, but was that the first full campaign series (level 1 - max) linked by a single plot?

Well, the GDQ series were all linked and also loosely tied to T1-4 and I believe the Tharizdun module or Tomb of Horrors. But they didn't come out in that order or anything. So kinda, sorta and not really but yes...

 

[Dedekind]

I imagine the "DMs buy, Players borrow" problem is why WotC is:

1) Making some books more DM focused.
2) Making DMing easier so more people do it.
3) Removing Player rewards in RPGA and only having DM awards.
4) Moving more towards DM tools in DDI.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I have to wonder what role the DDI will play in WOTC's business plans? I'm sure there is one but I don't know what...

 

[jeffh]

Was Dragonlance the first real adventure path? There were certainly sequential adventures before that, but was that the first full campaign series (level 1 - max) linked by a single plot?

By that definition, no, since it didn't start at level 1.

But it's better to just think in terms of long series with a single linked plotline. DL was the first such entity of anything like its length, but I tend to think of the GDQ series as D&D's first serious epic, not DL.