Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

[Maggan]

But isn't this what almost every 3PP did... capitalize on their relationship to the D&D brand as support companies for whatever product they were producing? Is this any different than say Green Ronin converting D&D customers to Mutants and Materminds customers or Mongoose and Conan? If so please explain how...

Paizo was official D&D. That carries a lot more weight than being a 3pp in the crowd.

Whoa now, I don't think that customer base or it's loyalty was just handed to Paizo, IMO...

Neither do I. They worked hard, but the fact remans: when Dragon and Dungeon were pulled, Paizo had something no other company has ever had, namely the names and credit card numbers of 50 000 odd customers. That wanted periodical support and were willing to pay for it.

First, I think your biggest mistake is in assuming that Paizo doesn't want to, or can't grow their customer base with new gamers.

Of course they want to do that. That's why they made the core book. Because their adventures wouldn't sell if there weren't rules for the game on the market.

The momentum carried over from people having D&D3.5 and buying AP from Paizo could only last for a while.

Well we can agree to disagree about the necessity of the rulebook... since honestly I think a better question is if you are basing your products on a set of rules, isn't it smart business to make sure they are always and readily available... instead of being dependent upon others to make them available?

Yes. I don't think I said otherwise? If so, I apologise for being unclear. I'll clarify.

You asked how Paizo could sell well before they released their core rules. I answered that I believe the momentum from D&D3.5 carried over, and that the availiability of the D&D3.5 books as well as the SRD on the internet meant they didn't need the core rules in print.

Now they do, and I believe they will make more rulebooks, and make more money selling them than they do selling adventures.

Also again, I see you attributing alot to the "Dungeons and Dragons customers" when I would argue they had already become Paizo customers through the efforts, good service and quality products Paizo put out. If they were "Dungeons and Dragons customers" well wouldn't they have went with 4th edition... or waited for it rather than go with a different game and company?

Yes. And many did go with 4th edition. The majority in fact. But Paizo converted enough to base their new business model on. Even if only a fraction of the Dragon and Dungeon customers stayed with Paizo, they were in a much better position than any other RPG company bar WotC and maybe White Wolf.

As a quick comparison, on a similar scale, look at how many rulebooks as opposed to adventures have come out for Dark Heresy 10 months out from FFG's release of the rules.

Okay. The Dark Heresy line (which I own in its entirety) consists of 9 books and a Game Master toolkit, of which three are adventures (one other adventure is upcoming). Thus the majority are rulebooks.

Like who? Who has created stellar adventures and fluff on a regular basis and with a dedicated focus on it...

Chaosium. Necromancer Games. Fantasy Flight. Privateer Press. Sword&Sorcery. Green Ronin (e.g. Freeport), Atlas Games, Columbia Games, Kenzer, West End Games ... and that's not looking very far back in history.

Take some of the most lauded adventure campaigns in the history of RPGs, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Horror on the Orient Express and Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

Brilliant. Groundbreaking. Massive. Cool. Fun. And still, Chaosium isn't taking the world by storm.

Hmm... I think perhaps you put too much credence in this, especially since a "subscription model" is such a wide term and encompases so much it's almost meaningless.

No it's not. It's a subscription model. People pay for continual support. EN World has been saved by it. WotC seems to be doing alright by it. Paizo is doing great thanks to offering subscriptions, it was one of the things they based the entire launch of their AP strategy on.

Subscriptions.

And access to a database of customers prepared to give you money is a holy grail of any business. Take Apple e.g. they have a database of millions of people signed up to iTunes, and their credit card numbers. Every single competitor would kill for that database (they'd preferably kill Apple).

It is my belief that what Paizo is doing right is running their business as pros. And making great stuff, but the key to their success is mainly how they run their business, not the quality of their offerings.

If they started compromising on quality, they'd still survive. If they took out the business savvy, they'd collapse.

Look, I'm saying that they are geniuses. Ok? They are brilliant, they make brilliant stuff. But there's much more to running a successful business than making brilliant stuff, that's all I'm saying.

/M

 

[ggroy]

Paizo was official D&D. That carries a lot more weight than being a 3pp in the crowd.

Kenzer also had the official D&D logo on the cover of all their 3E/3.5E books for "Kingdoms of Kalamar". Though Kenzer didn't continue their success once the official D&D logo was gone.

"Knights of the Dinner Table", seems to be their main success over the years.

 

[MrMyth]

Yes. You buy the modules for play. They cost $3.99 a pop. Unlike the old RPGA modules, these are full color and profesisonally illustrated with a quality Paizoesque map.

You can use them for organized play -- or just borg them and adapt some aspect of the module for use in your home campaign. The value the adventures presents is a very good one -- and the people writing them are not just newbie authors (like most of the RPGA and Star Wars Living Force modules are/were).

If you want quality and name talent for modules like this -- and especially to pay the artist for the map -- someone's got to pay for that work. In this case, that someone is you.

At $3.99 they present a great value, imo. You may have a different view.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to say this is some evil scheme, and that explanation does make some amount of sense - the concept just caught me by surprise. While I certainly prefer the more player-support driven support of the RPGA (and have certainly enjoyed many of their free modules), I can understand the appeal of a different approach, and certainly don't begrudge anyone the chance to pursue it.

 

[Maggan]

Kenzer also had the official D&D logo on the cover of all their 3E/3.5E books for "Kingdoms of Kalamar". Though Kenzer didn't continue their success once the official D&D logo was gone.

"Knights of the Dinner Table", seems to be their main success over the years.

Yeah, Kenzer is also an interesting company. They have said that the official stamp was great and did boost their sales, for a while.

As time passed, that official stamp didn't mean as much as it once did, and at the end of D&3.x it was mostly a wash between having the logo and not having it, at least for Kenzer.

/M

 

[Imaro]

It is my belief that what Paizo is doing right is running their business as pros. And making great stuff, but the key to their success is mainly how they run their business, not the quality of their offerings.

If they started compromising on quality, they'd still survive. If they took out the business savvy, they'd collapse.

Look, I'm saying that they are geniuses. Ok? They are brilliant, they make brilliant stuff. But there's much more to running a successful business than making brilliant stuff, that's all I'm saying.

/M

Emphasis mine... This is the main gist I'm having a problem with... they are continually praised by their fans for their quality and you believe that quality has little or no bearing on their success, I find that almost impossible to believe.

Do you think Paizo customers are so caught up and mesmerized by the "way they run their business" that even if the quality plumeted they would just continue to mindlessly buy from the company. Sorry I'm not buying it, a subscription can be cancelled just as quickly as it can be bought.

 

[Imaro]

Paizo was official D&D. That carries a lot more weight than being a 3pp in the crowd.



Neither do I. They worked hard, but the fact remans: when Dragon and Dungeon were pulled, Paizo had something no other company has ever had, namely the names and credit card numbers of 50 000 odd customers. That wanted periodical support and were willing to pay for it.

Which if they didn't create, greatly increased... since, as I said earlier, the magazine was in decline when Paizo took over. They built the customer base up... not WotC.

 

[Maggan]

Emphasis mine... This is the main gist I'm having a problem with... they are continually praised by their fans for their quality and you believe that quality has little or no bearing on their success, I find that almost impossible to believe.

Ok, put it this way:

I think that there are many companies that deliver high quality material apart from Paizo.

So what is it that separates Paizo from the others?

What, in your opinion is it that Paizo is doing that no one else can match? What is it that Chaosium, Mongoose, Green Ronin, Fantasy Flight, Open Design and the rest of the very competent bunch of companies out there aren't doing?

Are you saying that only Paizo is giving people quality? That only Paizo is in tune with what their customers want?

Is quality the sole defining factor of Paizo's success?

That I don't believe for a second.

/M

 

[Maggan]

They built the customer base up... not WotC.

So you don't think that the very successful launch of D&D3 by WotC had anything to do with popularity of Dragon and Dungeon rising?

/M

 

[Dannager]

All I can say to this is... anytime you are coming on to various message boards asking us "non-mainstream D&D players" how you can make your adventures better... maybe this mythical "mainstream" or "average" D&D player (especially as we are talking about DM's for the most part) isn't that far from us "non-mainstream" DM's in what makes an adveture fun or interesting enough to spend cash on. Crazy talk I know, but maybe... just maybe there's something to this line of thought.

Asking the community for ways they think the adventures can be improved is not the same as lending credence to the idea that simple, easy-to-run prepackaged adventures aren't the way to go for WotC. Keep in mind that the designers of D&D are experienced DMs, as are most of their staff and freelancers - the people who write their adventures. If they felt that publishing adventures that feature greater complexity at the cost of less hand-holding was something they should do, they would just do it - and they still might (and, arguably, do exactly that in Dungeon magazine). Getting community input is a smart idea, but trust me, they're not going to let the ENWorld forum base write their adventures for them (save a handful of people who literally write WotC's adventures for them).

 

[MortonStromgal]

Ok, put it this way:
I think that there are many companies that deliver high quality material apart from Paizo.

So what is it that separates Paizo from the others?

What, in your opinion is it that Paizo is doing that no one else can match? What is it that Chaosium, Mongoose, Green Ronin, Fantasy Flight, Open Design and the rest of the very competent bunch of companies out there aren't doing?

Are you saying that only Paizo is giving people quality? That only Paizo is in tune with what their customers want?

Is quality the sole defining factor of Paizo's success?

That I don't believe for a second.

/M

Open Style Commitment - For example while MRQ is also open, the worlds are not. I can find more wiki information about various Pathfinder rules and world information that I can about MRQ.

I wouldn't say they are the only ones who do high quality or open games but they go above and beyond most other companies in multiple areas. Picking D&D as a base already lets to tap a huge community though much bigger than MRQ has. Also I think pumping out so much material of high quality keeps fans excited and keeps them playing Pathfinder rather than playing another game. I don't think they are the best in perhaps any individual field but even 80% across the board makes you a big guy on campus. Paizo really excites me as a company, regardless of if I like Pathfinder or not (not a d20 fan) and I will keep buying product to use in my other games and maybe someday even give Pathfinder an old college try.