D&D 5E I think WotC has it backwards (re: story arcs)

[Parmandur]

Not at Gen Con specifically but they're being a lot more secretive with releases, so it's possible - For Out Of The Abyss, we found out quite late in the day and Dragon+ & Fantasy ground we got an announcement day of release.



Plus, this is a thing all the cool kids are doing.

Princes of the Apocalypse got leaked early, but it was also done by outside contractors. If they are doing something in house they have demonstrated ample ability to keep things under wraps. Time will tell.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Back it up, Defcon. I did no such thing; go back and read what I posted and you'll see. Stop assigning motives to me and putting words in my mouth, thank you.

I am surprised I am not being given more opportunities to give WotC my money. That's all.

The general 'You'.

 

[Jester David]

Princes of the Apocalypse got leaked early, but it was also done by outside contractors. If they are doing something in house they have demonstrated ample ability to keep things under wraps. Time will tell.

Yeah, Elemental Evil was "announced" in February, a month before. And we found out about the July release of the Starter Set in June. They could still announce something. Or not.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, Elemental Evil was "announced" in February, a month before. And we found out about the July release of the Starter Set in June. They could still announce something. Or not.

If we hypothesize that they may do a non-AP release, the Starter Set is a decent model: designed by WOTC, printed by Hasbro.

 

[aramis erak]

Responding to some issues several pages back...

The reasons for books and movies tie together....

A typical bestseller novel will sell several hundred to a million copies of the hardcover - bringing the imprint and publisher a dollar or two each, and a known author a quarter each... but will also generate 2 dollars or so profit for the booksellers and for the warehouser/distributor per copy. President Obama's book (from his senatorial days), for example, is around a million hardcovers at $25 or $30 per each... $30M in economic activity, plus the attendant wages of those employees adding on... But also about $2-4 M for the imprint/publisher. And probably $250 K for Pres. Obama. Plus any pocket sales.

Now, I don't expect Fantasy novels to do quite that well (but have read from Jim Baen that a top Sci-Fi or Fantasy bestseller sells over a quarter million copies in pocket and usually well over 100K in hardcover). Sure, Harry Potter set records... over 500 M copies of the first one...

A combined movie and novel looks to make Wizards a couple million or so dollars after random house gets their cut - a movie will help book sales, and book sales will help the movie... add a videogame content release at the same time, and you get massive synergy in all three.

It all funnels together. The RPG creates some awareness. More importantly, it provides a nucleus of already hooked fans clamoring for more, and if they can give that more with the (fairly inexpensive) novels, and get a third party to pay them a couple million plus a share of box office for a movie, all tied to the same setting...

So, getting people playing is a loss-leader activity. It generates a ready made audience nucleus which will talk about and spread enthusiasm about the books and movies, and fuel the initial sales. And as far as loss-leaders go, it's a pretty inexpensive deal, since they own the properties themselves. They're creating a market ready for a feature film and novels.

If WotC kept up the current release schedule in terms of number of words, but divided them differently, I'd probably be a happier (read: spend more money) customer.

As in, instead of multiple 1-15 APs, release one such product, then also make other, one-shot adventure modules. As it is, my group bought HotDQ and that is it. Had there been other stand-alone mods, we would have definitely bought them, even if we didn't end up using them as is (Goldomark's point earlier in the thread).

That would satisfy a lot of us, I do believe, and it wouldn't even be more content, per se.

Let's see...
Slated for one year... about 30 short adventures. 2 long ones. 1 book (about 40 pages) of rules crunch (races and spells)... All of it focused upon building a communal public-play user-base. It's not like the passwords have been hard to figure out. This season's was figured easily enough from the player packet for the season.

And they're good adventures. Not great, generally, but good. If my players for my home game hadn't insisted otherwise, I'd have been running those instead, and they'd have more magic items than they do now.

 

[delericho]

Perhaps. But then we counter that by the number of people who bought HotDQ because it was one book with eight levels worth of adventures. Or will buy PoA because it's one book with an entire campaign in it, 13 to 15 levels of content.

Yep. It's also well-known that as a series progresses the sales diminish - they'd probably sell as many copies of IA1 (Individual Adventure 1) as of the compiled PotA, then sell about half as many of IA2, then fewer still of IA3, IA4, and so on.

Add to that the fact that larger books have a higher profit margin, and the individual ones are pretty quickly a losing proposition.

As far as I can see, there are two ways around this: either do compiled volumes of individual adventures (so 8 x 32-page adventures in a single 256-page hardback) or sell the product primarily as a subscription, at a price-point such that you sell enough copies to subscriptions so that even the "bad" later episodes don't need to sell any copies to non-subscribers. The first of these obviously doesn't help people who want to buy one 32-page adventure; the second might, if WotC ever bring back Dungeon mag.

 

[Kramodlog]

Not at Gen Con specifically but they're being a lot more secretive with releases, so it's possible - For Out Of The Abyss, we found out quite late in the day and Dragon+ & Fantasy ground we got an announcement day of release.

The time of secrecy for anything not digital (excluding SCL) is over. Rage over Drizzt as been announced almost six months in advance and they mentioned all products or partners liked to it. Now that the core rules are done and have been published, they are are getting ahead of their release schedule and are more confident about announcing stuff that won't be cancelled. No more EE-like announcements 10 weeks before the release.

Also, if they announce an RPG book for september, I doubt they have secret RPG book that will be release before the one that is announce. The secret one will be droned in the promo of the other. Bad marketing.

Digital stuff is announced when it launches because they want to avoid Dungeonscape and 4e's VTT announcements that lead to disappointement.

 

[Benji]

Also, if they announce an RPG book for september, I doubt they have secret RPG book that will be release before the one that is announce. The secret one will be droned in the promo of the other. Bad marketing.

I tend to agree with this on the marketing front, I just was just giving examples of secretness that has happened that wouldn't have happened before. But If they announced say a forgotten realms book tomorrow, I don't think people would forget it existed because of rage of driz'zit.

 

[Benji]

Let's see...
Slated for one year... about 30 short adventures. 2 long ones. 1 book (about 40 pages) of rules crunch (races and spells)... All of it focused upon building a communal public-play user-base. It's not like the passwords have been hard to figure out. This season's was figured easily enough from the player packet for the season.

And they're good adventures. Not great, generally, but good. If my players for my home game hadn't insisted otherwise, I'd have been running those instead, and they'd have more magic items than they do now.

Man, I have no idea what the passwords are. I'd love that stuff. No idea why they keep it for AL only - they should lat least make it available after the season.

 

[Kramodlog]

I tend to agree with this on the marketing front, I just was just giving examples of secretness that has happened that wouldn't have happened before. But If they announced say a forgotten realms book tomorrow, I don't think people would forget it existed because of rage of driz'zit.

Yeah, but the narrative from some posters is that WotC will surprise everyone with a product at GenCon or a last minute announcement. It doesn't make sense marketing wise. If they do surprise everyone with a FR campaign setting at GenCon, all the attention and money Rage over Drizzt would get would be diverted. If it is a splatbook called Heroes of the Elements, it won't get much attention away from the Rage storm. If it is Heroes the Abyssal Underdark, why not announce it with the rest of the Rage bundle? Expecting something more than a small adventure or booklet for GenCon is wishful thinking.

A lot of people say "I do not need anything else from WotC. But they totally are gonna surprise us with a book that I'll buy!". Sounds like defending WotC by saying they are above other books, but really wishing for more books.