D&D General (SPOILERS for Vecna: Eve of Ruin) Are My Standards Too High for Adventures?

[FitzTheRuke]

Not from what retailers on this board have said, the distribution sale price to retailers is lower than half, but maybe @FitzTheRuke can speak to tgat more directly.

I would like to point out that in your earlier example I seem to have typoed "60" for retailer when I meant to say "40" (maybe I was reversing the out-of-100, I'm not sure what I was thinking) but yes, it seems that WotC probably gets ~35% of MSRP, the distributor ~25% and the retailer ~40%, when we charge "full price". Any discount we give customers comes out of our end, which is why it's hard for a small FLGS to give much, if any, discount on a single item - the clerk who rings you in will get paid enough (in a store that treats its employees with respect) to take a chunk out of that right quick, not to mention the lease & lights.

 

[KYRON45]

Of course. That's why I asked (upthread) what your threshold was for "unplayable out of the box."

I find all published adventures unplayable. That's why i don't use them. I find them useful for ideas and maps and any other goodies that may be embedded in them. If i did use them I would make sure that the entire premise of the campaign as well as the characters history and mechanics were in line with the adventure so I wouldn't have to tinker too much with them. I have the feeling that this is hard to do when you bring existing PCs into a 10th level adventure.

I get my RPG information from a lot of different sources; none of which make me angry and give me reason to question other peoples judgement. It is not uncommon to hear from a lot of these sources (i weed out the haters and the monetized opinions) that many of the published adventures fall short.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I completely agree. I just also strongly believe that how many people share an opinion has no bearing on that opinion's validity. That is in and of itself an outlier, it seems to me, given how many people seem to think that pointing out how popular something is at the moment "gamers today want this and don't want that", somehow makes that something better.

Absolutely. I think that there's incredible value in outlying opinions. However, I think that modern corporate-think doesn't value outliers very much. Which I think is what most people are meaning to say when they act like your opinion being off-the-popular means it's less important. They mean to WotC, not to society.

I honestly think is a common mistake in modern corporations. Because I don't think that it's impossible to please BOTH the masses AND the outliers. It's not possible to please EVERYONE, sure, but you can TRY. The thing is, that there's no group that agrees on every detail, and there's plenty of people who would like one thing AND the other thing. Also, something being really good will usually cross over boundaries.

The main thing that I'm trying to say (and probably failing) is that you never need to throw away an old audience to gain a new audience. This is a huge mistake that I see happen all the time, in various modern ventures.

 

[jayoungr]

I get my RPG information from a lot of different sources; none of which make me angry and give me reason to question other peoples judgement. It is not uncommon to hear from a lot of these sources (i weed out the haters and the monetized opinions) that many of the published adventures fall short.

Sure, but I think some selection bias is happening there. The people who are running the adventures out of the box and not having major problems aren't, for the most part, coming online to post about their experiences.

 

[KYRON45]

Sure, but I think some selection bias is happening there. The people who are running the adventures out of the box and not having major problems aren't, for the most part, coming online to post about their experiences.

Yes.

 

[Faolyn]

I think the claim here is that if you don't like what WotC makes, it's your problem and not theirs, and you should just get over it.

That is kind of true.

For example, my table used to play a lot of GURPS, both 3e and 4e. Like, almost exclusively. I ran several games in 4e. But it became too overwhelming of a system for most of us at the table, and definitely for me. Perhaps because of other things in my life that were going on at the same time, my brain just sort of snapped and GURPS became far too complicated for what I was looking for, and it got worse every time a new supplement came out. There were good things in each book and pdf, but the rules because Just Too Much, GURPS Lite didn't actually help any, and SJ Games never updated the things I wanted them to (I'd do anything for an updated Technomancer).

So I had a choice: I could just stop buying and playing GURPS, or I could complain about how much SJ Games is not putting out what I wanted them to. One of those is a healthy choice. The other one is not.

With D&D, you actually have a third choice: Play with what you already own and buy 3pp when you want something new. Which I know you do since you have Level Up.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

You do not own anything on Beyond. You are renting it. That's predatory. And no, being able to print out a janky, ugly AF pdf does not make up for it.

And I already said I understand why WotC doesn't sell short adventures. I wasn't even saying that they should. I was saying that it is reasonable for people to want that and big anthologies are not the same thing.

I don't agree, but even then you can still use the free stuff on Beyond. Like the shorter adventures I mentioned. All have been free so far.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is kind of true.

For example, my table used to play a lot of GURPS, both 3e and 4e. Like, almost exclusively. I ran several games in 4e. But it became too overwhelming of a system for most of us at the table, and definitely for me. Perhaps because of other things in my life that were going on at the same time, my brain just sort of snapped and GURPS became far too complicated for what I was looking for, and it got worse every time a new supplement came out. There were good things in each book and pdf, but the rules because Just Too Much, GURPS Lite didn't actually help any, and SJ Games never updated the things I wanted them to (I'd do anything for an updated Technomancer).

So I had a choice: I could just stop buying and playing GURPS, or I could complain about how much SJ Games is not putting out what I wanted them to. One of those is a healthy choice. The other one is not.

With D&D, you actually have a third choice: Play with what you already own and buy 3pp when you want something new. Which I know you do since you have Level Up.

I'm with you, but I think it is worth noting that in your example the game didn't actually change: you did.

And yes, I do use 3pp (from WotC's perspective) almost exclusively at this point. I still miss the old take on WotC's owned IP though, and most of my ire is directed there.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think the claim here is that if you don't like what WotC makes, it's your problem and not theirs, and you should just get over it.

Whenever I suggest gaining influence over WOTC via stock buying or intrigue I'm ignored.

Do people expect to magically just make WOTC cater to their taste?

 

[jayoungr]

I don't agree, but even then you can still use the free stuff on Beyond. Like the shorter adventures I mentioned. All have been free so far.

However, WotC could decide to just pull any of those adventures at any time, and they'd vanish from your collection. Like streaming services that decide to retire available shows.

I don't have any reason to think they're planning to do this, but it is a valid concern. With books and PDFs, you at least can own the adventures in offline form.