Imaro
Legend
Well I'm one. Just makes sense.
D&D (2024) Kobold Press posts 2024 DMG Hit Piece
- Thread starter Waller
- Start date
The sad truth it is matters more than the building of the thing. It’s not about how good your thing is, it’s about what reach you have. Poor quality things with good reach sell far better then high quality things with poor reach. (Not a comment on anybody talked about in this thread, just a general truism).
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Is everything else in that book necessary to play the game? The bastion rules? How about the lore glossary? How necessary is that?
Imaro
Legend
Didn't say it was.
EDIT: Of course once we get beyond the necessities it's all about subjective preference. I'm cool with Bastions and will be using them so I'm not sure I'd trade them for a bunch of optional rules when I have that book from 2014... I also don't have to only purchase one book for DM's... so I'm kind of glad that the different guides have different mechanics and focuses.
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Hexmage-EN
Legend
I really appreciate the Bastion rules as something more concrete and potentially team oriented than the downtime rules were, and the lore glossary was something the game needed for a while now to try and get the new blood to know and maybe care who this Mordenkainen guy is that they keep namedropping and naming books after. 5E has has kind of a bad habit IMO of referencing characters often and not really explaining who they are.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
It was his first book. Yes, he was relatively unknown before that. It's why people talk about him these days. He didn't even have a play video series up at the time as that was funded by the kickstarter. For a relative unknown guy who isn't even from the industry to run his first kickstarter and make over $2M from that basic concept, it was a sign there was serious demand.
How do you bridge that gap?
That’s an odd stance. Starter sets don’t even exist for most DMGs. Of course DMGs are for new DMs. That’s literally their point. A guide for Dungeon Masters. The clue is in the title.
mamba
Legend
he is from the industry afaik, what makes you say he is not? He just went back and forth between TTRPGs and computer games
EDIT: this is what his bio has to say
“Prior to creating MCDM, Matthew Colville had worked as a writer on various TTRPGs, such as Dune (2000), The Lord of the Rings (2005), Star Trek (2002) and Liber Bestarius: The Book of Beasts (2002).[1]
In 2011 he was a lead writer at Turtle Rock Studios and worked on the video game Evolve. ”
Matthew Colville
Matthew Colville is one of the authors of the Vox Machina Origins Volume 1 comic series, along with Matthew Mercer. He also contributed to the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting and is thanked in the credits of the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. Matthew Colville is the founder and Head of Writing and...
criticalrole.fandom.com
So yeah, very much from the industry
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It was the minis and stuff (which push the average ledge level right up) combined with a big YouTube following. All the big multimillion crowdfunders make their money from the merch, dice, minis, etc., not the book—just look at the million dollar KS club. Only 2 TTRPG million-dollar crowdfunders out of 41 ever have made a million without minis etc. None have made 2M; Shadowdark did $1.3M and Coyote & Crow did $1.07M.
When looking at these things, look at the proce of the core product, and then look at the average pledge level. If all 29K backers had only bought the book for $30 it would have made about $800K (well, less, because half of those would have bought the PDF, but I can't be bothered to do that maths). A good number to be sure, but far less than $2M+ made by including all the extra stuff. The majority of the funds are 'other stuff'.
It is not proof of demand for bastions; people like Matt Colville and his videos and they like minis and stuff. He's popular and he's good at making Kickstarters. But that book could have been about anything and it would have done the same.
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