Game Pricing

Re: adventures don't sell

Thorin Stoutfoot said:

David Kenzer writes:


David, to be honest I think that it's more a matter of packaging than a matter of your adventures not selling. I've been participating in one of Noah's giveaways, so let me tell you that the content is pretty good, but seriously, who would buy a 32 page adventure for $10, when you could say, get Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil for $28 @ 192 pages of gaming goodness? Especially for something like the Coin series, which is essentially a rail-road and requires 3 purchases.

<SNIP>

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I think adventures don't sell because most of a game group won't buy them, and DMs that do buy them rarely use them more than once. And once an adventure makes the rounds, everyone knows it, and it's not very usable.

If you look at the threads about people's favorite adventures of all time, they've run them maybe 3 or 4 times. You use those 32 pages once and that's it. I don't think its packaging.

PS

Re: adventures don't sell

Thorin Stoutfoot said:

David Kenzer writes:


David, to be honest I think that it's more a matter of packaging than a matter of your adventures not selling. I've been participating in one of Noah's giveaways, so let me tell you that the content is pretty good, but seriously, who would buy a 32 page adventure for $10, when you could say, get Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil for $28 @ 192 pages of gaming goodness? Especially for something like the Coin series, which is essentially a rail-road and requires 3 purchases.

One suggestion (and I know it's an experiment, but it's worth a try): try packaging several of your adventures together as a mega-adventure, one that would span say, levels 1-8, or 8-14, or something like that, and see if that would sell, at a higher price point. I bet that even if it sold a few copies less than the standalone modules, the increase in markup would make a difference in profitability.

As for people knowing how to make their own adventures, it's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of time! If you had all the time in the world you'd never need to buy an RPG product, you'd make your own, but put time into the equation and everything changes.

Besides, I seriously doubt if most of the members of EnWorld, (who are by self-selecting enthusiastic gamers) really know how to construct adventures above 14th level. A campaign that took adventurers from 1-20, for instance, could really entice more gamers into trying the upper levels for a change, and really would be something different.

Just a couple of things for you to think about.

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Comparing a Mega-adventure to adventures is an apples to oranges compaison. I agree that The coin series would have done better as one mega-adventure, but probably not three times better -- in fact it sold VERY VERY well. But I atribute the strong sales to the early days phenom. Mega adventures always do well, but STILL not as well as source material.

It may not be true in your experience, but it is certainly true across large numbers of gamers (i.e., from the data large distributors have shared), that a 192 page sourcebook at $28 will sell more and for a longer period of time than a 192 page mega-module. My guess is that you simply get more use out of it and EVERYONE is in the market for more rules and source, while only people with characters at level such and such or starting a new campaign are interested in modules.

The fact that adventures typically sell worse than source (a fact) and typically sell for fewer months (another fact), and that there are already 100s of d20 adventures available, is why manufacturers may be chosing to ignore modules in favor of source. That's all I'm trying to say.

Dave

Here's the deal, it depends on how much time you have right now. For instance, right now you have time to write and build your own campaign, so you only look for adventures here and there to slot into your story.

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I actually use a pre-existing world (Middle Earth) that I've just modified a bit to my tastes. I run a campaign in the eastern part of Middle Earth a thousand years after the War of the Ring. That way, the races, history, pantheon, etc. are all done for me, but I have enough leeway to do what I need to do to tell my story. I've drawn on a bunch of stuff that Tolkien left unresolved and made my story from that (right now the players are dealing with a war between the 'other' two Istari mentioned in Unfinished Tales, for example). It hasn't really taken that much work to cobble together a story around these unresolved issues from Tolkien.

In some ways, the Freeport and Witchfire adventures have already gotten you hooked.

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Sure, but I was able to try before I buy to an extent. I bought Death in Freeport for like $8, and after reading it I figured I could work it in, so then I knew that spending the other money and time would be a good choice. Those adventures are great for me, because they rely on a generic cult worshipping 'the unspeakable one', which was quite easy to fit into my story. I've never gotten Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, not because of the money, but because I don't want to take the time to read it to see if it works for me (and also, I'm fairly certain the grand dungeon crawl style would not go along with what I'm trying to accomlish). Also, I can run DiF, then do some other stuff, then do TiF, then do some other stuff, then come back to MiF. I don't think I could do that so easily with something like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

I agree about the value of mega adventures from a page to dollar perspective, and I hope more mega adventures get made. I'm just saying I won't be buying them because they aren't useful to me as a DM, but I do hope to get a chance to play through them.

My guess is that you simply get more use out of it and EVERYONE is in the market for more rules and source, while only people with characters at level such and such or starting a new campaign are interested in modules.

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That's probably true, though I've found new rules and source material to be somewhat like a treadmill --- your players get more powerful items, you get more powerful monsters, and so on and so forth. In the long run, for long term play, it's better to just disallow any non-core rules and introduce what you want slowly.

Anyway, I am convinced that I'm the minority any way, at this point. I was just pointing out that I don't think any "pull out all stops" adventures have been produced, while I have seen "pull out all stops" campaign settings, etc.

Re: Re: adventures don't sell

Hard8Staff said:

But I atribute the strong sales to the early days phenom. Mega adventures always do well, but STILL not as well as source material.

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Pish tosh. Attribute it to it being a Damn fine adventure.

I'm sorry but it ain't over!

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