3pp: what can they sell?

[fireinthedust]

[post=Ruminating on the topic; thinking, thinking...]



The GM: I think this is a big avenue for sales for 3pp. I as the DM am the major input for stuff to my group. I bought all this stuff and now I'm putting my players through the material. I have a box of minis, I have shelves of books, I keep buying battle mats and dungeon tiles. I even like the additional books for critters, tho I may eventually just build my own variations. I like cheap, quality, quantity and usefulness: I just bought Bag o' Cthulhu because we'll be fighting Illithids soon, and I'm going to buy Bags o' Zombies and Skeletons, because I want a pile of generic baddies I can throw at my players when I don't feel like using a warforged and a hobgoblin to stand in for zombies (if that makes sense); and I don't want to buy expensive minis I have to gamble on getting.

My players, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. One of them hates numbers, but has a lot of personal flair. Another is a 2e dm who I pulled in. a third loves 3rd ed and game-breaking (ergo 4e disturbs him; as in: what is this "role"playing I keep talking about). Another is a long-time friend who has bought material but likely won't buy nearly as much as me (I have an addiction to this stuff).
Basically, I'm the cash cow for WOTC at this point.

Example: The Monster builder is going to be huge, but that's not an issue: if I get a monster book for 4e that I like, and could theoretically crunch the data into the MB and there it is. I personally predict that they'll eventually allow me to take an MB creation and plop it onto a page alongside my written notes, so I can format my own modules; that would be huge for me. As such, it would mean I'd be more inclined to get the 4e S&S scarred lands book (which looks great), or products like it, when I'm writing my own modules for my home group.
So that's why I'd buy a Monster Book 3pp.

Minis: like the bag o' zombies I mentioned, that sort of thing would be huge. I can see a bag o' goblins, and a bag o' orcs, and a bag o' ogres going over great. Heck, a "space trooper" would do for Storm Troopers in SWSE. cheap, single-colored, and useful. I don't want to collect minis the way some get Magic Cards. I want my el cheapo army of too-many-orcs. I want Helm's Deep!
the WOTC mini department is sadly lacking. I can't afford to buy a pile of fancy individual minis. I will for special stuff, or for larger monsters, but the generic bad guys I'll gladly sub in with generic minis (goblins, orcs, skeletons, and larger ogres, I guess; and space marines for storm troopers).

Would the minis be profitable? Maybe, I have no idea how this would play out, I just know what I'd jump on if I see it.

Campaign Settings: I guess. The art would have to be evocative. the 3e FRCS was just win. Pathfinder CS is pretty good as 4e, Ironically.

Maps: dungeon tiles are handy. I have a battle mat with grid and hexes. I dunno. A see-through mat would be nice, so I can put pictures beneath it (star maps, open sky, ship decks, etc.) when I need to. I can make do for now, basically.
Maybe a way to design and print out my own minis-sized maps?

 

[Tallifer]

The only 3rd party thing I can imagine buying, or even bothering to read, would be a solid campaign setting (with city maps and adventures included), a series of adventures or a series of encounters (outside, inside, much variety).

Those are things anyone can use. I would pay for that.

Magic items, powers, feats, classes? All next to worthless to me, since they are not transferable to other tables. WoTC crunch is universally accepted and there is enough of it.

Now on the other hand, I could see some use for books full of information which the rules do not cover. How to run a manor and fief. How to run a mediaeval merchant house. Tournaments, feasts, fair days, mediaeval past times, details about food, clothing, et cetera. Most of that cna be found in any decent children's picture book about the middle ages, but it could be collected, organized and fit into 4th edition rules.

Still not sure I would buy such a book.

 

[darjr]

Isn't selling to players the goal?

Some can sell to GM's but even those guys would love to sell to players.

I'll say it again about living campaigns. The impending Blackmoor one sold a few books to players and GM's. It'll probably sell a few more.

I'm not sure what else I'd want as a player.

Maybe something like a life path source book for backgrounds? That would be cool. Something that could be finetuned some how to a flavor of a campaign. It'd be cool if it had a party interlink mechanism ala Mongoose Traveller. It could then do modest background like stuff that could be either easily remembered or directly added to the CB by players in the backgrounds as a kind of note.

 

[ggroy]

Looking back at the d20 3PP glut era, adventure modules were popular at first from 2000 to mid-late 2002. Several d20 3PPs were producing many modules like Alderac, Fantasy Flight, MonkeyGod, Atlas, Troll Lord, Fiery Dragon, Necromancer, etc ... After 3.5E was released, it was mainly Goodman and Necromancer left who were still regularly producing many adventure modules for 3.5E D&D. The rest exited the adventure modules business in 2002/2003, and did something else like crunch heavy spatbooks or they shortly exited the 3.5E d20 business altogether. Other smaller d20 3PPs followed a similar pattern too, of producing a few modules at first and then moving on to crunch heavy splatbooks.

This time around for 4E, the 3PP market may possibly remain in the adventure modules market phase for a long time without ever truly being in a crunch heavy splatbooks market phase.

If there are going to be some more new settings for 4E, I don't know whether the market will follow any of the d20 3PP era's patterns, such as Scarred Lands, Midnight, Freeport, Kingdoms of Kalamar, etc ... This time around, I wouldn't be surprised if some 4E 3PP settings end up following the "Castlemourn" model of only a campaign setting guide and maybe a player's guide being published.

 

[dmccoy1693]

It'd be cool if it had a party interlink mechanism ala Mongoose Traveller.

Interesting you should mention this, as I'm a Mongoose Traveller, 3rd party publisher.

Isn't selling to players the goal?

As a publisher, not really. The 80/20 rules applies here. 80% represent 20% of the total market; 20% represent the remaining 80%. In the case of RPGs, that 20% is largely made up of GMs. I've known players (and at times have been such a player) who didn't even own the core book. The GM on the other hand tends to have every supplement the system offers. So as counterintuitive as it is, the larger market is the GM oriented product.

GMs tend to present their problems online for others to help with, read up on upcoming products, search out something to challenge the problem player, and might even adjust the whole game to fit in some cool thing he/she read in a book. Players do not tend to put as much out-of-game time investment in.

Besides, the larger company (Wizards in D&D's case, Mongoose in my own company's case) are doing a great job of fulfilling the demand for player oriented products. As a small publisher it is best to go where the demand is vastly underserved. Where is that in D&D? I don't know. I don't follow that market much. Wish I could help more.

 

[Ourph]

Isn't selling to players the goal?

I think there is a catch with 3PP player books though. In my experience, DMs who don't own and really love a 3PP book aren't likely to allow options from that book in their game. A player who owns that book gets no value out of it if the games he plays in don't allow its use. The common answer to such a dilemma is "Run your own game" but that doesn't really solve the problem if your goal is to market to players.

 

[ggroy]

I think there is a catch with 3PP player books though. In my experience, DMs who don't own and really love a 3PP book aren't likely to allow options from that book in their game. A player who owns that book gets no value out of it if the games he plays in don't allow its use. The common answer to such a dilemma is "Run your own game" but that doesn't really solve the problem if your goal is to market to players.

Several egregious cases I've heard of, were the Quintessential series of splatbooks by Mongoose.

Several 4E DMs I know locally, have banned all the released 4E Quintessential books for allegedly being overpowered and broken.

Back in the 3E/3.5E days, I remember some munchkin powergamer type players who really loved those Quintessential books. After awhile, several 3.5E DMs I knew banned all those Quintessential titles also for allegedly being broken and overpowered.

(I don't have any first hand experience with these Quintessential books, either from the player or DM sides).

 

[Ourph]

Exactly. You can't focus just on the players, even in player-oriented books. Because if DMs don't find the book appealing in some way (as in, "Wow, I really want to include these player options in my game because it will be more fun for everyone!") then there won't be games for those players to use the books in. It only took a few instances of buying a 3PP book for 3e that I found wasn't allowed in any of the games where I was a player for me to lose ALL interest in 3PP player-oriented books.

 

[catsclaw227]

I've said this before..

I'd like to see adventures, encounter areas, NPCs (with Monster Builder import) and things that I can use with WOTC tools.

 

[MichaelSomething]

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