Adventures don't Sell? Do you agree? Redman Article

[Teflon Billy]

Two adventure sources I happily pay for:

Dungeon Magazine
Dire Kobold -- the pdf adventure publisher

(Snipped)

The problem is a signal-to-noise ratio problem -- which is why I pay for "filtering" services where some editorial system picks adventures for me.

Mark it on your calendars folks, BArsoomcore and I agree on something

Dungeon, while hit-or-miss of late, has traditionally been an astonishing value. did I get maximum use out of every single on of the seven adventures in each issue? No. But I paid eight bucks for it. It was money well spent if I got 1 useable adventure every two months, and an absolute steal when I got something like Dungeon of the Fire Opal.

Dire Kobold is also a big winner here in this category, but for different reasons. Their adventures, while well-written and interesting (Wil Upchurch of Midnight fame seems to be their main guy at the moment) are--most imortantly and most innovatively--scaleable by the individual DM.

Your players are level 5 and you like low treasure? Enter it into the approriate fields, click, and you have an adventure tailor made for them.

"Signal to Noise ratio" is a huge concern in this market (and there is some true gype out there), but the sheer volume of product virtually insures that total gems like Nemoren's Vault, Of Sound Mind, and Hall of the Rainbow Mage get made. Stuff so good that it can even appeal to guys likem who do not usually run premade adventures.

I forget what my point was

 

[DonaldRumsfeldsTofu]

Homebrew adventures are always fun to make, and if I ever needed a filler adventure, I'd consult Dragon or the WotC website, but I'd pay my left testicle for a new good relatively long adventure (Not an actual offer) along the lines of the ones WotC made, (such as Forge of Fury and Sunless Citadel). I want to see more modules. I'd buy them. I don't care if they're campaign specific. Any campaign could easily be modified to fit whatever houserules or homebrew worlds I would have. I like variety in m adventures. I have like 30 D&D/D20 books, make me use more than three of them.

The lack of fresh solid modules for me to buy has delayed my process of jumpstarting a campaign of my own.

 

[jasamcarl]

In brief:

1) Publishers enjoy designing the same things DMs do (settings and deities and house rules) and would much rather buoy their egos by releasing an entire setting than "just" an adventure. This is the opposite of the service they should, ideally, be providing; if DMs love statting deities and creating homebrews, leave that fun stuff to them.

2) There's a D&D publishing culture that says adventures should almost always be small, and rules and settings books huge. Release megamodules which weren't &*^&&% megadungeons and they may well sell, because they have more than one dimension (rather than just dungeon crawling) and they are the campaign, rather than 32 pages with little to no chance of fitting into an existing campaign without extensive conversion.

Imagine what a product with the page count of the FRCS which focused on just the Eveningstar region could do - fully fleshed out status quo dungeons, lairs and towns to explore, fully statted NPCs with personalities and adventure hooks, and enough mini-adventures to fuel a campaign. It might not even include campaign story arcs, leaving them for the DM to construct for their favourite villains and themes. I'd trade my FRCS in for such a product any day. Oh well.

I imagine that is a product that wouldn't sell. While having dungeons and npcs statted out is a blessing, there are products on the market that provide these time-savers already, and in a far more efficient manner than a general fluff 'set-up' could do. The appeal of campaign settings is essentially fan appeal; people who buy them generally care more about that broad themes, mechanical twists, and narrative potential than the nitty-gritty of gameplay; in other words, they adapt the gameplay to the setting, as oppossed to vice versa. What you are suggesting is synthesizing the two in a mid-level set of conditions; unfortunatly, this is the level which is most variable from campaign to campaign, thus leading to a limited market for such a 'setup'.

Actually, that was way too long, let me make it simple; rules appeal to players and dms. Enduring settings appeal to players and dms. A 'setup' campaign would only appeal to a limited number of dms, because such conditions are usually determined by a unique player/gm dynamic.

 

[Coreyartus]

Those same long adventures are almost two products for the price of one: isn't it fun to read a mod through for the first time? It's like a novelette--I kinda "play" it in my head as I go along. I love that! I don't mind paying around $15-20 for a good mod, as long as it has the quality, length, and visual aids, as well as enough generic flavor so it has the potential for future use in any home campaigns I might develop.

On the other hand, sometimes having a juicy mod that takes place in my favorite campaign setting can be SO worth it! Regardless of whether I actually get to DM it... Half the mods I've purchased I'll never actually judge--I just liked reading them! Admit it--buying something and actually using it are two different things, especially when it comes to RPGs, right?

Two ideas from this thread could develop into quite interesting commercial experiments:

1) A "serial" campaign, where the setting changes and expands from mod to mod, published at regular intervals, perhaps from the reported results of players of each installment. A good part-time campaign, players could subscribe to each monthly mod for the quality of the story development, then be able to put it aside when they want to play their regular campaign. It's like crossing a comic-book with a campaign, without having to invest in tons of source books.

2) Truly generic adventures with blanks for names; no limiting maps but the adventure's geographical necessities listed instead; no plot lines inherent to any company-favored settings, but with plenty of suggestions and opportunities written in for homebrew campaign plot hooks and development. "This NPC could help the DM do this..." or "this locale is good for DM's that need a place to do this..." Most published adventures don't include guides for incorporating homebrew campaigns. Publishers would instead like to do the creative stuff for you because they say it's easier, but really it's more fun! Name-It-Yourself mods with plug-'em-in locales and NPC's would be very interesting.

In the end, either the mods have to have a great story with fantastically interesting encounters, or they have to be generic enough for DMs to do that themselves. Most of the adventures on the market today uncomfortably straddle both worlds, and accomplish neither aspect very well.

Just my two cents!!

Coreyartus

 

[Wraith Form]

Spoilers man!!! , some of us are still running this MOD ..on these very boards!

Erp. My most humble apologies! I blame it all on caffiene.

Do you want me to go back and edit the post so that it's spoiler-free?

 

[Wraith Form]

Oh, and here's your sphincter. [Hands you a sphincter.]

Ulp. I just gave a rat's ass. Hmph.

 

[Wraith Form]

On the other hand, about a year ago I started a pretty good thread about the "classic" modules of 3e (perhaps some Community Supporter can search for it...), and that thread convinced me to send a group of newbies thru Sunless Citadel. I felt they should have that "shared experience" I had with all the 1e adventures. That thread had a lot of great suggestions for modules, incidently. So naturally they befriended the goblins and married into the kobold tribe, thereby guaranteeing that they share an experience with no one!

I'd love to be able to read this thread--thank you for the lead!

 

[Red Baron]

Does anyone know when Gates of Oblivion is going to be releasd. Fiery Dragon has it listed as Sep and Nov.

Not an official response, now, but I suspect that we're not going to make November - and certainly not September . I'm afraid family and work life is simply crazy for us all at the moment.

Again, *not* an "official" response: December/January (?).

Edit: I sure can speel!

Borken!

 

[Ranger REG]

You know, Mr. Redman, I think that you're article is somewhat correct, but short-sighted. Back in the days of TSR when we got adventures, they were mostly generic and easy to fit into campaigns, and they SOLD! Now we have too many publishers who just will not give us what we want.

Back in the days of TSR, the AD&D products only caters to the geeks, and so the sales projection is based on that current small market. Of course, it helps when TSR was a small but rising company, who have the foothold on being the first marketable roleplaying game. Simply put, everyone was learning this new rules back then, and the adventures help so much.

Nowadays, we are older, wiser, and tend to make our own because GMs knows what their own gaming group wants (which are also older, wiser, and expect more from their experienced GM). Most of us welcome newbies who learned from us, rather than when we started off with the same low level of skills in roleplaying ... back in the days.

And as much as I hate to say this, generic doesn't cut it anymore. Some like campaign-specific adventures, or genre-specific adventures (dungeon crawl, hack-n-slash, mystery, horror, political), and even those audiences are small for each.

 

[Orcus]

Clearly you guys all need to come check out Necromancer Games.

www.necromancergames.com

I didnt want to post to early here because I didnt want to seem like I was shamelessly plugging, but I think now is the time to drop in.

We make generic adventures (generally) and they sell just fine. I will prepare my thoughts about the article, which I think is dead wrong, but that is a long post and I just wanted to drop in here.

Aside from our Maze of Zayene series (which was done how Rob Kuntz wanted it, what can I say) our modules dont "railroad" the PCs. They are designed to handle all types of characters. They harken back to the old reliable modules, but dont contain some of the ills associated with them.

If you havent checked out Necro before, you should. Particularly if you want good, solid, generic adventures that allow for PC to roleplay and rollplay however they want.

Clark