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

[Liminal Syzygy]

I'm a big fan of The Vault of Larin Karr, one of the mini-campaign modules Orcus mentions above, and I have to say I think Necromancer is onto something with the mini-campaign approach. I'm anxiously awaiting City of Barakus and am just hoping that I can get it in my hands somehow here in Japan despite the limited print run.

 

[Belen]

Orcus,

Your rock! For the record, I bought Grey Citadel last night after Teflon and crew started bragging about Necromancer, although I admit that I do have Crucible as well from way back in the day.

I have to agree with you 100% and I wish that some other publishers would jump onto the bandwagon. I will say that Necromancer has just earned a lot of my dollars.

Why? I am tired of buying sourcebooks. I have more than enough now. I have three fighter books and need no more etc. However, what I really want/ need are adventures.

While the other publishers may think that they do not need to produce adventures, I think more and more people will want something different and feel as if they have a glut of sourcebooks, so I think adventures will be a perfect market for the future.

I do have one question though. Would you think it feasible to get a bunch of freelancers together to work on adventures to see to other companies? Yeah, it may be great to publish stuff yourself and have your own company, but maybe that would be a good service to provide for the industry.

Just wondering. E-mail me if you want: dave_ncsu_alumni@yahoo.com

Dave

 

[Belen]

Older Gamers versus Young Bloods

Some of you mentioned that you think that you have all the adventures that you want now. However, isn;t that a disservice to new gamers? Am I the only one who cut their teeth running adventures?

New GMs just do not have the adventure support that we had back in the day. And no one seems to be helping other than Necromancer.

That's just bunk.

 

[Belen]

Freelance Company- Adventure Writing Call to Arms!

EnWorlders!

What would you think about forming a group of freelancers to produce adventure material for d20 publishers? I am talking about getting together to produce adventures that people will love and providing them to companies that we love.

We would be there to critique the work or our comrades. We would be there to provide editing for new modules. We would be there with adventures for the big guns who do not want to write them but may want to produce them.

What you you think? Workable?

Contact me: dave_ncsu_alumni@yahoo.com

Let's rock, gentleman!

Dave

 

[talmar]

I have to say that Orcus is correct in all that he says. Not that I know anything about publishing but about his products. My LFGS preorders every Necromancer Games product because they know I'll buy them.

I'm now eagerly anticipating Lost City.

All their stuff is unique and different and modular.

I amazed my group by using the Witches Teat in the Tavern's book. They thought that was awsome. Can't tell you why, just go by the book.

 

[ToddSchumacher]

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?

Please...Or use the nifty spoiler tags. Thank-you

 

[Desdichado]

I still think there is something Clark said that remains unaddressed and somewhat unnoticed -- saturation of the market. How big exactly is the market for adventures, anyway? He says Crucible of Freya is their best selling module at about 20,000 units. That's a tiny fraction of the amount of PHB's sold (and hence, a relative gauge of 3e gamers.) There's a difference between saying a handful of good but small publishers can make a profit with adventures as their bread and butter and saying there's a large market for adventures.

 

[JeffB]

I'm glad Clark showed up on this thread. Necro is THE module company, and has consistently put out great mods that sell. (I also like Kenzer's Kalamar mods).

The Support material is excellent and they give you a whole heck of a lot for free compared to everyone else. You can take the support from CoF along with Mod and run it for months.

And they really listen to their fans/customers.

Best D20 company on the market, AFAIC.

And no , I'm not being compensated to say any of this

 

[Belen]

Josh,

I disagree. A lot of publishers consider 20k to be a fantastic success. And I am talking about non-game publishers such as Tor, Bantam Spectre, Baen etc. They consider a novel to be sucessful and reprintable with "only" 20k in sales.

You cannot use the PHB as a guide to sales. It is marketed more than any other book and is a MUST have for anyone playing the game.

Heck, the journal I work for, and we are the publisher, have a print run of 6500 and we consider that a whopping success. In fact, we have been named one of the top 10 biomedical journals of the decade by Sciencewatch.

Trust me when I say that publishing is funny. Sales of 5k are good. Sales of 20k is spectacular!

Dave

 

[Davelozzi]

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.

AEG tried to do this with their Shadowforce Archer interactive campaign for Spycraft. Unfortunately, the interactive adventures are put out on the website for free, and as a result, they're so low on AEG's priority list that they're like a year behind the actual products which defeats the whole point.

I think they might do similar things with their other campaign worlds, but I'm not sure about the details because I don't follow them as much.