Are your adventures selling? If not lets figure out why.

[philreed]

I think one reason it might be hard to sell d20 adventures is because the market is automatically splintered into 20 different segments.

You can't just buy any old adventure, you've got to find one written for the level your characters are at. And you can only use one adventure for each level- once the characters get to fifth level, all those nice third level adventures are no longer options.

Compare this to other systems, where you can pretty much use any published adventure at any point in your campaign.

Actually, 20 is a low number. When you factor in campaigns you can expand that out a lot.

5 settings x 20 levels = 100 different segments. And there are more than 5 settings in use today.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I was told in no uncertain terms that adventures are not a big seller for most publishers. I decided to publish my adventures for free. I thought I could get some feedback and people would play them and appreciate my contributions. Well, my adventures have been downloaded over 10,000 times. I have received exactly three comments....

I think my next round of adventures will be sold. People who buy an adventure seem to have a more vested interest in actually playing them. If only six people buy them and four comment, in my mind I'm ahgead of where I was giving them away for free.

I download free adventures for two reasons: to mine for ideas and to have choices for the party.

I don't purchase many adventures anymore because it seemed any time I did, my players chose another path and I never got to use the adventure.

 

[PosterBoy]

I think talking about why adventure won't sell is sort of a dead horse, but I think it's simple math. GMs only buy adventure and only those that fit their level and campign setting. Thus you got only a slice of a slice.

With that said, I make money on Darwin's World adventures, but that's not fantasy. I've sold over 150+ of severel and even 200+ of some of the Darwin's World adventures.

Goodman has done very well (it seems) with their DDC adventures, but that I think is more about a very well developed and fun game line.

But I think those two cases aren't the norm. A generic d20 fantasy adventure will be a tough tough sell.

We've been working on a new d20 fantasy adventure product that will hopefully buck the trend of fantasy adventures.

 

[prosfilaes]

I've bought three adventures for my current campaign, and supplemented it with two 2ed adventures. I didn't read any reviews before hand, but the middle I do plan to post a (scathing) review when Enworld reviews comes back.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Three words: Word of mouth.

A sucky adventure does not sell. This thread is heading for the icebergs as we speak, captain.

The Threadtanic is unsinkable!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I've bought three adventures for my current campaign, and supplemented it with two 2ed adventures. I didn't read any reviews before hand, but the middle I do plan to post a (scathing) review when Enworld reviews comes back.

The reviews are back!

 

[Sledge]

The only adventures we sell in numbers that make it worth the effort are for M&M Superlink.

www.roninarts.com/superline

But, and this is what is both sad and funny, the print versions don't sell well enough to continue printing them. I'm constantly told that people want print over PDF but we sell 50-100x more PDFs than we do print books.

D20 adventures, anything d20 fantasy, isn't worth the time for us these days.

Okay Phil, you posted here and I'm going to run with you. This I feel I am allowed to do after having bought some of your pdfs.

"An Evening's Entertainment
This 33-page PDF, written by Michael Hammes and illustrated by Christopher Shy, presents two adventures for use with 3rd edition and other D20 System fantasy games."
and
"Allure of the Sea
This 13-page PDF -- written by F. Wesley Schneider and illustrated by Christopher Shy -- is a short D20 System adventure ready to be dropped into any fantasy campaign.
The daughter of a triton noble is being used as bait to lure unsuspecting people to their doom. The heroes must locate the lair of the evil seahag who is holding the triton lady and then free the triton from her captivity.
Includes maps by SkeletonKey Games."

Both are inexpensive, but neither tells you much. Both only have their levels listed on the covers. The first leaves you guessing completely. How am I supposed to know if that adventure is appropriate for my campaign? The second is more of a complex encounter apparently than an adventure. Really it's inexpensive enough that it's worth looking at. However doesn't the description tell more for players than a dm? As a dm I need to know what about an adventure will help it to fit in, and a brief introduction to the plotline. Do I really need to know how the players are expected to solve it? Also are either of these adventures recent or are they older with 3.0 information? Finally how come I couldn't find them on ENGS?

Worst thing of all is that this thread is a selfish one, because I'm hoping to spot a few gems in the process, but I'm not able to find out if these adventures are suitable for me at all.

 

[SteveC]

For me, adventures don't sell all that well for the same reason most D20 products don't sell well: small print runs. Unless you go out and buy a copy of a module immediately as it comes out, you won't get one because it will be sold out. Now many companies will sell them afterwards as a PDF but if you want them in print, you're out of luck.

For an adventure, this pretty much puts me out of the market. I've purchased enough bad products that I don't pick up almost anything without seeing reviews and comments about them.

I'll give you a couple of examples of early adventures: Necromancer Games Tomb of Abysthor and the Tomb of Larin Karr came and went from my game stores in about two month's time. Both of those modules were excellent (I know because I ended up picking them up on the secondary market) but I didn't have the chance to even buy them conventionally.

Is the Shacked City a good adventure? I think so, and I can go to my local game store and buy a copy (which I just did) because it's actually in print.

I guess what I'm saying is that it takes time for an adventure to sell, and a good one could be an "evergreen" product.

So that's my $.02 worth.

--Steve

 

[Hussar]

IMO, the modules that seem to do fairly well, like Freeport for example, are more along the lines of mini or even full campaigns.

This is a trend I hope continues actually. I like the idea of self-contained campaigns. Instead of having to buy four or five supplement books and THEN start writing adventures for a given setting, I would much prefer to buy two or three modules (or one honking big one) and start right off.

I don't have the time or energy to develop a 12 adventure story arc like Shackled City, nor could I possibly find the time to write The World's Largest Dungeon. I love the fact that I can go out, buy either book and run a campaign for the next two years.

I'm actually really (selfishly) hoping that more of these hit the shelves.

And, I agree with RFisher that the day of the 32 page module with the map on the inside of the cover is done. Given the capabilities these days of desk top publishing and the internet, why should modules be pretty much exactly the same today as they were in 1984. X numbered encounters, box text to read out loud, two or maybe three maps.

IMO, to make modules more attractive, they need to be more of a site based mini-campaign than a straight up Go here, Kill this, Get that treasure.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I like pdfs that I can cut & paste into Word. Then I can make changes/expand the material before printing. I'd love to get the WLD as a text product, but it would be huge! If I ever ran it again, I'd probably end up expanding each section by about four times first.