Charles Ryan on Adventures
- Thread starter MerricB
- Start date
Squire James
Explorer
The first post was perhaps a bit too much like a WoTC commercial (where claiming to be the best is basically required), but mostly I agree with him. A company who releases the 2nd or 3rd best product in every category is the best, if all the "number 1's" are different companies. All this is opinion, of course, and I think people pick other peoples' words apart way too much these days.
Well, I stand corrected... your dates push the ends of months and beginnings of months to make up a month or two, and M&M2 was pre-released at GenCon (much like the D&D3E PHB), but I was thinking it was more like a year's difference. Maybe the publishing of M&M1.5:The Errata'd Edition is what skewed my view.philreed said:
So... what would you say? Is three years too long or not long enough between revisions/new editions? Or is it different depending on whether you're Green Ronin or WotC?
Ed Cha
Community Supporter
I haven't read this entire thread, but I still want to put my two cents in! 
I think it would be great if WoTC somehow sponsored a few good adventure-publishing companies. You know, get their products on the shelves of stores and such and make it a profitable venture for them. For example, it could be like a WoTC seal of approval and these select publishers could be on WoTC's order list available to retailers. These products would be published and financed by the companies, not WoTC, so there's no financial risk to WoTC. Adventures help the sales of other books. I think it's a win-win situation.
Stores seem to focus on ordering WoTC, then some major d20 companies, then a smattering of the smaller companies, and then little, or virtually no, indie stuff. Adventures then sell a fraction of what sourcebooks and such sell. So imagine a small company, like my own, publishing adventures. It would sell a fraction of a fraction of a fraction!
Don't get me wrong, I broke four digits in sales for The Hamlet of Thumble, but barely and that's just not enough.
I think it would be great if WoTC somehow sponsored a few good adventure-publishing companies. You know, get their products on the shelves of stores and such and make it a profitable venture for them. For example, it could be like a WoTC seal of approval and these select publishers could be on WoTC's order list available to retailers. These products would be published and financed by the companies, not WoTC, so there's no financial risk to WoTC. Adventures help the sales of other books. I think it's a win-win situation.
Stores seem to focus on ordering WoTC, then some major d20 companies, then a smattering of the smaller companies, and then little, or virtually no, indie stuff. Adventures then sell a fraction of what sourcebooks and such sell. So imagine a small company, like my own, publishing adventures. It would sell a fraction of a fraction of a fraction!
Don't get me wrong, I broke four digits in sales for The Hamlet of Thumble, but barely and that's just not enough.
Corinth
First Post
I'd be satifised if WOTC would just recommend third-party products that fill demands put forth by the less-than-informed userbase. I'd also like it if WOTC folks would come out and say in print what's said online regularly; some face-to-face honestly with the folks who either can't or won't take off the blinders WRT third-party products would be good for all concerned.
Ed Cha
Community Supporter
BiggusGeekus said:
Thank you, BiggusGeekus, for the mention! I'm glad Indie Press Revolution is starting to get noticed! We are trying our best to get great product out there directly to customers... and now retailers!
It is not an easy job. We are trying to get retailers to order from us, but many just stick to WoTC and then a few of the major d20 publishers. WoTC, as pointed out earlier, has it all really.
I do want to point out that the statement Charles Ryan made about hard-cover quality is not entirely true. While overall WoTC may produce the best hard-covers, I know that Denizens of Avadnu has probably the highest production quality ever seen in the industry. There is so much color in this book that it almost screams at you! And the content KICKS ASS! It is really better than any monster book out there.
That said, it still only sold a tiny fraction of what the most minor WoTC supplement sold.
Uder said:
I'm just going based on when I remember seeing/buying the products (which I know was very, very close to the actual release dates).
And as to printings, I'm fairly confident that the Player's Handbook was printed at least once between its release and the 3.5 release. So that really isn't a significant measurement of time.
It's very easy for dates to blur together for all of us. At least, I know it happens to me quite frequently.
Pramas
Explorer
Uder said:
For those who might not know, there was no such thing as the "M&M1.5:The Errata'd Edition." We sold out of the M&M core rulebook and had to reprint. When we did so, we corrected the known errata. We also gave the errata away for free and even printed it in the M&M Annual and we were perfectly up front about what the reprint was. It was never advertised or marketed as M&M1.5. It was a reprint that fixed errata, something so standard in the RPG industry I'm not even sure why it merits comment.
There is no magic formula. It depends on the game, the state of the fanbase, and the scope of the changes. There is also a big difference between a revision and the new edition. You can call that semantics but that is the heart of the issue. You have to be up front with the fans as to what is going on and why.
I was not at WotC when they released 3.5, so I can't tell you if what happened with 3.5 was intentional or not. I can tell you, as will any honest publisher working in that era, that 3.5 had a negative impact on the d20 market.
Pramas said:
I'm just a consumer of all these products. When 3.0 came out, my group looked at the books, shook our heads and went home and played 2nd Edition. Somehow Tome & Blood didn't make us feel any more impressed than the 2nd Ed Complete Wizard Handbook did.
When 3.5 came out, we "felt" different. The WOTC books just seemed better. Cleaner, richer, fuller. Folks may hate to admit it, but the hard covers, the distribution of artwork... it somehow added up. We bit on the bait and moved away from 2nd Ed at last.
This opened the door for us to get interested in AEG, Green Ronin, Mongoose, Goodman, etc.
The thing my group has been most interested in is books (adventures, settings, etc) that make the rules we were then working to master "flex". Show me scenarios where the monsters from MM1&2, the new classes, the skill system, the feats, the new spells all work together in harmony. These we gladly buy from the other publishers.
I feel like there's a lot of material which is "hole-filler". As in - the information from WOTC is "light" on transmutation, necromancy, drow, devils, cavaliers - and to fill this single hole, an entire book pops up. My "need" was maybe 2-4 pages, but here's 100+ pages. My usual response - I'll use Google and find the 2-4 pages I need or Dragon will come along with a timely article. Once or twice, I made an impulse buy (i.e. Complete Book of Familiars) if something was top of mind while I perused through our local store and I was having trouble finding the info online. Lately I've stopped these impulse buys as the Internet is now saturated with pretty much anything I need.
I can't speak for everyone, but 3.5 is the catalyst for the modules/settings I've bought from Goodman, Necromancer, AEG, etc.
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