Why Publish an Avlis Setting?
Avlis (
www.avlis.org) as a setting already exists and has existed for some time. Though it started out as a small project known only to a dozen people, today there are over 500,000 people who have heard of it. The majority of these people are players of Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights (nwn.bioware.com). A search on their message boards will reveal the degree to which Avlis’ existence is common knowledge within that community. Thus, this setting is not simply an amateur submission from an unknown fantasy author who has never shown it in public before. The concept of Avlis is tested and true.
The online incarnation of Avlis through Neverwinter Nights is arguably the most successful persistent world (PW) created with that software. Here are some references in which Bioware has mentioned or featured Avlis:
http://nwn.bioware.com/players/profile_persistent_worlds_avlis.html
http://nwn.bioware.com/players/profile_copap_part1.html
http://nwn.bioware.com/links/viewcat.html?c=10
Avlis has also been featured on many unofficial fan sites, such as Neverwinter Connections, where it is has been rated the number one PW:
http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/
A google search on “The World of Avlis” reveals hundreds of hits:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="The+World+of+Avlis"&btnG=Google+Search
Of course not every one of the 500,000 members of the Neverwinter Nights community would be likely to buy an Avlis sourcebook. Out of those 500,000 people, maybe 10,000 have tried Avlis, and there is a steady state membership of roughly 1,000 individuals playing the game. At any one time, roughly 30 of them are online, as you can see by this server status:
http://www.copap.org/portal.php?getpage=serverstatus2
Another piece of market research can be seen here:
http://www.avlis.org/viewtopic.php?t=44936
In this non-scientific poll, respondents were asked “Would you buy a hard cover d20 System Avlis Sourcebook?” There were 292 responses. 157 said “Yes”. 68 said “Maybe”, and 22 said they would buy more than one copy a piece.
In short, an Avlis sourcebook should be published because it already has an established market. The former editor of Dragon Magazine commented in a seminar at GenCon2004 that any sourcebook selling 1,000 copies is considered wildly successful. For Avlis, the first 100 to 200 copies are going to be extremely easy to sell because no advertising is necessary. In effect, the publisher is getting a 100 to 200-copy jump on that 1,000 mark. Depending on the publisher’s quality and market penetration, this could go a long way.
