Forgotten Rums....? Evil Overlords...?

[Renshai]

Warchild,
I felt the exact same way about Silver Marches that you do. However, I went ahead and bought the product. I don't know why I did.. when I already had Waterdeep and the North, The Savage Frontier, Volo's Guide to the North, and The North boxed set. I was expecting the same reshash of all that material with the 3E stamp on it... and well, I was wrong.

Silver Marches offers alot more than a rehash of material. The current state of the Silver Marches (the country not the book) offers a so many plot hooks I had to stop reading and start writing them down. For those of you who like FR Fluff (history and plot tied to to historical content) the book is great. The very nature of the Silver Marches council offers so much to do with a political campaign I don't know where to start.

Sure we do see some of the same material, but I thought it was well done and basically shed some new light on an area that I hadn't considered running in again for a long time... As it stands I'm creating an adventure in the Reaching Woods that will yeild a portal to the ruins of Earlann... so I can get my PCs to the Silver Marches. You might want to flip through it at your LGS... it might surprise you

Cheers,
Ren

 

[Renshai]

People attribute the popularity of FRCS to its crunchy bits. But if you think about it, only a third or so of this book is very crunchy. But there were many inspirational ideas in the rest of the book, the kind that are more portable than the typically much more detailed setting books like Lords of Darkness or Silver Marches.

Dead on Psion. (imo)

I guess I could fall squarely in that category, in fact I'd say that most FR Dungeon Masters that played through the 2E years could as well. As someone who owns pretty much all of the FR Accessories the regional information wasn't all the important. The prestige classes, feats, and spells were the most useful, and pretty much continues to be the most useful info in Magic of Faerun and Lords of Darkness. But that is only because I already have a great deal of that FR information.

The newly added information (fluff) was really good though, imo. The City of Shade, the near fall of Cormyr, the expansionism of the Red Wizards... the current state of the Drow attack on the Dales... these all gave me tons of ideas too... I think the FRCS was a good balance of fluff vs crunch.. (i hate those terms.. ) It is harder to retain that balance in a book that isn't as large as the FRCS.

I guess since books like Silver Marches target only FR DMS then the market mmust be smaller than a generic book.... but you just can't support a setting without expanding on the setting itself, so I guess WoTC is in sort of a bind in that area.

I wonder if marketing and selling a campaign setting is a viable option as far as sales go? I'd hate to think that, but it sounds like this is what SKR is hinting at.

Another interesting point... At Gen Con 2000 Anthony Valterra mentioned that WotC would be creating one shot game settings that would never get more than one or two books supporting them before being turned over to the players and the WotC web for support. Could this be a viable option for producing campaign settings? It would certainly give us a greater number of settings to choose from don't you think? Imagine if all we saw for the Realms was the FRCS plus Magic of Faerun and all the manpower that was spent creating Lords of Darkness, Silver Marches, and City of the Spider Queen went into producing a one shot campaign setting in a book that resembled the FRCS? We might get some really quality settings...

Anyway... I'm rambling now...

Ren

 

[Gizzard]

My problem with the mythical bean story is that the bean-race in it is very shortsighted. They look at 2 product lines and find the first to be more successful than the second. And they immediately begin tinkering with the second product line trying to make it just as successful as the first.

But their tinkering seems crude and ham-handed. "Make product two more like product one." The elves are puzzled and frustrated. "So our long term strategy is to de-diversify our product offerings?" (Because, even as bean-people believe that they understand the world of elves; elves also believe they understand the bean world.)

Even though I couldnt care less about Forgotten Rums, I sympathize with the elves.

 

[Zulkir]

Seriously, I think the market is not 100 people and selling to 40 people neglects the "other 60." I think that the market looks more like "80 people who like it mostly crunchy" and "20 people who love both crunchy and creamy" and "20 people who prefer much creamy with a little crunchy" - IOW, it's closer to 120 people - instead of 100 - something the bean counters are missing because in choosing to go "all crunch" they miss the group that doesn't really like crunch

Alright lets assume you are correct. What products do you put out?

A) Three products 1) All crunch 2) All cream 3) a mix

Result: You make your margin on product 1, you fail to make your margin on 2 and 3. Why? Because those who like crunch will buy product #1 but not 2 (sales 80 units). Those who like 2 will buy 2 but not 1 or 3 (sales 20 units you lost money - your revenue is low and your costs high due to low print runs). Product number 3 will do okay (sales 55 units you sold 20 to the mix crowd but you picked up 10 from cream and 25 from crunch - you didn't make your margins but you didn't lose money). Result you didn't make your margins for the year - you lose your job and maybe a few Elves do to.

B) One product all crunch.

Congratulations you made your margins (90 units sold - all of the crunch and half of the mixed - they had no other product to buy). Unfortunately, you must lay off 1/3 of your elves.

C) Two products 1) All crunch 2) All cream

All crunch (80 units - makes it margins), all cream (20 units loses money). Didn't make margins, lose job, fire Elves.

D) Two products 1) All crunch 2) mixed

Crunch (80 units makes its margins), mixed (45 units 20 from mixed 25 from crunch - doesn't make its margins but turns a profit). Congratualtions! You made your margins (the mixed didn't pull your numbers down low enough) and you didn't lay off any Elves!

Fortunately you invented a thing called the d20 license which allows other companies to make some of those low margin products you can't so they step in and make heavy cream products to make those customers happy. You are happy that they are happy. You are happy that your elves have jobs. You are happy you have a job. You are unhappy about the stock market. But thems the breaks.

AV

 

[Blacksad]

I would like to know what will happens if the elves do

E) Two products all crunch

???

 

[JeffB]

Oh it definitely makes business sense Anthony...I'll never argue that...I deal with this kind of stuff on a daily basis in both my main hobby,and my job...

That being said..what about those of us who want Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms cream? Because the OGL doesn't apply..we are screwed more or less..we either take the crunch or move on...

You say FR and GH cream don't sell..so you make crunch......eventually you won't be able to discern between GH crunch and FR crunch because crunch does not have any flavor...

On the other hand..each batch of cream has a different taste.some slight, some more pronounced...

Since you don't plan on making cream, and all the crunch is basically the same, why not sell off your cows?..cows can't make crunch, only cream...And since WOTC only wants to sell crunch..It seems like perfect business sense to me...Why keep the cream, and let it spoil in the corner?

Brand Identity...

Problem is now..you don't have the brand identity.....and so you manage to piss off all the folks who would have liked crunch and cream, or a few crunchy and one or two cream..and you'll never sell to those who want cream because there is none....

Hey get rid of the cream..sell crunch...that's your pergoative

but...

Eventually fans will realize that when you peddle crunch using the previous good reputation of the cream and don't deliver any of said cream, your brand identity is worthless.....it's crunch with a different logo..no different than company a, b, or c's crunch...and then your profit margins fall flat again...

You can't have FR crunch without the Cream..the two are symbiotic..same with Middle Earth or Glorantha or Barsaive...the cream is what makes the crunch taste good.....

JeffB

 

[Heap Thaumaturgist]

As I said toward the end of one of my posts, we The Gnomes are the people truly in control of what is going on. End of the run, we decide what gets sold.

It's not really sad if over 1/2 the posts on this board are from people saying: "Dude, Fluff sucks, I hate WotC, I hate FR Fluff, I'm never buying any Fluff of theirs, give me Crunch or give me death!"

Well, then, is it really such a huge shock that they can't make Fluff? So, if you really like Fluff, go forth and turn some heads. We vote with our wallets. If you can convince some DMs out there to run the Realms or to buy Silver Marches ... then they will have more sales and they can continue selling things like that.

--HT

 

[Zappo]

I would like to know what will happens if the elves do

E) Two products all crunch

???

Same as B), I suppose.

 

[Mistwell]

I think the bean counters should do a case study on the Harley-Davidson AMF years.

AMF bought HD and took a quality based product and drove it into the ground by focusing only on the bottom line. What turned HD around in the end? Why it was HD execs buying HD back from AMF. And once again focusing on quality.

Anybody want to go in halves-ies on WOTC?

Umm, didn't the government also bail them out at one point?

 

[Gizzard]

> Result: You make your margin on product 1, you fail to
> make your margin on 2 and 3 [...] you lose your job
> and maybe a few Elves do to.

I follow all this logic, but in Seans bean world parable he pointed out that:

"But," the elves protested, "forty books still a respectable number! Why, only a few years ago, we were lucky to sell 10 copies of one of our books. Forty books is wonderful!"

It seems to me that Hasbro is having trouble explaining to its elves, ex-elves and the public why it margins are what they are. Which leads into this...

> Fortunately you invented a thing called the d20 license
> which allows other companies to make some of those
> low margin products you can't ...

It sounds like the elves in the story were a bit surprised when 40 books was a "low margin" product under Hasbro when a few years before it would have been magnificent.

And this is going to be the interesting thing to watch - if Hasbro only wants to make 70-100 unit products, what will its annual catalog look like in 2 years? Is this goal sustainable? My guess is that it is not and they will have to readjust their strategy (or sell off WotC to someone who is willing to take the profits on a 40 unit run.)