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

[rankarrog]

I have another idea why the less crunchy books don'T sell that much: If you are a speaker of a foreign language (like me) it's a pretty easy thing to understand the crunchy bits (i.e. Spells, GameMechanics, etc.) to a degree that you can use them, but it's harder to understand the less crunchy bits to make them useful for the game(Not that it's impossible, its just a bit harder to read 20 pages of plain text, than 3 sentences which describe a spell).

So I bought the english crunchy books but wait for the translated less chrunchy stuff. I belive many foreign D&D-Players do the same.

 

[rounser]

Fluff, however, is all for the DMs. Dungeon Masters like Fluff, because Fluff is Recipies of Rum. For the DM who has no time to distill his own Rum, or who likes the elves' flavor of Rum, these Fluffy bits are great. Unfortunately, even within the DM caste, many of them do not want the Fluff the elves produce, because they like picking the Fluff from their own navels. (This DM being one. My ego demands that I think my Fluff is the best Fluff of all.)

I'd rather they just sell us Rum (i.e. entire campaign worth of adventures. Innabook.). There's too much work involved in distilling a genuinely big, quality one, IMO, unless the Fluff is very low level. Crunch and macro-fluff don't help save much time in making My Kind of Rum.

Don't believe me? Consider the Dancey Lion's take on how hard it is for frickin' full time elves to make what I'm talking about:

Second, those products take too long to design. Handling character
development from really low levels to really high levels is incredibly
tricky. Our data tells us that most people who play D&D restart their games
about every six months. So we're going to be designing products with an eye
towards that time frame as the logical maximum amount of time we can expect
anyone to stick with a product. Something that would take a whole year to
play through won't be fully used by many consumers.

Third, there are only so many "big ideas", and they often don't come on a
schedule. When we get a really great proposal for something epic, we'll put
a product on the schedule. But we're not going to task the designers will
creating something like that in the absence of great inspiration.

There are a lot of deluded gnomes out there who think they have enough time to make quality rum, on top of making their own fluff, when not even elves who slave for hours day after day think they can do it! The gnomes who actually pull it off seem to be rare, but some of these creatures write stories on these very boards which prove that they manage it...

 

[Heap Thaumaturgist]

I made the transition from system administrator to manager over the last few years. It was a real revelation. There are usually communication problems on both sides of the divide, but there's not much the rank and file can do to fix the problems on the bean counter side.

But that just makes it all the more important not to treat bean counters as a malevolent alien race. If you do that, you give up /any/ hope of communicating.

Ahhh. Here's where my field comes into play, sort of. I'm a rhetoric major concentrating in Computer/Human Interaction, for the most part. It's a buzzy sort of field, but really when I get into the industry sector my major job will be communication problems between managers, users, and developers.

It's all mostly issues of knowledge and context. The context for Bean Counters is trying to get the most beans they can, built up around alot of factors. One of those factors is the people above the Bean Counters approve when the counters can show that they consistently bring in a high level of beans. You get condensed data as you move up the tree. To the people at the top at Hasbro, WotC is just a group of numbers. If the D&D part of WotC makes a product that brings in TONS of beans, and then NOTHING they produce ever brings in that many beans again, it looks like a problem to them, because they want to keep bringing in the top number of beans. It doesn't really matter that when it was TSR they made piddly beans with everything. All they're seeing is that the Core Books brought in, say, 25000 Beans. Then Forgotten Rums Setting brought in 15000 Beans ... Lords of Rumness brought in 7000 Beans.

If you condense the data down you get:

25000 Beans - Product X
15000 Beans - Product Y
7000 Beans - Product Z

Well, this D&D part of WotC is certainly not living up to the Bean Expectation that the Donut Core produced, now is it? If Hasbro's context doesn't contain the information that WotC's does, or that The Elves' does ... they have to work off those figures up there above. Now, down here, our context has lots of information about what is going on.

The Core sold big time because, to play the game, EVERYBODY has to have it. You're never going to reach that number again. Everybody doesn't need Forgotten Rums. Even fewer need Lords of Rumness. This doesn't mean, however, in the long run that Lords of Rumness is a bad product. If you look back back back, to the age of T$R, you'll find that, say, all their products brought in 3000 or 4000 Beans. Even the lowest selling book is still making more than it used to. Really, you can say, 7000 Beans is about the average of what a D&D product will make, and you're really only in danger when you're not making 7000 Beans.

D&D should be trying to explain to The Bean Counters that what they should really be expecting from them is 7000 Beans per Elf Product, and that the 15000 Bean product is going to show up every three or four products. Now, if some little Elf at D&D promised Haze Bros or Wotk that they could bring in 15000 Beans on a regular basis ... you've got problems. (I certainly hope no silly elf did that.)

There's also alot of other variables that you really need to invent buzzwords for. Really all "Buzz Words" are is a form of condensed data. You're putting a concept into a short phrase that is easily remembered. The Bean Counters' context needs to be changed to include information on other things, and they have to be convinced of the viability of these other ideas ... like "quality" (I'm not sure what that means, honestly, what's Quality about Lords of Rumness? We should be shooting for "Quality" in all our Elf Product, no?) ... but things like the ability to generate sales of other products later ...

If, say, Silver Munches will generate more sales of Secret Product Z later down the road, a way to explain that to the Bean Counters needs to be created. If some of these books that have lower sales MUST be produced to keep interest in the hobby at a peak, THAT must be explained to the Bean Counters in a way they'll understand it. Their context doesn't include playing role playing games ... the more information you can condense and bring to their table, the better you'll be. If you can say: "Alright, Silver Munches is what we call a product of 'Interest Maintenance'. It will sell to a smaller demographic, but that demographic will in turn stimulate another market group to purchase Secret Product Z. Without Silver Munches, Secret Product Z will bring us an estimated _____ fewer beans. As you see, by producing Silver Munches we are, in fact, not only bringing in 7000 Beans but stimulating the market to bring an aditional 5000 Extra Beans from Secret Product Z."

That sort of language brings your context into the context of the Bean Counters. Now, end run, if Silver Munches isn't going to make a basic profit that should be expected from D&D Elf Product and isn't going to do anything down the line to stimulate the market for continued purchasing of later product ... then it really shouldn't be produced, no matter how much an elf really likes it.

In the end, you have to show the Bean Counters that, in the long run, Fluff adds to the continued viability of the D&D Product Line as a whole.

... ... as a disclaimer I'll say I don't have alot of familiarity with Bean Counting (although I am picking up a Business minor this year), and I know even less about the internal workings of Hasbro/WotC/D&D. I'm mostly demonstrating how language, knowledge, and context barriers between two groups can be overcome to the betterment of both groups. You just need to find a good rhetorician with training in communication difficulties within industry and corporate America.

--HT

(I really should go to sleep, it's 4am)

 

[LightPhoenix]

For one thing, I think we can drop the innuendo, as cute as it is. Let's just call it what it is.

Second, this really, really saddens me. In another thread, someone asked me if I needed the WotC seal on my products. Things like this make me say no, and support third party publishers all the way.

Third, I think that everyone can do more with the crunchy bits than the fluffy bits. That isn't to say the fluffy bits are bad, but for people who run their own campaigns, buying a book like Lords of Darkness or Silver Marches isn't really adding much useful to their campaign, whereas buyings something like the FRCS or Magic of Faerun is.

At the very best, it's a books of ideas. Now, I don't know about other people, but I've gotten lots of ideas just looking at the crunchy bits and saying, "Ooh, I know how I could work that in, and have a neat story!". On the other hand, flipping through Lords of Darkness at the store, I was getting that reaction much less.

I think this just all points toward Hasbro's waning interest in both D&D and WotC. First the sale of the retail stores, then the periodicals, and now this... how long before they sell off the entire thing?

[EDIT] Because I KNOW people are going to get the wrong idea... no, I don't support this. I may not like the Realms, but that doesn't mean I want the thing to die. If people like the campaign, more reason to keep producing it. I'm just trying to produce a reasoning for why the higher-ups are saying what they're saying, and why the crunchy books sell more.

 

[dreamthief]

Hmm I feel like I've walked into a fairy-tale gone wrong. Is there a scene where those elves come back to take over the Cores and the Rums? Isn't that how it's supposed to end?

Oh I see it's a to be continued. Dang I hate cliffhangers...

 

[Shadowdancer]

This is all just another example of what happens when Creativity becomes Big Business. The same thing happened with the motion picture industry, and the popular music industry.

A movie comes out and sells a lot of tickets. All the movie studioes try to make a movie just like it. In fact, many movies like it. Until people stop going to see those movies. Then something fresh and new comes along, people go to see it, and the imitations start again.

Or a new style of music gets popular. The music companies start looking for other artists who sound like that style. Or they get artists already on their rosters to change their style to sound like the new style. This goes on until people stop buying that style. And then a new style comes along, people start buying it, and the imitations start again, and the scouts are out looking for new artists playing that style.

Anytime a business that sells something that is Creative is run by people who are not Creative, you have these types of conflicts. The movie studios were all started by people who made movies. Sometimes those people had no business sense, so they hired people to count the beans for them, but they maintained control of the business. But as the business got profitable, and the creative people in charge got old, the business got sold to a bigger business, a business run not by movie people but by business people.

Same thing with the music companies. Founded by musicians, but later sold to companies run by people who didn't make music.

 

[Randolph Carter]

I personally want to show the bean counters my own little world...and itnroduce them toi Tempus' new friend, Vangal and his hearld.

Wouldn't you rather introduce them to my FR campaign where we replaced the wimpy 3E Tempus with Vashanka of Thieves World infamy?

Tyranny,
PTL

 

[Frosty]

When GW made WH 40,000 3rd Ed they made it all crunch. They had already lifted the fluff over to their publishing branch The Black Library. This killed my interest in the game. The stories weren't so good as to sell by itself (not to me) and the rules weren't all that fantastic without the stories. Me, I like chocolate chip. A little bit of both. All crunch is a cracker.

 

[bushfire]

You know what?
I bought the FRCS, Monsters of Fareun and Magic of Fareun.
I didn't buy Lords of Darkness or faiths & Pantheons and don't plan on buying Silver Marches.

Why?

I don't play in the Realms! These books have so little value to me over the more "crunchy" ones like the FRCS. I don't care about Realms specific stories or cities or characters or organizations. Most of the stuff written for the Realms is way more trouble than it's worth to use in a non-Realms setting. If there is not enough "crunchy" stuff that can easily have the Realms serial numbers filed off and reused somewhere else then why should I bother with it?

The same goes for Realms specific modules. I looked through Into the Dragons Lair and Pool of Radiance and found them both too tied to the Realms to use in any campaign outside the Realms. City of the Spider Queen will also get a good look over before buying for the same reason.

I feel sorry for those that run a Realms campaign in that most likely the source of new fluff (excepting of course novels and TV shows) will dry up in the not so far future but you won't see me change my buying habits to prevent it.

 

[Warchild]

Wouldn't you rather introduce them to my FR campaign where we replaced the wimpy 3E Tempus with Vashanka of Thieves World infamy?
Tyranny,
PTL

Yeah, lets see what those beaners do when the Storm Lord tattos "Cruncheth Not Without Fluff!" on their foreheads with a lightning strike from the sky.

I'm am probably in the vast minority when i say i'm not that concerned about this. In fact i'm surprised that so many people ARE shocked or concerned about this. Did you really expect different? The only difference in this case are the 3rd party publishers, of which so many are truly wired into their fan-base. God bless them. I find that the standard level/ingredient of the big bad elves has gotten so far astray from my own recipes, that i occassionally forget they exist. I have their Core recipes, but beyond that they are in the mud and dirt competing against the all the other elves in the kitchen, scratching out recipes in the hopes i'll give them my cabbage. Lately, they have losing out on a LOT of cabbage. But hey, its an elf-eat-elf world out there. If they stop producing their Fluff in flavor of their Crunch, and this may damn me to the Hell of a 1000 burning donuts but so be it, i don't mind. I haven't liked their Fluff in quite a while. They might as well stick to the Crunch and see where that leads them. Not that i'm all that happy with their recent or upcoming Crunch.

From a consumer standpoint, i never planned on buying anything other than the FRCS book (not even that until i got it cheap). I haven't been happy with the Realms since 1E. 2E damn near ran me out of the D&D fold all together, in fact it did. Not JUST FR 2E, but that was a majority factor of it. Let me point out that the vast majority of 2E books WERE Fluff. But crap FLUFF, IMM, is worse than that crap Crunch. I'm one of the home-made fluffers, because no one can craft better fluff for me and my elves than me and my elves. No one. Now, some independant elven groups produce fluff that occasionally open my eyes and i'll purchase it. A few other elven companies produce my kind of Fluff and i watch their their recipes more carefully and hence, they get my cabbage. Thats how the Fluff and Crunch world is.
Now, i'm going to rest my head, because all of this Fluff/Crunch/Bean/Cabbage Innuendo is hurting my head. In fact, from know on whenever a player of mine using the Innuendo skill, i'm going to start having them make Will saves to avoid splitting headaches!!