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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reinhart" data-source="post: 6764194" data-attributes="member: 13080">You pretty much understand then. The classic RPG business model is that the supplements create continued interest and shelf-presence in your game, but the core books are where you make the most profit. So the supplemental materials are essentially used to help drive demand for the main product. RPG supplements are not quite the same as a loss-leader, but it's very similar.In the past, many RPG companies have suffered instability because they over-estimated the demand for their supplements and thus lost money on some of these products. Most RPG companies don't have that much money to lose so such a mistake can be disastrous. Related to this problem is the idea that ubiquitous supplements can glut the market or jade consumers. Essentially there's a thought that the faster your release schedule the fewer books each given person buys. It's a plausible theory but in reality we still have no evidence. What is certain though is that the more books you release the more likely you're going to make a demand error and lose money on a product. This is pretty much the main reason why Kickstarter is so important to other RPG companies: It fills a critical role for marketing and measuring the demand for a product *before* it's printed.WotC doesn't have this exact problem because WotC has the best selling RPG brand on the market. Instead what WotC has to deal with is Hasbro shareholders. They're essentially guaranteed a profit, but their RPG's have to compete with Magic and other more profitable Hasbro game brands for funding. When D&D doesn't do as well as Monopoly or Risk: Legacy, the WotC CEO has to justify the funding and may have to start messing with D&D's budget. It's not exactly fair, but Hasbro isn't ever going to let D&D die either. To them it's too potentially valuable in a time when geek is chic, games are going mainstream, and 80's nostalgia rules cinema.</blockquote>

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