Have the third-party d20 publishers failed?

[barsoomcore]

Just a note to say that Dire Kobold is alive and well, last I checked:

http://www.direkobold.com

To throw a new curve into an interesting discussion, does anyone think that this is an industry that might benefit from more cooperation between companies? Maybe I'm crazy (and I sho'nuff got no evidence to suggest that this is true) but I bet that if assorted publishers promoted each other's books, there'd be overall growth in the industry. Especially WotC -- if they want other companies to succeed at picking up the slack on the low-end products, I don't think it's crazy talk to say that maybe they'd do well for themselves by spending a little money and time promoting those other companies.

Fragmentation is probably the number one problem for small presses -- they can't get out of the narrow niche they find themselves in and so their sales are always limited.

Maybe, though, we're coming up to a turnaround point in the industry, like mouseferatu says. It's going to be interesting times in RPG publishing, I think.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Maybe, though, we're coming up to a turnaround point in the industry, like mouseferatu says.

Well, like Mouseferatu hopes, at any rate.

I'd love to see more interaction/cooperation between publishers. I loved Green Ronin's and Paradigm's Interlink concept, and I'd be delighted to see more such things. I have no idea how it would impact the market--I haven't looked into that sort of thing--but I know it'd be great on a personal level.

But I'd really love to see is WotC allowing 3rd party companies--on a case by base basis, not as an open license--to product products that tie directly into WotC hardcovers that are not OGC or part of the SRD. For instance, WotC has their Frostburn environmental book coming out soon. How cool would it be for, say, Necromancer to do an arctic-based module that made use of that material (with official permission), and to have the two books point the reader back at each other? How cool would it be to see Green Ronin do a book of planar locales and socieities that included info from, and pointed back to, The Manual of the Planes and the Planar Handbook--again, with specific permission, not necessarily because WotC opened up those books in general?

I think that sort of cross-polination would be great for everyone involved, especially if the WotC books referenced the other, 3rd party material (even if it's just a single mention in the introduction, or a tiny ad blurb in the back). I have no idea if such a thing is feasible, and I have no solid facts on which to base my theory that it would prove helpful, but I'd love to see it.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

It always scares me to hear how many publishers lie close to oblivion.

Oddly, I'm not at all bothered by it. Perhaps it's my bloodthirsty worship of the free market, but I rather like the fact that the current bloated d20 market is getting winnowed down a bit. I've stopped buying most 3rd party products -- I've got way more sourcebooks than I'll ever use; the only reason I buy some of the WOTC sourcebooks I do is more in the way of having a complete collection than actual intent to use the books.

Adventures are my favorite product, and I'd like to see more -- there are certainly great ones from Necromancer, Goodman, and others, as well as some great adventures in PDF -- like CMG's Whispering Woodwind. Dungeon is the best adventure buy for the buck. There's more adventures out there than I'll ever use, though, so if the market thins out a bit there, I'm not bothered.

To all the writers and publishers out there, my hat's off to you. It's nothing personal, mind you -- it's just I trust that the strongest will survive, and if a few of you get eaten in the meantime, that's the price of doing business. I trust when the dust settles we'll have the market that consumers voted for. And if I don't have the products I like, I have only myself to blame, since after all I voted with my wallet.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

To throw a new curve into an interesting discussion, does anyone think that this is an industry that might benefit from more cooperation between companies? Maybe I'm crazy (and I sho'nuff got no evidence to suggest that this is true) but I bet that if assorted publishers promoted each other's books, there'd be overall growth in the industry.

Cooperation (or mutualism) is one of the strategies Behemoth3 is betting on to help start the next wave of growth in the field. I don't think an abstract promotion is enough; what we've done is to choose other products that would specifically be interesting to people who were using our book. In A Swarm of Stirges, for example, we recommended Throwing Dice Games's forthcoming Notebook Essentials because he has a higher-CR version of a stirge swarm than the one in our book; Silverthorne Games' Book of Templates because it has a skinhusk template that's a natural extension from the hollow husk monster in our book; and The Other Game Company's Complete Spell Cards and Dwarven Forge's Master Maze dungeon sets because we used them to great effect in our Masters and Minions tournaments. There are many other companies I have tremendous respect for, but didn't recommend just because there wasn't a specific hook to do so.

Every one of these folks was delighted to give us permission to recommend them (as the Open Game License requires us to get permission to use other companies' trademarks for any reason). I know Joe Muchiello of Throwing Dice is planning to start doing recommendations sections as well and pointing his fans towards Behemoth3's books (among others). That's great, but we didn't expect it when we did our recommendations; as you say, we did it just with the faith that it would help the industry grow, which is good for us & everyone else too.

 

[Ed Cha]

The sad truth I suspect, is that if it doesn't have the WoTC label on it, that it's invisible to the masses. This isn't always true as several companies like Malhavoc, Green Ronin, Necromancer, and Mongoose seem to move along with little signs of slowing but for others it seems much more a struggle.

The most ironic part of people complaining about these small companies to me, is that three years ago, almost all D20 publishers were small including Green Ronin, Malhavoc and Necromancer. "I don't want to try Blue Devil Games, Dog House Games, Ronin Arts, because they're new! I can't take the time to judge them when I have quality coming from Publisher Y!" Hate to say it, but Publisher Y doesn't always have quality.

Joe has made some very valid points, especially this one about small publishers. I've tried to promote the hell out of my adventure settings to the extent of shameless plugs on messageboards, buying advertising, and hustling at conventions, but people don't ever bother to even check out the company Web site.

There's definitely an advantage to starting out early and it's a challenge to overcome that hurdle for newer entrants in this business, but I think the average d20 consumer is highly averse to looking beyond a few of their favorite publishers (even here on EN World).

What's more important though in this equation, in my opinion, is the retailer. If the retailer doesn't stock the product or fails to re-order, then it's just not available to the consumer. If it's not available, it can't be sold.

 

[JohnNephew]

Really, there are a ton of ways to help GMs that do not have the time to devote to actually using the ton of source material produced.

Maybe a book that details encounters. Take existing monsters, or write up tactics; describe how terrain can be used to effectively run a fun encounter. etc.

At the risk of tooting our own horn, you might be interested in En Route, En Route II: By Land or By Sea, and En Route III: The Road Less Traveled.

Having said that...the adventures market is especially challenging, as others have observed, since you're aiming a product at a subset of a niche (especially if you have tie-ins to other products beyond the core d20 rules set).

It's fair to say that adventures are part of what teaches people to run a game; it tells you what, as a player, you DO. Very important. But when it comes to d20, the independent publisher faces a crucial dilemma: If you're doing the adventure to plus something of your own (say, Dire Spirits, an adventure designed for our Nyambe: African Adventures sourcebook), then you're limiting your sales to a subset of people who have already bought that product, in most cases. (Dire Spirits is designed so that you don't need Nyambe to play it...and it even has 3.0 and 3.5 stats, if memory serves...but the odds are that not a lot of people not already sold on Nyambe are likely to pick it up.) On the other hand, if you've made an adventure generic enought to appeal to a pretty broad swath of gamers, whose product are you promoting? Well, WotC's. And you're probably still selling fewer copies than you would of a sourcebook. So essentially you're paying an "opportunity cost" (the difference in profit from what you might have made on the same investment in a different product) to market WotC's game for them.

When the d20 market was young, and adventures were selling thousands of copies and making decent profits, this wasn't a big deal. It was fun to publish adventures, and not that big a concern that one might have been making even more money publishing something else. But when many projects are really marginal, in a marketplace loaded with four years of an incredible volume of output (adventures and otherwise), it's pretty hard for publishers to give up any edge that might help a product turn a profit or, as the case may be, lose less money.

 

[JohnNephew]

Repeated post. Sorry.

 

[Ed Cha]

Yes, adventures are almost like a dying art form now. I think they can still be profitable, but much less so than before. They're my favorite type of product, so I'll continue to publish them and I wholeheartedly agree that they teach us how to play AND improve the game!

 

[broghammerj]

Ed,

I've tried to promote the hell out of my adventure settings to the extent of shameless plugs on messageboards, buying advertising, and hustling at conventions, but people don't ever bother to even check out the company Web site.

Is your website down or changed? The hyperlink to your sigs not working and when I type it in directly....no dice.

 

[Psion]

They complain about not having innovative settings, but then don't buy those innovative and different settigns because "it's too different.

Robin Laws mentions this syndrome (or one of the major causes of it) in his excellent "Robin's Laws of Gamemastering." The less accessible a setting is to a player (i.e., the less familiar they are with the setting, either directly or from borrowed tropes), the harder it is for them to get into the setting.