Have the third-party d20 publishers failed?

[Belen]

I think your missing the larger point. If publishers thought they could make money on adventures then they would. But, with a few exceptions, they aren't. If what your saying is true (that adventures would result in higher supplement sales) then the only excuse as to why such adventures aren't available is that there is a great conspiracy against making adventures. In sort, if you lose more money publishing adventures than you gain in increased setting/supplement sales then its pointless.

There are supplements that have adventures made for them; Midnight and AU are just two. The main problem is that most game book sales are during the first two to three months after release. The supplement's sales are pretty much done before any adventures would be ready.


Aaron

Chicken and the egg. The adventure should come first, not the setting. Or they should have one ready to go quickly enough to land within the sales window.

The fact is that most companies never tried to make adventures profit and they certainly did not try to use them for cross-marketing.

The argument that it would have been done if profitable is bunk because they never tried it in the first place.

 

[Belen]

I may not be 15, but I did teach myself to play and DM 4 years ago.

Fair enough. No harm done.

So you find that adventures are actually useful? (Well of course you do, else you wouldn't have started this thread. But it's perplexing to me.) I have *tried* to use them, but my players always wander off to do other stuff. So for me, adventures aren't actually less work, since I have to slap stuff onto them at the last minute when the party goes haring off. Heck, I'm presently trying to run the Freeport trilogy, but they barely managed to pay attention long enough to finish the first module, because they wanted to explore the jungle.

Actually, I haven't ever run an adventure straight through, except for one that I was play-testing, preparatory to writing a review. My players hated every minute of it. In fact, I never wrote the review because I couldn't find anything constructive to say, and I didn't want to appear to be doing a hatchet job. Admitedly, the adventure was one of the worst railroads I've ever seen.

Oh, and I should probably tell you that although I don't like running published adventures, I do buy them. I think I own nearly every adventure published for 3.0, except for the ones with the sluts on the covers. I even bought the FFE adventures! Why do I buy them? Hmm. Possibly I'm crazy. Or possibly I like to read them for ideas. You be the judge.

Yes, but ideas can be worth a thousand adventures.

See, I never ran an adventure as written. I have always added to it on the fly and if the players wanted to go elsewhere, then that was cool too. So instead of meeting Borash in the bar, they meet him chopping wood in the forest etc.

Another good thing about adventures? You can rip encounters out of them or venues or just steal ideas or use them as a muse.

I love adventures. I buy them when I find them because they add to the game and shore up where some of my skills may be lacking. For instance, I have never built a dungeon. I always buy them and then do what I will with them.

 

[Kitsunekaboom]

I would say no, they have not failed. Heck I buy more 3rd party stuff than I do WotC stuff. (Open game content is more useful to me on average, and since WotC doesn't do anything OGC anymore, well, it gets annoying).

Your average 15 year old may not go to 3rd parties (unless they are of a certain topic said 15 year old is big on, I was a huge necromancy fan back then myself). The question is, how much D&D stuff does your average 15 year old gamer buy? Older age brackets probably buy more.

Plus, I have a hard time believing that any rpg game company's success relies on the purchasing of 15 year olds in the first place.

 

[Belen]

Plus, I have a hard time believing that any rpg game company's success relies on the purchasing of 15 year olds in the first place.

15 becomes 30 if you wait 15 years. The kid who starts buying your adventures will soon buy your sourcebooks. Just wait 2-3 years.

 

[Aaron2]

The argument that it would have been done if profitable is bunk because they never tried it in the first place.

Midnight, Arcana Unearthed, Scarred Lands, Iron Kingdom (this one was an adventure first), Forgotten Realms, Freeport (also adventure first), and Mutants and Masterminds are all examples of d20 settings or games that had adventures published for them. And that's just off the top of my head. It seems to me that it has been tried.


Aaron

 

[jgbrowning]

Plus, I have a hard time believing that any rpg game company's success relies on the purchasing of 15 year olds in the first place.

Any gamer picking up a d20 product is already familier with D&D gaming. D20 is a sub-set of D&D gamers.

The only company that produces d20 material and has the resources to risk marketing to non-gamers is WoTC. It's very risky and expensive to attract new gamers and requires a lot of resources.

This is the concept behind the new basic set.

joe b.

ps. Modules aren't profitable when weighed against putting the same resources to a supplement. In otherwords, opportunity cost.

 

[Belen]

Midnight, Arcana Unearthed, Scarred Lands, Iron Crown (this one was an adventure first), Forgotten Realms, Freeport (also adventure first), and Mutants and Masterminds are all examples of d20 settings or games that had adventures published for them. And that's just off the top of my head. It seems to me that it has been tried.


Aaron

Funny how those are really successful campaign worlds huh? Maybe because the adventures allowed an easier entry into them.

Funny how WOTC sees the need for adventures all of a sudden.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I would say that 99% of all statistics are made up on the spot, including that one.

I get 89.4% of my stats from http://www.statsoutofmyass.com.

 

[kerakus]

Quick aside. Of my current gaming group, half of them started on Palladium or White Wolf. I've actually met White Wolf LARPers who've never evern heard of D&D.

 

[Aaron2]

Funny how those are really successful campaign worlds huh? Maybe because the adventures allowed an easier entry into them.

Ah, there's the rub. Are these campaign setting popular because they have adventures or do they have adventures because they are popular?

I agree that its a good thing for publishers to release adventures for their settings. However, I disagree that they aren't doing it and have somehow "failed."

Early on, a couple of Necromancer adventures included stuff from Rituals & Relics, Creature Collection and Book of Eldritch Might. However, the general opinion was that this was bad since the guy who bought the adventure might not have said book. I think they still do it somewhat but now they include all the relevant information so that the book is no longer required. While I agree with this method, I don't think it encourages anyone to buy the original book since they don't actually need it.

Funny how WOTC sees the need for adventures all of a sudden.

They've run out of splats.


Aaron