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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tinner" data-source="post: 1736906" data-attributes="member: 19667">Alternate Adventure FormatsWe keep hearing this refrain that adventure's aren't profitable. At the same time we have evidence that some publishers are making profitable modules.Is this simply that those publishers that succeed with modules are somehow "smarter" or "better"? Or have they figured a better model for publishing this material?I can understand how the classically formatted stand alone module would be a tough product to make profitable. It is only usable by a small percentage of the total market, it costs just as much to produce as a similarly sized sourcebook, and contains less of the "crunch" that seems to attract buyers.But clearly some publishers have found a formula that is working for them. Sovereign has tapped into an underserved Dragonlance fandom and is selling profitable adventures. Other publishers have mentioned that they are including smaller adventures in their sourcebooks.Is there another business model that might work?I know some companies have tried to support a different module format. PEG did so with Deadlands both by including adventures in all their early "crunchy" books, and with the Dime Novel series.The Dime Novels in particular really seem to me like a great idea. For a fairly low price you got a short piece of fiction that helped flesh out the campaign world, as well as a tight, well contained one-shot adventure.I know I bought every one of them, and if someone made a similar product for D&D, I'd grab those as well. (And yes, I already have plenty of AEG's and other publishers' "pamphlet" style adventures!)Were these kinds of products profitable?There certainly were a lot of them produced early on in the 3.0 explosion. I really haven't seen many lately, but that may be the effects of d20 glut on my FLGS.PDF modules seem to be doing as well as most PDF's. That is they seem to get purchased by those that would use PDF's anyway. It's currently a small but growing market.I wonder if a publisher could make any money trying the Cheapass Games style of publishing for a module? Bare-bones production values, but excellent value for price? After all, it's not like a module is going to see the same service as a sourcebook. Most often it will be played once, then set aside for several months/years. Why not go the Cheapass route?What about printing modules in a comic book sized format? Flimsy color cover, thin cheap paper on the inside. I recall Palladium did this with their old Weapons & Armor books way back in the day. Could a publishing model like this help make modules profitable?I guess it just seems to me that even though modules don't sell as well as other types of books, there are some potential buyers out there. It seems a shame not to come up with some sort of product that will let publsihers take their money.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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