How I fell in and out of love with Pick and Mix in 20 minutes

[DSC-EricPrice]

Today, the good people at Enworld announced their arrival to the pdf retail market. With that announcement came a tantalizing little offering wedged in among the other details – Pick and Mix™. For those who missed the front page or the press release Pick and Mix is a section of the store where customers can pick up 1 and 2 page pdfs for a low price – 49 cents.

The idea is an interesting one. At once I was in love. Inexpensive content I could pick and choose. It seemed perfect. Everyone I know has lamented at one time or another the content they paid for and never used. Then I started thinking, which caused me to start reading, which in turn caused me to think even more. In the end, I think Pick and Mix will fail unless its changed, and that it isn’t a good idea for consumers or publishers. Here is why.

I immediately began to think about what was being offered. How would I know what I was getting until I bought it? It is only two pages, so it isn’t like they can show me a demo. If they let me browse it before I buy, what would stop other, less scrupulous people from copying the text for themselves? A quick look at the offerings already up confirms my suspicions.

Shadowslayer - A single prestige class - a shadow-curse assassin!

That is all the description offered on one class, and the other offerings are similarly vague. Do they expect me to buy it on a name or a short description? How is that any better than buying a book where there are pages I don’t use? Still, the price was small, right?

Wrong. After I downloaded the style guide and license information I discovered that for .49 cents I was getting at MOST two pages of text. That comes up as .25 cents per page! Even the smallest pdfs I’ve bought from RPGNow haven’t been THAT expensive. If the article is just one page the price is even higher.

Then there was the color coding. At first blush it sounds like a good idea, but if I print these out and put them in a binder, staying color coded requires me to print in color, something not everyone, including myself, is prepared to do.

Opening up the license brought a couple of other big alarms blaring in my head. Section 10 of the license says I have to release everything but the company logo and name as Open Game Content. So, everything released here is 100% OGC, meaning that anyone with easy access to the material, particularly in digital format, quickly gains access to LOTS of new material. Given that I have always released content as completely open, this doesn’t really bother me that much, except it makes me leery. This became more bothersome after I reviewed sections 11 and 12. Section 11 says that Enworld controls the release of my offerings, while section 12 says the retail store can release my 100% Open Game Content for free as a promotional item. To me this screams trouble. Not that Enworld really needs a lot of reason to bring people to their site (They routinely have 100s of people online at any given time) but the mere idea that I’d be giving away content for free for someone else’s site without any compensation and with no recourse is alarming, to say the least. There are some assurances in the license about the rate at which material will be released. Strangely, it is this comment, perhaps meant to calm concerns, that concerns me the most.

EN World GameStore warrants that no more than one in every 20 (or part thereof) of your Pick ‘N’ Mix™ branded products will be available for free at any given time.

Ultimately, I can’t help but think Enworld intends to use these small bits as free material to draw people to the site and the store, without being hassled with paying a reasonable fee to the creators of that content.

All these things together paint a pretty ugly picture for me, so unless something changes, I may have to keep these little monster entries in my folder until I can find some other place to drop them in.

What do you guys think about Pick and Mix?

 

[Twin Rose]

Well, certainly you have missed the intention of the entire idea. It isn't about giving away freebies at low cost, for example. It's about several factors - being able to get peoples buying habbits down with a very low cost. Compare to Amazon's $1 PDF page called "Surprise Me". Looking at other peoples bookshelves, their forum posts, whatever - you will also be able to tell, at a glance, how things mesh up with other peoples ideas.

Keep in mind there's also a full-paragraph description of the item in a "mouseover" (alt) text that you will be seeing in the next couple of days.

Personally, I think monsters are the very best thing for P&M - you can tell by CR whether or not it's what you need for your game, and the mouseover will tell you enough details if it might be interesting. They're also meant to be add-on purchases - if your buying habbits are such that you buy from certain publishers very often, or your current cart has products from a certain publisher, then the P&M selections you are offered will be "Recommended" based on that. Certainly, I hate getting an entire PDF of content, of which I use 1-2 pages because the rest doesn't fit my game.

The other intention was to create a low entry point for people who wanted to give PDFs a shot. By creating a standard format, standard set of brief descriptions, cheap price, and easy categorization for recommendations, the hope is that people will find "Just one more thing" that helps their game out, and therefore, start to look deeper into the entire concept
of PDFs.

 

[Morrus]

OK, your concerns one at a time:

1) Not enough product info -- there will be more very soon. The P&M page isn't quite finished yet.

2) Price -- that's a value judgement, and I can hardly argue with you on that front. For me, it's worth it for the price.

3) Colour printing -- I envisage people building upn their P&M collections very gradually. And they don't have to print it in colour if they don't want to!

4) OGC -- well, ENP releases its products as OGC in entirety and has had no such problems. But this is an issue which has raged around the boards many, many times with people on both sides of the fence.

5) Promotional Items -- it will happen very occasionally, but the intent is to use the odd P&M to show people what P&Ms are all about.

I believe that it will become a successful concept.

However, the license is one that you accept or don't. I have no illusions as to the fact that not everyone will put their virtual signature to that license. I also believe that many (such as ENP, Ronin Arts, Dark Quest Games and Exp Retreat Press, who already have) will do so. There's no harm in the concept not being suitable to everyones' business plan - I'd be amazed if it was! These are, by and large, impulse buy items.

Tell you what - wait a while and once the P&M library has built up, ask the publishers involved how it's going for them. That's as fair as I can say!

 

[DSC-EricPrice]

Well I certainly appreciate hearing back. I know you guys are trying something new and that success is often built in the face of naysayers. I have to admit a mouseover with some additional information allays some of my concerns as a consumer. I still worry about the price point. It is just hard to imagine paying .49 for an item, or a monster. The laws of probability tell me that a monster manual, while having plenty of monsters I hate or rarely use, will be a better value. I suppose I agree that .49 cents is enticing for those looking to try pdfs, but as someone who already buys pdfs I'm not sure it is compelling. Maybe Im not the intended audience for the pdfs though. At .49 cents though I also worry that it sends the wrong message to the audience you make reference to, and that paying such a high price might leave potential customers with the idea that pdfs arent worth the money. Like you said, I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one. One thing I would agree to is that there is a price point where people seem inclined to impulse buy small items.

As a potential publisher it seems like the license makes no provision for art, meaning that I have to get artists who do an illustration for a monster to agree to giving up their art as Open Game Content. Most artists I know will not do so.

 

[Morrus]

As a potential publisher it seems like the license makes no provision for art, meaning that I have to get artists who do an illustration for a monster to agree to giving up their art as Open Game Content. Most artists I know will not do so.

You know, I hadn't even thought of that. Thank you! I'll amend the license to clearly indicate that it means text only.

On your OGC concerns, by the way -- have you considered that, by the nature of the content, it would have to be all OGC anyway? You can't have a non-OGC monster, for example, because it is derived from the SRD. The only think you could keep as OGC is the name of the monster, in which case I'd rather publishers renamed it and kept the name they want back.

 

[madelf]

As a consumer... it sounds all right. If I find some little piece of something that I really like I'd buy it. I wonder how much of it will have enough substance to get my interest, but it's certainly possible something could catch my attention (a 2 page monster ain't going to do it though).

As a publisher... my initial reaction is, why bother? After the commission, the pay-out on those things is going to be miniscule. They'd have to sell by the hundreds to even notice. I suppose if I already had a bunch of stuff laying around... but even then it makes more sense (IMO) to just bundle them up into a larger product and sell it for a decent price. Heck, it might even make more sense to give them away free as promotional items.

But heck, I've been wrong before. It might be a gold mine. I might even change my mind and try it.

 

[madelf]

...giving up their art as Open Game Content. Most artists I know will not do so.

It might be worth asking around before assuming that no artists will do it. I know I'd certainly be more inclined to release a drawing as open content than sell it as a work for hire. Anything that leaves me the right to use the art myself is better than the alternative, even if it means everyone else can use it too.

 

[Morrus]

But heck, I've been wrong before. It might be a gold mine. I might even change my mind and try it.

The model is i-Tunes. I view full products as "albums" and P&Ms as "singles". And goodness knows, I've impulse-bought my way through i-Tunes a lot!

The other benefit is it's soooooo quick and easy to make one of these things. Uploading it to the site takes but a few seconds. ENP will certainly be doing it, because we think it's a wonderful idea.

You can even use stuff that's already in one of your books. If you're like us, you probably have dozens of bits and pieces lying around, but not much to do with them. We have classes, spells, monsters etc. all over the place just waiting to be quickly made into a P&M (the templates make it pretty quick!).

 

[madelf]

On your OGC concerns, by the way -- have you considered that, by the nature of the content, it would have to be all OGC anyway?

Why? Not everything is mechanics.

I could see things like short adventure scenarios, plot seeds, historical reference articles, or any number of other things that aren't coming immediately to mind, working quite well as 2 page mini-products (I know I'd be more inclined to buy those than a single monster). None of which would even have to be system specific, much less rely on using the OGL, except in so far as your license requires it.

Not that I see it as a big deal, I'm just saying... y'know?

 

[Morrus]

That's true. I was imagining the system being used more for mechanical stuff and rules, but there's nothing to stop you using it for other things.