Agreed.
I'm eyeing a couple of the campaign setting products, but at this time I'm only buying Pathfinder for lore and fluff. I need negative amounts of crunch. If I ever run Pathfinder again (and I might: I'd like to run Carrion Crown) I'll likely enforce harsh limits on the books and amount of books.
I can't imagine PF2 working out. And it's doubtful I'll pick up Starfinder: if I want to run a science fiction game I'm more likely to go Star Wars or Star Trek. Or Eclipse Phase. If I do get the book it will be as a PDF only for review purposes. And then only if it's the standard Paizo $10.
PF's success was due to a very specific historical situation. I agree that with 5e, they're facing hard times. Still, i hope they'll work out something. PF 2 could be as good as any other rpg. They has significant fanbase, if the product is good, it will sell. Probably not as much as the 1e with all the alienated 3e fans, bust still. i have hope.
We're getting three hardcovers from WotC each year. Going down to one or two would be a pretty heavy drop in content.
I specifically said that WotC could do the core products, while 3rd parties could do the more niche products. I meant that some support for those niche lines is still more than nothing. Other smaller companies could manage multiple hardcovers in a year.
But, honestly, VtM and VtR have a visibility problem now. You can't get the books in stores. You can't get them on Amazon. You can only get them Print on Demand, which is still only so-so in terms of quality. (The book's pages themselves warn they're not full bleed. And it's pricey.)
This means it's really only selling to established fans. But that's a shrinking audience that is hard to sustain, since they already own the books. You can only sell people books they already own so many times...
I agreed that OP's publishing methods are indeed having visibility hindrances. That's why the new WW want to be back in stores, not just in gaming stores, but in average bookstores. I hope it'll work out. Still, it's not that simple that only established fans play the game and buying books. Go to the specific reddit pages, there's always new ST/new player topics. New gamers buy the 20th editions. Yes it doesn't have the wide cultural recognition than back in the day. Yes it doesn't make as big money as it did. Yes probably it's spreading more through word-of-mouth. However, the games are still alive, OP is well, the LARP scene is pretty much lively and Paradox deemed it wortwhile to purchase the whole IP. It's not dying out, it's just smaller now. Not so long ago we had a discussion on the OP forums and I was honestly suprised how many anecdotes were about new people coming in and how many groups playing the various lines, especially at universities. That's another thing: WoD games are more... I don't know, philosophical (or you could call that "angsty" or "edgy", whatever you like
)? I could imagine that more people are interested in them at college campuses than in the average gaming shop. I don't want to be uppish here and I agree they're not as big with as many active fans as they were, but i doubt it's only as simple as only aging goths playing it. I just suspect that the average D&D gamer at the shops and organized play is just not the main target audience of WoD games, it's just different styles and expectations about what you want from the game and how you like to play. I also think D&D is also more friendly to kids (or it's more like WoD is absolutely not for kids). Said all that, I myself introduced a group not long ago, they're absolutely new to the game and loving it. Getting the books in pdf and from specific sites is not a problem with youths, in fact some of them prefer pdfs.
As for content saturation: as i said earlier, I never had the problem, I just bought and read what I wanted and what interested me, but I understand the problem. I just never had the green marble wall thou shall not pass effect.
Also, OP doesn't sell books the fans already have, they sell new books, with new, or complimentary content, both are good for beginners. The NWoD lines are currently in their second edition.
PoD quality is depending on what type you buy. The premium heavyweight paper is as good as most gaming books and i think it is good to have cheeper options. Also OP recently working on the ebook versions of their products, so in the not so distant future there will be that new avenue. They just doesn't follow the traditional publishing and distributing model and it works for them Rich Thomas talked about it in various panels at GenCons and in other places. They don't want to be BIG, they want to make the rpg books they want and they can and it works.
From the ICv2 link: "These do not take into account online sales, Kickstarter, direct sales, Amazon, or anything other than hobby retail sales"
So, in fact ICv2 indeed doesn't take into account the online distribution channels and kickstarters, or really anything except the statements of retailers. That WoD games is the best placed in discussions among non D&D and derivative games and the 6th best after them among all, and taking the fact that the WoD-connected kickstarters are highly successful are in fact a sign to me that, while OP is not old-day's WW, the games are pretty much alive and well. Yes not being in shops is a problem and OP doesn't make nearly as much money as Wotc, clearly, but again, I'm not an employee of them. From a fan standpoint OP makes a lot more content, and good content and their games are played and alive. You just don't see it on D&D focused sites and in gaming shops because they don't distributing through them and don't have organized play. Look at the LARP scene, for that and you'll see that WoD is pretty dominating here.
It's a Gold Best Seller. Which means >500 but <1000 sales. So including it's 12k Kickstarter backers, the book has sold likely <20,000 copies. Which is great for a small publisher, but a quarter of the number a D&D book is expected to sell.
Which is the catch. A product that's a huge, phenomenal hit for any other RPG company isn't worth printing for WotC...
(And when you consider the money the D&D RPG brings in each year would be a rounding error in the Magic the Gathering accounting books, it's a wonder they even bother. It's *almost* not even worth their time.)
Indeed there's the catch. You just proved what I'm saying, that rpgs are better off in the hands of smaller, rpg-focused companies. They don't have to meet insane expectations from above, they could do the books they want and frequently do them in high quality.
They did that during 3e and stopped. They likely did so for some reason. If they were making money hand over fist they would have kept licensing the products. It's probably preferable for them to retain the rights for the *chance* they could use it, rather than license it out for a nominal fee. (And have to compete with their own IP.)
I imagine the money any 3rd Party studio could afford pay for the rights would be pretty low compared to WotC's numbers. And if the right movie or video game deal came up they'd want to be in a position to make use of the rights. The potential money is much higher than the actual money that would be gained...
And the number of 3rd Party RPG studios that have the up front capital to pay for the license are teeny-tiny, and they'd be more likely to just make their own setting.
Again, money, money, money and it results in books not getting created, settings unused, novel line cancelled. Meanwhile smaller companies could run healthy gamelines, in some cases even a bunch of them. Sorry, I'm not interested in Hasbro's profit percentages, I'm interested in products I want to buy and enjoy.
I'd love that, but I doubt it'd be that successful. The 3e line had a lot of fan support and came hot off the heel's of the 2e setting, and it never really sold amazing numbers. Campaign settings in general sell so-so, 3rd Party stuff also has a bad reputation, and the most ardent fans of the setting already have the books. You don't need to buy another Ravenloft book as the setting hasn't changed: all the lore is the same. It's just a repackaging.
And I bet, based on the success of CoS that it'd be a great success. Maybe not the kind of "great" for the expectations of WotC, but among other rpg products, I believe it'd be successful and greatly so.
They get 40% of sales for non-exclusives and IIRC 30% for exclusives. I imagine they get 25% from the DMsGuild.
Still, only 0.52% of products are Platinum (301 total), 1.43% are Gold (836 total), and 3.45% are Electrum (2013). 72.65% of products aren't even Copper, which means they've sold <50 copies. 15,959 products are actually selling but 58,350-odd are just there.
But that still ends up to a few thousand dollars each day.
Minus bandwidth and hosting costs, the security and infrastructure, and more. And a half-dozen full time staff. The maintenance costs are probably pretty damn high.
But it works. It's going for a fairly long time at this point. WotC itself deemed wortwhile to make a contract and getting their own sub-site on it. Look, RPGs are a niche hobby. D&D has a resurgence now, but it won't last for ever. I don't expect an rpg company or online distributor to have dozens of full-time employees.
But you can't flip through the book in a store while browsing. You have to go to a very specialized website, which only some people will know of.
Yes, but don't pretend that in these days the internet is an unreachable, obscure thing. I suspect, for a lot of people, a gaming shop is more like that than a reddit page, or kickstarter, probably even more when you aren't in an US metropolis. My opinon is that being in general bookshops is much more important. Having VtM, as well as D&D books in local bookshop lines and every small shop was HUGE back in the day. Now, there (in Hungary) i couldn't find either in bookshops, just in gaming shops and those are pretty rare.
Also, you could do watch YT videos, read reviews, and read almost all of the contents online in certain cases. You could get a more clear picture about what you plan to buy than with flipping through it at a gaming shop.
So to sum it up: does D&D could reach more people than smaller companies? Yes, absolutely. Does it have it's own significant drawbacks, being that big and having to answer also big expectations? IMO also yes, absolutely.
They doesn't make certain books, because it's too niche and won't generate enough money. They won't outsource, because it won't generate enough money. They won't make novels, for the same reasons. I understand the decisions business-wise, but again I'm not their employee and I'm not a placeholder of Hasbro. I'm interested in the results and the result is not getting books I'd like to see.
Back to the restaurant example, the Corner Burger certainly couldn't afford the advertisement and being in everywhere McD could. But they are making damn fine burgers and running well with their smaller costumer base.
