Is built-in customization bad for sales?

[eleran]

(Looks at Hero System Fifth Edition, surely the most customizable game on the market)
(Looks at nearly three feet of Hero System Fifth Edition supplements)

Nope. Don't think so.

Seems to me the 4e model is tailor made for splats -- new power sources, new talent trees, and the monster creation system means ten million different kinds of orcs. (Orc Archer, Bigger Orc Archer, Orc Archer With Cool Special Power, Orc Archer With Cool Special Power and Spam, Spam Archer Spam Spam and Spam, etc)

I don't like Archers, can I have spam instead?

 

[JVisgaitis]

Nah. A lot of people are just lazy or don't have the time. Supplements will still do just as well as they always have. Plus, you'll always have the portion of the audience who cries that "it's not official".

 

[DonTadow]

Yes, built-in customization to the extent you create a one-book point-based system is probably bad for sales. There's much less space for designing Mutants & Masterminds splatbooks, for instance, than Dungeons & Dragons splatbooks.

Providing guidelines - not hard, point-based rules, but good suggestions and examples for class and race creation will only serve to help those inclined to tinker with things, not cost you sales. Likewise, any attempt at working a classless system out of 4e D&D would still allow strongly for splatbooks to mine new abilities from. So no, I'm not seeing a loss.

I'd counterargue that you will produce more sales with a classless, build your own system. Once you introduce this, you can stop now sell the parts of various future classes and feats ala cart, producing more supplements with fewer resources. For instance, instead of writing up 6 classes for roguish teers. I can instead publish 3 books of 20 abilities for 10 bucks a piece. One book, diplomacy abilities, the other espionage stuff and the other thug fighting stuff. I sell each for 15 and increase my profit by 50 percent.

 

[pawsplay]

Yes, built-in customization to the extent you create a one-book point-based system is probably bad for sales. There's much less space for designing Mutants & Masterminds splatbooks, for instance, than Dungeons & Dragons splatbooks.

It doesn't seem to hurt GURPS or HERO. I question this premise. HERO actually manages to sell one supplement per "character class," despite being completely point-based... The Ultimate Speedster, The Ultimate Brick, etc.

 

[sinecure]

I don't think they will lose money from this. I think we should applaud them for taking this risk and making the game better for it. The ones who will make the most money in a widely customizable market are going to be the ones who are the most successfully creative. Wizards holds a huge advantage in this regard as they have the largest and most successively creative designers on staff. And, with the preponderance of money they make in comparison to everyone else, they can contract or hire anyone who has success in the smaller market. This may be why they are using a much stronger and easier to enforce license for 3rd party publishers. It will be a bit of a tightrope to walk I thnk. To encourage enough creativity in the community to ensure its inevitable inclusion is beneficial, but also stay on top of the heap by sheer size and power - something that tends to tamp creativeness - is a fickle road indeed. I hope they are up to the task. I'm merely thankful the game will be infinitely better because it can more easily be modified versus twisting DMs away from their own creativeness all the while promising new toys to players for their games.

 

[Imban]

It doesn't seem to hurt GURPS or HERO. I question this premise. HERO actually manages to sell one supplement per "character class," despite being completely point-based... The Ultimate Speedster, The Ultimate Brick, etc.

You know, I need to pick up HERO sometime and see how they manage to do that, since they seem to have the same sort of system as Mutants & Masterminds from what I've heard, which would more or less preclude useful splatbooks.

I wasn't really referring to GURPS, where yeah, it's point-based, but you still buy things off of a list rather than creating effects on your own so much, and expanding the list is a pretty big deal.

 

[MaelStorm]

I think there is a market for both the do-it-yourself and ready-made games.

Now, it remains to be seen. But if 4E could come up with a good hybrid, they could appeal to both market, and be even more successful.

The down point of this is that the hardcore fans could boycott the change. But with time, I am sure some of them will eventually come back.