Logic behind sales of "Expedition to Castle Greyhawk"?

[Infernal Teddy]

What about the "other" side of the DM croud? I haven't bought an Adventure since Rappan Athuk. I don't LIKE prefab adventures. So, no way I'm gonna buy this. A sorcebook I'd buy, no sweat, but this?...

 

[the black knight]

It's just a way to drum up sales for the book by manipulating Greyhawk faithful. Dangle a carrot in front of Greyhawk starved fans and they'll buy two copies in the hopes that Greyhawk will return with more support.

But it won't. They've already made that abundantly clear with the cancellation of Dungeon (and Draon) magazine. The best we can hope for is the occasional lip-service and perhaps a chapter here or there in a core book. As for setting stuff, they couldn't care less. The last eight years have been proof enough of that.

 

[delericho]

What about the "other" side of the DM croud?

There's also a segment of the DM crowd (that includes myself) who are not Greyhawk fans*, don't really care about nostalgia, and so aren't swayed by any notion that this could lead to any revival of the setting, but who are going to buy the adventure anyway because of the names behind it and because we're interested in quality adventures.

So, I wouldn't worry about it too much - with luck those segments will balance one another out reasonably well.

* Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the setting. It's just that I wasn't around the first time out, and never really bought into it. Even now, I'm not into settings, since I like to create my own. It's just that the Greyhawk name and/or label really doesn't influence my buying decisions one way or the other.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They've already made that abundantly clear with the cancellation of Dungeon (and Draon) magazine.

The Greyhawk focus in those was a Paizo thing and wasn't WotC-based at all. Crushing Greyhawk was pretty low on the reasons to pull the plug on Dragon/Dungeon.

Honestly, if WotC wanted to terminate Greyhawk, they'd just kill Living Greyhawk and stop putting references to it in books and that'd be the end.

Killing off magazines or cruelly turning the Expedition modules into the Delve format aren't attempts to kill off Greyhawk.

 

[delericho]

Killing off magazines or cruelly turning the Expedition modules into the Delve format aren't attempts to kill off Greyhawk.

Quite. Although I think you put it better when you said:

I don't see how this would kill Greyhawk, though, since it includes Mordekainen, an attempt to actually replicate EGG's Castle Greyhawk and a storyline that moves characters between the Free City and the castle and back, all written by berserk Greyhawk fanatics.

If that's WotC's attempt to kill off the setting, they're exceedingly subtle.

 

[danzig138]

What is this "delve format" you all speak of?

 

[Scott_Rouse]

It's just a way to drum up sales for the book by manipulating Greyhawk faithful. Dangle a carrot in front of Greyhawk starved fans and they'll buy two copies in the hopes that Greyhawk will return with more support.

But it won't. They've already made that abundantly clear with the cancellation of Dungeon (and Draon) magazine. The best we can hope for is the occasional lip-service and perhaps a chapter here or there in a core book. As for setting stuff, they couldn't care less. The last eight years have been proof enough of that.

Not to sound rude but don't talk about things you know nothing about, this miffs me a little. It feel like words are being put in ours mouths.

The cancellation of Dragon and Dungeon magazines was not a statement on Greyhawk. It was a statement on how to run a business.

We give away for free more Greyhawk content through the RPGA than most other companies publish in for sale product every year. We also spend more time, effort and money running the Living Greyhawk for the RPGA than any other setting or even D&D minis. To put that into perspective we put more time/money support into LG than the rest of the D&D gaming line combined.


We know how many people play LG and we have a good idea of the market size for the setting. We don't sit around creating plots to screw over Greywhawk fans. Quite the contrary most discussion around the setting focus on how we can make it a viable for sale product line.

Yes Expedition to The Ruins of Greyhawk is a test but it is not the end all be all factor determining support/future products for the setting

 

[delericho]

What is this "delve format" you all speak of?

It's the new adventure format seen in all recent WotC adventures, starting (I think) with "Scourge of the Howling Horde". In it, each encounter is spread over a whole page, or two pages, presenting everything you need for the encounter together to minimise page flipping.

It's so called because it was developed for the "Dungeon Delve" event at GenCon 2006 (?). For more information, see this article at Wizards.com.

 

[Erik Mona]

Now that Scott's chimed in on this thread I'm sure he can speak for himself, but my memory is that the "sales of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk are a test for future Greyhawk support" came out of a thread recapping the Q&A session at this year's D&D Experience. That's certainly the first place I heard of it, because we weren't told that while we were designing the book.

WotC contacted us and said "You guys wanna write this book?" We said: "Duuuuhhhh."

And the rest is history.

Or is soon to be history, anyway.

--Erik

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Now that Scott's chimed in on this thread I'm sure he can speak for himself, but my memory is that the "sales of Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk are a test for future Greyhawk support" came out of a thread recapping the Q&A session at this year's D&D Experience. That's certainly the first place I heard of it, because we weren't told that while we were designing the book.

WotC contacted us and said "You guys wanna write this book?" We said: "Duuuuhhhh."

And the rest is history.

Or is soon to be history, anyway.

--Erik

Erik is totally correct here. It was said at D&D XP by me that this would help us to gauge interest in Greyhawk and give us a measure of interest in the setting. We will also look at LG RPGA play data among other things to make determinations on future Greyhawk products.

Me personally I want to make more products. I beleive that is what a segment of customers want and the linch pin on the whole issues is figuring out if the products will sell enough.