DDAL Lost Tales of Myth Drannor: DDAL's "Secret" D&D Book For Gen Con 50

Lost Tales of Myth Drannor is an official D&D Adventurers League book containing six adventures for characters of levels 1-20. It is billed as a promo for Gen Con's 50th anniversary, although it will eventually appear on the DMs Guild -- from DDAL's Greg Marks: "It is a book that is a promo for GC50 and cons the admins are invited to. It will eventually appear on the DMsGuild."

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Greg also added that "When initially released some are being distributed by BMG at Gen Con (I can't speak to how) and some by admins as promos" and that its appearance on DMsGuild would be "some months later.... PDF and possibly POD".

He added later that "I can't speak to what the BMG folks will be doing with their allotment, but the admins that are there will have some as well (myself, Claire and Alan are attending). The first print run of Super Secret Project 76 (not its real name) will be used by the admins as a promo item that we hand out at cons we go to (an actual book is a pretty awesome promo!). It will eventually go up on the DMsGuild as well, though not immediately. I will continue to tease more info on my twitter (@Skerrit7h3green) up until it is released on August 17th."

And there's a LOT of them sitting in boxes at Gen Con this week!

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[Hutchimus Prime]

I’d still buy it.

 

[warfteiner]

Sorry you feel that way, Zapp. Our initial intention was to have it be a convention exclusive for a full year. Getting it released ahead of that window was a secondary goal and one that we continue to work towards.

It'll get released when it's ready. We're not keen on sending a print product into the wild that isn't ready for print or general consumption.

Should we do another book, it will almost certainly not be made generally available immediately after the convention. We're huge supporters of "play where you want", and our intention with products like this is to also promote social gatherings like conventions and major gamedays.

 

[EthanSental]

I'm with the Capn on this one now. Although I picked on up off eBay at a premium price, I had planned to buy a PoD when it cMe available to support the effort but now that it's dragging on I'm losing interest due to my perceived lack of effort on getting it out. If you do another, do like Capn mentions and make it available asap and more people with plunk down the money for it.

 

[LordEntrails]

Yea, I don't get the con exclusive mentality.

"Couldn't make it to the con? Well then not only did you miss out on being there, but we're not going to share with you either!"

I've never gone, or not gone, to a con based upon being able to get or play an adventure only at the con. I go to cons when I am able because they are fun, you get to meet new people, see new products, etc. Not because their is some adventure you can only play at the con. Frankly I don't give a crud what adventure is played, their are thousands of good ones. The fun is more about the GM and players, not the material.

All this "convention exclusive for one year" does is further the mentality of an in-crowd. I thought most of us weren't in grade school anymore.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sorry you feel that way, Zapp. Our initial intention was to have it be a convention exclusive for a full year. Getting it released ahead of that window was a secondary goal and one that we continue to work towards.

It'll get released when it's ready. We're not keen on sending a print product into the wild that isn't ready for print or general consumption.

Should we do another book, it will almost certainly not be made generally available immediately after the convention. We're huge supporters of "play where you want", and our intention with products like this is to also promote social gatherings like conventions and major gamedays.

I hope I didn't come across as telling you not to do exclusives. That is your right, and if I came across as even questioning this I apologize for the lack of clarity.

Just don't expect to make much money off of year-old releases.

Good luck

Edit: Based on the other replies, I see now I did come across as questioning making con exclusives. Let me assure you that was not was I was questioning.

 

[Mistwell]

The point of delaying publication of previously con-exclusive content used to be to allow for other conventions to run that same material without their players knowing what was it in, so it remained spoiler-free for most players.

Is this content being used at other conventions, or was it only for the one convention? If it was only for the one convention, I am not seeing a lot of point to delaying release a year. I mean, unless you're trying to intentionally artificially pump a collector market? Which typically is not a good thing for an industry to do on a long term basis.

 

[AriochQ]

With so many gaming conventions out there, a year seems a very long time to wait. Given that AL season tend to run about a year, it generally means any season specific content (not the case with this product AFAIK) would be for the prior season by the time it was released.

 

[warfteiner]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] -
No, you didn't come across that way at all. On the same token, my apologies if I came across snappish; not my intention. We're looking for awesome ways to incentive public play when we attend events, and Lost Tales happened to be our thing for 2017. As much as I'd love to say that I did it for the money (I do need at least two more shiny nickels in my collection!) it was really to provide something cool and unexpected for our public play people across the world. Future things will almost certainly be along these same lines.
[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] -
We started handing them out at Gen Con last year and continued doing so throughout the summer, fall, winter, and now spring of 2018. A couple admins still have copies - I only have my personal 2 copies left out of my original ~160 or so - and we've sent a ton of them to various locations all around the world. I sent them to Australia, a couple events in Russia, some in Italy, and even some to Israel last fall. The adventures don't have to be played at conventions, but that's just the most common way to get a copy of the book. As above, our intention is to reward the dedicated folks that attend public play events. The market on those things will crash, and hard, upon the digital release. We assumed that it would take roughly a year to get it that way, though, due to the huge number of other tasks that we're working on.

 

[warfteiner]

Any adventures that we release in this manner will be season agnostic (see the "Season 0" list in the Content Catalog).

 

[Jester David]

I like the idea of a convention exclusive book on paper. But they really should be released as a PDF fairly shortly, such as within six months. Denying fans the content is undesirable.
Like Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle.
Having a non-PoD copy is pretty exclusive, and I don’t think people will care less about the physical copies if they can get a digital version. The simultaneous release of regular and collector’s editions of D&D books doesn’t devalue the latter. And a short exclusive window of a book like this doesn’t devalue the more limited non-PoD version.


Not everyone can make it to a convention. There are a lot of gamers in Europe and Canada that can’t get to a NA cons. Students are unlikely to be able to afford the travel costs.

As I said earlier in this thread, I tried hard to make it to GenCon last year. Saved up the $2500 needed for air and hotel. (And as a librarian in the school system, that took a loooong time. I get paid squat.) And then lost the housing lottery for rooms. So I missed out on a rare collectable D&D book, which just rubs salt into a raw wound.

Going to a convention is already a reward. It doesn’t need to be even more exclusive. If the 19 million D&D fans, how many attend cons? Even if every single person at GenCon was there for D&D, that’s only 0.3% of the audience.
It’s literally rewarding the top 1% of D&D fans. It’s a little like watching the Stream of Annihilation and seeing people get super rare swag while also being invited to an exclusive private event... “Congratulations photogenic professional actor, have some free exclusive D&D merch that’s unavailable in stores. Thank you for liking out product. You’re so much better than the rest of the plebeian fanbase.”