Mearls says adventures are hard to sell [merged]

[Wraith Form]

Not necessarily, groups can rotate GMs. If adventures really aren't selling, then perhaps WOTC should ask itself what it can do to increase the pool of GMs (like, making D&D easier to DM!).

QfT, by Cthulhu.

 

[Hussar]

Not necessarily, groups can rotate GMs. If adventures really aren't selling, then perhaps WOTC should ask itself what it can do to increase the pool of GMs (like, making D&D easier to DM!).

How much easier can it get to be a DM when you run a module? All the heavy lifting is done for you. You don't need to do any prep (or at least your prep is pretty minimal), so long as the stats are accurate, you don't need to lug many books with you to the session and the new format makes running combat significantly simpler.

What else can they do to make it easier than that?

 

[Cam Banks]

I don't think he was referring to the graphic design or art direction of said adventures. I mean, as cool as the Dragonlance novel series was, could there be a worse set of modules?

I personally put them favorably up against any earlier series of modules, including Against the Giants, the Slavers, etc etc. The only series that I felt surpassed them in their day were Tracy and Laura Hickman's Desert of Desolation modules (pre-reprint), which I still consider the best of TSR.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[trancejeremy]

I don't think it's really fair to compare modern day to back in the high point of the 1e era. Role-playing was really really popular then. It's hard to explain just how popular was, but you can make pretty good parallels with any fads, or even say, the internet bubble.

One day, people would buy just about anything. Then suddenly, boom, no one except a few was interested any more. And so more sounder business plans had to be developed for companies to survive. And the meme about sourcebooks vs adventures was apparently started. Indeed, even TSR had to do that - supposedly how Unearthed Arcana was rushed out to make money (it basically being nothing more than revised Dragon articles by EGG and a few others) to everyone still playing AD&D. And presumably it worked - UA had something like 12 printings, which has to be far more than any modules from that era.

d20 was in many ways a repeat of the same basic cycle. In the very early days, everything just about would sell. Then for whatever reason, boom, it didn't. Now they are fighting over table scraps (so to speak). The market for sourcebooks is played out. So the battle for adventures has begun.

 

[T. Foster]

Indeed, even TSR had to do that - supposedly how Unearthed Arcana was rushed out to make money (it basically being nothing more than revised Dragon articles by EGG and a few others) to everyone still playing AD&D. And presumably it worked - UA had something like 12 printings, which has to be far more than any modules from that era.

Don't be so sure. The other "big" product that was rushed into release alongside UA in order to save TSR was a module, T1-4, which also proved popular enough that it was still being reprinted as late as 1992 (3 years after 2E was released, and a year after the last printing of UA). [Per The Acaeum]

 

[Hussar]

T Foster - true, but, as the site also mentions, no other supermodule went into multiple printings. And, even then, only went into 7. Not the 12 of Unearthed Arcana (if that's the right number). Also, note the bit at the bottom of the page you mention:

These modules were thick, relatively expensive, and produced in small print runs towards the twilight of the 1st Edition rules (with the exception of T1-4, which was printed several times due to demand). As a result -- and because they are compilations of popular modules -- they tend to go for high prices.

T1-4 was reprinted, but, that doesn't mention how large the original and subsequent print runs were.

 

[Mokona]

I recognize they need to concentrate on the books that would bring in AT LEAST 40,000 or 50,000 units or so in sales. The other print companies would call half those figures a miraculous runaway success... WotC would call it a failure.

That's a good guess. I'd say complete failures would regulary sell in the 10,000 to 30,000 range. At 40,000 an RPG would break even. Success would be for books that sold in excess of 60,000 units.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm running a game now where this is very much the case. I have an overall plot/campaign in mind, but I'm using Necromancer Games adventures and Goodman's DCCs to give me great site-based adventures I can plug in and play. I have no use for adventures that are heavily plot-based. I need a location (BBEG treasure hoard) to stick the "emerald key of illumination" that I want my PCs to find.

I think this has been part of Goodmans' success, right there. I had players on the run in the Midwood campaign, and needed to get them a chance to gain some XP so they could survive the bounty hunter on their tails and prep them for the dangerous badlands they were going to run to. Dropping The Dragonfiend Pact in their way worked out perfectly, and it took me all of five minutes to adapt it to the world of Praemal, and four minutes of those were spent on deciding between two gods to use to replace the DCC World ones in the module.

 

[Erik Mona]

The best adventures speak directly to the group playing them. A DM is far better equipped to design such an adventure than a designer who has never met your group and knows nothing about your campaign.

I think this is absolutely true of story modules.

It is not true at all of site-based adventures, which are more enjoyable because the decisions being made are those of the players, and not an author.

The best-selling D&D adventures of all time were site-based.

Goodman Games's adventures are site-based.

When Dungeon shifted focus to site-based adventures, our circulation started growing and hasn't stopped.

Adventures are interesting in that they are the easiest thing to design poorly, but the hardest thing to design well.

Amen!

--Erik

 

[Erik Mona]

TSR had a near-monopoly on modules for 1e, so they sold well for TSR.

It's worth noting that TSR had to "compete" with Judge's Guild in the early days of D&D, and Judge's Guild produced a great deal more adventure product (and much, much thicker in presentation) than TSR.

I understand your point, and I don't strongly disagree, but in the period from the very beginning to the "heyday" of first edition around 1983, TSR was far from the only company selling modules. There were a ton of non-D&D options at the time, too, most of them far more appealing than the average d20 sourcebook in terms of paving new ground and excitement.

But how about for anyone else who tried in the same era? How about for 2e and later?

Because the people at TSR after Gygax was purged thought they were smarter than the people they displaced, and because the staff was composed mostly by asking the question "who has a reasonable grasp of English and lives within driving distance of Lake Geneva", the adventures in second edition sucked ass worse than the filthiest German porn on the internet. Things improved _considerably_ in the mid 1990s and have basically been getting better ever since, but the TSR modules in the era you're asking about are awful.

They are almost uniformly story-based.

--Erik

PS: There were exceptions, obviously.