Mearls says adventures are hard to sell [merged]

[Sammael]

I for one welcome our new Greyhawk Eberron overlords.

Fixed it for you.

 

[MerricB]

My fiance would beg to differ!

Adventures have always been a hard sell, particularly for games other than D&D. How many adventures does WW release for the WoD each year? How about GURPS or Champions?

I think you need a pretty big fan base, and a fan base that includes a significant number of beginners, for adventures to sell.

Just thinking back, the original Star Wars RPG had a *lot* of adventures in its first incarnation. We played a lot of them. I wonder how they sold?

Cheers!

 

[Hussar]

Going way back, Star Frontiers had a fair number of modules too. Pretty good ones as I recall.

But, honestly, do we need yet another campaign sourcebook about FR? Come on, between OOP and current releases, you could fill a reasonable sized library with FR sourcebooks. Since sourcebooks aren't really all that system dependent, I don't know what the beef is.

Even if WOTC wasn't publishing lots of modules (and I'm glad that they are), they probably still wouldn't be rehashing the same tired old Realms crap that has been trotted out for the past couple of decades.

At least Eberron hasn't been done to death. Give it time and it will be.

All I know is, I am totally loving this new "Campaign in a Box" trend in the game. Running the World's Largest Dungeon has been the first time I've had a campaign not fizzle out after ten or so levels in I can't remember how long. Next week the characters who have advanced together from 1st level will take on the Tarrasque. Now THAT'S cool.

Next up to bat is the STAP. Given how much fun I've had DMing in the past couple of years, I have to say that I'm unlikely to create another adventure for a very, very long time.

 

[amethal]

War of the Burning Sky is selling pretty dang well too.

Glad to hear it. It looks fantastic so far, but with the sterling / dollar exchange rate the way it is you ain't going to get rich from the tiny amount I paid for it

 

[Sammael]

Next week the characters who have advanced together from 1st level will take on the Tarrasque. Now THAT'S cool.

Coincidentally, this is also the case in my game. Except I don't use pre-made adventures, and my PCs have travelled all over their world and the Multiverse, rather than being stuck in one dungeon (which would have driven both me and them insane - all a matter of play style, available time and taste, of course).

I realize I'm obviously in the minority, as the companies are catering less and less to my DMing style and more and more to Hussar's. Perhaps this is why I am strangely attracted to the notion of running a Vampire game.

 

[delericho]

Adventures have always been a hard sell, particularly for games other than D&D. How many adventures does WW release for the WoD each year? How about GURPS or Champions?

I'm not sure those other games lend themselves to published adventures as well as does D&D. WoD would appear to be far more story, plot and character based, which makes it nigh-impossible to write an adventure that would be generic enough to sell well, GURPS is such a wide game that again narrowing adventures down to the single flavour that people are playing would seem problematic (this would be different if there were some widely-used GURPS settings. One could see a GURPS Discworld-branded adventure, for example, but not just GURPS). I can't speak about Champions, having never played, but doesn't that suffer from a huge power-differential between characters, without the convenient labelling of levels to give a rough guide?

In addition, I think perhaps WW may have been burned by the adventures they put out for the old WoD, of which there were quite a few - two 'Diablerie' modules, the Giovanni Chronicles, the Transylvania Chronicles, and Gehenna. I'm not sure how these sold... but the ones I saw were generally rather poor. The Transylvania Chronicles, in particular, suffered from being a bit too plot-heavy, requiring the PCs to observe certain events rather than driving them, and on at least one occasion directly advised Storytellers to railroad their players. That being the case, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they didn't sell.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, because you'd have to have been drunk to {RHoD} this was a good adventure.

Is this a common view?

Aside from Dungeons mags, RHoD was one of the first adventures I had purchased in quite some time. Aside from it not having full stats for the Spawn of Tiamat, I thought it was well designed and interesting in concept.

 

[The_Gneech]

Adventures have always been a hard sell, particularly for games other than D&D. How many adventures does WW release for the WoD each year? How about GURPS or Champions?

Thing about that is, if there was a regular stream of adventures for Fantasy HERO (which is a subset of Champions), like there is in Dungeon magazine, I would never run D&D again.

Readily-available content (i.e., adventures) is THE thing that makes me a D&D player.

-The Gneech

PS: I should mention also, that with the death of E-Tools, the likelihood of my buying any future rules books becomes vanishingly small. Adventures are going to be it for me for the forseeable future.

 

[rgard]

Why would WoTC decide to print adventures now?

1. Both to support and advertise supplementary material that cannot be used in OGL/d20 licensed content.

2. To increase marketshare and brand-loyalty.

3. Insuring longterm health of game by actually getting people to play it, especially with the trend of a "campaign in a box" style adventures.

4. They've figured out a way to make it profitable or at least a way to minimize losses, making it an attractive loss leader.

Makes sense to me.

 

[diaglo]

Yes, because you'd have to have been drunk to think this was a good adventure.

quoted for truth.


adventures that are universal and good aren't hard sells.

adventures that are setting specific can be hard sells. as it varies on how well the setting is doing at the time of release. new setting with no adventures previous... maybe you get a boost due to the new factor. old setting with an established fan base who is still very much happy...
old setting that is jumping sharks... um... hard sell.

adventures that are lame but have name recognition or are protected in some fashion. are gonna sell better than lame adventures by lame companies.