Mearls says adventures are hard to sell [merged]

[helium3]

Amen Brutha!!

 

[JRRNeiklot]

About the only thing I've bought in months is adventures. Small adventures. I don't need the complete knitter or PHB 3.11. I can always use adventures. And a small adventure can be crammed into any campaign, or ran as a one shot, or whatever. Plus, if it DOES suck, I've blown 10 bucks instead of $49.95 or whatever.

 

[Banshee16]

(3) Given the loads of regional supplements to FR over the past 6 years (Underdark, Silver Marches, Unapproachable East, Lost Empires, Shining South, Serpent Kingdoms, City of Spendors, Power of Faerun, others I'm forgetting), I'm not sure there's very much of Mainland Faerun left to write about for 3E. That's just my perception of it, though.

The Sword Coast, the Old Empires, the Bloodstone Lands, Amn/Tethyr/Calimshan, Chult and the kingdoms around the lake of steam, the Dalelands, and the Moonshaes...

That's a fair amount of areas that haven't really been covered yet.

Banshee

 

[Mechanurge]

RHoD is new and was published after a long draught.

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

 

[mearls]

What? Yes he is!

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.

You have to work extra hard to make an adventure stand out. Part of this challenge, IMO, lies with the factors that Wright pointed out in his keynote. 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.

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

I wish people took me this seriously all the time. I'd say things like, "Mike Mearls thinks you should mail him $100."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I wish people took me this seriously all the time. I'd say things like, "Mike Mearls thinks you should mail him $100."

Wolfgang Baur beat you to the punch on that one.

 

[Sammael]

I wish people took me this seriously all the time. I'd say things like, "Mike Mearls thinks you should mail him $100."

Hey, if you lobbied hard for WotC to (1) give us more FR regional supplements (like, oh ONE per year, as opposed to zero in three years) and (2) make FR books bigger than 160 pages, I'd gladly send you $100. As it is right now, WotC is simply not making the kind of books I am likely to purchase.

 

[Maggan]

Adventures have always been a hard sell, particularly for games other than D&D.

The sales numbers for game lines I have worked on here in Sweden shows that adventures sold about 1/5 the amount that rule books did from 1980 to 1995. After that I haven't seen any large amount of numbers, but it seems to be the same situation now.

The adventures that sold best were the ones easily identified as dungeon crawls. Apart from that it didn't make much difference if the adventure was top notch or not. So I imagine that Dungeon Crawl Classics is a perfect product name if you want to sell adventures.

/M

 

[Sammael]

Ah man, that makes me sad

Same here. Anyways, here's a quote regarding source material on Cormyr from candlekeep.org forum:

There's a bit over four pages on southeastern Cormyr, Wheloon and the Vast Swamp at the back of the module, along with some crunchy bits. Magic items, mainly.

They are also saying that there are only 10 illustrations in the whole book because the new delve encounter format is using up all the space.

As I said, not a book I'd EVER want to buy.

 

[VirgilCaine]

(3)- Because they are trying to kill the FR line

I for one welcome our new Greyhawk overlords.