New adventures from Wizards - policy reversal!!!

[Staffan]

I'd really like to see a major campaign released, like the 2e Night Below or the 3e Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil - something that will cover 10-15 levels of playing. Only, Eberron-based and not focused on One Big Dungeon, but more like Dragon's Crown - lots of travel, showcasing different parts of the world, with a mix of dungeoneering, fighting, exploring, and interaction.

 

[Steel_Wind]

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p2.html

From a History of D&D - Gamespy. Full text at above link.

Based on an interview with Bill Slavicsek director of RPGs, miniatures and R&D at Wizards of the Coast.

The late '80s saw the launch of Forgotten Realms (still D&D's most popular setting), and DragonLance. The runaway success of those lines, particularly Forgotten Realms and its popular signature character Drizzt do'Urden, begat a slew of new world designs. There was the post-apocalyptic Dark Sun, the highly political Birthright, a response to White Wolf's successful Vampire: The Masquerade game called Ravenloft, and the extremely avant-garde Planescape, among others. Unfortunately for Williams and TSR, this strategy, while presenting the initial appearance of success, is actually a strategy for long-term loss. The marketing term is "Brand Extension," but Bill Slavicsekdirector of RPGs, miniatures and R&D at Wizards of the Coast, just calls it the "Many Buckets" theory.

"Picture it this way," Slavicsek says, "it's raining money outside and you want to catch as much of it as you can. You can either make a really big bucket or waste your time and attention by creating a lot really small buckets -- either way, you're never going to make more rain." In plain English, TSR, by putting out a lot of product lines instead of supporting the main Dungeons & Dragons line, fragmented the marketplace. The same audience was giving the same amount of money to TSR every year, which had taken on the additional financial burden of creating, producing, and supporting hundreds of products. It needed to grow the marketplace, and these brand extensions weren't doing that.

The many settings also contributed to something called "Brand Dilution." The original Dungeons & Dragons brand stood for something. You knew essentially what you were getting when you bought a D&D product. All of these new settings began to play havoc with the rule sets and philosophy of the game. As the settings grew more popular, they began to diverge from one another, advancing along their chosen philosophical paths, essentially becoming their own separate games.

In not too many years, players had stopped identifying themselves as D&D players and were instead identifying themselves by the setting they played in. A Planescape player was very different than a Forgotten Realms player, and their rule systems were beginning to become incompatible with each other. More significant from the company's point of view, though, was that players would never buy a product set in any other setting than their own. Far from catching more money in their small buckets, TSR was actually making the audience smaller!

No matter what you think that WotC should do to differentiate their product to Category A, B and C - I think the above discussion shows how and why that is not going to happen given WotC's strategy.

The reason WotC has not done it until now is simple: they don't think they can make decent enough money at it, vs. the alternative of selling rule books appealing to everybody.

As I mentioned, the Rulebook market is over saturated even on the WotC end, so branching into more adventures is something they now need to do as there are fewer alternatives to adventures.

But it's pretty clear they they are going to try as hard as they can to avoid fragmenting their market.

 

[D+1]

If a third of the market wants type A adventures; a third, type B; & a third, type C. If you publish a type A adventure without identifying it as type A--making it clear that it might not be for everybody--pretending that one size fits all, then you've just discouraged two thirds of your market from buying future adventures from you, even though they might be type B or C. Then the people who liked the type A get annoyed when they buy the next one & its a type B.

You know what this sounds like to me? A niche to be filled by a website. Given the number of people on recent polls noting the HUNDREDS of rpg products they buy there has to be someone out there who would put together a web site that can tell you simply what a given adventure can do for your campaign. Want murder mystery? Look at these modules (and links to reviews and publisher website). Want something epic and world-saving? What you want is those modules (and then list more reviews and the publishers site).

I can go to a dozen websites and read reviews, but that will at best give me and indication of quality - it doesn't tell me how or even IF I can really adapt that module to the needs of my campaign. If I had the money to spend on the modules and the time to maintain a website (much less my own campaign) I'd do this myself. But I think maybe it could be done simply by collecting links to reviews as well.

 

[teitan]

Sunless Citadel was the 1st Wizards module for 3E - you'd really have to look at sales figures of the later modules and compare them.

However, I do think that Wizards keep an eye on the available adventures on the market. The health of the adventure market must be somewhat tied to the health of D&D.

Cheers!

I tend to think published adventures are indeed important to the health of D&D and especially new DMs just learning how to play the game alongside thier new players. Not all groups have the advantage of having a seasoned veteran to teach them the game and how to write adventures.

I look back and I see the D20 bubble bust as happening about the time that most of the smaller publishers started slacking off on the adventures and focus more on source material (it sells better). Maybe WOTC also perceives this little blip.

If you think about adventures, no they don't sell as well but shouldn't they be a bit more profitable? The low price vs. cost of production would have to be a better margin than the cost of production on a sourcebook like Serpent Kingdoms or even adventures like City of the SPider-Queen (which really irked me that my Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil was the same price and twice as flimsy B&W). Not as much profit but a better margin no?

Jason

 

[coyote6]

What would make adventures more profitable? Adventures tend to be smaller* than sourcebooks, and in general, the smaller the book, the smaller the profit margin. I don't see where adventures would be significantly faster, easier, or cheaper to produce than a comparably-sized sourcebook. Maybe if you compare a B&W adventure to a full-color hardback sourcebook, the production cost will be lower; but I'm not sure it's that significant a difference, given the difference in potential markets (you can sell most sourcebooks to *all* players; only GMs [& maybe cheating players] are going to buy adventures).

*World's Largest Dungeon excepted.

 

[RFisher]

No matter what you think that WotC should do to differentiate their product to Category A, B and C - I think the above discussion shows how and why that is not going to happen given WotC's strategy.

Yeah. I know the history of TSR. I would never suggest they should make those mistakes.

What I'm suggesting is more along the lines of the way they used one cover look to indicated books targeted at players & other for books target at DMs. Or perhaps even more a propos, the way they say things like "Designed to challenge 2nd-level D&D heroes".

Besides, the fact and point is that they have & likely will produce adventures that would fall into multiple categories. If the bucket analogy were applicable, it would still be applicable whether they're up front about the categories or whether they remain ignorant to them.

 

[Steel_Wind]

One thing the whole "many buckets" analogy relies on to be a useful analogy relies on a central premise:

no matter what you do, you can't make more rain

That's a pretty big leap. It may well be true - but I am NOT taking that one on faith.

Moreoever, when it comes to consumer spending, NOT being able to create demand (make more rain) where there was none before for a particular product is akin to a marketing director saying:

"Fire me. I have either failed utterly in my task - or I'm telling the truth and, as a consequence, I'm useless. Because no matter what we do, demand is the same"

I don't think so. I really don't. There WAS no 10 million dollar plastic miniature market a year ago. WotC created that. That's not simply a big-ass bucket - that's more rain.

There are, however, a whole complex series of issues with adventures in this marketplace. A big one that TSR never had to contend with on such a large scale was online piracy.

If your products are stripped down cheapy B&W 32-64 page booklets, this is a prime cadidate for a loss of sales to .pdf scans.

OTOH, if your product is high value, full color with cool pull out folding maps, this strikes me as something that a .pdf will not be able to capture properly and more of your market is going to want to buy it, than pirate it.

Complex times in the RPG biz...

 

[Rasyr]

There WAS no 10 million dollar plastic miniature market a year ago. WotC created that. That's not simply a big-ass bucket - that's more rain.

Actually, there was. Mageknight and all the other clicky games....

Wotc's entire marketing for their minis is based on the same premises as the clicky games. Heck, they even have the same company making them (or did - dunno if this ever changed).

 

[Steel_Wind]

I would suggest that Hero Clix were aimed at a different market segment than RPG enthusiasts, altough they share the same packaging premise first made popular by M:TG, quite true. (A premise which amounts to gambling, as has been noted before...)

In any event - I don't accept that it is impossible to create new demand and that every hobby dollar is just being shifted between hobby products and established customers.

When you attract a new player to game without losing a departing customer to churn - you create "more rain". When you entice hobbyists who had left TSR/WotC products in the rear view mirror BACK to your product line with 3E - you create more rain.

When you use the OpenGL to wipe out at a stroke many smaller competing systems and bring those customers back into the fold - you make new rain.

The "many buckets" theory is a powerful analogy - but it's a vast over-simplification of the market.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

It's fascinating to see how the RPGA has been reorganised: as there are no fees, Wizards must be funding all of this out of their sales (most likely of the miniatures. )

Even more fascinating, IMO, is the impact of the 800 pound gorilla that is the Living Greyhawk player network on sales. I have heard of numbers up to 20,000 players. When the LG campaign adds a particular WotC book to the campaign, there are thousands of players who have a good reason to get it, and most usually do!

There have been anecdotes of the issue of Dungeon with Mad God's Key selling at rates far higher than normal, for instance.

Hearing how 3rd party D20 developers are amazed when they have a print run of a 1,000 being pretty good, it's easy to see that the RPGA is finally getting the respect again inside WotC that it once had under TSR. High quality or not, the RPGA puts out adventures. People join the RPGA to play, not to collect books, but they will buy the accessories that improve their play experience.

However, the RPGA is not for everyone. I think WotC hoped that 3rd-party adventure market would mature enough to fulfill the needs for those who the RPGA is not their cup of tea. It did briefly, but then sputtered out.

I am very glad to see WotC jumping back into the adventure market. I'm hoping they put out enough Core mods in between the Eberron and FR mods.


Regards,
Eric Anondson