New adventures from Wizards - policy reversal!!!

[Pants]

Couple of thoughts--

Mods Don't Make Money: And too many companies have demonstrated that the small profit margin is just fine for them.

Companies as big as WotC?

RPGA and WotC: If anything, WotC's decision to publish mods is a result of finally waking up and coming to the party a little too late...

They did publish modules before.

Dungeon Magazine: By far the best value a DM could hope for. Which is too bad, because with WotC publishing adventures, young DMs will glom onto their products and push Dungeon aside. It's bound to suffer as a result.

Did that happen back in the days of tSR?

Now why would they want to invest money into publishing adventures for anything else when they know they will have an almost guaranteed sales success story with their shiney new setting? The FR setting has been pushed aside by those looking for something different

FR will be getting more modules later on. Rich Baker said as much.

(and frankly at this point it's impossible to start new home groups in without plunking down major cash for setting-specific sourcebooks anyway).

How is this any different than 2ed? Frankly, I find the FRCS itself to have enough information to start a good FR game. Everything else is just gravy.

and catering too much to players that were looking for the next shiney new trick (and don't know how to play the game beyond min/maxing and powergaming),

*sigh*

And now that they've convinced everyone else not to publish adventures, and WotC needs the money, they'll lower themselves to "filling a gap in the market".

Oh for gods...
Now it's a conspiracy...

Sorry if this is negative, but please remember WotC doesn't do anything without being compelled to by profit.

The OGL?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Kezner actually went and arranged for a DnD licence and have to products approved by WotC.

Or, if you believe certain people, got a D&D license out of Wizards of the Coast as payback for copyright violations.

Which, if true, means that there's no implication of quality necessarily attached to Kenzer's "official" products.

 

[poilbrun]

"Wizards of the Coast is planning to put out more adventures in the future, as there has been a perceived reduction in publication of them in the d20 market. They said they had shied off from putting out many adventures in the past, as there were many d20 publishers putting them out. But with a reduction in the number of adventures being produced lately, this is an area where they feel they can provide service by re-filling that niche."
- from Gaming Report article

Wow! Fantastic!

Now, all they need are some decent adventures...

Cheers!

I totally agree with you on that one... If I just get adventures as good as their "adventure path", I'm not sure I'll buy them... However, if they can give me something interesting, that can be good news, their production standards being much higher than other companies' (mainly because the cost is offset by the high number of books they sell - this is not an attack at other d20 companies!)

 

[Piratecat]

They aren't "loss leaders"--they pay for themselves. Many times over. They just don't bring down the amount of revenue WotC was looking for. The product simply didn't pull in the millions of dollars that, at that time, Hasbro and WotC expected from their efforts. I call that greed.

I call it building a sustaining business, personally. WotC has been handling the things that they (arguably) handle best -- sourcebooks -- and have allowed 3rd party publishers to produce things that they didn't want to get involved in. It's a great solution that benefits both groups. Out of curiosity, Coreyartus, do you have access to WotC's financial statements? If not, I'm curious how you know that all the modules paid for themselves many times over. I'm sure the first couple must have, but I'm willing to bet that the sales on the latter modules were relatively weak.

Modules nowadays really don't make much money at all, and usually lose money unless you have fantastic distribution. If a 3rd party module published today sells more than a few thousand copies, it's a solid gold winner. Sales are down dramatically since a few years ago.

And too many companies have demonstrated that the small profit margin is just fine for them.

Heh - ask the people in those companies if they're making enough money, and you might get a different answer.

Dungeon Magazine: By far the best value a DM could hope for. Which is too bad, because with WotC publishing adventures, young DMs will glom onto their products and push Dungeon aside. It's bound to suffer as a result.

You know, I'm not so sure about that. I don't think people only buy modules that they know they're going to use; they buy them to steal ideas out of. If the new WotC modules introduce cool adventures to DMs who never used to buy adventures, I can easily see them turning around and getting a Dungeon subscription. I know that's how it worked with me. We'll have to see.

Campaign-specific Adventures: It must be fairly obvious by now that "Uber-ron" is now the penultimate setting for WotC. It's their baby, their cash-cow, their answer to everything everyone wanted.

Hey, I know you're bitter, but please don't refer to Eberron by a derogatory nickname. Similarly, we ask that people not refer to 3etards, Wurst Edition, and any number of other insults. Thanks.

To be a pedant for a second -- If you go by the model developed by the Boston Consulting Group, Eberron is technically WotC's rising star, the hot new product that brings in sales. A cash cow is defined as a product that doesn't have spectacular sales but which consistently makes a profit. A good example of this would be the Players Handbook, a product that will continue to sell at a fairly consistent level without additional changes.

I hear what you're saying, though. Most of WotC's focus is on Eberron. Although I don't use it, I think that's fine; any product that brings them cash and new players is okay with me. I'm of the opinion that the healthier financially WotC is, the better off D&D and the RPG industry as a whole are, and I don't begrudge them success.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

OK, I just scanned many of these posts, so please forgive me if I am restating things.

My feeling on this is that WotC is going to focus almost exclusively on adventures for their campaign settings. There are other companies out there who write generic D&D adventures, but nobody else is licensed to write a Forgotten Realms or Eberron adventure. I believe their hope is that be writing adventures specific to these settings they will be seen as providing more setting support which they then hope will translate into increased sales of the supplement books for these settings - which tend to be better for revenue.

I'll be honest, I've stopped buying FR books and never even looked at Eberron. Why? Because if I have to do all this work creating my own adventures or adjusting generics to fit the setting, I might as well just take it a little further and make my own setting. If WotC were to reduce my workload by providing decent campaign-specific adventures, I'd be more likely to reinvest in the settings themselves.

 

[MerricB]

Most of WotC's focus is on Eberron.

I'm not even sure if "most" is accurate - more than any other individual setting, yes, but there's a bunch of non-Eberron books coming out over the next few months, and I think they outnumber the Eberron books by a fair margin.

(Not counting the miniatures...)

Cheers!

 

[Coreyartus]

Out of curiosity, Coreyartus, do you have access to WotC's financial statements? If not, I'm curious how you know that all the modules paid for themselves many times over. I'm sure the first couple must have, but I'm willing to bet that the sales on the latter modules were relatively weak.

That's a given, but lower print runs as the series went on would have meant lower outright cost. I don't have access to WotC's financial statements (meow), but you don't need them to ask a publisher to make printing estimates--simply show him the mod and ask "how much would this cost to make?" Piece it together--let's say a mod takes $30,000 to make--that's including printing for a run of 5,000 (with their paper choices, black and white, and gloss color cover), distribution costs, and a stipend for the creative staff. You know WotC made more money than that on all of those mods. It's not a lot, but it's enough to pay for itself, and the early ones made enough to pay for themselves many times over. The size of WotC's print runs are bigger than a couple thousand. But the creative costs remain consistent regardless, and the printing costs actually get cheaper with larger runs.

Heh - ask the people in those companies if they're making enough money, and you might get a different answer.

Yeah, but their expectations aren't as astronomical either. Smaller scale companies define "windfall" by different terms than WotC. Does it pay for itself and cover the costs to produce it? That's often enough to warrant the creation of a product. Profit is great, but company survivability is sometimes just fine. Everyone brings down a paycheck, and earned it doing what they love, and the consumers got what they wanted. You might earn enough to start on the costs of the next project. I personally define that as success.

Hey, I know you're bitter, but please don't refer to Eberron by a derogatory nickname. Similarly, we ask that people not refer to 3etards, Wurst Edition, and any number of other insults. Thanks.

Sorry, I was just stretching things to make a point. I can indeed play nice, and even with the adults sometimes. I will exercise self-control and refrain from insults (implied and otherwise) in the future.

To be a pedant for a second -- If you go by the model developed by the Boston Consulting Group, Eberron is technically WotC's rising star, the hot new product that brings in sales. A cash cow is defined as a product that doesn't have spectacular sales but which consistently makes a profit. A good example of this would be the Players Handbook, a product that will continue to sell at a fairly consistent level without additional changes.

Touché! But I predict that the Eberron Campaign Setting will slip nicely into that catagory soon, especially if WotC makes the decision to place most of their attention in that direction, establishing it as a pseudo-necessity in order to make sense of future product.

I hear what you're saying, though. Most of WotC's focus is on Eberron. Although I don't use it, I think that's fine; any product that brings them cash and new players is okay with me. I'm of the opinion that the healthier financially WotC is, the better off D&D and the RPG industry as a whole are, and I don't begrudge them success.

I don't bergrudge them success either. I just think it's curious to so adamantly "poo-poo" modules and then turn around and start producing them. It doesn't inspire me with great faith in them. It strikes me as a move that demonstrates the company is either (and I am trying to be as non-insulting as I can be here) somewhat lacking in the "visionary" department, or taking an uncomfortably aggressive turn. Like I said, WotC doesn't do anything without there being some return on their investment. (The OGL was, perhaps, the biggest outside-the-box loss-leader risk they took. Do they need to do more?)

Regardless of their motivations for changing their policy, however, the impact on smaller d20 publishers will be profound. That, combined with the economic downturn in the industry and the vast number of extant companies today, I predict we will see a number of company closures. Some might say that's a good thing considering the high number of them, but I'm gonna wait to see who it takes out before I can say WotC's take on mods has improved the quality of my overall gaming experience, especially at the cost of products from other companies that have been a lot of fun.

2cp.

Coreyartus

 

[Piratecat]

I certainly can't argue with your last sentence. Nicely put.

 

[BryonD]

Hey, I know you're bitter, but please don't refer to Eberron by a derogatory nickname. Similarly, we ask that people not refer to 3etards, Wurst Edition, and any number of other insults. Thanks.

May I humbly request the addition of Pokemount to this list of derogatory terms?

I hear what you're saying, though. Most of WotC's focus is on Eberron. Although I don't use it, I think that's fine; any product that brings them cash and new players is okay with me. I'm of the opinion that the healthier financially WotC is, the better off D&D and the RPG industry as a whole are, and I don't begrudge them success.

I agree completely.

I don't see myself buying any further Eberron products. But if lots of other people doing so is the way to keep D&D financially strong, then Go Eberron Go!!

 

[Mr. Kaze]

Show this to WotC Marketing...

I've been DMing for a few years, but have no particular love for any campaign setting. I don't care about their geographies, politics or histories if they don't mesh with the overall campaign we're going through. Which generally they don't because adventures rarely happen anywhere particularly important. Thus, things like the Players Guide to Faerun is lost on me -- it's just a hash of new races, prestige classes, and spells that I don't have time to absorb. I'm married, I'm employed, I'm a homeowner... and D&D is just a hobby.

But because I don't have time to absorb the plethora of new whatnot worth of overhead for said hobby, I prefer taking modules or campaign-sized pre-printed books with a mildly interesting plotline, using their maps (love Photoshop) and many of their encounters (love EL ratings) and twist the foundational event and style of that module into my campaign.

Now how are you going to sell me on an optional book that I otherwise don't want in my campaign? Demonstrate how dang cool it is in an adventure. Cross reference. Needing Monsters of Faerun for City of the Spider Queen is a good start. Magic of Faerun is likewise, but nothing from that book is especially highlighted for "really dang coolness". The hook to Song and Silence is kind of nifty, but isn't supported by the size of the adventure -- and S&S was underwhelming. But beyond all of that -- at least in the 3.0 release -- City of the Spider Queen absolutely demonstrated the niftiness of several FRCS prestige classes and, as such, effectively required that at least the DM have the ~$40 FRCS book (though sadly I didn't see a lot in the way of ties to the history/geography of the Realms which is the hardest part for me to homebrew on the fly...)

Compare that to Return to Elemental Evil which had only its own bonus material to work with. Return to Elemental Evil had no cross-merchandising for DMs to care about. Any bonus material players brought in was something that the NPCs didn't have available to them -- so it's easy for the DM to say "nope, doesn't fit in this story" and thus save a whole lot of money on splatbooks and geography books and the like.

I'm hoping that WotC is really making the hook-and-reference the case with the Eberron mods -- they can sell Eberron Campaign Setting books (dang expensive!) and maybe some Expanded Psionics Handbooks that lots of DMs would otherwise not use if it weren't canonized in the campaign setting. [Disclaimer: I don't play Eberron yet, but I think it's a pretty nifty goal to say "all of the rules are included in a sensible fashion", which is what I heard they were going for...] Eberron adventures need to highlight Eberron history, geography and culture. (So do Forgotten Realms adventures and the like, but I'm going off on Eberron at the moment... )

Adventures are the gateway drug that introduces DMs to powerful NPC villians that use all of the optional rules, races, spells and feats and make their lairs in the secret houses of true power that only huge knowledge checks against a wide variety of campaign-setting historical and political figures can deduce. The most compelling and depth-intensive of adventures can have $0 margin and still make a killing for the publisher... but only if they're bait for the other products that the publisher has to offer.

::Kaze