New adventures from Wizards - policy reversal!!!

[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

 

[Vocenoctum]

Mods Don't Make Money: Hoowee. WotC didn't make mods for so long because they didn't make enough money. There's a big difference. One bucket, many buckets, who cares? You're still catching the same amount of rain. And that wasn't enough of a profit margin for WotC. 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.

Actually, I think it's not so much a blanket "it's not making enough money" as "it's not a good enough return for the investment."
Lets say it takes them $15K to make a module, and 30K to make a sourcebook. They make two adventures, which double their money, so they've got 30K in profits. Meanwhile, that sourcebook would net them quadruple profit with one book, or 90K in profit.

If the company had infinite resources, then it wouldn't matter. As long as they're limited to a budget though, they have to strive to make the most on that budget as they can.

 

[dwilgar]

It must be fairly obvious by now that "Uber-ron" is now the penultimate setting for WotC.

Not to be too much of a twit, but just how do you know that WoTC is only going to release one setting after Eberron?

{Penultimate must be one of the most misused words on the internet}

Dwilgar

 

[Gorilla726]

Do we have any idea when the new adventures might be starting to come out?

 

[Squire James]

Not to be too much of a twit, but just how do you know that WoTC is only going to release one setting after Eberron?

{Penultimate must be one of the most misused words on the internet}

Dwilgar

Agreed.

Ultimate: last or latest (though it's been mis-used so much that "best" has become another definition of the word).

Penultimate: second from last.

 

[Staffan]

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.

The downside to this is that most people won't look at an adventure and say "This looks like a cool adventure. Oh, but it also requires Monsters of Faerûn, which I don't have... I'll better buy that too." They'll say, "This looks like a cool adventure. Oh, but it also requires Monsters of Faerûn, which I don't have... too bad. **puts adventure back on shelf**"

Eberron adventures need to highlight Eberron history, geography and culture.

There I agree. If you are going to make adventures for specific settings, and I think those adventures are more rewarding from the consumer's standpoint (whether they're more rewarding from a commercial point of view is a different question), you should make them use the setting. An Eberron adventure that's just about going into a goblin stronghold and making some goblin chops is a waste of a good Eberron logo. An Eberron adventure should use the stuff that makes Eberron unique - dragonmarks/houses, the Last War, the Lightning Train (I *so* want to make a "Murder on the Oriens Express" thing some time), political intrigue, Xen'drik, the Inspired, abberations, "blue-collar" magic, somewhat civilized goblinoids, warforged, the druidic sects, and so on. I think Shadows of the Last War is a pretty good effort in that direction, at least for a 32-pager.

The best adventure I've seen in this regard was the 2nd ed adventure Dragon's Crown for the Dark Sun setting. This was one adventure that really used the stuff the setting had to offer: the plot centered on psionic stuff, and in the course of the adventure you would travel both across the Silt Sea and the Ringing Mountains, to different city-states, and into ancient ruins, encountering island giants, feral man-eating halflings, thri-kreen driven mad by the adventure's centerpiece, a sorcerer-king, and ghosts from the wars between preservers and defilers. You'd also fight in a gladiatorial arena. In addition, a significant part of the adventure was dedicated to side events that could be popped in at various places in the adventure, but that weren't directly related, but showed off various cool things. Something like that is what I'd love to see for Eberron, only with Eberronian stuff instead of Athasian.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The downside to this is that most people won't look at an adventure and say "This looks like a cool adventure. Oh, but it also requires Monsters of Faerûn, which I don't have... I'll better buy that too." They'll say, "This looks like a cool adventure. Oh, but it also requires Monsters of Faerûn, which I don't have... too bad. **puts adventure back on shelf**"

I think the best idea to handle this kind of "commercial" by including all the neccessary stats of the creatures/classes/spells they used, but note where you can find more of it.
It`s something I really liked at Malhavoc`s "Legacy of the Dragons". It is meant as a Arcana Unearthed/Diamond Throne supplement, but all NPCs and monsters that refer to AU-specific items, classes or spells are described in the book. It´s not enough to recreate, say, the witch class from the witch-class using NPC, but it`s enough to use him without having to buy the AU Player´s Handbook.
I like this idea, and I think it`s a really "fair" in regards to the costumer.
(Though I myself, did already own the AU PHB and the Diamond Throne Campaign Setting )