Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 1447216" data-attributes="member: 2238">Actually, Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games has stated that they DO make money off of thier modules (in fact sourcebooks from NG are fairly rare).  The Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games are one of the top sellers at my FLGS.  They keep having to reorder them.  As are the modules adapted from the fighting fantasy series.  Why are these sucessful and the others not?  The answer is so simple that many companies run right over it.  People want stuff they can fit into any campaign.  The things that you listed in Die Kluge's previous post are pretty much what makes a good module.  No plot, or ecology.  Thats for the DM to figure out.  What most DMs want in a module is not the story.  They already have the story.  They just need a place and some monsters to give thier story some detail and maybe a few side plots.  Over the years the more plot and logic was added to modules the more unpopular they got.  The plots to Grey Citadel, Larin Karr, Crucible, Abysthor, and Rappan Athuk (if it even had one) can be completely ignored and the modules will still run fine if a DM is using them for locations that he puts other plots around.  Nope, plot and ecology are the PROBLEMS.   Take any 3e module that did not sell, and you will find that it 1. made sense ecologically so much to the point that there was nothing really interesting going on, 2. Was so tied to a plot that the module was useless if you did not use the plot provided.  NG and gooman have modules that:Allow for replotting.Canibalisation.Have interesting things in them.Both Goodman and NG modules sell.  This is from my FLGS owner, the owners of those companies, and my own experience from talking to other gamers.  The reasons other companies cant sell modules is because they don't understand how to make them.  TSR/Wizards (except for a few rare ones like Sunless, Fury, Haunted Halls, and Shattered Circle) forgot how.  If you stop trying to tell a story and make modules like they did before 1984 they will sell.Aaron.</blockquote>

Verification