Publishing Modules

[EOL]

As far as I know, DireKobold.com is still on track to begin offering adventures on time, as stated. I've spoken with Ross recently and all seems to be on target - he's very excited about it all, suren!

Yes we are still very much on track to start publishing our first adventure on December 9th.

Just a few teasers (I'll start a new PR thread about this on Monday):

The first adventure will be called "When Dire Kobolds Attack" sort of a humorous sample adventure that will always be freely available to give people a taste of the site.

Also in January we'll be publishing the first adventure in Dire Kobold's own adventure path series (I know Dungeon announced first, but you'll see ours first ) Wil Upchurch, late of FFG, will be doing the writing. We'll be releasing a new one each month.

Make sure to check us out! Especially on December 9th!

 

[JohnNephew]

Modules don't have to be the standard adventure. I'd like to see a book of encounters.

This is what we designed EN ROUTE to be; essentially, a collection of well-developed encounters and events. It's been well received (and should be out of print pretty soon; there aren't many left in the warehouse). Sometime next year we'll be coming out with EN ROUTE II: BY LAND OR BY SEA.

 

[Brudewollen]

Thank you for all the fine responses and points of view. I hope people continue to add to this conversation going forward.

One goal of the adventure we are writing is to try and do something that is different, that is not like anything, or at least much else that has gone before. One interesting balancing act we are hoping to work out is how to make it an (at least somewhat) structured adventure and story, while still maintaining a fairly loose, heavy role-play oriented setting. It's an element I'm not yet completely satisfied with but we have ideas.

Such a heavy roleplay oriented enviornment of course necessitates deeper NPC character development. We come from a background in acting and film/screenwriting, so this sort of thing is right up our alley, we hope. Even several side NPCs will have interesting personalities of their own and we think we have a way to convey this succinctly so the DM won't be overburdened with details. We want the enviornment to breathe and we want to help the DM bring this out in the game.

Our plan is to do a short series of adventures in the 44-48 page range, probalby a trilogy, though possibly in four parts. Each adventure will be able to stand on its own, however, but can also be integrated as one long mega-adventure. Also, they will be "generic" enough to plop down into most D&D worlds, published, homebrew or otherwise.

There may be some additional optional rules included with each adventure, including some expansion of social-based skills, which we hope can be well used well in such a heavy role play enviornment. There will be new monsters, "artifacts" and other goodies that we hope people will like.

The idea of including battle maps and encounter pieces is not a bad one, though I don't know if its necessary to sell the product - especially one that is more about roleplay, not combat. Also, it seems maybe a bit gimmicky - though a useful gimmick.

We would be interested in some hard numbers on sales, if such statistics are available.

 

[JohnNephew]

There is no central repository for sales statistics. There are many variations from publisher to publisher, depending for example on how many distributors carry your line, whether you are represented in the book trade, and so on. And, at the end of the day, adventures perform most poorly, as a general rule.

Having said that, the "whisper number" heard on the street is that for a lot of small D20 publishers it's now hard to sell more than 1000 copies of an adventure. (Even a few months ago, this figure would have been a lot higher.) With the number of new titles still coming on the market, this number is only likely to be driven lower.

To be honest, at 1000 copies, money is probably not being made, unless the retail price is high. Still, most publishers can hide from this fact by not accounting for all the expenses (e.g., if most of the labor involved in creating the book is "volunteer," or done by stakeholders who in theory would be getting a cut of profits...of which there are little or none), or by just not paying all the bills (leaving freelancers unpaid, etc.). My bet is that the market will drive the number down even lower, beyond the point where manufacturers don't even recover the cost of printing. Even then, there will be some willing to take a chance on publishing their own product, hoping or believing that it will catch fire and turn profitable (or accepting that publishing at a loss is a hobby activity in itself). At the risk of sounding Malthusian, we probably won't see a real bottom to the market until the typical newbie adventure publisher is only shipping 400 or fewer units in the first month of release.

Well before that point, publishers who have non-D20 games will find it more profitable to publish support for them instead of D20. Already we've seen a lot of the mid-sized publishers largely abandon adventures. Even with experience and quality on your side, it's just hard to get any sales traction fighting over the inherently limited market for adventures.

 

[Sir Edgar]

I'm sure some of the more widely distributed best sellers can push out 10,000 copies if they were lucky. But I agree that many are selling below 1,000 copies. I would guess that you have to break 2,000-3,000 copies at least to break even for a mid-sized d20 company. Most people are confused about d20's relationship to D&D and it doesn't help when many retailers display WoTC adventures face forward while the d20 ones are stacked sideways. A mediocre WoTC adventure will outsell a good d20 one by x10, I imagine. I'm just wondering if it's even possible for a new d20 company (that's not Malhavoc or Necromancer) to sell 10,000+ copies on a first run now.

 

[Pramas]

Already we've seen a lot of the mid-sized publishers largely abandon adventures. Even with experience and quality on your side, it's just hard to get any sales traction fighting over the inherently limited market for adventures.

We basically took 2002 off, as far as doing adventures went. However, we've had enough demand for more Freeport adventures that we've got some in the works. We're also doing a Mutants & Masterminds adventure in March. We'll see how those go.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

We basically took 2002 off, as far as doing adventures went. However, we've had enough demand for more Freeport adventures that we've got some in the works. We're also doing a Mutants & Masterminds adventure in March. We'll see how those go.

When you've got a new game (such as Mutants & Masterminds), it would be silly to not have GM support in the form of pre-written adventures. While it's easy for a D&D DM to pick up adventures in the form of Dungeon magazine or other such, it's not that easy for non D&D games.

My suspicion is that one reason for the longevity of Call of Cthulhu is the existence of a wide variety of well written, pre-published adventures. Few other non-TSR/non-WoTC games have had the same support. (I can only think of DC Heroes off the top of my head)

Godlike, for instance, was well-hyped at the start, but the buzz has now faded. Without pre-published adventures to make a GM's job easy, I just don't see how games like that would expect to thrive.

 

[JohnNephew]

I'm sure some of the more widely distributed best sellers can push out 10,000 copies if they were lucky. But I agree that many are selling below 1,000 copies. I would guess that you have to break 2,000-3,000 copies at least to break even for a mid-sized d20 company. Most people are confused about d20's relationship to D&D and it doesn't help when many retailers display WoTC adventures face forward while the d20 ones are stacked sideways. A mediocre WoTC adventure will outsell a good d20 one by x10, I imagine. I'm just wondering if it's even possible for a new d20 company (that's not Malhavoc or Necromancer) to sell 10,000+ copies on a first run now.

Uh...OK. Maybe you have better information sources than I do.

 

[2WS-Steve]

One trend we've started seeing is having a smaller publisher produce scenarios for a bigger publisher's setting. MEG/THG with Dragonstar and now Paradigm with Spycraft/Rokugan. This strikes me as a good thing for everyone from the big publisher to the consumer since the big publisher gets support out there for their setting, the smaller publisher gets a product with reasonable sales, and the gamer finally gets some module support for their home games. WotC ought to consider doing this for its settings since it seems like we're not seeing many Forgotten Realms adventures lately and Urban Arcana is going to need more than one token module to really take off.

 

[Darrin Drader]

WotC ought to consider doing this for its settings since it seems like we're not seeing many Forgotten Realms adventures lately and Urban Arcana is going to need more than one token module to really take off.

I think its safe to assume that Dungeon magazine is the official outlet for future Forgotten Realms adventures. This is actually a pretty awesome value to the customer since many of these adventures have page counts that rival 32 page modules from some publishers, and the magazine runs under $10 per issue. It's still one of the best values in the RPG industry.