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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5676158" data-attributes="member: 54877">The dichotomy of fluff and crunch is the wrong one for a DDI/print split. Both delivery methods should have plenty of fluff and crunch. If you want a split that makes sense, consider something like this: 1. Ignore any marketing/sales effort that is too focused on print-only or electronic-only media. Example, trying to make a book that sales massively upfront due to a huge marketing splash, and thus letting that aspect cause content to be included that should not be there. 2. Accept that the print/electronic divide is naturally one that supports two very different customer types: A.) Early adopters, the infamous "completists," and so on. B.) Those that want some quality stuff that they can sit down and browse. 3. Accept that a game system with lots of fiddly bits will never be quite right in every detail, and that the big boss ain't gonna ever give ya enough budget to playtest it well enough before it gets released in the wild. 4. Accordingly, everything you do is released electronically first. At least a six month lead time, but often more than that. This is all subscriber based, but delivery is focused on making people want to subscribe. This is where the money is for this medium. If your anti-piracy option has any appreciable negative effect on making people want to subscribe, you can't afford it. Really, you cannot afford it. Remember, your customers here are people driven to be early adopters (with the game, if nothing else) and those that gotta have it all. 5. The people who naturally gravitate towards the electronic side will make pretty fair early playtesters. That is, they'll both pick up on some narrow institutional blindness that may have crept into the mix, and they'll also nit pick details to death. There is no dead horse that they can't make bounce a few times. What they often lack is a bigger picture. And given the state of what they are given, one can hardly blame them. 6. Then you take the really good eletronic stuff. It has been used. It has survived the critics of #5. If it cannot run that gauntlet, you keep it online (perhaps with errrata or comments or whatever), but it doesn't make The Print Cut. Even if the best game developer on staff has a pet piece that everyone loves, if the critics have hit it hard, you can't risk it. The good stuff gets proposed and packaged into a coherent book, preferably with a theme. You don't dribble in an extra page of feats to round out the folio. If you have 142 pages of good stuff, it is going to be a 128 page book. If you have 126 pages of good stuff, it is going to be a 96 page book. Editing out even some of the good stuff is the best way on the planet to ensure that what makes it is highly likely to actually be good. 7. Now you let the marketing/sales team go to town with this planned print product. While they are ramping up, you have a very focused playtest with drafts of this product, from people actually using it, and you listen to them. If they don't give you good feedback, you get some new playtesters. You don't need many, but you do need some dedication. You might have to pay them a bit, because what they are doing is work. What they are going to do is turn your 96 or 128 pages of good stuff into a great book.  8. Having produced this great book, with some painstaking effort, you know that most of the sales will be on launch. However, you can expect a somewhat "longer tail" than normal--because it is a really great book. And your electronic stuff is reminding people about this book all the time. Some people that never touch the electronic side will hear about it and still want it.  Experiment hard electronically. Craft painstakingly with print. Sustain this overtime and watch reputation and profits rachet a little with each hardwon milestone.</blockquote>

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