So when should a publisher ditch d20 and develop their own system?

[JoeGKushner]

Sure feats are part of the OGL, but that is hardly a selling point for the game. Had they gone D20 or Conan-like OGL, one of my regulars or I would have DM'd this at the store and I know folks would have purchased copies of the game as well. I count myself lucky to have sold the one copy I got in at 30% off.

Ditto.

The old Atlantis book was AD&D 1st edish. I still use it and the various other books by the old Bard's Company (compleate adventurer, alchemists, spellcaster.)

Their Talislanta monsters book was pretty bad though in terms of rules so perhaps they saved me some money.

 

[BryonD]

But not a sufficient component.

Very very true.

 

[rgard]

Right.

And your point is....... ?

Agreed, 'Audace, toujour audace' (pardon my butchered French) doesn't always get the job done.

 

[rgard]

Ditto.

The old Atlantis book was AD&D 1st edish. I still use it and the various other books by the old Bard's Company (compleate adventurer, alchemists, spellcaster.)

Their Talislanta monsters book was pretty bad though in terms of rules so perhaps they saved me some money.

We mined those same books back in 1e. Oh no, feeling nostalgic!

 

[NanocTheCivilized]

OK, first post here (after several years of lurking).

I checked out the sales ranking on Amazon.com for several SF games, plus the D&D PH as a benchmark, and the Conan RPG as a popular non-SF licensed game for comparison. Here are the results, ranked from most popular to least ...

D&D Players Handbook 4,448
Serenity RPG 25,186
d20 Modern 37,656
d20 future 49,679
Savage Worlds 68,630
Babylon 5 RPG 2e 76,413
Conan RPG 123,881
Gurps Basic Set: Characters 132,625
World of Darkness 146,049
Star Wars RPG 167,090
Star Trek Roleplaying Game: Player's Guide 238,507
Gurps Space 309,234
Gurps Traveller Interstellar Wars 398,486
Hero System 722,546

So Serenity is currently outselling every other SF game I could think of, including three other licensed games (Babylon 5, Star Wars, and Star Trek) which one might expect to sell to fans who are not normally gamers.

From other posts in this thread it seems Serenity is not selling well in games stores, which suggests that the most of people buying it are not the sort of folks who frequent such stores.

Addressing the OP's question ...

Is it a good move for a publisher to ditch d20 and develop their own system? And if so, when?

The answer seems to be "yes - when that publisher wants to sell to a fan base which is largely outside the established RPG community." In other words, if they hope to grow the market and attract customers who (perhaps) have hitherto been put off by the complexity of what we think of as the mainstream.

Back to lurking
Nanoc

(edited to put World of Darkness in the correct place)

 

[RyanD]

Serenity RPG 25,186

I would speculate that this translates into less than 1 copy sold per week.

Ryan

 

[Turjan]

I would speculate that this translates into less than 1 copy sold per week.

Ryan

I cannot really believe that. The numbers fluctuate too much to suggest that. Now, the rank is #35,420. When I wrote my post, it was at roughly #19,000.

 

[BryonD]

I cannot really believe that. The numbers fluctuate too much to suggest that. Now, the rank is #35,420. When I wrote my post, it was at roughly #19,000.

I don't have any idea how to relate a rank to a rate.
But I'd readily wager that the rate of movement of the rank has a lot more to do with other products sales than the specific product's. For example, if 16,000 other products sold 1 unit each since it was at #19,000 it could drop to #35,000 by simply not selling any in that time frame. It may not be quite that simple. But the basic idea works.

 

[Turjan]

I don't have any idea how to relate a rank to a rate.
But I'd readily wager that the rate of movement of the rank has a lot more to do with other products sales than the specific product's. For example, if 16,000 other products sold 1 unit each since it was at #19,000 it could drop to #35,000 by simply not selling any in that time frame. It may not be quite that simple. But the basic idea works.

I understand that. However, we have a change by 10,000 in, let's say, 3 hours. At this rate, the book wouldn't stay at #25,000 for long, if it just sold once per week. If this were true, D&D books would also sell extremely poorly at amazon.

 

[Mark CMG]

OK, first post here (after several years of lurking).

Wecome to the dark side!