Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pramas" data-source="post: 1242474" data-attributes="member: 995">I'm afraid none of this stuff is a science. There's not one formula you can follow that means success. Yes, books that appeal to players are good. That's why we do the Master Class series and the Races of Renown series ("Want a character like Richard the Lionhearted? Get the Noble's Handbook Want a character like Legolas? Get Bow & Blade?"). But many players are not active purchasers. Many don't even own the core books, they use a friend's. If they won't buy a Player's Handbook, it's unlikely they're going to buy the Shaman's Handbook. While the number of Gamemaster's is smaller, they also tend to be the folks who are most "bought in" to the game and who are most likely to spend more money on it. So books pitched at them, especially time-savers, can do very well. So for instance, Skull & Bones sold about one third better than the Noble's Handbook on release, even though the former book was for GMs and the latter for players. As for adventures, I think the deeper reason they don't sell as well as things like campaign settings is that they are basically an all-or-nothing gambit. Even if you never run a Testament campaign, there are tons of things you can mine out of that book for your campaign: a mass combat system, feats, classes, spells, monsters, etc. If you don't use an adventure, it just goes on your shelf. And it isn't even as good reading as a general sourcebook. Reading room descriptions and what will happen to the party if they do such and such is not as engaging as reading about the history of a Naranjan (the Mindshadows setting) or details of the drow pantheon from Plot & Poison.</blockquote>

Verification