Stuff I want (From you 3pp People)

[Rechan]

In my experience, DMs are very, very leery of 3pp stuff for players. Because unless they personally own it and greatly like it, they think it's broken by default. I never got to use any 3pp stuff as a player in the 3e era.

 

[Rechan]

Firelance, I personally don't like a product that is 5 totally unrelated things.

Usually because I may want 1 out of the 5. So either that 1 better be real good, or it's not worth all the stuff I won't use. It'd be better if they were five products, each with 5 of the same category of things.

Unless you really do want people to grab it because it only has one thing they like, and this way you can appeal to more people.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Yes, and yes.

Unfortunately, what I'm currently working on is Yet Another Suite of Player Options, not because I think it will sell well, but because it is what I want to do.

Boneheaded business decisions like this are why I'm not quitting my day job.

But, just to conduct some informal market research (and to help me pick my next project), how many of you would be interested in a short pdf (say about 5 pages of actual content, not including the cover, legal stuff, etc.) with a few modular elements, e.g. a magic item that WotC can't publish, one new type of fantastic terrain, a skill-based challenge (not necessarily a by-the-book skill challenge), a combat encounter with an objective other than "kill them all" and tied together into a delve-like format?

As noted above I too would probably be more interested in a short string of encounters, enough material to last a session. It would be great to run in my not-so-important Tuesday sessions.

The great thing about such a short string of encounters is that the prep-time would be about the time it would take to read the material and entering some encounters into excel.

If you manage to get some out-of-the-ordinary encounters it would be great. I have managed to create one such myself, noted in the encounter-thread. (A White Dragon's breath weapon awakening undead).

If they were good enough I would probably buy one or two a month for about 3$ each. Maybe not a lot, but it shouldn't be more than maybe 10 pages either. The selling point would be interesting encounters.

The problem with this is that you are competing against modules like WotBS, but I currently have two games running, and for one of them the above idea would be ideal.

 

[jmucchiello]

Yes, and yes.

Unfortunately, what I'm currently working on is Yet Another Suite of Player Options, not because I think it will sell well, but because it is what I want to do.

Boneheaded business decisions like this are why I'm not quitting my day job.

I'd like to thank you for pointing out that I'm not the only one.

3pps do not make serious money doing 3pp material. So the only reason to do it is because you WANT to. If people wanted to make little plug-n-play encounters, minor NPCs no one will remember, or terrains for random encounters, there would be products of these types. The very fact that there aren't shows 3pps don't find making such things interesting.

As for general fluff, the GSL makes it possible for WotC to steal your fluff. So any fluff combined with the GSL will only be of the sort that the producer thinks isn't worth stealing. "Hey, buy this book full of fluff that isn't worth stealing" is not a good marketing plan.

 

[buddhafrog]

Well personally I would rather see them broken out into different books...

Echoing what many have said - highly unlikely I'd buy another book that had 5 different things in it. I'd much rather have books/pdf's that include multiple variations of the same thing. I would buy a book/pdf that I could go to for my NPC's, for my fantastic terrains, for my non-dungeon encounters, etc.

 

[FireLance]

Thanks for the inputs so far, guys. If I can come up with enough good ideas, I might do up a more specialized pdf. Otherwise, I think it might be better to focus on short, delve-style encounters which may include some of these individual elements (although they would not be the selling point), at least for a start.

 

[Mark]

I know a lot of former 3PPs are no longer 3PP, per se, but rather just Publishers since the original "first party" no longer supports the game system most 3PPs formerly were "third party" to. With the advent of the GSL and the lessening of usefulness 4E 3PP material can have due to the DDI restrictiveness, how many 4E 3PPs still even bother to try and carve a piece off that shrinking pie? Setting aside "generic products" (and the publishers who trade in them exclusively), are there even a dozen 4E 3PPs who put out anything? Are there many that put out more than a couple of products a quarter? A year? On a related note, how up to date is the 4E SRD being kept? Do 4E 3PPs have access to the latest and greatest (and all) of the current mechanics of the game such that their products would even be relatively viable as the 4E era marches on?

 

[jdcash]

I think the notion that products for DMs do not appeal to players is not accurate. I have never been a DM but I have bought a ton of stuff that would be considered aimed at DMs. DMGs, MMs, Adventures, generic setting stuff, etc. I enjoy it. It gives me ideas for character backgrounds and helps me get out of my real world, logical mentality and start the impossible and imaginative working again. It also helps feed the meta-gamer inside of me, which is good and bad I guess. Anyway, I do not think that I am the only player that spends money on DM stuff.

 

[TarionzCousin]

As for general fluff, the GSL makes it possible for WotC to steal your fluff. So any fluff combined with the GSL will only be of the sort that the producer thinks isn't worth stealing. "Hey, buy this book full of fluff that isn't worth stealing" is not a good marketing plan.

What if it's a book full of fluff without any GSL in it?

Would people in this thread want that?

 

[Teflon Billy]

In my experience, DMs are very, very leery of 3pp stuff for players. Because unless they personally own it and greatly like it, they think it's broken by default. I never got to use any 3pp stuff as a player in the 3e era.

Agreed. With the exception of a very few products (Ben Durbin's stuff pop's to mind) most 3pp "players options" books in 3e were little more than list of power-ups.

I don't know how many of your recall the latter part of 3E's time, but a large chunk of DM's just flat out refused to allow 3pp player options in their games. Like Rechan says above, they were assumed to be broken...and that belief didn't come out of a vacuum.