The D&D Business Model

[Rothe]

I would seek to reduce cost, customize product and expand product ease of use.
Reduce cost by offering all but the basic core rule books as primarily pdf products. Print products are only on-demand and come at a margin sufficient to make a profit on each unit.
Offer customized products, the post above about wanting certain monsters in one book is a great example. You can have a build your own book page, which could work well for spells and monsters, classes etc. You select what you want, in the order you want; software generates a table of contents, paginates and generates an index. You get it as a pdf or for extra as hard copy. You pay for the content you add. Now 100% of the book you buy is what you want in the way you want it.

Ease of use is I think a key hinderance to RPGs: getting people I the same palce at the same time. Support a line of products that make it easy for people to game over their computers, increasing the number of people who can paly the game. Maps, software, support etc. This part of the company can benefit from a relationship with counsole games.

 

[Wraith101]

I would seek to reduce cost, customize product and expand product ease of use.
Reduce cost by offering all but the basic core rule books as primarily pdf products. Print products are only on-demand and come at a margin sufficient to make a profit on each unit.
Offer customized products, the post above about wanting certain monsters in one book is a great example. You can have a build your own book page, which could work well for spells and monsters, classes etc. You select what you want, in the order you want; software generates a table of contents, paginates and generates an index. You get it as a pdf or for extra as hard copy. You pay for the content you add. Now 100% of the book you buy is what you want in the way you want it.

Ease of use is I think a key hinderance to RPGs: getting people I the same palce at the same time. Support a line of products that make it easy for people to game over their computers, increasing the number of people who can paly the game. Maps, software, support etc. This part of the company can benefit from a relationship with counsole games.

The problem with this is exposure. If most books are pdf only, or even POD then we loose the FLGS aspect. The player base will grow slowwer because It is harder for the average person to get product.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

This is just pure speculation but wouldnt it seem that WOTC releases products that really only the DM can use and most players will never look through, or buy?
Most groups are what 3-6 players including the DM? The Dm would pick up most of the books he finds he will need and the players either barrow them or never see them. As for player products most groups only have 1 or 2 copies. My group has for example 2 copies of most of the complete books. The other players have no reason to buy the others as they can use a friends copy.
So it would seem that WOTC could stop producing books that are more DM centric, and just because the book has alot of feats, or classes in it does not make it automatically player driven. I for one would consider the FR books to be DM specific with some player stuff thrown in.
With groups only buying a few copies of a book at a time or copying out the pages they need, causes the product to be driven down in sales. Maybe they need to estimate how many cpoies a book could possibly sell and do a lower run on them until deman arises again.
They also need to reduce costs of the book. 34 for the new MM is not worth the price.
A 160 page book should be no more than 25 bucks and im being generous with that. How many people wont buy a book based on price? If a 160 page book cost 20 or 25 bucks and 50 people where willing to buy it how much would you make than say upping the price to 30 and now only 25 people are willing to buy it? And thats will the assumption that it only cost them a 4th of the cover price to make (though i really have no idea what it would really cost).
But the real problem i dont think is WOTC but with Hasbro. I think Wotc would of had a little more sense in dealing with the D&D liscence had Hasbro not been involved.

 

[Paradigm]

One can only hope that they haven't mentally seperated D&D miniatures from the table top RPG, because D&D RPG players are the D&D miniatures customers.

 

[RFisher]

I see two workable business models for RPG companies:

(1) Early TSR: Diversify. An RPG or RPGs should not be your only product(s).

(2) SJG: Creamy supplements. Keep your rules relatively static, but put out really high-quality, well-researched supplements with low rules content.

Note also that these are not mutually exclusive!

Another key is sizing your company to your market. Do your best to grow the market, but don't bet being able to make payroll on market growth.

Of course, keeping costs low & quality high should go without saying, yet some companies do that much better than others.

 

[Glyfair]

Targeting the DM is an interesting idea in changing the business model, although the books of ideas I think would face the same increasingly small segment problem. Is there something beyond books that would help produce good DMs, and help good DMs fine-tune their skills? Or help players recognize good DMs to avoid the false starts? Wildly extrapolating your idea, if you subsidized the training and licensing of good DMs, would you reap the rewards in fanatical player/consumers? If you as a player knew that a 5-star DM had space at his table and was kicking-off a nautical campaign, would you rush out to buy Stormwrack? Could the DM be your passive sales field force? Selling to the DM might get you 20% of your market (I'm guessing less), but selling to motivated players... And yes, I realize that all of this is quite out there, just looking for possible alternatives.

Hmmm...it's generally assumed that prior to 3E the DM bought the majority of materials, the player's less. While I doubt it's feasible now, setting up a gaming culture where it's assumed that the players will help the GM buy the materials he uses to set up the campaign could help this imbalance.

While I doubt it could be sold, it makes sense. Even if the players aren't directly using the material, they are reaping the benefits of it. However, only one of the "players" at the table is spending their money on it.

Now, there will always be gut reactions from a few players "I'm not spending my money to buy my DM stuff, he should feel privileged to spend the money for my enjoyment." It would have to be set up in some indirect fashion. After all, are the non-payed referees/umpires have to spend their money on equipment for a sports game? Are the fields, and upkeep all donated? In some cases yet, in other cases their are assumed fees to deal with that sort of thing.

Still, I doubt it can be done. It might have been done, but that ship has long sailed and the culture is as it is.

 

[sullivan]

Now, there will always be gut reactions from a few players "I'm not spending my money to buy my DM stuff, he should feel privileged to spend the money for my enjoyment." It would have to be set up in some indirect fashion. After all, are the non-payed referees/umpires have to spend their money on equipment for a sports game? Are the fields, and upkeep all donated? In some cases yet, in other cases their are assumed fees to deal with that sort of thing.

Still, I doubt it can be done. It might have been done, but that ship has long sailed and the culture is as it is.

The ship might have sailed, but we got this new technology called wireless to get that old hunk of timber and canvas to change course!

This ties into my talk towards the end of the "Eric Noah's Info" thread about changing the tone of the role of the DM and players. If the game belongs to the players just as much as the DM then pride of ownership is quite likely to not only improve table behavior, but to change spending habits. Indeed why would I by for someone else? Well besides it being their birthday or something (which incidentally happens in one of my groups, but we've been friends some time). However buying something I'm going to use or maybe even share is something very different.

 

[Vigilance]

(2) SJG: Creamy supplements. Keep your rules relatively static, but put out really high-quality, well-researched supplements with low rules content.

Boy Im not sure where you got this idea but as a longtime GURPs player it doesn't jive with what I see.

Yes GURPs places a high premium on well-researched and well-written books that has gained them a lot of popularity with non-GURPs players. I think this is a good goal for any game book.

As to the rules being relatively static, GURPs has gone through 4 editions since it was created in 1986. This is a MUCH faster revise, reset, reset schedule than D&D (5 editions since 1974). In fact I would say that GURPs and White Wolf are two of the pioneers of the 3R business model.

As to the rules content, GURPs books are NOT low in rules content. Picking a GURPs book off my shelf, GURPs WWII we see the following: History of WWII pages 1-34 (all fluff); Combats pages 35-56 (all fluff); Characters pages 61-85 (crunch); armoury 86-116 (crunch); vehicles 116- 155; campaigns 157-173 (fluff).

The last section of the book is GURPs lite, a primer to GURPs, sort of a "SRD" so the book more or less stands alone. Still, about 62 pages of fluff out of 173.

GURPs is not any more "crunch lite" or "creamy" than most D&D books in my experience. In fact when I look at the business model WOTC has been following for D&D since 3rd edition, I see many similarities with the GURPs business model.

 

[Anson Caralya]

Hmmm...it's generally assumed that prior to 3E the DM bought the majority of materials, the player's less. While I doubt it's feasible now, setting up a gaming culture where it's assumed that the players will help the GM buy the materials he uses to set up the campaign could help this imbalance.

Sorry, I did a poor job of explaining my thought. I didn't mean that the players would buy for the DM, I meant that a player about to take part in a campaign in which a specific supplement would offer him good background and options as a player would be eager to buy that supplement for himself. Going back to my example, I've heard the DM is running a nautical campaign, therefore I'd like to pick up Stormwrack to take some nautical feats, see how the dread pirate PrC feels, and, most likely, find some spells to help me thrive in a nautical campaign.

Extrapolating this, a good business model might be to put out 3-4 supplements a year, for each publish a DM and a player's version, keep them at the same price even though you know the DM version will sell less, and spur interest in them through tie-ins to mega-adventures or adventure paths. (These wouldn't be hard tie-ins; the adventures should be playable stand-alone, but enriched by the supplements.) And sell tons of related miniatures, including a few ships, and maybe an aquarium or two for the completists.

 

[Anson Caralya]

As to the rules being relatively static, GURPs has gone through 4 editions since it was created in 1986. This is a MUCH faster revise, reset, reset schedule than D&D (5 editions since 1974). In fact I would say that GURPs and White Wolf are two of the pioneers of the 3R business model.

This is an aspect of the business model that I'm stuck on. How often should you do a rules reset? If you recognize the economic need to infrequently reset to give a boost to core book sales, but also look at it as a gamer and demand that you're getting something very valuable out of that reset -- NOT just being forced to learn another system -- how do you say When? Say we did have the Greenbay Packers ownership model, the business is being run just to assure the future of an RPG called D&D and the ability for any kid anywhere to be able to play G1-3 someday -- how do you work rules resets into that? Revisions I can imagine following some simple plan, say core books get revised every 2 years, with updates available online, and other products quote which revision they are based on and have online conversion notes. But resets...

Would resets be more palatable if the gaming public was in on the beta work? Would you sign up for this: buy a 4E beta core book set and 3 adventures, run with it, and submit your feedback after 6 months (no promises on the action taken on the feedback, but let's assume good intentions, and with the recognition that it's beta, therefore prone to some trouble spots)? I think I might be willing to pay a premium for that. Maybe this is a way to approach the question of when to do a reset. Say you periodically released a beta version new rules set and pored over the feedback, then tweaked your next beta appropriately. Would there be a point at which the gaming public would say, "Yes, taking the Incarnum magic approach with action points, simplified AoO's, and knight, warlock, and beguiler in as base classes and monk out represents a clear improvement over the current system. I'd happily buy a new set of core books and run that game."

I realize that the beta approach is to some degree already happening (like, say, Incarnum), but I'd be much happier with it if it was labeled as such and potentially building towards something.