The D&D Business Model

[Ogrork the Mighty]

This is an aspect of the business model that I'm stuck on. How often should you do a rules reset?

The business answer?

As often as you can. Or, in other words, as soon as your core rulebook sales (PH, DMG, MM) have flatlined.

 

[MerricB]

Ah, an excellent point.

I think the randomization is the thing that gets the RPG players riled up. When WotC is selling you something but you don't know exactly what you're getting until after you've paid for it, that's not the basis for a great relationship. It works for the minis game, but not so well for the RPG-only people.

Unfortunately, without the randomisation, all you'd see would be orcs, orcs and more orcs.

Cheers!

 

[sullivan]

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...

Publishing duplicate versions for something actually creates overhead. The optimal is items that both players and DMs alike will purchase. In fact publishing rulebooks of anysort, especially the lower volume ones, is where the money isn't. The worst part of it is you run the risk of cannibalizing your sales of the higher margin items.

 

[MerricB]

So what you need to do is produce things that basically everyone in that base will want, and you need to produce them regularly, and they need to seem "different yet the same."

Hmm.

That can be a dangerous idea. "We'll only produce products that everyone wants!" It tends to fail tremendously. Which books that Wizards produces appeal to everyone? Past the core books, it's pretty much the Complete books. After that, sales drop off.

This is not to say that it's completely flawed: it is always a good idea to produce general interest products (and the minis and dungeon tiles do fit that niche quite well). However, it is possible - and desirable - to produce niche products as well. The trick is to produce products that, even though not everyone wants them, enough do so that they hit the necessary profit margin.

I tend to think that any strategy that automatically discounts certain products as "not selling to enough of the market" are flawed. Rather, research and - that best bit of research - actual releases can tell you far more about whether there is a viable market or not.

What happened to the Map Folios? They were, theoretically, selling to the "general" market. Only, they didn't. They were replaced by the Fantastic Locations series - I'd love to know how they're doing in comparison.

Cheers!

 

[Mark]

Unfortunately, without the randomisation, all you'd see would be orcs, orcs and more orcs.

Cheers!

They should sell non-randomized Orcs swordsmen, Orc Archers, Orc spearmen, and Goblins (in different varieties), Hobgoblins (same), Skeletons, Zombies, etc. in packs of 24 or so without cards for RPG usage.

 

[MerricB]

They should sell non-randomized Orcs swordsmen, Orc Archers, Orc spearmen, and Goblins (in different varieties), Hobgoblins (same), Skeletons, Zombies, etc. in packs of 24 or so without cards for RPG usage.

It'd be interesting to see if they could do that. I'm pretty sure they have considered it, but it's not quite so easy as it seems.

Sadly, such packs can be found today through secondary sellers of DDM on ebay and likewise, and for less than Wizards could sell them for.

Cheers!

 

[Mark]

It'd be interesting to see if they could do that. I'm pretty sure they have considered it, but it's not quite so easy as it seems.

What makes you say it seems easy?

Sadly, such packs can be found today through secondary sellers of DDM on ebay and likewise, and for less than Wizards could sell them for.

For less? Please show me a link to such a pack. I have not seen what I have described.

 

[Anson Caralya]

Publishing duplicate versions for something actually creates overhead. The optimal is items that both players and DMs alike will purchase. In fact publishing rulebooks of anysort, especially the lower volume ones, is where the money isn't. The worst part of it is you run the risk of cannibalizing your sales of the higher margin items.

Sell the DM version at a loss, recognizing that DMs are the ones who drive players to your products, and make up for it on the volume of selling to players. And to take it a step further, maybe there aren't two separate books, maybe it's a single hardcover plus a softcover "DM's notes".

 

[Anson Caralya]

The business answer?

As often as you can. Or, in other words, as soon as your core rulebook sales (PH, DMG, MM) have flatlined.

I'm looking for a business answer that would also be acceptable to gamers. Is there one? I'm thinking it has less to do with how long between resets and more to do with the assurance that the reset represents a significant improvement. How does that come about?

 

[Vigilance]

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...

The problem is that the gaming public has not SHOWN itself to be all that adverse to new rule sets.

Again keep in mind that White Wolf's Vampire game is on it's 4th edition since 1991, GURPs has gone through four editions since 1986, whereas D&D is on its 4th edition since 1974.

In each case, there has been a segment of the market that screamed bloody murder with each revision and in each case, as near as I can tell from the outisde, the new editions seem to have done their job, being books everyone buys and allowing the company to revise, reset and resell the most popular books in their line.

Some gamers are early adopters, they like the new shiny thing. Other gamers convert because the game is social. If no one you know is playing the old rules anymore, then the social network prods you to convert as well.

D&D gamers were just a little spoiled. Since D&D is the most popular game they could traditionally afford to wait longer between revision cycles. It doesn't appear as though the current management at WOTC is going to let the fields lie fallow for 10 years between editions any longer, adopting a model closer to GURPs' average of an edition every 5 years.

Maybe, based on how quickly revised Star Wars and D&D 3.5 came out, something closer to White Wolf's scheduling.