The End of the Gaming Renaissance

[Mark]

Was jim saying it was hard to find a distributor for his $50 400 page softcover b&w book earlier this year?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/reviews/253174-ultimate-toolbox.html

I thought it did well?

 

[SSquirrel]

This strikes me as a bit of "no true Scotsman" - when reality refutes your hypothesis, rewrite the dictionary until your hypothesis is valid again. The original point was that there was an era when talented amateurs had a place in the market, and that era is now over, because the big distributors won't pick up talented amateurs.

The existence of a thriving PDF market refutes this claim; talented amateurs can continue to succeed by circumventing traditional distribution.

The pdf market is not the big distributors tho and a great chunk of the stuff available in pdf only isn't touched by them for various reasons.

 

[Dausuul]

The pdf market is not the big distributors tho and a great chunk of the stuff available in pdf only isn't touched by them for various reasons.

This is true, but I don't see why it matters. If talented amateurs can succeed without big distributors, then big distributors are not the be-all and end-all of RPG publishing.

Talk about pedantic. My point was that if you tried to publish something with a 1985 production value today, you likely couldn't get it into distribution. Yes, I'm SOOOOO sorry I used b&W and softcover as examples.

Do you need a hand with those goalposts, or can you move them yourself?

 

[Cam Banks]

There's definitely an improvement in production values since the first ten or twenty years of RPG publishing. Even small press books released in the past couple of years are much better looking than the early production house games, like those from TSR or Chaosium. I wasn't aware that was the argument. Rather, I thought there was some claim that nobody puts out B&W softcover books any more or that those are in the minority, when in fact it's the opposite.

Back when we were doing Dragonlance books, some people thought we were crazy to keep putting them out in full color inside. Some of our books (adventures, specifically) were B&W softcovers, but we were definitely riding hard against the norm to put out color hardbound supplements. 90% or more of d20 products in the OGL period were B&W interior.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Mark]

Back when we were doing Dragonlance books, some people thought we were crazy to keep putting them out in full color inside. Some of our books (adventures, specifically) were B&W softcovers, but we were definitely riding hard against the norm to put out color hardbound supplements.

When you have a slew of color Elmore artwork (and others), going b&w would be nigh unthinkable, I am sure.

 

[Umbran]

This is true, but I don't see why it matters. If talented amateurs can succeed without big distributors, then big distributors are not the be-all and end-all of RPG publishing.

Well, consider for a moment what you mean when you say, "succeed". If your definition of success is, "Sell a few copies," then you are golden. If success is, "be as big as Shadowrun," you might find that pdf doesn't lead to success. At least not yet.

 

[maddman75]

I tend not to take the Forge into account, but that's b/c I think the entire Forge theory system is stupid.

There is a huge gulf between the forge theory and the games produced. I have issues with the theory myself and don't much like discussion of it. But the actual games are really fun, some interesting stuff out there.

The Indie press I feel represent a different strategy toward gaming completely. Some of the guys I game with lament the old days, when you'd start level 1 and work up to Immortal over a couple of years of gaming, and they just can't seem to get that to work like they did in high school. I don't share in their lament, because I stopped trying to do that.

Its an unspoken assumption in most traditional games - the PCs will start out weak and small in scope, eventually becoming tougher and more powerful. In the real world, more likely the game fizzles out leaving everyone dissatisfied. The solution is to run a game for a single story arc, then move onto something else. Maybe you come back to an old favorite, but you don't play the same game forever.

The point of this? That is what the Indie games are suited to. They are focused. I don't get an general 'roleplaying in the old west' game, I get Dogs in the Vineyard, where the PCs are God's Watchdogs in a fictional west, leading the Faithful away from Sin and Demons. There aren't rules for mining gold or surviving in the desert or even shootouts, apart from in the context of a moral dilemma. That's what its about, and when we're done we'll move on.

They also frequently give the players more narrative control, with the goal of getting players invested in the game more quickly and making things easier on the GM prep-wise.

I like both the new 'indie-style' and Traditional games, though to be honest more and more the Indie ones are suiting my gaming style better.

 

[resistor]

Well, consider for a moment what you mean when you say, "succeed". If your definition of success is, "Sell a few copies," then you are golden. If success is, "be as big as Shadowrun," you might find that pdf doesn't lead to success. At least not yet.

How about we define success as "able to make a viable living off of it." Back in the day, that generally meant that you had to be a big name like Shadowrun, because printing and distribution costs cut into the percentage of the sale price that ended up back in the hands of the authors. Today, a much larger percentage of the sale price of a PDF (essentially all of it) goes into the pockets of the authors so, even if they charge less, I suspect the successful ones, at least, are earning more per copy that traditional authors did back in the day.

Overall, I don't think the situation has really changed that much. The market is still dominated by one lead company and a handful of second tier companies, and there's still a small but viable subset of talented amateurs who are able to eke a living out of it.

 

[Umbran]

How about we define success as "able to make a viable living off of it."

Then, I think you need to go to print.

Folks on EN World have, imho, an overly optimistic view of the pdf market. Yes, lots of folks here, on EN World, like pdfs. However, I have seen no credible evidence that the bulk of RPG players make use of them. I think the market for them is much smaller than many might expect.

Back in the day, that generally meant that you had to be a big name like Shadowrun, because printing and distribution costs cut into the percentage of the sale price that ended up back in the hands of the authors. Today, a much larger percentage of the sale price of a PDF (essentially all of it) goes into the pockets of the authors...

Folks have done breakdowns of the costs of producing works - while you get rid of the cost of printing and most of the distribution costs, your artists, editors, and writers still need to be paid. So, it isn't 100% profit, by any means.

In addition, have you noticed that folks tend to gripe when you try to sell a pdf for as much as you'd ask for a print copy? It seems to me only WotC has the clout to ask that - so while you aren't paying printing and distribution, you also aren't able to ask as much per copy.

I am not sure that this comes out positively for the pdf publishers.

In addition, pdfs have a major marketing disadvantage when compared to print. For a print work, people can see it on a shelf in a store or a friend's house. They can take it off the shelf and browse through it, or borrow it from the friend. The physical object helps get the product into people's minds.

Meanwhile, for a pdf, the people really have to come looking for it before they ever see it. If I am not specifically searching for your pdf product, I am unlikely to ever encounter it. It is may be sitting on my friend's hard drive, but I don't peruse his electronic library. I don't see the thing on the gaming table. I don't see it on the shelf when walking through a book store. Banner ads on websites are cheap, but they are horribly ineffective. Getting the market to even know your product exists is difficult for a pdf.

 

[Grimstaff]

Also, the rise in popularity of trade paperback collections--and especially the ability to sell these books through the book chain--has been a real boon to publishers and retailers alike (though I know the specialty shops are not thrilled with competing with the likes of B&N and Amazon).

I'm enjoying these compilations, its pretty cool to be able to get whole collections of comics from the "good 'ol days" without having to pay inflated "collector's" prices. <Goes back to reading his Savage Sword of Conan compilation>