We need your advice please :)

[Whisper72]

One side note on the issue of ppl owning the stuff electronically versus wanting the physical book.

First off, the ppl who frequent these boards are a specific subset of players. They are also a small minority (although very vocal and among the most dedicated!) of the total amount of players. So, even if we all have the electronic goods, there is still a whole load of ppl who have no idea, and who will first learn of your product through (for example) advertising in Dragon/Dungeon or by finding it in their FLGS.

Secondly, the nature of many on this here board is such that they indeed will want to own the physical book(s) for various reasons ranging from collecting, just liking the shiny on their shelves, ease of play, wanting to have the art as well, supporting the hobby etc., so even among those here who have the stuff electronically, it is my impression that many (at least those who would consider buying the books in the first place) would buyt the physical product as well as owning the electronic version.

Another way to go about it, is to only post parts of the IP, only those where you are currently not yet comfortable with the exact level of detail or quality.

For example: is it really relevant to post all the fluff? Maybe just enough to give ppl a feel may be enuff.

Maybe not all crunch needs to be reviewed: post only that crunch which really needs to be tested.

By presenting the stuff as text only (relatively unformatted), without (much) art, with as little fluff as possible, you can make the stuff you make available such that the REAL product offers so much more, that everyone will want to buy it anyways (if they are interested in the first place natch...)

 

[dougmander]

You might want to contact the creators of the Nyambe and Northern Crown, both settings now published by Atlas Games (http://www.atlas-games.com) about their experiences. They both published to the Web first and were later picked up by Atlas. (Northern Crown was originally called Septentrionalis).

Speak of the devil and he will appear

I have nothing to add concerning product identity, but I can tell you that putting your campaign on the web for free doesn't kill the market for a pdf or print version, as long as the pdf/print version is significantly bigger or more complete than your initial offering. My own experience suggests that if you want your campaign to be published someday, start giving it away for free now. Don't be stingy about your free content, either. This was my experience:

1. I put a huge amount of free stuff on the web.
2. Players appreciated it and asked for more.
3. A professional saw my work and connected me with a publisher.
4. The publisher was delighted to see that I already had written much of the material and had an established fan base.
5. I got an offer.

I believe Chris Dolunt had a similar experience with Nyambe. The market for d20 is quite different now, but the basic concept is still sound, except that you can reach many more people through rpgnow or drivethrurpg than I could with my web site.

In the end, you're going to be doing this for beer money at best, so I would focus on getting your game out there to be enjoyed by our little community and not worry too much about bleeding away your sales potential by sharing what you've created.

Best of luck.

 

[MonkeyDragon]

I'd suggest changing what you offer online once you're ready to publish the setting. So you'd start off with having all your beta stuff online for everybody to see, use, test. Then the book comes along. Take down the beta versions, and to get the whole package, they have to buy it. But still offer plenty of supplementary material and extra goodies on the site for free.

So I go to your site, and playtest your material. I like it. Then I come back to your site...the beta stuff is gone, oh, noes. (Ok, so I may still actually have it, if I downloaded it to start with) But I can see that the full version with all the art and pretty layout and all that extra fluffy goodness is up for sale. So I buy it. But I don't feel ripped off, because look, free monsters! Sample treasures! NPCs and profiles of the different cultures and adventure ideas!

My biggest word of advice to you and anyone else wanting to put out books: If you can, include a selectable PDF of just the text and tables. I like having electronic copies of books as well as hard copies. I want the hardcopies to look good on my shelf, to look at the art close up, and to have with me at the table. I like electronic copies so that I can select out the parts that I need for my game that day (especially monsters) and print them out with my notes. The thing that keeps me using the SRD monsters most of the time is not having to retype stat blocks. I know there would be issues to work out considering that it would make pirating the book easier without having to scan it, but that's just my two cents.

 

[Morrus]

One of the primary concerns would be if we made everything public and then grouped the final product with good graphic design and artwork, would customers still purchase a hardbound book?

On one hand, most or all of the game materials would be available on-line. This would give us great playtesting and feedback, but offers very little incentive(other than owning a physical book) to purchase the book for game materials.

WotC seem to be doing OK, despite the d20 SRD being online. People don't like to read large chunks of text off a computer screen.

 

[Najo]

These last points make a lot of sense. PDFs are going to get created by a pirate somewhere (unfortunately), so perhaps we remove that obstacle for our fans and give them the PDF or at least a SRD like WOTC does.

 

[Land Outcast]

Plus, pirates don't usually create "real" pdfs, but scanned versions which are -obviously- not that much appreciated... remember that.

On top: care to drop a line about the setting theme?

BTW: if you had aready planned selling online, then the Cons associated with that would be the same anyway (ie: no special problems from going web-public).

 

[Najo]

Our plans are to sell hardcover, in the same vain as the Forgotten Realms and Ebberon CS books. I will give more details when I can, but right now I am under a NDA and our company isn't ready to reveal more at this time. It's pretty exciting stuff though, I have really enjoyed working on it, and we have only had positive feedback on the setting from the first two rounds of playtesters and contributors we have worked with. Personally, I have played every edition of D&D since 1st edition AD&D. I really enjoyed the period during 2nd edition when TSR embraced their campaign settings (dragonlance, dark sun, planescape, ravenloft), and we would like to see content done that way again, but more player friendly then that older material was.

 

[Just_Hal]

Our plans are to sell hardcover, in the same vain as the Forgotten Realms and Ebberon CS books. I will give more details when I can, but right now I am under a NDA and our company isn't ready to reveal more at this time. It's pretty exciting stuff though, I have really enjoyed working on it, and we have only had positive feedback on the setting from the first two rounds of playtesters and contributors we have worked with. Personally, I have played every edition of D&D since 1st edition AD&D. I really enjoyed the period during 2nd edition when TSR embraced their campaign settings (dragonlance, dark sun, planescape, ravenloft), and we would like to see content done that way again, but more player friendly then that older material was.

From a different perspective...........

If you are planning on making money on this endeavour my opinion is stop right now. It will be very hard as a 3rd party publisher to get your books into the market. The market is tight and with rumors of 4th ed soon getting tighter.

I would do some serious research and contact some publishers who are no longer in the business (like me ) and some still making books and really make sure the money you are spending is money you do not want back, if you get ot back great but do not plan on getting it back.

Good Luck.

 

[Najo]

We are really familiar with the products that have come out from both WOTC and the third parties, I personally have been involved with the industry for almost 20 years now, and a retailer in it for over 10. Our store is very event driven, and we have down to a near-science how to sell and market the successful products in our store. From my experience with D&D 3.5, you have products that are official from WOTC (selling 10x as much as a third party), next are cool products that are fairly professional and know what they're doing with the game mechanics, but many do not effortlessly fit onto D&D (I would even put the Wotc official products that technically "flop" here too), and then products that do not know how to build onto the d20 game mechanics. Most third parties are the latter, unfortunately. But a good D&D (or other roleplaying) product is built with the players wants and needs in mind, which all too often seem to get missed. The best D&D products hit certain "sweet" spots, and we plan to do the same. Our main hurdle will be getting people to look at us, embrace our products and take us as serious as official material. Once we have done that, the rest falls in to place. Our business plan has more to it at this point, regarding our marketing and secondary product plans, but I can't get into specifics at this point.

Regardless, I appreciate your concerns and warnings, but we are going to do everything we can to keep costs manageble and protect ourselves, while reaching our goals. If we don't attempt this, there is always the what ifs and what could be. The game designer in me can't live with that, and I feel we have a decent shot at succeding with this project, once we get through this last phase of work we're in. Wish us luck

 

[Land Outcast]

I appreciate your concerns and warnings, but we are going to do everything we can to keep costs manageble and protect ourselves, while reaching our goals. If we don't attempt this, there is always the what ifs and what could be. The game designer in me can't live with that

Man, that almost brought a tear to my eye

-

Godspeed