What Do You Need From Publishers?

[Celebrim]

This question is NOT aimed at new entrants into the hobby. of course those people need rules and adventures and stuff.

But the vast majority of ENWorlders are NOT new entrants into the hobby. They have been playing RPGs for years, probably decades. They own games, probably multiples systems.

So, assuming you are a customer of "the industry" as a whole -- what do you need from publishers (whether it is WotC or a tiny one person outfit)? Why are you buying stuff? What can't you do with your own imagination and elbow grease?

Facetiously, I need them to publish things that I would like rather than things that would sell for a profit.

More seriously, I need RPG publishers to actually put in some hard work rather than doing all the easy stuff and then leaving me to do all the hard work. So many publishers out there seem to think they've done enough to be "inspiring" or to give lists of ideas. Bits of micro fiction and some sort of catchy novel theme and a basic resolution engine and then they think they are done. If D&D had started with that, it would probably have never caught on.

I need rules that tell me how to handle the hard stuff, like what happens if the PC's are running a business, or leading an army, or decide to get in a aerial dogfight with like 12 participants, or at the very least how to run a chase scene well when your combat engine is turn based. I need an RPG to have out of the box excellent adventures as good or better as I could design myself.

Almost no modern RPG is meeting that test which is why I'm buying and playing games mostly designed and published like 30 years ago or more, then spending 1-2 hours writing adventures for every hour at the game table.

But most of all, I need Chaosium to get off their butts and instead of giving me a 6th or 7th edition of Pendragon with only minor edits to all of that already really well done material, to get the license to Tortall and give me a Tortall campaign using Pendragon as an engine because in this day and age I can't get groups to get all that interesting in King Arthur - especially the highly immersive medieval inspired King Arthur they are doing with all their excellent research into the literature - but I could get players for Tortall with all of its modern anachronisms just because it's so much more relatable to most people who haven't had 12 hours of coursework in medieval history.

 

[bedir than]

For one shots to not take a dozen sessions. That's a campaign (short, yes).

Give me something I can do in a day.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Both the recent starter sets from WotC, and the Cosemere one someone in my group is running, have made me realize how incredibly nice it is to just have a simple adventure packaged with the battlemaps and monster tokens you need to play it. I'd probably find it too constrictive for a big campaign (I'm not sure I'd ever run a big campaign close enough to "as written" for it to be worth the probably very high cost of such a product), but it's nice to have a neat little "everything you need for this little campaign" set for when the DM can't make it last minute, or for the one-shot my sister-in-law wants me to run this Christmas. It would probably be best for campaigns written to be run basically with no prep at all.

 

[Blue]

What do I need from a publisher. Taking this at face value, it needs to be something I value that I also can't get for free from a fan on the internet. And is less effort than making it myself.

A lot of IP-specific stuff could fall into this, but I generally think specific IPs are not what I want to run/play in.

• New RPGs with mechanics that actively support a feel I like that have been playtested by more than one group.
• Follow-up books to the above.
• Things that I don't have the ability to make, but I can't find for free on the internet. For example, I can't make maps, but so many people publish them for free or really cheap digitally. So maybe map pieces on laminated heavy stock I can use to quickly build things when I play in person.
• Timesavers. Things that I don't have the time to make, and can't find for free or generate easily from AI. That last one is a curveball, changing what I will buy. For instance I've had a masquerade ball and had the major things going down and all the movers and shakers, and had AI create a bunch of background nobles and servers to add depth and cover me for unexpected interactions. One time I don't have time to do things in mid-session, so things like easy-to-add sidequests with things to scale, or actually interesting encounters with varied win conditions, that I can throw in while improving would be useful.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm old enough I don't want to supply my own elbow grease, and just because I've got a lot of systems doesn't mean someone hasn't done one that does something that seems to do something interesting and/or new, or simply better suited to something I'd like to do. The fact I don't lean into the low-crunch end makes this even more true.

 

[Joerg Baumgartner]

I expect from the publishers:
1) to ensure playability of a game system by clearing up unintended ambiguities and addressing/resolving contradictions
2) to provide world-building or to provide tools and niches for customer world-building (ideally providing a community content platform for the latter)
3) to support introduction of new players, e.g. by putting out convention scenarios that can be played in a typical time slot and still offer enough hooks for the participants to want more, or possibly a guide to creating such modules.

Some of this could and should be done for virtual table tops.

World-building through supplemental material like board or card games in the setting or game world literature.

 

[Parmandur]

So, assuming you are a customer of "the industry" as a whole -- what do you need from publishers (whether it is WotC or a tiny one person outfit)? Why are you buying stuff? What can't you do with your own imagination and elbow grease?

What I need from publishers is help reducing the amount of elbow grease I need to use. I am 40 years old: I have a day job and five kids aged two to ten.

Maps, encounters, NPCs, plot hooks, local Settings, player handouts...if it would take work and time for to make then, I would like them.

 

[delericho]

Very little.

What I lack is time. So the thing I need from publishers, I guess, is materials (notably adventure materials) that I can use without modification and without needing much preparation. Those campaign-in-a-book adventures that WotC and Paizo produce are great... except that they require too much preparation and often need massaging to make for a satisfying experience to run.

The other thing I'd love to see, though it's more a nice-to-have, is a 256-ish page book that contains three or four unrelated adventures that (each) serve as mini-campaigns and jumping off points to whatever campaign I then want to run. Basically, a book containing several "Lost Mine of Phandelver"s.

 

[schneeland]

I'm not buying as much as stuff as I used to, but there's still a fair amount of things that can interest me:

• For new stuff, I like things that have a clear concept, without being overly narrow - examples would be Free League games like Alien or Necrotic Gnome's Dolmenwood.
• In the context of such games, I can sometimes be interested in a longer campaign, but I'm more tempted, if there is an equal amount of smaller adventures or adventure locations, and generally supplementary material focused on play, that I can use to enhance either the aforementioned pre-made campaign or one of my own
• I tend to like monster books, especially for fantasy systems
• I'm inclined to buy modules/premium content for Foundry for games and adventures I play, and I'm generally open to anything that makes running digital games easier
• Specifically, I would love to have more atmospheric background images, good tokens (facing, not top down) and music, as well as somewhat abstract maps (I'd prefer to have the rooms laid out and maybe a few key locations within them, but not every piece of furniture, etc.) - this is especially true for non-fantasy settings (SciFi, Cyberpunk, Modern Day, etc.)
• I can be interested in general treatises about the potential/probable effects of magic or technology on society, or books that contain useful thoughts about how to conceptualize locations for specific types of settings
• I haven't seen this so far, but if there was a good book about TTRPG game design, I would probably buy it
• Lastly, while it has become rare, sometimes there's a game that sounds interesting mechanically, and then I will buy it just to give it a closer look