What do you think about a Third-Party Conversion Promise?

[MatthewJHanson]

So I've got a little publishing company that makes books fore D&D 4e and Pathfinder, and the 5e announcement has got me thinking a lot about the future of the business.

One concern is that I was hoping to put out a number of 4e products this year, and I expect that sooner or later interest is going to drop off as 5e approaches.

On possible solution I thought of is the promise to convert the adventure when 5e is released, and offer anybody who bought the 4e version a free .pdf copy of the 5e conversion, assuming that WOTC has a license that allows this.

The final part is the stickler though. This is contingent upon WOTC releasing a license. Statements from Mike have been promising, but are still far from an absolute guaranty.

So the question is, would such an promise from a publisher effect your desire to purchase a product? I'm mainly thinking about 4e since I expect most Pathfinder players to stick with that system, but I'm curious to hear from Pathfinder players too.

Thanks!

 

[Alan Shutko]

It wouldn't affect my purchasing decisions. Frankly, unless I had known your company a while, I wouldn't trust its promises for events in the future. Too often companies make commitments which quietly go away.

It's all the worse in this case, since you'd be making a commitment on something you couldn't control. WotC could refuse to offer a license. Would you convert it anyway, trusting to an interpretation of the law that mechanics can't be copyrighted, so long as you avoid any trademarks? Probably not. What if they allow a license, but it requires that you kill other versions of your product? What if the license is there, but it's so pricy that you'd lose a lot of money?

There's so much uncertainty in there that if you made a commitment like that and I didn't know your company, I'd just assume you were blissfully naive. I'd look at your offering to determine whether the price and content made it worth it for me for 4E, and wouldn't give it any points for nebulous 5E promises.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

There's so much uncertainty in there that if you made a commitment like that and I didn't know your company, I'd just assume you were blissfully naive. I'd look at your offering to determine whether the price and content made it worth it for me for 4E, and wouldn't give it any points for nebulous 5E promises.

Thanks for the honest reply. I can totally understand the skepticism. I would of course make it very clear when making the promise that it is dependent on WOTC making a license and I'd probably include that it would have to be a free licenses, since as you point out, I would likely lose money on a pricy one (though I highly doubt WOTC will do that after attempting and then retracting that plan for 4e).