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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pickin_grinnin" data-source="post: 6293639" data-attributes="member: 6697674">As others have said, core rulebooks sell more than anything else.  I believe that modules/adventures sell the least, but someone will correct me if I'm wrong about that.  Splatbooks, modules, and other things that aren't system agnostic depend upon people first owning the core rulebook, so that's where you want to maximize sales.The problem is that systems are a dime a dozen.  A few hit is big (within rpg industry terms), but most fade away as soon as they are introduced.  I have hundreds of rpg books, going back into the 70s (when I started playing), and they represent almost a hundred distinct systems.  Think about that for a moment - I'm counting all the D&D versions as one system when I talk about "distinct systems."  Most of them are things that your average player has never even heard about, much less seen, because they were tiny flash-in-the-pans.  Some of them even had high production values and fairly innovative ideas.D&D retains a certain level of success because it's the first successful rpg.  Pathfinder is successful because it took advantage of some poor decisions by WotC and managed to lay claim to a large existing client base.  Call of Cthulhu has name recognition (due to it's association with Lovecraft) and a solid system behind it.  A couple of "rules light" games have pulled ahead of the pack (Savage Worlds and Fate, for example) for various reasons.  In the past, Hero Systems and White Wolf were popular, and there is always GURPS. Most people who play rpgs regularly stick to one or two of the above systems.  There are some who play a wide variety of games, but I would be that 90% of the players and GMs out there focus on one of the games in the paragraph above.  Compare that to the hundreds of systems that have come out over the decades, and you can see what you're facing.  That's why so many rpg companies primarily stick to putting out third-party support materials for one of the popular games.The sad thing is that there are some very good, innovative rpgs out there, but they will always have a tiny player base.Getting back to the main question, though...If you're going to launch a new system, you need to focus on selling the core rulebook.  I don't think anyone has a good idea of how to balance out free materials (such as the basic SRD for the game) versus the retail version because only a few of the major systems have been designed that way, and the two that are the most extensively used are D&D and Pathfinder (which is basically a souped up version of D&D 3.5).</blockquote>

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