Why D&D is slowly cutting its own throat.

[Mark]

So Mark, if you'll indulge me one more time, I'd like to have your opinion as a publisher.

Could it be that the reason that there are not many good modules on the market is that writing a compelling module is harder than writing up a rules supplement? Is the good fluff harder to do than the crunch?

Good? That's a matter of personal taste and my speaking to that achieves little. I do think that the overall lack of adventures available is due mainly to what publishers see as a lack of return on their investment.

As to "fluff versus crunch", any writer or publisher can tell you the volume of liquid a bucket can hold and it is accepted, since a bucket can be of any size and it is fair to say that a particular bucket is of any particular size. Once they begin describing the appearance of the bucket they begin to whittle away the number of people who will find it acceptable to present the same bucket in their game world, the more detailed or unusual, thes less people to whom such a description will appeal. There's a perceived diminishing rate a return while increasing the level of detail in the fluff in published materials. I don't know that it is harder to write fluff than crunch but it is definitely more difficult to hold the widest possible acceptance of fluff as it is more clearly defined.

 

[Crothian]

I'm mostly asking, why aren't there more great adventures out there? And implicitly, do we love a game mostly because of the adventures that we've had in it?

There are some great adventures out there, they just aren't made by Wizards and are not so widespread that most people are running them like in first edition.

 

[radferth]

Re: Celebrim's post on why GURPs will never be the industry leader

1) What he said.

2) Every time I have sat in with friends who were playing GURPS, every fight was an extended attempt to shoot, slash, or poke the opponent in the head or eye.

 

[Storm Raven]

Arguably, that's a statement that just isn't true and hasn't been for some time. The minute that someone releases a variant player's handbook, whether it be for LotR, Wheel of Time, or Diamond Throne, you are no longer married to WotC products.

You still need to have the Player's Handbook, because the variant versions don't have some critical elements of the rules.

So the question is, why do inarguably valuable IP's like LotR or WoT not successfully compete, and the answer that satisfies me is that quality published adventures are required to keep a large base of players hooked into a setting.

Maybe it is because, as people have told you already, fluff doesn't sell very well.

As I said, near universal. I couldn't possibly guess at numbers, but I'm fairly certain that there are examples of fantastically successful early modules where the appelation 'near universal' applies - afterall, many of these had 6+ printings.

And somehow the fact that piles of adventures have been produced for 3e (vastly more than were ever produced for 1e) doesn't register with you?

I can't help but feel that to at least some extent, both those things were driven by the availability of quality modules. Getting started in 1st edition was easy. Getting started in 2nd edition without a 1st edition DM to guide you was not so easy.

Which is why WotC farmed out the development of this sort of fluff to third party publishers - so that there would be a steady stream of it being produced that WotC doesn't have to bother spending their resources on. And guess what - piles of adventures have been produced.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

So the question is, why do inarguably valuable IP's like LotR or WoT not successfully compete, and the answer that satisfies me is that quality published adventures are required to keep a large base of players hooked into a setting.

Have you read Ryan Dancey's takes on why TSR failed, and the theory behind implementing the D20 license? Because I think those things would answer your questions pretty thoroughly.

In short, D&D succeeds in large part at this point because of its position as THE roleplaying game. It succeeds due to its network of players, and its preeminence in people's minds - even as part of a market as small as PNP RPG's. It got to that point for a variety of reasons, but it remains there because of its dominance.

Your answer may have been the answer to how D&D became dominant, but its not the answer to why it remains dominant.

 

[buzz]

Arguably, that's a statement that just isn't true and hasn't been for some time. The minute that someone releases a variant player's handbook, whether it be for LotR, Wheel of Time, or Diamond Throne, you are no longer married to WotC products.

LOTR was not a d20 product, WoT was not a variant PHB (it was a self contained d20 game), and AU still requires the DMG and MM. Also, plaing AU != playing D&D, per se. If you want to play D&D, you need either a copy of the PHB or access to the SRD. If you want to DM D&D, you need the DMG and PHB, unless you choose to use an alternate level progression and CR system from an OGL product or one you created yourself.

So the question is, why do inarguably valuable IP's like LotR or WoT not successfully compete, and the answer that satisfies me is that quality published adventures are required to keep a large base of players hooked into a setting.

LotR is essentially dead becasue of Decipher's lack of support. Their production of an entire Moria boxed adventure set didn't do anything to compensate for poorly edited and unsupported products.

WoT was intended from the get-go as a one-off product. Barring massive sales, the core book and the Prophecies of the Dragon adventure (!) were all that were planned for the line, IIRC.

As for your hypothesis, I don't see that the lack of published adventures for, say, V:tM hampered it's becoming the second most popular RPG on earth, or Shadowrun becoming as popular as it was in the day. Or M&M's usurping the SHRPG crown. I dunno; I don't think there's a dreict correlation.

As I said, near universal. I couldn't possibly guess at numbers, but I'm fairly certain that there are examples of fantastically successful early modules where the appelation 'near universal' applies - afterall, many of these had 6+ printings.

Sure, but these are a hadnful out of the 220+ modules published for Basic/1e. How well did the others sell? Did "Midnight on Dagger Alley" or "Skarda's Mirror" do anything to contribute to D&D's success?

Data? Data? We don't have data. We have a bunch of settings which failed, but we can't prove one way or the other why they failed until we have several counter examples of settings which succeeded.

There are extensive accounts of the fall of TSR avaiable on the Web from people ionvolved with the company. We also have had, time and again, publishers come to these forums and state explicitly that adventures don't make any money. We also know that WotC's current business model has been extremely successful. This is what we have available to us. I can only assume that the various publishers who confirm all this know what they're talking about.

All I can try to be is compelling, and as far as compelling arguments for me go I believe that the strength of D&D has been modules and 'network utility'.

Understood. I just don't really agree and don't feel the theory holds up to scrutiny. I don't think I have ever read commentary from anyone invovled with D&D in it's heyday that attributed its success to quality modules. (Which in no way implies that there were not quality modules, nor that modules may, at one time, have been profitable to produce.)

 

[WayneLigon]

I think the reason D&D remains dominant is that it always has been dominant. There are three main reasons for that: (1) It was First, and for a long long time you had people that would not even look at another RPG. (2) You had the Egbert case, which was basically free nation-wide publicity for D&D. (3) TSR's best (and later, worst) business move ever was the deal with Random House that put D&D products into the national chain booksellers network. Suddenly you didn't have to go into a hobby shop, you could see D&D in a chain bookstore - and let me tell you, more people walk into a high-traffic chain bookstore per hour than into the best FLGS in the nation every week. That visibility can't be discounted in explaining D&D pre-eminance.

I don't think it was because of modules. I can only speak for the groups I've known, but I've never known people to use modules all that much unless they were really pressed for time.

I bought 3E because it was a good set of rules. The IP surrounding it has no interest to me. The settings are of marginal interest at best; I can mine some things from them for my own use but I wouldn't miss it if all the fluff vanished tomorrow leaving only the SRD. The novels and other peripheral stuff? No interest. Neverwinter Nights? Come on. No use to me.

 

[jmucchiello]

Could it be that the reason that there are not many good modules on the market is that writing a compelling module is harder than writing up a rules supplement? Is the good fluff harder to do than the crunch?

Actually I think most writers feel they can pound out fluff easily and it is coherent crunch they find difficult. Writing clearly understood, unambiguous crunch is not easy. The actual answer is probably that writing is writing and if you can write fluff you can write crunch and if you cannot write fluff, you can't write period.

To me, it seems like it is, because I can smith out rules as I need them and feel I'm doing a pretty good job. I respect a good crunch writer, but generally speaking I don't feel that the quality of the crunch on the market vastly exceeds what I could do myself. I think if I had the time, I could write up a crunch product - even several products - that might appeal to enough people to sell as a PDF.

Go for it. If it's any good, you'll make a little money. And I mean a little money. What you will find is the money made is not in proportion to the effort made. Thus you will understand that publishers must focus on stuff that makes the most money for the least effort: prestige classes, feats, spells. Not adventures.

But seriously, try to write 10,000 words on a topic, straight crunch, see how easy or hard it is. I think you'll find a lot fluff creeping into those 10,000 words. Especially when you try to describe a PrC or spell or magic item. (Short) Descriptions are always both fluff and crunch. I'll publish it if it's good.

 

[Staffan]

WoTC has seen the point you're making - they announced several months back that due to the lack of adventures in the marketplace they were going to get back into the module business. I don't think we've seen any product announced to back that up yet, but WoTC's business cycle is slower than the average RPG company due to their size.

Well, there are the three Eberron adventures (Shadows of the Last War, Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw), and they have a FR adventure called Sons of Gruumsh scheduled for September (though in the online catalog, it's labeled an "anthology" - probably a typo when entering it into the database).

 

[Aristotle]

I think you have this backwards. The farmed the crunch of the game via the SRD and the OGL. The SRD does not contain fluff - or at least it contains as little fluff as WotC can manage.

He had it right. They instituted the SRD and OGL so that other companies could provide the ever-important, but typically less profitable, fluff. The expectation was that these 3rd parties would create great settings and adventures using the rules provided, allowing WotC to focus on the expansion and refinement of the rules with minimal fluff. The various book series (Complete, Races, Environments, Heroes, and so on) support this.

WotC did not expect the 3rd party publishers to directly compete with them with rules products, although many have, and have since said so. I don't have a link, but a recent release talked about this and how WotC was going to be getting back into producing Adventure Modules to fill the gap they had expected the 3rd party folks to fill.

I think some of the scheduled modules, as well as the Locations series of books are a direct result of WotC seeing a need to keep the quality of the fluff up so that the crunch has some meaning.


I would also say though, that nobody starts out wanting to write a mediocre adventure. Nobody knows when an adventure is going to catch on and become the next great "classic". I have to think all of these module writers are attempting to give you what you want, even if few actually have the talent or concept to deliver.