The price of an adventure?

[squeen]

Drivethrurpg--RELEASED: 8/2018--1 download--free

That was me!

Even at 10x the profit, this is barely worth a day's wage and it's probably going to take several month's of effort to do it well.

That said, it probably shouldn't be about income---I've mentioned it before, but this falls within the notion of a Gift Economy (potlash). All the DIY internet-y stuff does (BTW I'm going back to exclusivly using the phrase 'cyberspace'...I'm calling the movement the Old Internet Name KEepers Renaissance or OINKER---and I am totally gonna gate-keep. Totally.). You are giving to a community for the prestige it garners you within that community, not to meet you basic survival needs.

Bryce has tagged it right in the forums: "Vanity Projects"

Also, how is 3-stars bad? That's average right? 4-stars = excellent. 5-stars = perfection. How much in life is perfect? (Ugh! The-Generation-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and their stupid stars inflation!)

But, again...what do I know? Seriously, I know nothing about commerce. I'm not being factious. I-KNOW-NOTHING.

@Malrex: Thanks for sharing that data. You are a stand-up guy, and shouldn't feel the need to apologize for mentioning your products. No harm, no foul in my book.

OINKER!

 

[The1True]

I like where this is going. This forum has a series of discussions nailing down theory. Distill each one down to its conclusions; Maps, Artwork, Themes, Game Design, Layout, UI, Marketing. Implement each one as a collective, turning theory into an active experiment. Keep the process (no matter how nefarious i.e. Astro Turfing) transparent so we can do an accurate post-mortem on the project. something something something PROFIT!

Honestly, it would be pretty cool to pool resources with like-minded people. My concern is that, given the gentlemanly acrimony over in the 'The State of Post OSR' thread, I'm not sure how like-minded we all are lol. I have like zero online presence and I have an immense ego, I'm assuming I'm not the only one here with this handicap. Dungeon Masters, amirite? Still, if we could turn our various divergent beliefs and skill-sets to good use, that would be pretty damn amazing.

I guess if other people are interested, we should break a project down into its components and make an outline of the steps in the process. Figure out what skill sets people have to offer (a brilliant and charismatic cat-herder would be helpful at this point, anyone?) and have at it. Keep the process public and inclusive. Any profits would be a measure of the success of our hypothesizing and I propose they be funneled back into the site that spawned them. The idea would be to have a working brand and formula at the end of all this as an umbrella for creators to work beneath.

Hope I didn't just overstep massively

 

[Grützi]

Hope I didn't just overstep massively

No Problem from my side here
Sounds like a good plan. I could write up something (outline of the process, some ideas for how this could work) later today.
If we do this maybe Bryce will create a subforum for us ... to go wild in

 

[Melan]

"So, you found out you're not a businessman after all."
"Just a man."
"An ancient race. Other Mortons will be along, and they'll kill it off."

...erm, where was I? Right! Everyone who isn't a bugman dislikes Zweihander guy for his disingenious sales tricks. If that's what it takes to build business success in this hobby, it probably isn't worth doing it. However, there is also Kevin Crawford: the marketing he does is tasteful and informative, and he seems to be doing well for it. So perhaps you don't have to be a bottom-feeder to get ahead, and quality product that has a broad appeal can stand on its own?

With regards to stock art (mediaeval woodcuts and the like), they are a necessary evil of sorts. Sales numbers do not support massive illustration budgets for anything but a hyped Kickstarter. I try to use them tastefully (and have spent a lot of time prowling free repositories to find good pieces) and combine them with well-placed custom art, but that's about the best I can do. My next release will have more art, but it will cost a bit more in exchange - we will see how the market reacts to it.

 

[squeen]

Who is Zweihander and what is he selling?

 

[Melan]

Zweihander is essentially an off-brand WFRP clone. I don't have an idea about its quality, but the author's constant shilling and spamming on all channels available to him (which got him banned from a bunch of places, and which you can still observe on his twitter) has soured a lot of people on it. He has, also, seriously manipulated his DriveThru sales figures through what are suspected to be burner accounts (reduce price for a narrow time window --> buy lots of PDFs --> increase price back up so it looks legit -- DriveThru eventually changed its sales rank algorhytm because of this), and astroturfed his way to an Ennie Award. (Granted, that's what the Ennies reward, so bully for him on that one). It came across as aggressive and completely distasteful.

 

[squeen]

@Melan: Thanks for the info! Crazy.

 

[Malrex]

Zweihander is essentially an off-brand WFRP clone. I don't have an idea about its quality, but the author's constant shilling and spamming on all channels available to him (which got him banned from a bunch of places, and which you can still observe on his twitter) has soured a lot of people on it. He has, also, seriously manipulated his DriveThru sales figures through what are suspected to be burner accounts (reduce price for a narrow time window --> buy lots of PDFs --> increase price back up so it looks legit -- DriveThru eventually changed its sales rank algorhytm because of this), and astroturfed his way to an Ennie Award. (Granted, that's what the Ennies reward, so bully for him on that one). It came across as aggressive and completely distasteful.

I don't know much...if anything..about Zweihander guy...I just saw a post he had made to someone on some forum...vague I know. But from what I picked up--basically offering a deal to past buyers for a limited time for a new release didn't seem disingenious to me...I thought past customers would appreciate the opportunity and saw it as taking care of your customers...but burner accounts and manipulating sales figures, astro-turfing....gah..I can see how it could be looked at as disingenious now--lot's to learn--except I have no interest or desire to be involved in that crap.

 

[Grützi]

Heard a few stories about the Zweihänder guy ... none of which made my impression of the guy better.
Never played the game tough ... probably never will (not really my venue) so it matters naught to me.

 

[Ice]

As a consumer of this type of stuff, which shall henceforth in this post be known as 'indy TTRPG stuff,' maybe I can give you some insight.

A few notes about myself: I am fairly frugal and don't buy a lot of shit. I do not like DMing with only a computer and greatly prefer books/zines. In general, I tend to enjoy supporting small-time indy stuff and tend to avoid large corporations. I bought all of the 5e core rulebooks, but little else from Wizards . Their books are printed for teenagers and don't really appeal to me. When I discovered the QuestingBeast channel about a year ago, I started buying 'OSR' stuff in print form because it all looked so nice. All but one of my purchases (maybe 15-20 things) have been in print form.

The first thing I bought was Swamp Fever in print form. It just looked too cool not to buy. It's one of two TTRPG books that sits on my bookshelf (the other being Veins of the Earth). The rest of the TTRPG stuff is cloistered in a box in my closet.

My most recent purchase was Winter's Daughter. I bought it directly from the Necrotic Gnome online store and had it imported to the US, so it cost me around 23 bucks shipped. I like Dolmenwood stuff a lot. Winter's Daughter looks like it is exceptionally well printed, which matters a lot in terms of how high I am willing to go. It hasn't shown up yet, but maybe it will be nice enough to keep next to Swamp Fever. 10-25 dollars for a nice looking printed book feels fair, especially since I'll probably get 3-5 hours of game-play out of it. I buy a 10 to 25 dollar non-TTRPG, normal, regular book every couple of week or so, so my brain lumps the price in with that part of my budget.


Before that, I bought Masque of The Worms. the module is 3 dollars and it was totally an impulse buy. 2-4 dollars seems like the threshold for impulsive buys for me. The review here, and the preview on DrivethroughRPG made it look incredibly good so I couldn't hold back. It was also the first module in PDF I've bought and I would gladly buy stuff from the person who made it again.

The largest chunk of the stuff I've bought has been from Goodman Games. In my opinion, their products' quality to price radio is very good. The DCC adventures are around 10-15 bucks in print. They are simply printed, but look way better than any of the Wizards stuff. I actually bought the DCC core rules at a FLGS because it looked so cool. It was sitting next to a bunch of Pathfinder (yawn) books and my curious brain said, "WHOA WHAT IS THIS!?"

The next thing I am hoping to buy is the Through Ultan's Door zines when they become available. The maker's website makes them look very nicely made.

As a final note, most of the stuff I've bought thus far has been on Questingbeast and has been reviewed here. However, I recently learned how to make PDFs into simple zines, so I will probably start buying more PDFs in the future, rather than just stuff reviewed on Questingbeast. I can see myself occasionally paying for 5-10 dollar modules in PDF (though I never have).

Hope that helpz.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I've got a boatload of PDFs (bundles and freebies mostly), and like you I don't care to read off a computer screen when I play. Fortunately, I've found it pretty inexpensive to throw a few modules onto a USB stick and run it down to Staples, where they'll print and bind some 100 page thing for about fifteen bucks. A standard 30-ish page module can be done for only $6 or $7. Makes it a lot easier to justify purchases.

FYI if you're trying to get some newbies into D&D, it's a good idea to have a print shop do up the SRD for you to give to them, so they don't need to commit to a $50 PHB in order to try out the game.

 

[Ice]

I've got a boatload of PDFs (bundles and freebies mostly), and like you I don't care to read off a computer screen when I play. Fortunately, I've found it pretty inexpensive to throw a few modules onto a USB stick and run it down to Staples, where they'll print and bind some 100 page thing for about fifteen bucks. A standard 30-ish page module can be done for only $6 or $7. Makes it a lot easier to justify purchases.

FYI if you're trying to get some newbies into D&D, it's a good idea to have a print shop do up the SRD for you to give to them, so they don't need to commit to a $50 PHB in order to try out the game.

Yeah, to cut costs even further, I've been learning how to bind my own zines so I don't have to go to a store and have some goober do it. I did my first thread binding today, and before that I've been using staple bindings. For my DCC home campaigns, I have all of the non-core stuff printed out into fun little zines. My players really seem to like this format. Maybe once I get good enough at making them, I'll post a how-to guide so all of us goobers who hate DMing off of a computer can look like cool DIY punks with our own home-made zines.

 

[squeen]

I would love a how-to on thread-binding. Sounds cool.

 

[The1True]

A standard 30-ish page module can be done for only $6 or $7.

Most of the time, that's what it costs to get the POD from DriveThru anyway, isn't it? What's frustrating is dudes who do the PDF on DriveThru and the Print on Lulu or their own website. I get it, they can actually make some money out of the print copy, but it's a drag hunting around for these things. (also, I've come to expect the PDF for free with purchase of print).

 

[shib71]

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum - I've bought far more DriveThru/DMsGuild/physical material than I'll ever use. Half of it is that I'm new to the hobby and I'm "buying" experience. The other half is that (as Bryce has shown) most adventures aren't very useful. I'm always hopeful that the next one will be.

I do run games from my laptop so PDF-only doesn't bother me, as long as that PDF is actually organised well and cross-linked.

I think $5-10 can be reasonable for a 1 or 2 session adventure. And as someone who has started to dabble in publishing on DMs Guild, that's my target - to write adventures worth paying that much for. Not that I actually expect to make money, but it puts pressure on me to aim for that standard.

One of the things I've learned is that a lot of what makes an adventure "good" for others is orthogonal to what makes an adventure fun to write. There's a lot of boring work between a cool idea that was fun in your campaign and 30 pages of adventure a DM can bring to the table. After reading Bryce's reviews for a while, I'm starting to realise that's what I'm paying for. I have plenty of cool ideas already, I don't need to buy more.

Some of the detail I'm willing to shell out for is:

• Having all the stat blocks organised and ready - especially for unique opponents
• An idea of what tactics enemies will use
• An attempt to include different elements of play (combat, social, etc)
• Some thought into what happens if (when) players get "off track"
• Names for all the important NPCs. Names for random NPCs
• Reference links from everything to everything else
• Art (to show players)

 

[squeen]

@shib71: I really like your list. Also your point about "fun to write" hits the nail on the head. Producing a polished product is serious work, and often hobbists are unwilling to do that heavy lifting. People who are so prolific of quality content deserve a huge amount of respect (I'm thinking locally of Melan, Malrex, Gus L., etc.).

While the first-time creators are to be commended for trying to publish something (many don't even make it past that initial hurtle), they are often a bit like your gaming-pal who says "wouldn't it be cool if they made a video game that..." but isn't about to learn how to program. They have a "cool idea", but fail to develop it and just push half-baked crap out the door.

My personal design process is the following:

1. draw a map
2. key the map
3. throw out the first map and redraw it based on the key---scan it in and tinker with it (digitally) way too much
4. play test
5. sit on it for a few more months
6. edit the new key and throw out the useless filler text because of something one of Bryce's recent reviews reminds me
7. sit on it for a few more months (the party has totally moved on, so back to step 1 for another site)
8. have the party get near the locale again and have some inspiration of how I should have done it the first time---sometimes I can't resist changing the world retroactively and tell them to "deal with it" (I'm not proud of that.)
9. fix the text again and expand the scope in a way utterly useless for my home campaign---pushing outward on the boundaries of the unknown (credit to Melan)
10. sit on it indefinitely thinking I should: (a) polish the presentation a bit more so that the earlier part is as good as the more recent stuff, (b) draw some decent artwork for it, (c) hire an editor, and (d) play test it again with a different group,
11. decide it's pointless to publish because its all been done a dozen times already (but secretly glad I've got something to give to my kids some day if they ever inherit the DM-bug)

TMI? Sorry, I digress..

Also, it's funny, but when I first started writing up my own campaign (often just days or hours before play), I was determined to get the characters and especially names recorded because...darned if my daughters (in particular) didn't want to talk to everybody and known who they are! Leaving aside any discussion on gender-stereotypes, I'll just say that I am NOT very good at making up names on the spot, so that was something I needed to prep.

Consider this fact: every single person in the B2 Keep is only detailed by job-description---without a single name. "Captain of the Watch, Castellan, Scribe, etc."

While it does give that impersonal, gritty, old-school feel (i.e. soldiers on a wargame map)---and avoids some of that silly high-fantasy melodrama with extemporaneous overflowing back-storyies---I've got to believe there is some sort of middle-ground that a designer can do to help out the DM.

On a related note, it seems to be a 5e thing (WotC) to publish little head-shots of all the major NPCs---yet for some reason, I find this excessive and distasteful too....screws with the imagination...but man, just a simple (first only?) name for the beings you are likely to chat with would be cool.

Note, Gary's other intro module, Village of Hommlet (T1) is different. There is a scattering of names for major NPCs. I am thinking that's because it was played extensively in his home campaign. Maybe that's why it breaths a bit more. Feels lived in. Whereas often the B2 Keep is sometimes ignored or glossed-over in favor of just "getting to the Caves where the action is" (...and so that the nameless priest from the Keep can backstab you).

I am just going to throw at y'all one more extraneous tidbit: in my campaign world the Inn of the Welcoming Wench serves a "Hommlet Omelet" for breakfast.

Bam! Now that mental-virus is in your head too. (You're welcome)

 

[Beoric]

@shib71: ...darned if my daughters (in particular) didn't want to talk to everybody and known who they are!

I have noticed that with younger kids of any gender, encounters often run like an episode of Pokemon. I have so many critters that have joined the party, there no need for henchmen or hirelings.

 

[squeen]

I have noticed that with younger kids of any gender, encounters often run like an episode of Pokemon. I have so many critters that have joined the party, there no need for henchmen or hirelings.

Yeah. But they both still do it and the oldest is almost done with college and youngest is half-way through high-school.

My son is more like "da boys" I played with back in the day---"Kill it. Take the loot." Although, through all the conversational "goings-on", he seems most concerned with making sure the NPCs know it was through his character's actions that the baddies were defeated---he wants the prestige.

Also, both my daughters are SO miserly with their resources and he's the only one willing to use stuff up to achieve a goal. Needless to say, he's the main exploratory engine and scout.

Too small a sample-size to generalize, but still...its been an eye-opener.

 

[EOTB]

If it's a labor of love intended as a vehicle to give back to the hobby you've enjoyed then I would make it free.

However, if the author seeks a return, then I would price it high enough that those who buy inexpensive things as a vehicle for the emotional high of righteous complaints are entirely dissuaded. The most vicious customers are, unfortunately, disproportionately found among those who can afford little; which is often why they are where they are. A merely inexpensive RPG product's cost threshold is low enough for them to get the value they seek out of the purchase while claiming some legitimate loss.

 

[Malrex]

If it's a labor of love intended as a vehicle to give back to the hobby you've enjoyed then I would make it free.

However, if the author seeks a return, then I would price it high enough that those who buy inexpensive things as a vehicle for the emotional high of righteous complaints are entirely dissuaded. The most vicious customers are, unfortunately, disproportionately found among those who can afford little; which is often why they are where they are. A merely inexpensive RPG product's cost threshold is low enough for them to get the value they seek out of the purchase while claiming some legitimate loss.

These are wise words. I remember trying to be nice, putting up something pretty cheap or PWYW...and people bitched about it. It's like you feel you are doing a favor for the community, but then they beat the crap out of you and you are left scratching your head.

I see the whole 'labor of love, giving it out for free' mechanic work really well for some people though, but they seem to have a large, established support group already.