Has Bryce lost his mind?

[The Heretic]

I'm starting to get scared. Bryce gave out yet another "The Best" review! Has he been replaced by a doppelganger? Are we going to need to do an intervention before he starts designating Adventure Path modules as "The Best" en masse?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The lesson here is get your product onto the market now to reap the "Bryce bump", while he's still in such a generous mood.

We need more Teh Worst EVAR reviews. Yes, it will hurt you Bryce, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

 

[Beoric]

I think he is being more selective about what he reviews. He has been doing fewer 5e reviews, and the last one that he did do had a very OSR cover. The last one before that was May 16.

 

[The Heretic]

The lesson here is get your product onto the market now to reap the "Bryce bump", while he's still in such a generous mood.

Good call! I could use an additional $4.21.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Your first mistake was writing adventures for money.

 

[Beoric]

Good call! I could use an additional $4.21.

I have wondered for a while whether the time spent figuring out how to get paid for adventures is worth the income received from getting paid for adventures. Can I consider that question answered?

 

[Malrex]

I have wondered for a while whether the time spent figuring out how to get paid for adventures is worth the income received from getting paid for adventures. Can I consider that question answered?

#1 Yes, the question is answered with $4.21--if DrivethruRPG/Lulu/etc. Maybe per month.

#2 Kickstarters--Higher numbers, but MORE time spent. If it's fun, it's totally worth it, but does bring on a heavy load of stress depending on your add-ons/stretch goals and how many people you are working with--might still end up the same as #1 once the dust settles despite large looking numbers, BUT-there is that value that you are working with commissioned art instead of stock art (or editors, or whatever). I think Kickstarters bring in a more polished product. Not sure how sales do after a KS, but can report it once I experience it. Also, some people nail it and seem to make a great profit (OSE, Glynn Seal, come to mind).

Reviews--Can boost sales if good, sometimes even if bad. Learning point: For my own experience--Nevermore Mines. It received fair..leaning towards bad/verbose perhaps on Bryce's scale. I spent time improving it after the review and updated it. This ended up being wasted time as sales never really increased from the additional effort--which is too bad for that loss of incentive, but it was a good lesson on improving.

So yeah, writing adventures to make money, doesn't really work that well unless you go balls deep and go Kickstarters which is a whole different animal then just throwing something up on DrivethruRPG. But if its fun, may be worth it for the beer money. YMMV.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

There's a lot of survivorship bias in adventure publication. For every popular/profitable adventure you see, I reckon there's at least 10 unknown ones, and 50 unfinished ones. But people only focus on the popular ones. Even the popular guys admit they mostly do it for the occasional bump of "beer money" (a common phrase, see above).

I think that trying to make a living by writing adventures is like trying to make a living by being a musician - yeah, some people have done it, but most people really won't, and success is basically a crapshoot. If you factor in your own time as part of the cost, 99 times out of 100 you'll earn less than minimum wage in writing adventures. Most writers have day jobs.

 

[Beoric]

With profits like that I feel like it would be less grief to just give it away. You aren't really doing it for the money anyway.

 

[The1True]

Yeah, I noticed in Bryce's latest outline he's pushing for PWYW, but I feel like earlier discussions on this subject touched on the problem of asshats using PWYW to pay 2 cents for your adventure thereby gaining the right to torpedo your ratings with an utterly undeserved and unsubstantiated 1 Star review.

There's got to be a happy middle ground. I'm kind of curious if anyone is paying the bazillion dollars for an Arden Vuul pdf. It's a lot of money to not have something substantial in my hands/on my shelf. I definitely balk around the $8 mark for a PDF. For a few bucks more, I could get a printed copy of something.

 

[squeen]

Agreed. I realized about a year ago that I was buying more than I could ever possibly use.
Now I try only to dish out for the acme products, and even then, only 2-3/year.

Arden Vuul was too much. I agree $8 sounds like a good cut-off in most cases for PDF. $20-$25-ish for hardcover.

 

[Malrex]

I'm sure a small fortune was spent creating Arden Vul. $40-$100 a pop for the art...how many pages is it? over 1,000 pages? I think they should of kickstarted it, then could of had a more "reasonable" price on it when selling. Although...most adventures are around 30 pages and could be around 5$ for the pdf. Volume 1 Arden Vul is 317 pages. 317/30 x 5$ = around 53$...the pdf is 30$, hardback is $55 for volume 1. Seems reasonable to me when breaking it down, but I also have a level of how much I'll spend on a gaming product.

 

[The1True]

I'm sure a small fortune was spent creating Arden Vul. $40-$100 a pop for the art...how many pages is it? over 1,000 pages? I think they should of kickstarted it, then could of had a more "reasonable" price on it when selling. Although...most adventures are around 30 pages and could be around 5$ for the pdf. Volume 1 Arden Vul is 317 pages. 317/30 x 5$ = around 53$...the pdf is 30$, hardback is $55 for volume 1. Seems reasonable to me when breaking it down, but I also have a level of how much I'll spend on a gaming product.

Yeah, I mean they have to seek remuneration for the amount of love and work that went into that behemoth. But at that point, skip the PDF and Kickstart a prestige Box Set or HC.

 

[EOTB]

If Arden Vul was priced to the level of how much people are willing to spend on gaming products, no one would talk about it. Everyone would own it, but the % of people who invested their time digesting the information they'd purchased would be low. It would be the "some day when I get time" product.

Paradoxically, if you're going to write a 1,000 page product, you want to price it to the point that those who do invest in it (whether that investment is tens or hundreds of $) feel obligated to use it - and also tell everyone they'd purchased it, and what they thought about it. But if the investment is tens of $ you don't get that effect, you just get file names buried on a hard drive and lots and lots of people thinking "maybe someday".

If someone wasn't going to charge a premium for it, it would be better to give it away then sell it for the same price as most of what Bryce slags on his blog.

 

[squeen]

I should clarify --- Arden Vuul was/is very tempting...but too much for me. If I thought there was a chance I'd run it, that would be different.
It's quite a feat and beautiful---I wish I'd made it...but over my mental limit for now.

 

[EOTB]

Right, I don't mean to imply people are cheap if they don't buy it - I haven't bought much of it because I don't need a thousand-page dungeon. And it's a good thing in many ways to price people like me out of the market.

 

[The1True]

If Arden Vul was priced to the level of how much people are willing to spend on gaming products, no one would talk about it. Everyone would own it, but the % of people who invested their time digesting the information they'd purchased would be low. It would be the "some day when I get time" product.

Paradoxically, if you're going to write a 1,000 page product, you want to price it to the point that those who do invest in it (whether that investment is tens or hundreds of $) feel obligated to use it - and also tell everyone they'd purchased it, and what they thought about it. But if the investment is tens of $ you don't get that effect, you just get file names buried on a hard drive and lots and lots of people thinking "maybe someday".

If someone wasn't going to charge a premium for it, it would be better to give it away then sell it for the same price as most of what Bryce slags on his blog.

I agree. What I'm saying is that at that price point, skip the high priced PDF altogether and figure out how to print it. If you're putting out a PDF because you can't figure out how to print it or how much demand you might have, then release it in tiny self-contained chunks (they did previously break it up into 5 parts and offer those parts POD but even that was too expensive), work up some word of mouth and get a healthy mailing list going and then launch a Kickstarter for a Big Box Set or shiny leather-bound monstrosity and yeah, I'll fork out $100-200 for that. I regularly shell out large chunks of cash for nice printed work because, as we've all discussed, I hardly ever get around to reading the cheap PDF's in the D&D folder on my laptop (Although, I'm finding the solution to that is to pack the PDF's into my Kindle. A bit of a pain in the ass to scroll around the page, but they're right there and convenient when you're travelling...) and because I like having attractive D&D books on my nerd shelf.

 

[squeen]

The1True is so right. I'm learning that, for me, PDFs are generally where purchased material goes to die.
I have to have something physical...even if I just home-print it.

...but having the PDF is a very nice addition (for reference, etc.).

 

[The1True]

...but having the PDF is a very nice addition (for reference, etc.).

An absolute necessity if you play with a VTT. Even if you don't, it's nice to be able to clip and print what you need for ready reference or handouts without having to crack the spine screwing around with the photocopier/scanner.

Like Barrowmaze, I've got a folder with about 30 pages of printed handouts and reference so I don't have to heavily bookmark the book. Which is kind of why I lament the lost of art of the boxed set. I guess it's harder to find small publishers who can do that?

 

[TerribleSorcery]

I find myself buying mostly PDFs, and only picking up print copies if some of the following conditions are met:
1 - I am confident I will use it at the table (I decided to drop the adventure into my campaign, or the monster book has plenty of monsters I'll use, etc)
2 - I have shelf space for it (does anyone else have this problem? I just ran out of room on my RPG shelf. Fuck.)
3 - It's made by an author I already know and am committed to supporting either way
4- Sometimes, if the artwork or presentation is just THAT good

PDFs end up being either 'try before you buy,' impulse what-the-hell purchases, or for products that, while useful, I won't need to pull out at the table (things I might use in prep but not during the game, like random monster generators). Although I do have plenty of PDFs that I wish I had in hard copy (great shit like Melan's older adventures, the Hyqueous Vaults and Mines, Claws & Princesses come to mind).