Ptolus and new methods of distro for setting-rich games

[Andy Kitkowski]

So, today I learned that the $120 Huge Bundle Thingy ("Preorder Special") for Monte Cook's upcoming D&D setting called "Ptolus" (more at : http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mpress_Ptolus ) includes this huge whopping core book, and FIVE "Player's Guides" ( http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mpress_PG ).

Is it just me, or is this one of the most novel and/or awesome approaches to game packaging/distrubtion we've seen in ages?

In a setting heavy game, like Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, L5R, Tribe 8, Aberrant or whatever (probably high Sim-style games) where familiarity with the setting is key to traditional avenues of enjoyable, immersive play, the traditional thing of couse was to release it all in one big fat giant core book or boxed set.  What about the other players? Well, they need their own core books (which cost money, so most people just rely on the GM/DM) or they need to rely on the GM and other players who have core books to explain setting elements as they come up, else borrow the core book between sessions, in which case only one person at a time can "take the setting home and read it". With the Ptolus preorder, the GM gets this baby-killer of a book and the players get to take home a quick, fast, 32-page "essentials" book to bone up on.  By Session Two, everyone is pretty much on the same page in terms of the major setting elements, locations, major NPCs, etc, and immersive sim play can take off from there.

Now, Ptolus was fueled by a particular necessity: The core book for this Ptolus game is so big that I heard a guy in Reno got crushed to death by a copy. This "Receive 5 player's guides" offer is only for the pre-order, after which you just get the core book for $120.  Asking everyone at the table to spend $40-50 for a Mongoose OGL hardcover to play a campaign is a little hard to swallow, but $120 is downright outrageous.  So I guess, to make a narrative from here, I guess that Monte Cook decided to then make this quick-play 32-page guide for the players to take home with them.

Sure, later they'll be sold seperately.  But packaging 5 of them together to appeal to the traditional 6-player D&D table-toppers (the 6th person, the GM, will be taking home the core book)? Absolute. Fucking. Brilliant. Sure, it was necessity that inspired it, but it was a bit of thought beyond that that to decide to package 5 of them with the core book for this Pre-Order special, rather than just opening up the player's guide seperately. IMO, anyway.

Some RPGNet commentary on the Ptolus set:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=232947

-Andy

[komradebob]

$120?!?! Ouch!

But yes, I've often wondered why this approach hadn't been taken before for exactly those sorts of setting heavy products.

It does point to companies reconsidering what they sell and how they sell it, in terms of how it is divided up. I wonder if other companies will follow suit, for example, releasing setting only books for their games ( pdfs, for example). WW would already have more money from me had they chosen to do this...

[Nathan P.]

That's cool.

For somewhat less...ambitious...projects, I can definitely envision something along the lines of when you buy the book, you get the PDF. Something like you buy the main book with all the shtuff, and you get access to a PDF of the "players guide" info, maybe on a friendly little form where you enter all the emails you want to send it too.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Interestingly enough, I've been working on translating and releasing this Japanese RPG (see sig) in English for a while now. Participants of the last two GenCons have almost all seen the book: How it has the first 20-26 pages as full-color plates that show, in flashy detail, various character options, setting elements, and other general "tantalize as well as get players on board and up to speed" setting elements. 

Well, for about two years I was expecting to partner with this one Major Publisher to publish this game through the traditional Three-Tier.  Lately, I've had second thoughts, and for creative control and simplicity issues have recently been thinking of publishing it totally independently, avoiding the traditional avenues.  Discussions on this thread in particular, with real life stories, Void of Vague Details and favorite the Concrete, have really fucking tore my top off: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17722.0 .

I don't fucking want to support that.  And I'm thinking that this game, though it might not end up in Barnes & Nobles like it could under the wing of a traditional publisher (the publisher we were originally working with has their stuff in every traditional bookstore, both in the Game Section and in the rapidly-growing "Manga and assorted manga-looking stuff" sections), it could be a game that, through popular support and enough weight, could really start to chisel at the pillars of the traditional distributors a little. Chip, chip, chip.

Going that route, though, something that I'm going to be very wary of going forward is ways to cut down on printing costs. Asian printers (like the ones that printed the original Japanese game) are generally dirt cheap, but these days unless you're printing a couple thousand up front, you'll get into this EOS-Press style situation that they had with Weapons of the Gods: Chinese printer takes your job and buries it under continuous incoming jobs that make more money, until they finally are pestered enough to get around to it...

Sorry, I'm rambling.  Thing is, this book has like 24 color plates. Gorgeously detailed, if offset by the fact that two of the female pics in the set suffer from the author's big boob fetish. To reduce costs, it makes more sense to print those pages in black and white with the rest of the book, so that:
1) It reduces the cost of printing the core book exponentially, and
2) It could be printed quickly by POD printers like Lulu if I wanted to go that route.

However, taking those gorgeous pics and B&W-ing them would be an utter travesty, so I was looking for a middle ground.

I had been thinking about the very thing that Ptolus is now doing for the past few months:  What if... I took those color plates out of the book, and printed basically a full-B&W core book and couple it with a 24-page full color comic book?  I could then offer the comic book seperately, so that multiple players could buy like this $7-8 "setting primer" so that they're ready to play by Session One (or Two), and don't have to break the spine of the core book by passing it around so that all 4-6 players can read the same 20-24 pages over and over again.

After seeing Ptolus, though, I'm probably going to take it one step further: To have the "Core Package" be three books: A core rules/setting book, a small full-color comic setting book, and a small B&W player's book.  Maybe I'll offer an option where One Core Book, and four color comics and player's books come as a reduced-price set. 

What I'm really thinking since I saw the Ptolus thread, though, is praying that I can take the color plates and add about 20 pages of B&W players' info (like containing things like chargen, setting info and "small rules that are easy to forget, but you should have at your fingertips to draw upon in play"), and produce that alongside a core book.  Core book with color plates would be expensive.  Color comic, plus player's book, plus core book would be cheapest (for me to print).  But Core book plus player's book of Color and B&W pages would be the most accessible for the players, but a little more expensive than the latter option to print... but hopefully not as expensive as printing the entire core book with the color plates... But thinking more on Ptolus, the more that I'm driven to take the character-specific stuff and print them in cheaper, accessible, easy to group packages (set of 1, set of 4, etc), and sell the core book seperately for the GM or Interested Players.

That's ultimately what the Ptolus thread started juicing me up about.

More thoughts later, in a few months, once I'm closer to layout.

-Andy

[Andy Kitkowski]

WW would already have more money from me had they chosen to do this...

No shit.  I ran Aberrant once, which I hold up as easily the best setting in a game ever for a traditional "cape and tights" supers game. I had one core book as the GM, and another core book I got cheap on eBay.  The game is traditionally, what, $25?  Something like that.  Anyway, the intro setting comic and color section with all the interesting world info was really essential to getting into the groove of the game, but unfortunately I only had one spare core book to pass around the group at a time (and it would sometimes take more than two weeks for the borrower to read and return it).  By week 4 or 5 or so, by the time the book had been passed around to everyone, the game kinda fizzled out because only one or two people knew what was going on without having to back up and explain everything.

That was around the time that I nearly vowed to only used prepackaged settings when EVERYONE was familiar with the setting/source material without having to buy/read a core book (like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc). But with the Ptolus system of cheap, quick player's guides, I think that games that revel in setting and immersion can be enjoyed with a much lower barrier to entry. $15 (for the Ptolus player's guide) vs having to buy a whole core book, or having to wait X weeks for the backup core book to make the rounds in the gaming group. I'd actually try to keep a player's guide closer to $10 as much as possible, though, but yeah $15 seems pretty fair to me.  Beats the $30-50 for most of those setting-heavy hardcover core books.

Oh, and just a very brief aside, for those wondering: I went to Japan a few weeks ago, and when I was there I met the author and prez of the company that made the game I'm translating... Asked them gingerly how they'd be receptive to me publishing it independently after explaining some of the big flaws with traditional distro, and they were totally down with it.  I was really worried about that, but luckily they've been cool and extremely receptive through the whole deal.

-Andy

[Tony Irwin]

Sure, later they'll be sold seperately.  But packaging 5 of them together to appeal to the traditional 6-player D&D table-toppers (the 6th person, the GM, will be taking home the core book)? Absolute. Fucking. Brilliant. Sure, it was necessity that inspired it, but it was a bit of thought beyond that that to decide to package 5 of them with the core book for this Pre-Order special, rather than just opening up the player's guide seperately. IMO, anyway.

Hi Andy, what I like about this is the subtext that gets sent out with this package. "This is not an interesting new book for you to read in bed with a cup of tea on a Saturday morning. This is a game, it is for you to share and enjoy by a group of friends." Here's the funny thing - I would probably never play Ptolus but if I heard it had some great new ideas I would maybe pick up a copy. That's a bad thing. It's good that they're packaging their game for players, not collectors, browsers, observers and commentators.

It would be like packing dice, character sheets, pencils and erasers with your game. You're sending the message "We expect that you'll be wanting to play this game as soon as possible. Why else would you have bought it?"

Tony

[ukgpublishing]

It is a major oversight IMHO that any core game system or setting does not come with the requisite material to "hit the ground running". Year of the Zombie for example comes with the core setting and rules, plus a mini adventure with 8 pre-generated characters, so from opening the book/pdf you can start playing in a simple and quick to understand adventure.

This worked so well for YotZ, our next YotZ setting, Dead Future, is going to have exactly the same concept applied and include a small adventure to play from the box.

It costs nothing in real terms, allows the publisher to showcase their adventure writing skills as well as rules skills, and can only improve the perceived value of the product.

[Josh Roby]

Needless to say, Monte Cook can get that price point due to name recognition.  On another tack, I have trouble seeing why that much paper is really necessary for any game, but that's probably just my personal preference.

For reference, How to Host a Murder games are set up exactly like this, with a little booklet for each character.  It's a package that works.

Andy, your color plates sound a lot like 7th Sea's color insert in the Player's Handbook, which were the Nation book covers reused (clever publishing).  I don't know about a separate, stand-alone book whose sole purpose is to generate interest in playing the game, however.  That strikes me as a tremendous waste of paper and customer dollars.  Making it a little more functional, as a character-generation device as you suggested, eases my reaction, and would facilitate not only getting readers interested in the game, but take them the first couple steps into playing the game.

[MatrixGamer]

Mr. Cook is selling to a devoted nich market. I suspect that RPGA players who only play D+D 3rd edition (or whatever they're on now) will shell out the big bucks. I don't think this is a model for everyone. Monte's name recognition is golden and he worked many years developing it.

I wonder about the printing on this game. He could be doing pre orders to generate the cash to pay for the printing (probably 10,000 units). I've seen this done before, it's a good idea. That way, the distribution sales that follow are all profit. On the other hand he may see that distribution might not want this book (not everyone is a dedicated RPGA player) so he might be doing the whole thing as a print on demand project. That would preclude distribution sales but maybe that is a good plan.

A subscription model works if your product has name recognition or just sounds cool. I'm working now on putting out a hardback version of Howard Whitehouse's miniatures game "Science versus Pluck: or Too much for the Mahdi". They are pre selling 100 copies which may well tap out the market. S v P is a great game but how many people play 1880's British Colonial wargames? PoD is the way to go for this product - 10,000 books would truly be a waste of paper.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

[Andrew Morris]

I've played quite a bit of D&D and come to realize that it is simply not the game for me. Maybe every once in a while, but certainly not as a regular game. But still, this Ptolus package had my mouth watering. I honestly considered buying it just to have a whole D&D campaign ready to go in one package -- wasting $120 just because it looked good. So, yeah, I'd love to see this style of packaging in some indie games that are more up my alley. I know I'd shell out quite a bit for a Dogs in the Vineyard game packaged like this: nice, hardcover rulebook with more expanded setting information (book of life, pregenerated towns, etc.) and a few setting and chargen overview saddle-stitched books.

[Josh Roby]

Jesus Christ, I just realized -- that book has no rules.  That thing is supposed to work with the D&D3.5 DM and Player Guides, isn't it?

[komradebob]

Jesus Christ, I just realized -- that book has no rules.  That thing is supposed to work with the D&D3.5 DM and Player Guides, isn't it?

That's brilliant!

[tetsujin28]

Indeed. It's all setting and scenario goodness, which could easily be transplanted to Your Favourite System_tm. And the $120 price point is actually rather cheap, if you add up what you're getting.

And Andy's right on, with this one: including player guides is a stroke of genius.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Andy, your color plates sound a lot like 7th Sea's color insert in the Player's Handbook, which were the Nation book covers reused (clever publishing).  I don't know about a separate, stand-alone book whose sole purpose is to generate interest in playing the game, however.

Oh, no, for my bit I was thinking of this:
Core book (160-some pages)
Visual book (40 some pages, 20 of which are full color plate: Or, if it's cheaper to print, then 20 pages color Visual Book, and a supplementary 20 page intro book).

They'd be sold together as a set, not seperately or stand alone.  I'd offer it up as a standalone purchase, but it's intended to come with the game: That way, the GM can have the rulebook(tm) sitting in front of him, and the player could be like, "OK, let's say I have a brother named... crap... what's a good name? Hand me the Visual Book" (player looks up name glossary in visual book while rule book remains in GM's hand). Something like that.

-Andy

[Josh Roby]

They'd be sold together as a set, not seperately or stand alone.  I'd offer it up as a standalone purchase, but it's intended to come with the game...

Me, pedantic: you need to make up your mind before you start laying that bad boy out, because the question of whether or not Random Player X will get his hands on the visuals book and only the visuals book should inform your layout and content considerations.  If there's any chance that, for instance, the rulebook will go out of stock but the visuals book does not, there needs to be a clear line of reference for your hapless customer to find the rest of the game somehow.  It can be as simple as a blurb on the back cover copy or a full-on sidebar on the first page of text. Either way, something to make that essential linkage between customer interest and where to buy the rulebook (ie place utility).

I think it's a great idea, and I've often been annoyed that so much is packaged into one book when it could easily be parcelled out in terms of actual use at the table.