In another thread (http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=972&forum=4&4), Ron Edwards sez,

The common plan of releasing supplements which are both (a) setting details and (b) metaplot continuance does NOT, ultimately, serve a given RPG well in terms of long-term sales. What it does do is MAYBE get your core book reordered from stores for about a year. That's a lot of "if's" to rely upon for success, and failure to meet one of those "if's" can cost you many thousands of dollars. And even this picture is changing.

And another question to this could be, "Could a publisher do a metaplot correctly?"

I figure that supplements and a changing world are one of the best ways to keep a game fresh -- especially a game tied with one specific setting. I could be wrong - in fact, I hope I am.... Deadlands, tied to one setting, can get PLAYED out. You can explore everywhere, defeat a bunch of stuff, and then get kindah bored. Therefore, what do you do? Pick up a new supplement with a more detailed new area, character classes, magic, items, monsters, and whatever.

This mentality is the same in the computer game world. buy Baldur's Gate, you play, you beat it, you get tired, and want more... Then you get the expansion set. Of course, computer games have very short life cycles. We don't see this so much in rpgs, but maybe it is becoming a feature of the industry - games have life cycles.

I figure another way around it would be to provide ADD-ONs, sort of like buying a car and getting a choice on extras that you could add. With an RPG, these extras might be special dice, books with optional stuff, and so on. I really don't know.... Maybe a viable way is to provide a quality of material that is ranged - but is simply not required.

This is a great question.. I want to hear what others have to say..

Thanks,
Nathan

Nathan wrote:

I figure another way around it would be to provide ADD-ONs, sort of like buying a car and getting a choice on extras that you could add. With an RPG, these extras might be special dice, books with optional stuff, and so on. I really don't know.... Maybe a viable way is to provide a quality of material that is ranged - but is simply not required.

Wow, Fang...

Great way to approach it. In a way, your approach sounds similar to GURPS. It seems to me that many recent GURPS products have included the GURPS Lite system in the back so that anyone could pick it up and play it, especially in licensed settings such as GURPS Myth and GURPS Discworld. What is the strength of this approach is that it presents new material that is solid and familiar to current fans but interesting and possibly a draw to new fans.

But this works for a generic system -- what about a rpg with one setting - ala Orkworld?

While we know Orkworld is a one shot "piece of f'ing art", what if it was one of our goals to produce supplements for it? This is where it gets difficult -- At the start, Orkworld has the potential of being bought by billions of people. A supplement though only deals to the x number of folks who bought Orkworld. It does not have the same potential of sale.

I think the metaplot/supplement idea in RPGs is related a lot to the way things have been done in the past -- but it has been strengthened by the CCG movement. CCGs are great products because they encourage players to buy more and more and more. They both add on to the game, provide new strategies/rules, and keep money coming in. In that way, looking at a line like Deadlands, it is easy to look at the other supplements as simply booster packs to the game.

And in reality, Deadlands has progressed to a point where new sourcebooks are really clawing for fresh material. I mean, they released Back East: North and Back East: South sourcebooks.... two of the worst supplement names ever. Boring and probably unnecessary... *sigh*

Well, it's late and I believe I am done rambling.

Afterthought: Would an rpg work where a new edition of the same book was released each year? Consider it - like a model of a car. You have the 1999 Ford Explorer, 2000 Ford Explorer, and so on and on. Each year, the rules get modified, expanded, clarified, fixed -- each year, new features show up in the game - tossing out old features that don't make sense but keeping much of the familiar stuff.... I don't know - but it would be a strange way for an rpg to be published...

Hmmmmm...

Night all,
Nathan

Nathan wrote:
Wow, Fang...

Great way to approach it.

In a way, your approach sounds similar to GURPS. It seems to me that many recent GURPS products have included the GURPS Lite system in the back so that anyone could pick it up and play it, especially in licensed settings such as GURPS Myth and GURPS Discworld. What is the strength of this approach is that it presents new material that is solid and familiar to current fans but interesting and possibly a draw to new fans.

But this works for a generic system -- what about a rpg with one setting - ala Orkworld?

While we know Orkworld is a one shot "piece of f'ing art", what if it was one of our goals to produce supplements for it?

And in reality, Deadlands has progressed to a point where new sourcebooks are really clawing for fresh material.

Afterthought: Would an rpg work where a new edition of the same book was released each year? Consider it - like a model of a car. You have the 1999 Ford Explorer, 2000 Ford Explorer, and so on and on.

On 2001-12-08 02:26, Nathan wrote:
[snip]
Afterthought: Would an rpg work where a new edition of the same book was released each year? Consider it - like a model of a car. You have the 1999 Ford Explorer, 2000 Ford Explorer, and so on and on. Each year, the rules get modified, expanded, clarified, fixed -- each year, new features show up in the game - tossing out old features that don't make sense but keeping much of the familiar stuff.... I don't know - but it would be a strange way for an rpg to be published...

Zak, speaking strictly as an indie, to imitate the big boys is suicide. The survival and growth of the game relies on something more (what I'm not sure), -but as an indie it definitely isn't a large 'payables to printer, shipping & distro' column in our ledgers.

And don't even get me started on d20.

We as indies need to take a different path. I have become numb with the silly attitude that we cannot compete with the so-called 'legit' publisher like WW, WotC and others. We can. But the applecart was nuked over a decade ago and we need to do something different. Our success (money, quality, fun, or however you measure it) relies more upon our direct connection with the people playing our games. The distro is a dinosaur in my opinion and the retailer (not online) nearly is. After that, I admit not knowing which way leads to the promised land. But I am willing to try and find it. And if I do I'll post the map.

Jeff

And don't even get me started on d20.

We as indies need to take a different path. I have become numb with the silly attitude that we cannot compete with the so-called 'legit' publisher like WW, WotC and others.

Hello,

We are really discussing what "success" is. As I have stated before, this term is not a shared, single concept across role-playing publishing. Zak asks, "What serves a role-playing game best in the long term," and my only response can be, "For what?"

If we are talking about continued business success for the company, even that is not well-defined. Adept Press is in the black; that, to me, means it's successful. However, in absolute terms, its profit margins wouldn't pay to empty a Hasbro exec's wastepaper basket - not even the glimmerings of success to someone else's use of the term.

All that said, which casts the entire discussion into darkness and confusion, I see only one small pinpoint of light remaining. That is the "continued sale of core books."

Not, note, a huge and overwhelming landslide sale of core books. Just their sale. If a few get ordered per unit time, and if, every time that happens, they sell within a month or three (I'd put a quarter as the ideal meaningful unit, although two-quarters is more realistic) ... in other words, if your game is being bought according to its demand, and you can roll out copies to meet that demand, then all is well.

Any other promotional or publishing effort relative to that game is valuable insofar as it aids this phenomenon. It is not valuable if it, for instance, distracts retailers from the fact that your core book is not selling. This is called "the supplement treadmill" by Ryan Dancey, most accurately. It can sustain a company for an additional year, maybe two, but it will eventually backfire if the plain old core books are not in demand.

The industry myth states that ongoing publication of supplements will establish core-book reliability. This myth is demonstrably false; it exists because it is perpetuated by those who stand to profit from you believing it.

Best,
Ron

On 2001-12-10 15:05, Ron Edwards wrote:
We are really discussing what "success" is.

If we are talking about continued business success for the company, even that is not well-defined.

All that said, which casts the entire discussion into darkness and confusion, I see only one small pinpoint of light remaining. That is the "continued sale of core books."
... snip ...

Hi Zak,

That's indeed the fallacy. The treadmill tactic essentially makes the continuing core book sales carry the weight of BOTH their own production AND the production of the supplements.

But maybe we should back up a little. I think the core-book sales as the priority is a fine thing. After all, that is the game, and selling the game is (or seems to me to be) the whole point.

OK, then your question is solid: how to keep those core books out there and selling? The hell of it is that the answer has two tiers.

A) The end-use customers actually have to want the thing to some appreciable extent (duh).
B) The industry itself has to be curried and soothed into getting those books ordered at all.

If I may say so myself, (A) isn't such a problem for Adept Press. (B) is much harder. Most retailers' orders and reorders priorities operate on a much faster "cycle" than the time it takes to deem whether an RPG is popular (or semi/niche popular, which is appropriate for most RPGs).

No one really knows a solid answer to solving the (B) problem, and the current (or chronic) disarray of the distributor/retailer organization isn't helping.

My solution is a matter of record - it consists of several tactics, the most important of which are (1) keep production costs way down without sacrificing quality, (2) maintain solid and rewarding contact with end-use customers, and (3) provide direct-sale outlet on-line as a backup or parallel means of distribution. A great deal of this combination relies on having sole proprietorship as well; otherwise all three are very hard to sustain as a unit.

I can't say I've managed to provide the absolute 100% guarantee of the sort of success we're talking about, but I think it's a stronger model than most. A related topic has to do with understanding what quantity of sales is deemed successful, and I tend to let the market tell me that, instead of setting galaxy-spanning expectations and then blaming the market for failing to fulfil them.

Best,
Ron

Hey Zak, et al;

The model we over at Apophis use (and please read with all caution) is to model a variant on the treadmill concept. More a law of dimishing returns with the treadmill.

Once the core book is out there, it will spike quickly (in my experience, most roleplaying uses a fad-based product life-cycle... meaning it will spike quickly in demand, then nearly as quickly taper off). A supplement should (in my opinion) be used to manage the tapering slope of demand.

YOU CANNOT STOP IT. This is the key point. By producing and marketing a game, you have officially committed yourself to a limited lifetime saleability (I say nothing about playability). Therefore, once the return on supplements ceases to bring in reorders at some critical point set by your marketing department (I'm kidding, the guy sitting next to you in the basement who has the calculator), you stop producing supplements, even if there are still bringing in marginal profit.

The reason for this is because at the point where core books sales cease (or reach a point that is functionally the same to the company in question), you have saturated your market, and penetrated as deep as you can go. Stop the game. Make a new one.

Then, in 3-5 years, revamp, retool, and put in new art, and rerelease the bastard. (Or, alternatively, have a one year delay then post all the stuff for cheap download on the net)

Ron's points are valid. Point 1, low cost, high quality is rather intuitive (I don't know anybody who can look at that statement and say anything about it not being right). And his statement that supplements, in standard fare, must carry cost of both supplement and core book is valid. And, I agree, ludicrous.

The point is to say that you have X books out there in consumer hands at a given time. 10% of those are used by gamers to game. 40% of those are people who will collect them. That means 50% of your sales (conservatively, I admit) will be repeat sales for the supplement. Each supplement will bring in 10% of its sales in new customers. Ideally, then, each supplement will sell 50-75% as well as the previous supplement, and bring in 5-7.5% in gross of new customers. Keep in mind, however, that the average customer also becomes more valuable to you (core book + supplement cost). The average Apophis client is worth $21.24 to Apophis in aggregate averages, and we have 3 books (core book + 1 supplement + 1 novel/supplement [think of it as a minisupplement]) with a retail value of $63.

Yes, direct sales distribution helps immensely. Rather than a simple $11.20 (distributor pricing), we earn $28 on the core book. Of course, costs are about $6 per book (all said and done for art, production, etc. with a small percentage of supplement costs factored in to keep things fair). Thus, we make about 4 times as much selling direct.

I stray a bit, but let me put it this way:
let's run some numbers on a game:
Cost to produce: $5 (total)
Price (retail/direct): $25 -Profit=$20
Price (Distributor): $10 -Profit=$5

5000 books in first run. Cost: $25000

Sell 3500 books (80% distr./20% direct): $28000


Produce 2000 supplement 1 books (cost $3 total: $6000), price $15 (direct)/ $6 (distr.)

Sell 1750 books (80%/20% as before): $8400
Brings 175 new core book sales (80/20): $1400


Produce 1000 supplement 2 books (cost as sup. 1: $3000), price (as sup. 1)

Sell 1000 supplement 2 books (80/20): $4800
Brings 100 supplement 1 sales (80/20): $480
Brings 100 core book sales (80/20): $800

STOP.

Total Income: $43,880
Total Costs: $34,000

Profit: $9,880

Looks nice, but remember, this is spread across a 2-3 year span (depending on speed of production). And, you still have a bunch of corebooks, and some supplement 1 cluttering your home. Also, remember the Bite. Taxes. Clever accounting can let you keep all of that up there. Straight-laced, you get about $6000 (depending on personal income).

Either way, you are looking at 2000-4000 per year income (which will not come in a lump at all). Beer money.

Not bad.

Anyway, that is how we do it.

Any questions? (Looks out upon barren landscape)

Dav

Dav,

Very interesting. And it makes sense of something that never previously made sense to me, that a game's later supplements are harder for a consumer to find. Intuitively, as a consumer you think a game's earliest supplements would be the hardest to find, snapped up by early adopters, the way the first few Elvis collectible plates in the series are harder to find than the later ones. But in actual experience, it's not true. I can't tell you how many times I walk into an unfamiliar game store and see the Legions of Darkness supplement for Kult, with no sign of the core book or any other supplements. The same is true of some of the early Birthright supplements.

Paul

My answer is this:

THERE IS NO "LONG TERM" IN THE CURRENT RPG MARKET OUTSIDE OF TWO GAMES, D&D AND VAMPIRE.

Many people want you to believe otherwise. A lot of them either chase that dream themselves or have a vested interest in your buying into it.

Allow me to explain.

RPGs should be packaged and produced along the lines of self-contained boardgames. A single book should contain rules necessary for a game session, setting information necessary to a game session, and a clearly defined story arc that gives the GM a skeleton for a campaign that carries the themes and story embedded in the setting and rules forward to its logical conclusion.

Example: Let's say I produce an alternate history RPG set in a world where a band of heroic freedom fighters seeks to topple a communist regime that has taken over the USA. The game rules should cover small unit combats, personal combat, and political interactions between freedom fighter bands and between freedom fighters and uncommited people. The campaign arc should detail rules for scaling up the campaign to cover the following story lines:

* Toppling the commie dictator who runs your home town.
* Uniting the freedom fighters in your home state.
* Toppling the commie dictator who runs your state.
* Uniting citizens on a national level against the commies.
* Tossing out the national commie regime
* Building a post-revolution government.

Note that the book doesn't provide exact detail on this stuff; it's all examples, advice, and mechanics. After all, you want players and GMs to buy the book, not just GMs.

RPGs today try too hard to cover too much. They're ponderous, 200+ page beasts that try to do too much and end up doing nothing at all. Face it, while a GM can in theory do ANYTHING with an RPG, most don't. Most try to extract the core adventures encoded into a setting and go from there.

That's the genius of D&D. It's extremely simple to figure out what the game is all about, and the systems built into support that game's basic idea while remaining extensible enough to support all types of adventures or campaign styles.

The problem with the RPG industry as a money-making enterprise is that very few publishers have figured out that RPGs don't work too well as trashy, serialized fiction.

RPGs should be no more than 128 pages long. Anything more is often superfluous. UNKNOWN ARMIES is probably the only game I've bought in the past four years that felt like FULL of useful information.

Deep settings and continuing metaplots are the death of a game. As soon as you begin to define events and your game world, you erect walls that cut off future developments. Supplements should always revolve around a core of new mechanics that increase player options or expand the scope of play. Supplements should encourage play, not reading, as an active player base is a far better mechanism for recruiting new players. Who gets people to play a game, the running a weekly game who's looking for players or the guy who read your supplements on the can, chats about the game on line, but never gives his friends a reason to buy it? The vast majority of gamers will not buy an RPG unless they plan on playing the game.

All metaplot does is add layer upon layer of cruft that alienates everyone outside of your hardcore fanbase. As the amount of trivia and background info pile up, it becomes harder and harder for the newcomer to easily pick up the setting. If you want to produce readers rather than players, publish novels with the game's logo on their cover.

- Mearls

The problem with the RPG industry as a money-making enterprise is that very few publishers have figured out that RPGs don't work too well as trashy, serialized fiction.

Mike asked about Vampire. I shall paraphrase: "If metaplot-driven supplements are so bad for business, why is Vampire so successful?"

Let's clarify a couple of things.

1) White Wolf nearly went bankrupt in the late 1990s, exactly on schedule given their substantial starting capital. It is incorrect to assume that their publishing strategy was itself the successful motor for their current, continued existence.

2) WW currently makes their Vampire money on new releases, essentially by publishing new games (Hunter, Kindred of the Orient, etc). In other words, by following a core book strategy. By shifting to this strategy, they survived a VERY near brush with death.

3) WW's initial success with Vampire is a repeat of D&D's success in the late 1970s - it happened to correspond to a teen/college subculture. Owning the game and one's clanbook (for one's character) was "gear," like owning the ankh jewelry and dying one's hair dead black. This phase lasted about two years.

4) That period of success from the retailer's standpoint (look, weird kids we don't know, walking in looking for the game!) put WW material into the permanent-order status, much like Rifts, GURPS, D&D, and Call of Cthulhu. This is hard to explain in the absence of my upcoming essay (slated for January) - what I'm saying is that there are factors between manufacturer and end-user that keep the books on the shelves.

In conclusion, I don't think that Vampire offers a counter-example to Mike Mearls' excellent, salient, and pointed post.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Sorcerer consists of three books: Sorcerer, Sorcerer and Sword, and The Sorcerer's Soul. That's all there is, there is no more to the game itself. However, I plan to continue publishing support material in the form of smaller items, in the under-$10 range, both on the website and through stores. This stuff is really "supplemental" in the dictionary, not industry, definition of the word.

OK, first my jab at you Ron was in reference to your penchant for trashy serial literature (detectives, Conan, etc) and how you're game supposedly caters to the form. Get it? Never mind.

Anyhow, I knew all that stuff you wrote, I was just trying to make myself an easy mark so that we can keep Mearls around more. Jeeze! Ruin a perfectly good ploy.

Actually, to heck with him. The last thing we need around here is another Mike. Right, Sullivan, Gentry, et al?

Mike

On 2001-12-13 14:48, Mike Holmes wrote:

What explains Vampire then?

Good question. In some ways, I think Vampire succeeds despite the metaplot. We've seen three editions of the game in the past 8 years, a sign that at times core rulebook sales have dropped below acceptable levels. Obviously, I don't have sales numbers in front of me, but conventional wisdom in traditional RPG publishing is to push a new edition as soon as the core book starts to wither.

A more important factor to look at is the rise of the metaplot as common publishing device. I'd place it around 1990, when the first generation of designers who grew up gaming began to do work. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, sales of games began to plummet. Personally, I think much of this was fuelled by the release of 2nd edition AD&D. But, more importantly, the next wave of "hot" games, TORG, Shadowrun, all prominently featured metaplot.

All of these games, including Vampire, have followed the same trajectory, strong initial sales followed by a steady drop in supplement and core book purchases. I think much of that is attributable to the metaplot approach. It encourages reading rather than play, which guarantees a stagnant and ultimately dwindling customer base. Active players generate sales. It also forces a game to define an end point. TORG is the classic example of that. The entire game line ends with a fight between NPCs that the PCs get to watch.

*YAWN*

Once you hit that end point, the game's dead. Personally, I don't see why companies produce games with finite lifecycles and then try to promote them as evergreen products.

Vampire has a strong enough central concept to survive despite the metaplot approach. IMHO, this approach continues to thrive because it is highly attractive to the fiction-writing set that currently dominates the "industry." In my experience writing freelance, fiction is far easier to produce than mechanics. A lot of that relates to the tight deadlines used by most companies. Look at all the d20 products that can't get the system right, and that's not even design work, it's simply using a published set of rules. I think the average DM who's been running a game for a few months knows the rules better than 90% of the d20 designers out there. When you have such close deadlines, you don't have time to produce durable rules, so the better option is to create background material.

- Mearls

On 2001-12-13 16:20, Mike Holmes wrote:
Actually, to heck with him. The last thing we need around here is another Mike. Right, Sullivan, Gentry, et al?

Wow.. Great discussion...

But I need a clarification. Metaplot doesn't work, but focusing on core book sales does. Therefore, focus on supplements that provide new rules and encourage playing.

What does - "encouraging playing" - mean?

I've heard enough gripes of gamers who bought a game then found out it doesn't contain "all the rules". What is the proper or ideal scenario?

Core Book: GRUNT (World War II soldier fighting game)
details hand-to-hand and land battle
Supplement 1: AIR FORCE
details air battle
Supplement 2: THE SEA
details naval battle

or

Core Book: GRUNT
details hand-to-hand, land, air, and naval battle
Supplement 1: BY SKY
adds more planes, guns, etc, etc
Supplement 2: OVER WATER
adds more ships, guns, etc, etc

Which is the better?

Thanks,
Nathan

In my opinion, the second option. Ron did this with Sorcerer, and it worked - they're the best supplements I've seen. You could easily run a swords and sorcery campaign with just the main book, but Sorcerer & Sword gave you even more details, and even more ideas to use in that sort of campaign.

I like having a little about everything on my plate at first, and then being able to get a book that further details a sub-section if I get interested in it.

On 2001-12-14 12:55, Nathan wrote:
Wow.. Great discussion...

But I need a clarification. Metaplot doesn't work, but focusing on core book sales does. Therefore, focus on supplements that provide new rules and encourage playing.

What does - "encouraging playing" - mean?

I've heard enough gripes of gamers who bought a game then found out it doesn't contain "all the rules". What is the proper or ideal scenario?

"When in doubt, always look to Greg Stafford."

Saying that out loud may get you stoned to death in certain circles, but it's a hellacious valuable principle. Note that "look to" does not mean "follow" or "emulate" necessarily. The looking will always yield insight, I have found.

Hero Wars is playable as written (although I always think of it as a combination of the Hero Wars and Narrator's Guide). But every single Hero Wars supplemental book is a "deepener" of some listed aspect of the main book. It literally does not "change the game" in its essence.

The Guide to Glorantha and Anaxial's Roster are respectively a world-book and a critter-book, but they are not necessary. One could play ten sessions using the first two books, then pick up these two ... and one's previous game is not invalidated, yet one's following ten sessions may be much improved, rooted deeper into both geography and myth.

Then you have the two books about Orlanthi culture, Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribes. At first glance, these seem much like clanbooks from Vampire, but that is not the case. Instead, they play a very similar role to the other two supplements I mentioned - they deepen things, give lots more specific options, and serve as player-inspiration. My Hero Wars players LOVE these books.

I think that's a key issue to Mearls' point as well, and it ties into my strategy with Sorcerer. The idea is that a game-book is not the private property of a GM whose job is to channel it to players, but the property (intellectually and creatively speaking) of any participant in the game. Jesse and I had some dialogue about that on the Sorcerer forum a while ago.

Now, all that said, I have to specify that I'm talking about the long-term viability and enjoyment of a game line by its practitioners, and its ability to attract new players and thus customers. Here's the problem: this is a slow process whose motor is actual playing enjoyment. That takes months, even years. Yet retailers and distributors think in terms of periodicals, comics, and modern print-and-shoot bestsellers. Their turnaround time to perceive the "value" of something is, in terms of the use of the product, too short by an order of magnitude.

This is why D&D and Vampire are perceived as the industry's "big successes," because they prompted sales that did accord with retailers' time-sense of the success of games. Even though those waves lasted only a year or two (1977-1979 and 1992-1994 respectively), they are still perceived as "success games" and ordered accordingly, despite frequent evidence to the contrary, and in flat denial of the fact that sales boosts to their line only occur when a revised or new core book is offered.

Can this be reconciled? Can a game line's utility and enjoyment for the users be brought into parallel with profit to manufacturer, which in this day and age means profit to the distributor and retailer?

No one knows.

Best,
Ron

On 2001-12-14 14:15, Ron Edwards wrote:

This is why D&D and Vampire are perceived as the industry's "big successes," because they prompted sales that did accord with retailers' time-sense of the success of games. Even though those waves lasted only a year or two (1977-1979 and 1992-1994 respectively), they are still perceived as "success games" and ordered accordingly, despite frequent evidence to the contrary, and in flat denial of the fact that sales boosts to their line only occur when a revised or new core book is offered.

Hi Gareth (-Michael Skarka),

I have a few points that will clarify.

1) Distributors are always going to pitch what supports their business, which is the constant, periodical-style outflow of supplements. They operate on a comics model and the wrong comics model at that.

Bluntly, I do not trust the distributors' word when it comes to what succeeds from a company's point of view. There is way too much conflict of interest at work.

However, I don't mean to say that they out-and-out LIE, because of the next point ...

2) The word "sales" means a lot of different things in RPG commerce, but almost never "end-user purchase." That's pretty much the only meaning of it that I take seriously when thinking long-term. Those supplements sell in the sense that they move to the warehouses, and in many cases that provides money back to the manufacturer, but it's often the case that they do NOT make back cost-per-unit, but are only profitable if they consistently prompt core-book sales.

I find it very unlikely that the metaplot-based supplements of WW were able to prompt a sale of (say) Mage with every single supplement sale. I submit that this strategy is precisely what turned Mage, ultimately, into an albatross.

Yes, I know there were other factors involved, most notably "what happened to the profit" issues in both cases, TSR and WW alike. But there is no way on this earth that every Mage supplement released could have prompted a 15-20% increase in core book sales - unless we are talking about such shitty sales in the previous month that basically one whole extra book sold in the "supplement" month. THAT I'll accept.

3) I'll give you the 1991 for Vampire; my notion is that the wave began the moment it hit the shelves, and I probably am mistaking its release for when I first saw it.

The D&D wave in sales is more complicated - going by within-tier sales, you are right, because that's when AD&D showed up all over the place. But I submit that end-user sales tapered off fast during that that wave of output, and that if we compare output to end-user sales (which are unknown, in hard numbers), then the "success" wave shows up in the late 70s - when D&D outgrew the hobby, model-airplane store.

Best,
Ron

Nathan wrote:

Wow.. Great discussion...

What does - "encouraging playing" - mean?

I've heard enough gripes of gamers who bought a game then found out it doesn't contain "all the rules". What is the proper or ideal scenario?

Core Book: GRUNT (World War II soldier fighting game)
details hand-to-hand and land battle
Supplement 1: AIR FORCE
details air battle
Supplement 2: THE SEA
details naval battle

or

Core Book: GRUNT
details hand-to-hand, land, air, and naval battle
Supplement 1: BY SKY
adds more planes, guns, etc, etc
Supplement 2: OVER WATER
adds more ships, guns, etc, etc

Which is the better?

A couple of responses:

Bluntly, I do not trust the distributors' word when it comes to what succeeds from a company's point of view. There is way too much conflict of interest at work.

No...no conflict of interest. The distributors (and by this, I'm talking about the pure game-only distributors, not those that also move comics and the like) recognize that their well-being depends upon the continued health of the publishers.

Trust me on this. I've worked as a publisher, a distributor and a retailer over the past 14 years. I've seen all three tiers from the inside.

2) The word "sales" means a lot of different things in RPG commerce, but almost never "end-user purchase."

Actually the sales figures that I was talking about are sales reported by retailers to their distributors, and so on. It's also backed up by the sampling-method sales reports provided by retailers and published every month in COMICS AND GAMES RETAILER (a subscription for which is free to anyone working in the industry...and is highly recommended).

I find it very unlikely that the metaplot-based supplements of WW were able to prompt a sale of (say) Mage with every single supplement sale. I submit that this strategy is precisely what turned Mage, ultimately, into an albatross.

Actually, the supplements artificially perpetuated Mage long past it's viability point....it largely failed because it failed to attract the larger number of Vampire and Werewolf players. Vampire players didn't find it 'sexy' enough, and Werewolf players didn't find it 'ass-kicking' enough. The problem is that the subject (reality bending to will, etc.) was far too esoteric and intellectual for most WoD fans...and those folks that were into the idea from it's initial announcement were expecting ARS MAGICA made modern, and were sorely dissappointed by the end product.

But there is no way on this earth that every Mage supplement released could have prompted a 15-20% increase in core book sales - unless we are talking about such shitty sales in the previous month that basically one whole extra book sold in the "supplement" month. THAT I'll accept.

That's pretty much what I'm talking about. Without supplemental releases, Core Book sales drop off precipitously. In a month when a supplement is released, you see an accompanying spike in Core sales. I've even seen this personally...the sales of HONG KONG ACTION THEATRE! was a near-textbook model of drop-offs and supplement-driven spikes. Conversely, UNDERWORLD, which I consider a better game, both in design and presentation, had high initial sales, but with no supplemental releases, a massive drop-off. When we released the UNDERWORLD soundtrack CD, even a 'supplemental' product that odd resulted in a brief upswing of sales on the Core Book.

My experience, for what it's worth,

GMS

Hi there,

Let's review what this thread is asking about - specifically, the long-term sales viability of a role-playing game.

Gareth has stated that a 15-20% increase in core book sales occurs with the release of a supplement. If I'm not misreading, Gareth has acknowledged that we are talking about 15-20% of Very Little. And I think ... I think I'm not incorrect to state that his observation does not counter my initial claim: that relying on supplement release to "boost" core book sales, especially using metaplot, is not a reliable tactic.

I think that by the time we are looking at that little burp in sales, per supplement, we've already hit the Deadly Point, in which the core book is not "alive" on its own merits. We're running on what Ryan Dancey calls the treadmill, and in all known cases, it's the Treadmill of Gruesome Game Death.

The question is, how does one generate core book sales without relying on an ongoing string of supplements? This question has two underlying points that are easy to misunderstand:
- That relying on the string of supplements is not an alternative, but a mistake. (GURPS books are not supplements, they are reference texts, by the way.)
- When I say "relying," I mean relying. Nothing is terrible or bad about a supplement per se.

What's my answer? I stated it a few posts above: contact with the user base, high-quality product, low overhead. I'll add the demonstration of the quality of current use to potential customers, which is rare for role-playing games. For Adept Press, my results are so far so good.

Best,
Ron

- That relying on the string of supplements is not an alternative, but a mistake. (GURPS books are not supplements, they are reference texts, by the way.)

Zak,

I think that the GURPS books are essentially core books, in that they are the base necessary rules and other material needed to play the game. GURPS is a little different in that there are several "games," if you follow me.

It's a lot like Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder. Small wonder since WoW was a generic/universal game like GURPS. You had the Basic Role Playing pamphlet which gave you the basic, stripped-down rules. This is similar to the GURPS main book. Then they had the different "world" books (Superworld, et al) which gave you the rules and material necessary for running a game in either a fantasy game, a super hero game or a space adventure game. These world books built on the basic rules to make a complete game. These are like the GURPS sourcebooks.

Furthermore, the GURPS sourcebooks have a second function as just a general reference book. Say you're running a game set in medievel China. You're not using GURPS, but a system of your own devising. Yet, you can still pick up GURP China anyway and use the material to help you with your game. This makes the GURPS book just like any other book on ancient China you might find in a bookstore or your local library. Perhaps slightly better for your purposes since you could come up with a way to convert the GURPS stats to your game. This works for SJG since they've gotten a reputation for putting out a quality piece of work and many will pick up the appropriate GURPS book as, if not as a be-all end-all, then as a good place to start.

(Persoanlly, I find the GURPS book are better as just a good start, but I digress)

Back to the thread at hand, the way to make suppliments sell is to make them needed, like how in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates announced that they need to have people need them to survive shortly before selling DOS to IBM.

There are several way to make a suppliment needed. Metaplot is one way, but it apparently is not a good way and is not an especially well liked way.

GURPS uses another way and it seems to work better.

What is another way to make a suppliment needed?

You could put vital rules in a suppliment, but this is also not well liked.

You could have extra rules, like TSR's Complete line (Complete Fighter, Complete Priest, etc) This one has a more moderate opinion. Some do not like it because it smacks of just trying to sell as many books as possible to the end user. Some do like the extra options available.

This is a tough question to answer. One could site historical example, like the Basic D&D Red & Blue books or even the three book AD&D/D&D3e sets, but these do not in anyway guarentee success. It's a case of what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

But the best way is to somehow make your suppliment needed.

Here's a question, what about house organs? For those unfamiliar with the term, a house organ is a magazine put out by the game publisher (e.g. Wotc's Dragon Magazine, Games Workshop's White Dwarf, etc.). Usually these are meant to hawk and support the companies game, but not always. I have no idea what the number crunching would be as far as cost and time/hassle but a magazine, be it monthly, quarterly, semianually or even anually can make a product seem "alive" in the market sense while not requiring a large volume of material or even especially necessary material. The beauty of such an item is if you have more than one current game, you can cover all of them with the same periodical. And when enough material builds up, it can be re-released as a suppliment.

Not a horrible idea. I think they do that with White Dwarf, too. But is it a commercially viable one? That is the real question.

I get the feeling it would be a milage may vary.

On 2001-12-17 00:59, pblock wrote:

Not a horrible idea. I think they do that with White Dwarf, too. But is it a commercially viable one? That is the real question.

I get the feeling it would be a milage may vary.

He said, “what about house organs?”

That’s what the forge is!  And Ron’s WANKING IT!

With a sidelong glance at Anon, two points.

1) I forgot to mention in my last post that Gareth and I clearly disagree about the "conflict of interest" issue among the tiers of RPG commerce. That's definitely a subject for another thread, but I didn't want to deal with it here by pretending it hadn't come up.

2) The Forge is indeed a mechanism such as this whole thread called for. "How do we promote our games?" "How do we generate a user base for our games?" "How do we provide ongoing contact for the user base?" The entire vision for this site is to provide such a service, at the boundary of design and commerce (or free distribution, your choice).

This can work at the individual as well as group level. I strongly urge anyone who asks the question that defines this thread to consider your website to be your company magazine.

Best,
Ron

On 2001-12-17 11:52, Ron Edwards wrote:

This can work at the individual as well as group level. I strongly urge anyone who asks the question that defines this thread to consider your website to be your company magazine.

One way MANY d20 publishers are building a fanbase is simply providing a tremendous volume of web enhancements for their products. In this way, new user's see the free material and (if it any good) become interested in the for sale material.
Clearly, many net prowlers are just scroungers and will never buy. That actually is one possible reason to make the majority of the material available only to paying customers via a code in the product that gives them access to limited access webpages (of course this isn't perfect but magazines get read and never purchased in the point of sale too). In principle, the stuff the web browser can't see might be more enticing than the stuff he or she can. Moreover, the cost saved in not printing material intended for a product anyway may be very much better than that made by a struggling or even marginally sucessful magazine. The key is making sure customers know the website and material is there. Clearly spelling that out for them in the product is important but creating news for traffic sites (like Eric Noah's) is as well.

my 2p

Ryan