Adventure pathing: Your thoughts?

[ubernoob]

Amazon isn't really in the business of making money, it's in a business of subsidizing literacy.

-Username17

Frank, would you mind making a thread to explain what makes you think this and why when you get a chance? This is something I'd love to hear more about.

[adamjury]

Let's put it this way: I don't know any store to have gotten that much in decades. Shippinh, credit, and general lack of purchasing power by retailers have pushed many a hole in the wall game store to the bone.

That stuff is hard to generalize about: some stores carefully order things so they can almost always qualify for free shipping (cutting back into the distributor's profits), some don't pay close attention and end up spending more than they could. Sometimes it's necessary to pay extra to get something sooner, sometimes it's not.

But: the money for shipping, interest, etc. does not flow downhill to the distributors or publishers. A retailer may have a 47% discount and may end up eating 7% of that in their costs strictly related to that inventory aquisition, but that 7% does not end up in the hands of the distributor: it ends up at UPS, the credit card company, etc. A game store's final margin can't be used to determine what a distributor grosses, and downhill, that holds true.

[adamjury]

As I understand it, you have to ship the goods to the distributor on your own dime, so sure.

I'm pulling my numbers from actual distributor discussions over the last couple months, not extrapolating from Amazon's sale prices.

[Username17]

As I understand it, you have to ship the goods to the distributor on your own dime, so sure.

I'm pulling my numbers from actual distributor discussions over the last couple months, not extrapolating from Amazon's sale prices.

Are you saying that PSI gets a better sales price from Catalyst than Amazon does, or are you saying that Amazon has to buy their books from PSI rather than direct from IMR?

Because those are the only scenarios I can think of that involve Amazon paying $15 for Vice and IMR selling it for less than $15.

-Username17

[adamjury]

I have no idea the specifics of Catalyst's deal with PSI. But that's what PSI is hired to do: sell to the chain stores, sell to other distributors, and sell to retailers.

[Username17]

I have no idea the specifics of Catalyst's deal with PSI. But that's what PSI is hired to do: sell to the chain stores, sell to other distributors, and sell to retailers.

So:

• Option 1: IMR sells book to PSI for $12, who sells it to Amazon for $15, who sells it to the customer for $18 plus shipping.
  
  Option 2: IMR sells book to PSI for $12, who sells it to Borders for $15, who sells it to the customer for $30.
  
  Option 3: IMR sells book to PSI for $12, who sells it to Alliance for $15, who sells it to a game store for $22 plus shipping, who sells it to the customer for $30.

That sound about right? It's good to be borders apparently.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Does IMR/their distributor sell through Amazon? I dimly remember a post a long time ago where they stated they did not support Amazon.

[adamjury]

I actually don't remember when IMR started selling to Amazon; it was sometime in 2009, I believe.

[Gelare]

• Option 1: IMR sells book to PSI for $12, who sells it to Amazon for $15, who sells it to the customer for $18 plus shipping.
  
  Option 2: IMR sells book to PSI for $12, who sells it to Borders for $15, who sells it to the customer for $30.
  
  Option 3: IMR sells book to PSI for $12, who sells it to Alliance for $15, who sells it to a game store for $22 plus shipping, who sells it to the customer for $30.

That sound about right? It's good to be borders apparently.

-Username17

Not so good, if you wind up selling fewer books and have to deal with much higher overhead costs for having such luxuries as physical stores.

[Crissa]

I think PSI is attempting to cut out Alliance, but it's probably true they don't give as good a price to retailers. I only have experience from the retail end, and that was pre-PSI (they hadn't been created yet).

-Crissa

[hogarth]

My question is: why doesn't anyone print an entire campaign? I mean, even Paizo dribbles them out over the course of a year (even now with their own line of APs).

It's a cashflow thing, i.e. they dribble them out so that their employees can eat a cheeseburger every day instead of eating 365 cheeseburgers once a year.

By the way, I think the adventure paths are great; I've played in too many games where the GM obviously has no clue what will happen next and then the death spiral starts.

I don't buy that. I mean, they put out 100 page single adventure APs, and that many pages go to one adventure because pages and pages are filled with dead content like unrelated fiction, monster write-ups, and even setting material.

Take Spires of Xin-Halast:

Total pages: ........................95 pages
. Editorializing:................................. 2 pages
. Preview of the next AP:...................4 pages
. Pre-gen ........................................2 pages
. Unrelated fiction.............................6 pages
. New monsters..............................13 pages
. New magic items............................1 page
. Setting material about mountains.... 3 pages
. BBEG stats.....................................3 pages
. Adventure....................................55 pages

And that is before we look at how much of the adventure is pre-statted out monsters, sidebars, and art. Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

I mean, good ideas for campaigns are not that hard. Frank and I once came up with a whole campaign while half-drunk, and we did it in under an hour. It was easily as good as any of these APs.

And even if you write up a whole campaign, that still doesn't stop people from doing single chapters of the campaign as one-offs in their own campaign.

To revive an old discussion, on the Paizo boards they've been talking about "filler" in the adventure paths. Long story short: 50 pages of actual adventure per month is the upper limit of what the editors can handle. The filler stuff (art, fiction, fluff articles) requires almost no editing.

The thread is mildly interesting, from a business standpoint.

[hogarth]

Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

I mean, good ideas for campaigns are not that hard. Frank and I once came up with a whole campaign while half-drunk, and we did it in under an hour. It was easily as good as any of these APs.

K,

Have you given any more thought to writing an $8, 100 page, level 1-20 adventure path? If it helps, I'll buy a copy.

(Actually, come to think of it, a while back I bought the PDFs for the "War of the Burning Sky" adventure path for $12 when it was on sale. I don't know if I've even looked at them yet, though!)

[Lokathor]

Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

I mean, good ideas for campaigns are not that hard. Frank and I once came up with a whole campaign while half-drunk, and we did it in under an hour. It was easily as good as any of these APs.

K,

Have you given any more thought to writing an $8, 100 page, level 1-20 adventure path? If it helps, I'll buy a copy.

(Actually, come to think of it, a while back I bought the PDFs for the "War of the Burning Sky" adventure path for $12 when it was on sale. I don't know if I've even looked at them yet, though!)

If K wrote an adventure for 3e (or even 2e) I'd buy it.

[Smeelbo]

PSI sells to Alliance. IF we were still carrying Catalyst Labs, then we'd get about a 44% discount over MSRP. However, as I made clear to my Alliance sales rep after the Auschwitz fiasco, we will no longer be carrying any Catalyst Labs publications. Neither will a few other game stores, after I pointed out that material.

Smeelbo

[Midnight_v]

My question is all of this is what exactly would a campaign like that really look like, in 3.X?
What kind of campaign can account for all the changes in power throughout a char's life.

[K]

Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

I mean, good ideas for campaigns are not that hard. Frank and I once came up with a whole campaign while half-drunk, and we did it in under an hour. It was easily as good as any of these APs.

K,

Have you given any more thought to writing an $8, 100 page, level 1-20 adventure path? If it helps, I'll buy a copy.

(Actually, come to think of it, a while back I bought the PDFs for the "War of the Burning Sky" adventure path for $12 when it was on sale. I don't know if I've even looked at them yet, though!)

I have. I'm not actually sure what the business models are on self-publishing modules, but the idea has recently become more interesting to me.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I was looking at Reign, and it seems that small RPG developers can get a pretty viable business model using print-on-demand websites. The guy behind Reign uses lulu.com ( http://stores.lulu.com/gregstolze ), but I don't know much about the details.
EDIT:
I would totally buy a copy of this hypothetical campaign.

[fbmf]

K,

Have you given any more thought to writing an $8, 100 page, level 1-20 adventure path? If it helps, I'll buy a copy.

(Actually, come to think of it, a while back I bought the PDFs for the "War of the Burning Sky" adventure path for $12 when it was on sale. I don't know if I've even looked at them yet, though!)

I have. I'm not actually sure what the business models are on self-publishing modules, but the idea has recently become more interesting to me.

Where can I get a copy?

Game On,
fbmf

[Red_Rob]

The ransom model seems pretty popular for fan-based stuff, and gives you an idea of committed interest before you have to put any work in.