Avoiding splatbook fatigue.

[JustinA]

I feel like this thread is conflating "splatbook fatigue" with "your product line is shitty". Both will cause people to stop buying your new products, but it's for very different reasons.

"Your product line is shitty" causes people to stop buying because they're unhappy with what you're producing.

"Splatbook fatigue", on the other hand, happens when people become satiated. The new material may be amazing and made out of solid gold, but the perceived rate of return on a purchase is marginal specifically because they already have "more stuff than they could ever possibly use".

(From a market standpoint, "splatbook fatigue" is also induced from player turnover. If your average players stays engaged with your game for 2 years and buys an average of 1 book every month then you can sell them 24 books. If you replace that guy with a new player, the new guy will also buy 24 books... but since most product lines tend to move from "most essential products" to "least essential products" over their lifespan, you'll probably end up selling the new guy the same 24 books you sold the first guy.

Unfortunately, there's also a pretty good chance the new guy is buying the used copies that the first guy just dumped onto ebay. Which further impacts your sales.)

Improving the quality of your products will fix the "your product line is shitty" problem. Improving the quality of your products will have, at best, a minimal impact on "splatbook fatigue".

Fixing "splatbook fatigue" is more difficult. A few thoughts:

(1) If you can actually get people playing something different -- so that the material they've previously bought isn't satiating their demand -- then you can market them new books.

This is essentially how a new edition "fixes" the problem. But you could also theoretically accomplish this by expanding gameplay into new areas. This has proven difficult in the past, but if you really focused on supporting the new options to the same level that existing options are being supported you might be able to grow both your product line and your customer base. (Variety might also reduce the rate of player turn-over, which would also help your bottom line.)

(2) Products that are designed to be "consumed" instead of retained. The problem with "another book of 50 feats for the fighter" is that everyone eventually reaches a satiation point with that: Once you've got 50 or 100 or 150 or 200 feats for the fighter, you've got more feats than you'll ever actually use.

But adventures, for example, don't suffer from this problem: Once you've played an adventure, you'll need another one. This is particularly true in a market where many roleplayers read modules as if they were fiction (enjoying them even if they never play them). (This is why Paizo can build a subscription business based on people buying dozens and dozens of adventures from them.)

Are there other examples? Possibly. WotC gets blasted every time they release a card supplement for a game, but that's another example of a consumable.

(3) "Splatbook fatigue" isn't limited to splatbooks. You'll see similar market forces working on miniatures ("I've got all the miniatures I need"), dungeon tiles, and the like.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I agree they're different problems but there are facets or implementation of otherwise 'good' products that can contribute to splatbook fatigue independent of quality. But product saturation and product qualities are aspects of splatbook fatigue, not the same thing.

If they had errata'd the hell out of Oriental Adventures and published it online, it's doubtless that the new book would be better than the old book i.e. higher quality. Nonetheless it produces more splatbook fatigue than publishing unerrata'd Oriental Adventures and Unapproachable East--even though it's by definition less product saturation and higher product quality. This is because there's another factor involved: namely, people don't like having to chase updates or feel that they're being guinea pigs for playtesting even if it improves the final product. Of course you could say 'don't print a crummy product in the first place' but it ignores the fact that people issue changes for reasons that don't have to deal with quality and that you would've had less splatbook fatigue if you left the shitty product as-is.

[Wesley Street]

(1) If you can actually get people playing something different -- so that the material they've previously bought isn't satiating their demand -- then you can market them new books.

This is essentially how a new edition "fixes" the problem. But you could also theoretically accomplish this by expanding gameplay into new areas. This has proven difficult in the past, but if you really focused on supporting the new options to the same level that existing options are being supported you might be able to grow both your product line and your customer base. (Variety might also reduce the rate of player turn-over, which would also help your bottom line.)

Love or hate D&D 4E, taking that engine and the basic premise of the game and translating it into Gamma World was a smart move. Play is the same at its core and GMs can use the same fantasy monster manuals to pull mutant critters for their Gamma World games. GW also taps in the CCG market by offering upgrades to power cards as booster packs.

I'm tempted to suggest that new setting releases should always utilize supplemental rule sets. 2nd ed. Ravenloft introduced alignment enforcement penalties, 2nd ed. Dark Sun introduced "everything has psionics" rules, and 3rd ed. Eberron introduced the action point. It's not enough to say, "our new setting is like the Arabian Caliphate with a new player class, a new player race, and rules for riding magic carpets" because that stuff is window dressing at best. There should be new combat and magic-use rules that reflect the traditions of the region, new skills (coffee making, genie bottling, or whatever), and new feats. The rules shouldn't be so different that they completely replace the core books but they should be different enough to provide a play experience that one wouldn't receive if a game was set in Faerun.

[JonSetanta]

You want to have sex appeal for the game but the problem is making it too sexy.

Tasteful sexiness is completely doable. It's not even hard at all.

Good taste is unfortunately relative.

Have you seen photos of the old TSR staff? Good gods, they were/are ugly.
The general "taste" of sexual suggestion of D&D art is generally, and most importantly IMHO, lame.
While there might be some coincidence there, hiring troglodytes with no connection to what's considered "popular preference" could have something to do with it.

I don't want Heavy Metal magazine rejects.
I want orc woman pinups.