Lago's Kickass D&D-Book Marketing Strategy!

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm no marketing expert. So these are my ultimately amateur opinion on how to sell RPG books.

I'm not going to go into the rules or quality of writing. I'm here to tell you how to polish a turd--I strongly believe that 4th Edition, even with its rules problems, could have sold more of their books if the presentation and scheduling was better.

1) Campaign settings should be the first books released, after the core book. I know people who wanted to play 4E. They also wanted to play Eberron. So in the year between when the new edition came out and the EPG/ECS got released, do you think that the people interested in that game just sat on their hands for a year? No. They either continued playing 3rd Edition or played 4th Edition with another campaign setting. So when the books actually came out, people settled into their old routine or lost interest.

So for 5th Edition, in the first two months they should immediately release books for campaign settings for their money-maker settings (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Rokugan), they should re-release a campaign setting that has fond memories in the fanbase but hasn't been supported for awhile (Dark Sun or Ravenloft or even Spelljammer), and they should also release a new campaign setting altogether to show that Things Will Be Different Now.

2) Pay money out the ass for artwork. I really don't know why WotC is so reluctant to do this for their books. When I crack open, say, Martial Power and see a bunch of white space at the bottom of some bullshit backstory paragon path it just feels empty and unappealing to look at.

Every page should have at least one picture on it. I know art is expensive, but it's the first thing that catches peoples' eyes when they look at your book.

3) Have a unified theme for your covers/spine. I'm looking over towards my bookshelf right now and my 3rd Edition books are a congealed mass of unappealing brown, even the hardcover ones. When I went to a bookstore and passed by the shelf, sometimes they released shift like Complete Divine and Player's Handbook 2 and I didn't even know that there were new books.

The 4th Edition books are a little better, but the spines are still unappealing to look at. Seriously, all spines should look like this:

- They're color-coded for a unified theme. Class books are gold,campaign setting books are blue, DM-tool books are green, etc.

- Books in the same category but different from other books should still have the same color overall but the stuff within the border should be different. I know that's hard to explain, so here's an example. See the 3E's Eberron Campaign Guide and the Miniatures' handbook? They use the same colors but the decoration is different.

- Every book should have a tiny piece of artwork at the top corner, like Arcane Power should show a cross-section of Mialee's face or the Eberron Player's Guide should show a Warforged. 4th Edition does that, but you know what? I didn't even notice it until a couple of months ago because they put it at the bottom and make it look tiny. This should be a third of the damn spine at the top.

- Dungeons and Dragons logo at the bottom. We KNOW what a Dungeons and Dragons book is, you don't need to have it take up a third of the fucking spine.

I mean, honestly, why are they so haphazard with their book presentation? The spine and cover are going to be the first things that people see. I'm not going to pick up the 3E PHB2 if the damn cover and spine looks like the one for the Complete Warrior and Book of Nine Swords.

4) Sourcebooks should have a little something for everyone. Now this is going past the marketing decision back to the actual writing of rules, but they're related.

The bullshit that 4E does where they make half of the feats racial in a sourcebook? Yeah, that needs to stop right now. This really hurts the sale of books. When some fucknut rolls by Barnes and Nobles or whatever, picks up Psionic Power and goes 'oooo, something for my Psychic Warrior! ... oh, wait, all of the stuff I want is for dwarves. Nevermind.', that's a problem.

By the same token, in 4E I've noticed that people have ignored entire classbooks. Why? Because Arcane Power doesn't have anything in it for their Ranger, that's why. In 3E, at least, we had people at least taking a look at Tome and Blood and Defenders of the Faith because there might be a feat or prestige class they can plunder. But in this edition, when I pick up Player's Handbook II there's going to be nothing in it for my pre-existing characters except for Weapon Expertise and a couple of armors.

5) Why the heck didn't they release the fucking CDs of their DDI Compendium with their Big Books?

The DDI was supposed to be their money-maker, like World of Warcraft and all that shit. So why do I have to stumble on their website before I find out about it?

If you want to push this feature, you should include a copy of a CD for your Compendium with every Big Book you release, with 'bonus material' on the CD to make people take a look at it. The DDI should come with a free damn trial, too. I have to pay money right away to have access to material that has a history of being dodgy or unbalanced? What's up with that?

6) All future prints of books should have the damn errata in them. There's no excuse for that shit where you know a book is fucked up but you don't fix it. I can understand not wanting to have to reprint fuckups in, say, Defenders of the Faith, but you know what? If you can't reprint or fix a book, then at least include it somewhere in a book someone is likely to buy. Remember that DDI compendium thing I was talking about? Why not have errata for the things you can't fix in there--or better yet, why not put it at the back of the book?

I actually liked the thing in the PHB2 where they took a time out and clarified/errata'd rules in previous supplements. You should do that more often. But that ALSO frickin' means that you should go back to the original books and fix that shit!

[ggroy]

[DragonChild]

4) Sourcebooks should have a little something for everyone.

I highly disagree here. In my opinion, books should be specialized and self contained. For example, Martial Power was damn near perfect, if not in power, at least in aim. Everyone in my group playing one of those classes bought it, there were no monsters, no useless fluff, just the crunch we wanted. The FR book, however, was basically ignored, despite us PLAYING in FR, as it was too diluted. I think you'll have a lot more luck getting multiple people to each buy one book that helps them a lot, then trying to convince everyone to buy a ton of books. Wider appeal, sure, but not as STRONG of an appeal.

In addition, BOOKS SHOULD NOT REFERENCE OTHER BOOKS OUTSIDE THEIR PRODUCT LINE. Arcane Power contains several powers that are only useful for a Dark Pact warlock. Not only were these powers useless to me, not knowing what a Dark Pact warlock was, I had no idea where you even GET a Dark Pact warlock, until I was told it was in a totally unrelated FR book. So dumb.


I'll be posting my thoughts on making money online later...

[Lago PARANOIA]

I highly disagree here. In my opinion, books should be specialized and self contained. For example, Martial Power was damn near perfect, if not in power, at least in aim. Everyone in my group playing one of those classes bought it, there were no monsters, no useless fluff, just the crunch we wanted. The FR book, however, was basically ignored, despite us PLAYING in FR, as it was too diluted. I think you'll have a lot more luck getting multiple people to each buy one book that helps them a lot, then trying to convince everyone to buy a ton of books. Wider appeal, sure, but not as STRONG of an appeal.

Dude, Martial Power is like 30% useless fluff. That is of course including the flavor text on powers and chunks of blank space.

But anyway, I didn't think that Martial Power was written well. Epic Destinies are easier to write than paragon paths but they only had eight of them. There's no reason why they shouldn't have had twelve.

Furthermore, when I say a little something for everyone, I mean that Martial Power should have options in it that are generically useful for the chosen class but still have a reason for other people to pick it up.

For example, the Mage's Weapon in Adventurer's Vault. There's no reason why that couldn't have been in Martial Power. Or how about a feat that gives you a certain benefit if you have both a martial power source and a divine power source? Or hell, how about a paragon path that combines the fighter path with that of a swordmage? Or in that one dragon issue, they had a twee little option to combine warlocks and warlordness for a new twee paragon path, with a couple of accompanying feats. It's a stupid option, but why didn't they put that in the book?

In addition, BOOKS SHOULD NOT REFERENCE OTHER BOOKS OUTSIDE THEIR PRODUCT LINE. Arcane Power contains several powers that are only useful for a Dark Pact warlock. Not only were these powers useless to me, not knowing what a Dark Pact warlock was, I had no idea where you even GET a Dark Pact warlock, until I was told it was in a totally unrelated FR book. So dumb.

Unfortunately, that's inevitable. While I agree that it's a pain in the ass to crack open a book and have it reference a swordmage feat, it's either do that or drop support for that class in future books.

Take the swordmage for example. How many people do you think would've never picked up the class if they had known that there wouldn't be support for it in future books? And if people aren't interested in classes because they have the attitude of 'who cares, this is just going to become obsolete in a year', that makes them less likely to pick up your book.

Dropping Swordmage support in Arcane Power would've been a bad move, because the Swordmage was the biggest selling point of the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide to people who weren't interested in the setting.

[erik]

If errata is something needing mention for marketing strategies then perhaps a nod to playtesting is recommended as well, seeing as how it raises the likelihood of catching errors and problems before errata becomes necessary.

On the art thing, I agree more art = goooooood, but the real cost isn't in paying artists... there's thousands of very talented JAFAs who would cream themselves for a cheap commission where their work would meet a million eyeballs. The cost downside is in having the books be 100 pages longer and having to pay to print it. No excuse for empty space though. That is just stupid.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If errata is something needing mention for marketing strategies then perhaps a nod to playtesting is recommended as well, seeing as how it raises the likelihood of catching errors and problems before errata becomes necessary.

I'm just talking about selling books; we're not trying to create a good product here, just make the most of what we have.

Though on the art thing...

I know cramming books with artwork increases the page count So let's just look for a place where we can start trimming. And I know where to start; that useless descriptive text 3E and 4E are in love with. Trust me, people like artwork a lot more than the pointless fluff bullshit that they fill these books with.

I mean, really, if it takes more than two paragraphs to describe your prestige class or epic destiny or whatever then you're just losing the attention of people. A lot of folks don't even look at the descriptive text for these things, they just look at the class and go 'hmm, Pit Fighter has the features I want for my honorable, upstanding Razor Paladin. Let's go with that!'

If for some reason you find it really important to whinge about how awesome and cool your option is, then really, you should reserve a section in the back of the book to put it altogether at once. Complete Warrior did it and it was moderately interesting. The current practice of putting that crap right next to the prestige class/paragon/epic destiny options is just insulting; it wastes space around the crunch and isn't enough time to really get to know how the option is supposed to work.

[Username17]

I disagree about the brown covers - I think they were excellent. The books were clearly thematically related. The golden tan for "rules" books and pale tan for "setting" books was a fine distinction in 3.5 land and it conveyed the message very well I thought. As for what should be in each book, that really depends on how your game as a whole is organized. And I'm afraid that gets back to the question of system rules somewhat.

Frankly, the only 3.5 books I've ever really felt the lack of not having a personal copy on hand were:

• Monster Books
• It's Cold Outside
• It's Hot Outside
• Heroes of Horror

Every other 3.5 book has not phased me in the slightest by its absence at any time. Which leads me to believe that while it is in many ways incredibly annoying to sort through, books filled with a scattershot pile of crap that a lot of different players and/or the DM might want to use are actually the most saleable. Personally, I'm damned irritated to grab disparate elements from Heroes of Horror, Complete Arcane 2, Libris Mortis, and Frostburn just to make a character. But that doesn't mean I won't do it. And that translates to real money for the corp.

The most convenient for me personally would be the Shadowrun system where I make my illusionist by grabbing the core book (singular) and then grabbing the advanced magic book and moving on. But that only sold me two books! They'd get me to buy more books if I grabbed the illusions chapter out of a book about fairies and illusions and deep forest adventures and the chapter about being a tricksy character out of the book about city adventures and intrigue and crap. In short, divvying things up weirdly and arbitrarily like the Tome material isn't just good for writer's block - it sells more books!

The reason why people didn't buy It's Wet Outside is not because the format was bad, it's because the book sucked ass. Same for It's Inside Outside and It's Crowded Outside. Making a book that sucks is always going to drive down sales. More copies of Book of Vile Darkness were sold than Book of Exalted Deeds. But making thematic books like those that have bones to throw to a lot of players is definitely the way to go for the moneys and the bling. Remember: your character only has one prestige class or paragon destiny anyway, so don't pretend that books like Complete Warrior or Martial Power are any more useful to your Rogue than books like Lords of Madness and It's Hot Outside.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank, you must be the only person I know who liked the uniformly brown spines.

I liked the magic tome theme for the hardcover books. The first time I got it. Why couldn't they be in more colors than 'dark brown with gold borders with red/blue/green orbs' or 'light brown with gold borders with red/blue/green orbs'? What's wrong with mixing things up like with, say, the Dungeon's Master Guide or the Miniatures' Handbook while still keeping the 'this rulebook likes like a spellbook! Wowzers'?

Making things maroon or blue-grey sometimes? I thought that was cool.

[Kaelik]

I'm hardcore with Frank on this one. Uniform content books are better, like grabbing Complete Arcane + Complete Mage + Core as the only books to make a Wizard.

But amalgamation books sell more books. And they can both work as long as you don't mix the strategies, because if I have to pull out Cold and Hot Outside, as well as Complete Arcane and Mage, the benefits of having lots of shit in one book is lost.

Also, with Frank on the themed brown covers as fine. If I want to know what's inside a book, I'll go through all the damn trouble of reading the words on the spine. The part where you want me to pictographically identify books based on a spine image of any size is fucking crazy sauce. That's what the titles on spines are for. That is their one and sole purpose. I want to use words to identify the book, not fucking pictures.

[RandomCasualty2]

The problem with the M:tG style of creation is pdfs. If you only actually use 2 pages for a PrC or paragon path out of a 120 page book, people will DL the PDF and just print out those 2 pages.

In fact, the whole 4E paradigm is way too piratable, since you can basically print your class and all its abilities in a few pages, and you don't even need a book like the PHB2.

[Lago PARANOIA]

All right, here's a compromise for dumpster-divin'.

For decisions that you only have to make a few times in your life, like your prestige class or your class variants, those can be spread out over several books.

For decisions that you have to make several times, like magic items or feats or spells, those should be in as few books as possible.

Also, with Frank on the themed brown covers as fine. If I want to know what's inside a book, I'll go through all the damn trouble of reading the words on the spine. The part where you want me to pictographically identify books based on a spine image of any size is fucking crazy sauce. That's what the titles on spines are for. That is their one and sole purpose. I want to use words to identify the book, not fucking pictures.

The spines aren't there so that people who already own them can visually identify books off of shelves, they're there so that people who are walking by them on a bookshelf or some shit can go 'hey, I've never seen a blue and green cover with a Warforged on it before. Must be a new book'.

The process of having to stop and spend a minute or so scanning and reading all of the books to see if there's one you haven't seen yet takes too long and risks losing interest. People should be able to go 'hey, new D&D book' without doing that.

In fact, the whole 4E paradigm is way too piratable, since you can basically print your class and all its abilities in a few pages, and you don't even need a book like the PHB2.

So the game should be built more like, say, the 3rd Edition's Player's Handbook where there was a huge kludge of abilities you had to select? That way if you want to pirate something you have to pirate the entire section?

[erik]

I'm hardcore ... I want to use words to identify the book, not fucking pictures.

You're hardcore... but against fucking pictures? Does not compute!

Anywho, I did like the color scheme of Red (MM), Blue (DMG), Brown (PHB) for their core books. The light brown Spell Compendium was different enough to be easy to identify also.

Beyond that I didn't really care about the colors of the books since they were rarely ever referenced during games, and if they were, we usually were annoyed at whoever was holding up the game, so they had best have the book already at their fingertips and know what the hell they were looking for. Spine colors didn't really impact against utility.

As for marketing, I knew what all the new releases were even when 3.5 was putting out books and I wasn't interested, so I never really had anything slip past me at the game stores due to uniform brown covers. Also most gaming stores that I visited would have books face up on their shelves anyway. I never saw the spines. The exception I suppose is at Borders and other big book stores, but I'd just read the titles on the spine there if I wanted to see what they had... the uniform spines at least let me know what was a DnD book and what wasn't. If it was too varied then I might have accidentally touched a book not pertinent to my interests.

[Kaelik]

I'm hardcore ... I want to use words to identify the book, not fucking pictures.

You're hardcore... but against fucking pictures? Does not compute!

WTF asshole. You are a goddam lying asshat.

1) WTF is hardcore about pictures? Hardcore is a fucking adjective and adverb. Whether or not hardcore is pro or anti pictures depends on what it is modifying. "I'm a hardcore reader." "WTF, Hardcore means you like pictures."

2) I'm using hardcore to describe how much I agree with frank about what he previously posted on this subject. He did not post anying about fucking spine pictures. Therefore, hardcore has nothing to do with fucking anything.

3)

I... a...m... a... r...a...p...i...s...t... .

Take your fucking nonsensical ellipsis and shove it up your ass.

[Username17]

Dude, take a chill pill. Hardcore also refers to "fucking pictures" where people are fucking. In the pictures. It was a harmless and slightly amusing joke.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Dude, take a chill pill. Hardcore also refers to "fucking pictures" where people are fucking. In the pictures. It was a harmless and slightly amusing joke.

-Username17

Wait, WTF? Hardcore means something specific. Fucking A. My apologies. clikml is still a rapist though.

[Caedrus]

Frank, you must be the only person I know who liked the uniformly brown spines.

I liked the brown spines too. And I liked the magic tome theme especially.

[Thymos]

I like the brown spines too.

As far as books go, I think it's hard for people to come up with quality material for a single subject too narrowly defined in one go.

I think the best selling stuff would be like Monte Cook's Complete Book of Eldritch Might.

The book is all about arcane power, but it has scatterbrained topics covered. Anything from new monsters, new prestige classes, new spells, to new locations. The reason I liked it mostly was that everything was high quality. I wonder if the books layout, scattered subjects all vaguely related, made it easier to create good content. I mean, your not pressured to pump out 50 prestige classes most of which are crap this way.

[Kaelik]

Well that's pretty similar to Cold and Hot Outside, both of which had good shit. Compare it to the Completes, which has some good stuff, but is mostly shit.

I think thematic books that fully explore their theme are probably a good way to write material.

[Prak]

I did very much like the magic tome theme, though I think the colour coded book types would be nice, simply because I organize my shelf that way and it'd look nicer and be easier to organize.

[TOZ]

In fact, the whole 4E paradigm is way too piratable, since you can basically print your class and all its abilities in a few pages, and you don't even need a book like the PHB2.

Actually, it is even easier. Get the character builder, all the updates, and you've got all you need from every book. It prints out your powers along with all your stats. You never need to buy a damn book again. Seriously, I never needed to reference the books on what my character could do because everything he could do was there. And a 4E character can do remarkably little anyway.

[Username17]

I am totally unconvinced that they aren't Trying to encourage piracy.

-Username17

[erik]

My apologies. clikml is still a rapist though.

It happens =-)

xkcd has a pretty good grasp on things that I find funny. I swear many of his quirks are ones I've had since highschool.

My brother is far worse. He will outright mishear what anyone says and have it rebroadcast as something retarded and then get outraged at people for sounding retarded. Thankfully we live 1000+ miles apart now.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, in cased you missed it, I include so much hyberbole and cussing and shit in everything that I say, I don't even remember that I included it at all, and just treat all such statements as punctuation. You could basically pull the 'fucking jacket' on everything I've ever said, and I still wouldn't get it.

[MartinHarper]

I know where to start; that useless descriptive text 3E and 4E are in love with.

I've heard a lot of people complain about the lack of fluff in 4e.

[Yugo]

What about the business strategy? You want a business model that makes money but doesn't piss off the customers. How's this model for a change?

Develop and sell only core rule books

Let's face it, accessory books will never sell as well as the core rule books. So rather than expending the time and money on developing products that won't give you the same profit margins, let's just give up on them. Retain and pay only a small group of game designers for the sole purpose of developing, testing, refining, and fixing the three core rule books. Make sure the core rules work well enough and consistent enough on the first release, and publish well researched erratas and errata'ed versions every year.

This method has the benefit of much reduced operating cost since you won't be hiring the number of people needed to constantly produce book (no matter what quality) month after month or wasting dough on the printing press to produce those said books. Sure, you won't be making as much money from selling accessory books, but you won't risk pissing off customers by selling poorly written/designed trash.