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Jan. 13th, 2006 01:51 pmI've known for a while there's a problem with publishing RPG adventure modules for a popular game -- you expect to sell only a small fraction of the amount you sell of the game, because (a) it won't appeal to all gamers, and (b) out of a group of gamers, each of whom has your core rulebooks, at best only one of them will buy the adventure.
Which is why we get settingbooks and sourcebooks and rule adjuncts, but (relatively) few high-quality modules. (The attempts by AEG to write small twelve-half-page $2.99 adventures being a welcome exception -- but you can't build a campaign around one or even several of those.)
But I'm realizing there's another market flaw to these adventures: compared with the 1990s and earlier, they have a much reduced shelflife, because you simply can't keep their contents private anymore.
I'm going to run the Banewarrens, and would like to run City of the Spider Queen afterwards if the players want to continue their characters. But just poking around the net, I find a minimum of a half dozen players-view writeups of the entire CotSQ. Presumably I can ask my players not to read them, but it's not a reasonable thing to run if they already have. (Jason may have already read a Banewarrens writeup a few years ago, but says he remembers little, and it can hopefully be variant enough in my running that very little useful info remains.)
Guess it means that when a module does come out, buy it and run it quick, before players innocently and accidentally read writeups online. Information wants to be free -- publishing stuff that you want kept secret is, well, difficult.
Which is why we get settingbooks and sourcebooks and rule adjuncts, but (relatively) few high-quality modules. (The attempts by AEG to write small twelve-half-page $2.99 adventures being a welcome exception -- but you can't build a campaign around one or even several of those.)
But I'm realizing there's another market flaw to these adventures: compared with the 1990s and earlier, they have a much reduced shelflife, because you simply can't keep their contents private anymore.
I'm going to run the Banewarrens, and would like to run City of the Spider Queen afterwards if the players want to continue their characters. But just poking around the net, I find a minimum of a half dozen players-view writeups of the entire CotSQ. Presumably I can ask my players not to read them, but it's not a reasonable thing to run if they already have. (Jason may have already read a Banewarrens writeup a few years ago, but says he remembers little, and it can hopefully be variant enough in my running that very little useful info remains.)
Guess it means that when a module does come out, buy it and run it quick, before players innocently and accidentally read writeups online. Information wants to be free -- publishing stuff that you want kept secret is, well, difficult.
