The Gaming Den

hogarth wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:It's not always irrationality though. With some incomes it's easier to pay $20 every couple of months than $120 once

Sure, I guess; there's another reason that someone wouldn't want to drop $120 on a single book. I paid about $40 for the Shackled City hardcover, and I think that's about the right price for me.

At any rate, the point is that Paizo wants to make money every month. So by their estimate, there's enough consumer demand for adventure paths to publish one every six months (note that the Dragon adventure paths were one every twelve months). So assuming they want to get some cash flow every month, that means that they'll split the path into six pieces. And by their estimate, the most anyone is willing to pay for each piece is $20 retail/$15 Amazon. And presumably they figure they can more easily charge $15-$20 for a 95 page book (with 50% filler material) than a 55 page book.

I think you fail at math.

There is no economic reason to split an AP into six parts. You can still sell as many units if they were one AP per unit. For example, rather than selling six installments of one AP over six months, you could sell six APs over six months at one AP per month. The sum total of units are the same.

I mean, there is some incentive to keep buying a serialized AP once you have one installment of it, but I personally have all of one AP and half of the other because I think one had a quality storyline and the other was crap that I opted out of after I got a look at a few installments.

If each was an AP, I might buy a lot more because no single installment would turn me off the whole. Now I am extremely leery of buying any of their products based on their general quality and ratio of usable adventure vs. random crap.

Their current business model consists of "we got all the guys who know that 3e is better than 4e, and would like to do some DnD no matter who makes it, and as the only guys who can afford art we get the lion's share." I don't think they've gotten a rigorous market testing of their model.

Personally, I'd love to go back to Magazine form. One hundred pages of mostly content and twenty pages of BS for $8.00. I bought a lot of those for the simple reason that they were cheap so that even if I didn't need it or like it I could always justify the purchase for the maps or NPCs because it was so damn cheap. This not something I'm willing to do with the current Paizo products.

K wrote: 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.

You really think that pre-statted out monsters and sidebars count for 40 out of 55 pages (so that you can fit 6 adventure path segments into 95 pages)? As I noted, I have a copy of the Shackled City hardcover, which is 400 pages. I certainly don't think that it's 75% filler material; maybe 25%-30%, at most (although I wouldn't count setting material as filler, for example).

If you cut out the long rambling backstory that you could never fit into the adventure in any way that wouldn't be horribly awkward, the statted out mobs that take between a page and half page, and the sidebars like the "aren't we clever that we copied the idea of Xanadu", you could cut 75% of the adventure out. Seriously, most of it reads like a sourcebook despite the fact that you could never use it as one.

Heck, considering that some of the entries in the One Page Adventure Contest* were perfectly playable, I see no reason why an AP can't be done in 100 pages.

*As an aside, it may have been called the One-Page Dungeon Contest. I forget.

Way back when, I bought Queen of the Demonweb Pits because I wanted to run a high level AD&D game with a chunk of the work done for me.

I never bought or played the G or D series modules, and I wouldn't have paid 3 times as much for a big book with all the series and some bonus stuff added in.

So, that sale depended on breaking the adventure up into multiple parts. If you're selling an adventure path in one book, either the person you're selling to has to have money burning a hole in his pocket, or they've got to want most of whats in there.

K wrote: I think you fail at math.

There is no economic reason to split an AP into six parts. You can still sell as many units if they were one AP per unit. For example, rather than selling six installments of one AP over six months, you could sell six APs over six months at one AP per month. The sum total of units are the same.

I think you fail at business.

You really think there's enough demand out there to sell a 1-20 campaign every month? Who plays D&D that fast?

Frank Trollman wrote:The original G-series is seriously 8 pages per segment, with an additional 8 pages of bonus material for Hall of the Fire Giant King. The combined Against The Giants adventure path is 32 pages long. The entire GDQ adventure path where you kill Lolth at the end is 128 pages. And that adventure path has about a million percent more enemies than any 3rd edition adventure. Bigger maps too.

And it still came out in 6+ parts so that they could sell 6 items instead of 1 item. And the GDQ series (about 128 pages in combined form) doesn't even go from level 1-20.

The point is not "Can you publish a campaign in hyper-compact form?" (presumably you can, if you sacrifice all of the prose portion which makes it less interesting to pick up and read, IMO), but "What motivation is there for a business to publish a campaign in hyper-compact form?"

I think I misread, nevermind.

hogarth wrote:And the GDQ series (about 128 pages in combined form) doesn't even go from level 1-20.

So? AD&D doesn't go 1-20. This was the edition where gods were 13th level or so and there was an actual limit to the number of 15th level Druids and Monks that could exist in the entire world. GDQ goes to the end of the AD&D campaign universe. Gygax seriously tells you to retire your characters at the end. This is like complaining that a 3rd edition adventure path doesn't go to 25.

The point is not "Can you publish a campaign in hyper-compact form?" (presumably you can, if you sacrifice all of the prose portion which makes it less interesting to pick up and read, IMO), but "What motivation is there for a business to publish a campaign in hyper-compact form?"

K is not suggesting hyper compact form. Hyper compact form could fit on a single sheet of paper. A 1-20 campaign for 3rd edition has 260 encounters on it. Less if some of them are boss monsters. Front and back of a piece of paper is totally enough space to list those encounters. An RPG page can have kind of a lot of text on it.

What he is suggesting is a magazine format, where every single month you get an adventure that you could run at each level that can in turn hang together as a single campaign that goes 1-20. This way every adventure has an obvious way to lead into it (the set of clues and cliffhangers from the previous adventure), and an obvious place to go afterward (the next adventure in the series). And thus it is that every issue is automatically useful for you no matter what your party is doing and no matter what level they are.

I would personally prefer a game without monster XP or predefined level points, where each adventure could be expected to be followed or preceded by an arbitrary number of adventures of the same level. But the idea of having the magazine of adventures provide one adventure of each supported level is pretty solid, and I approve that message.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: K is not suggesting hyper compact form. Hyper compact form could fit on a single sheet of paper. A 1-20 campaign for 3rd edition has 260 encounters on it. Less if some of them are boss monsters. Front and back of a piece of paper is totally enough space to list those encounters. An RPG page can have kind of a lot of text on it.

What he is suggesting is a magazine format, where every single month you get an adventure that you could run at each level that can in turn hang together as a single campaign that goes 1-20.

No, in his comment above he is literally claiming that one adventure path per month can sell as many units as breaking it into individual adventures. What you're describing is basically what Paizo does, isn't it? (Modulo a bunch of filler, of course.)

K wrote:There is no economic reason to split an AP into six parts. You can still sell as many units if they were one AP per unit. For example, rather than selling six installments of one AP over six months, you could sell six APs over six months at one AP per month.

hogarth wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: K is not suggesting hyper compact form. Hyper compact form could fit on a single sheet of paper. A 1-20 campaign for 3rd edition has 260 encounters on it. Less if some of them are boss monsters. Front and back of a piece of paper is totally enough space to list those encounters. An RPG page can have kind of a lot of text on it.

What he is suggesting is a magazine format, where every single month you get an adventure that you could run at each level that can in turn hang together as a single campaign that goes 1-20.

No, in his comment above he is literally claiming that one adventure path per month can sell as many units as breaking it into pieces. What you're talking about is basically what Paizo does, isn't it (modulo a bunch of filler)?

K wrote:There is no economic reason to split an AP into six parts. You can still sell as many units if they were one AP per unit. For example, rather than selling six installments of one AP over six months, you could sell six APs over six months at one AP per month.

No. What I am talking about, and what K is talking about, is a lot like what Paizo used to do. Back in the days of Dungeon they used to drop a bunch of adventures of many different levels in each issue. These days, they publish 96 page perfect bound adventure path segments that are only at all useful for characters of tiny level ranges.

K is saying that Adventure Paths should be more like Dungeon Magazine of old, and less like hardbound versions of G2: Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl with a bunch of filler to bring it up to nearly a supplement length.

-Username17

Oh, Lordie.

As someone who actually plopped down money for Attack of the Frost Giants, I have to say that those things are some of the most obnoxious things ever.

They're filled to the brim with padding just so that the game can stay within the advertised levels. Now I don't mind an adventure that only spans one or two expected levels, but cut me a fucking break here. Short adventures like White Plume Mountain is thinner than a magazine. They managed to stuff just as much plot progression into an entire hardbound book.

FrankTrollman wrote:
K is saying that Adventure Paths should be more like Dungeon Magazine of old, and less like hardbound versions of G2: Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl with a bunch of filler to bring it up to nearly a supplement length.

"One Adventure Path per month" (which is what K was saying, read the direct quote) is not synonymous with "one Adventure Path installment per month".

hogarth wrote:

K wrote: I think you fail at math.

There is no economic reason to split an AP into six parts. You can still sell as many units if they were one AP per unit. For example, rather than selling six installments of one AP over six months, you could sell six APs over six months at one AP per month. The sum total of units are the same.

I think you fail at business.

You really think there's enough demand out there to sell a 1-20 campaign every month? Who plays D&D that fast?

No one. But then, people are going to opt out of whole campaigns anyway, so you might as well release at least one a month they'd want. I mean, if you don't want to even deal with the idea of "Sin Magic" based on the Seven Deadly Sins because it's to Christian and lame, then Rise of Runelords is not going to sell a single installment to you, no matter how good any particular adventure is.

Even then, people are never going to use adventures as printed either, so you might as well give them the whole arc and let them use what they like anyway. You seriously can print a three whole campaigns a month and people would still buy one, but they'd be picking the one they really like of the three, and that sure beats having three APs with one installment a month each.

Personally, I think they know that they are BSing their audience and are desperate to fill space and sell something. They aren't confident enough to design whole campaigns and would rather design them piece-meal so someone has to find out $120 in that they can't string a narrative together.

But yes, I think they really could be pumping out $8.00, 100-page, campaigns with no fluff or filler at a rate of one or two a month. Instead, they've gone for Los Vegas showmanship instead of craft with high-end printing and super-glossy pages and lots of art.

Basically, minus the art, we could lose the rest and be better for it.

K wrote: But yes, I think they really could be pumping out $8.00, 100-page, campaigns with no fluff or filler at a rate of one or two a month. Instead, they've gone for Los Vegas showmanship instead of craft with high-end printing and super-glossy pages and lots of art.

Basically, minus the art, we could lose the rest and be better for it.

I think (a) you're probably not their target audience, and (b) asking for less filler for the same price is not likely to happen.

My understanding is that their current adventure paths are meant to appeal to three kinds of people:

• Folks that are too busy (with work, family, etc.) to come up with their own ideas for a long campaign, so they buy canned modules.
• Folks that like reading buying modules as reading material, whether or not they actually get around to playing them or not.
• Folks that play a lot of D&D and are always looking for adventure ideas.

In particular, Lisa Stevens (the CEO of Paizo) noted that a significant number of people that buy their modules will never play them, instead treating them as a weird kind of nerdy genre fiction. I know that's how I treated modules and Dragon/Dungeon magazines when I was a kid. So toning down the "Las Vegas showmanship" might hurt that market.

For the folks looking for time-saving prepackaged modules, your comment "people are never going to use adventures as printed" doesn't apply, so a certain minimum amount of fluff is necessary. Probably not as much as they currently include, but more than the bare bones you seem to be looking for.

But I'll just repeat what I said before: Why should Paizo give you more "crunch" for the same price? (Actually, you're asking for a lower price -- $8 for a 100 page super-module? What is this, 1983?) People complain about the fiction, semi-related articles and other filler from time to time, and Paizo has said on multiple occasions that they will not get rid of them. Of course, they're cagey about the reason why -- filler is cheap and easier to edit than game material, and they can charge you for a 100 page book each month instead of a 50 page book. The important thing from a business point of view is to charge an Adventure Path subscriber $20 per month. I'm sure they would be happy to produce a book that was 100% filler if anyone would buy it!

Note that they have backtracked on some "filler" items. For instance, some of the recent adventure paths had so-called "Set Pieces" in them, which are adventure locations that are only tangentially related to the main plot (if at all). There was some backlash against that (since the Set Piece was eating into the page count for the main adventure), so they backed off on it. Likewise, in the recently published Adventurer's Armory (an equipment book), they included a stat block for a level 5 Expert NPC. There was a lot of grousing about that (who needs a full stat block for something you're not going to fight?), and they backed off on including random NPC stat blocks in future rule supplements.

So, like any business, they charge as much as they can get away with and will occasionally check to see what else they can do to pad it out?

It is true that adventures are some sort of nerdy reading.

However, I don't know anyone who owns/reads old adventures who also reads the Paizo ones. Of course, the only people I know who read the Paizo ones also liked 4th and Pathfinder.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:It is true that adventures are some sort of nerdy reading.

However, I don't know anyone who owns/reads old adventures who also reads the Paizo ones. Of course, the only people I know who read the Paizo ones also liked 4th and Pathfinder.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. You have a friend who reads the Paizo adventures, but he uses them all right away (i.e. he's not just buying them as reading material)?

hogarth wrote:

Crissa wrote:It is true that adventures are some sort of nerdy reading.

However, I don't know anyone who owns/reads old adventures who also reads the Paizo ones. Of course, the only people I know who read the Paizo ones also liked 4th and Pathfinder.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. You have a friend who reads the Paizo adventures, but he uses them all right away (i.e. he's not just buying them as reading material)?

No, she's saying that she knows people:

a) Who like reading adventures. But not Piazo ones, assumably because the Piazo ones aren't as good to read.

b) Own Piazo adventurers, and do not read them for reading value. Also like Pathfinder and 4e, and thus demonstrate bad taste.

I have a friend who reads Paizo adventures. But they have bad taste to like Pathfinder. I know someone else who reads them, but likes 4th. neither of them use them.

And I know many people who read or collect old adventures, or read and pass adventure hook material. But they don't like the Paizo stuff. I could ask them why.

None of the people I mentioned run adventures from books.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:I have a friend who reads Paizo adventures. But they have bad taste to like Pathfinder. I know someone else who reads them, but likes 4th. neither of them use them.

O.K. So that agrees with what I was saying before: a significant number of people buy the modules but don't use them.

hogarth wrote: O.K. So that agrees with what I was saying before: a significant number of people buy the modules but don't use them.

To my knowledge, no one has actually disagreed with this. I am imply of the opinion that if you are going to ask someone to plop down 20 bucks, it's pretty unreasonable to give them what is essentially 3 of 6 from a miniseries. For that kind of money, people are looking for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I think the key point I'm disagreeing with people is I don't think an Adventure Path should even bother going all the way to 20. It should just be a Heroic Adventure Path or a PAragon Adventure Path and leave it at that.

-Username17

hogarth wrote:
But I'll just repeat what I said before: Why should Paizo give you more "crunch" for the same price? (Actually, you're asking for a lower price -- $8 for a 100 page super-module? What is this, 1983?)

The 2007 price of an issue of Dungeon, actually, is $7.99; which has the same number of pages plus twenty of advertisements. Of course, I noted that the price on the final issue was a whopping $10.99, so there obviously was some massive inflation that year as they tried to bank a war chest for their own publishing endeavors.

I probably shouldn't complain. Used copies of Paizo's newest AP are around $11.00 on Amazon, so paying the $19.99 cover price is the fanboy-only price.... and the pages are so very glossy.

Its is nice to hear that someone realizes that they they are being snow-jobbed by useless stats and fluff. (A statted out 5th level Expert NPC you never fight is just egregious, though).

Though to be honest, filling those pages with more sandbox or just raw adventure and less useless fluff would create a vastly superior product, they obviously don't feel the need to create a better product. I don't know why, considering how easy it is to write adventures.

FrankTrollman wrote:

hogarth wrote: O.K. So that agrees with what I was saying before: a significant number of people buy the modules but don't use them.

To my knowledge, no one has actually disagreed with this. I am imply of the opinion that if you are going to ask someone to plop down 20 bucks, it's pretty unreasonable to give them what is essentially 3 of 6 from a miniseries. For that kind of money, people are looking for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I think the key point I'm disagreeing with people is I don't think an Adventure Path should even bother going all the way to 20. It should just be a Heroic Adventure Path or a PAragon Adventure Path and leave it at that.

-Username17

I think that saying either adventure paths should always/never go to the level cap is pretty silly.

When I was in high school, I played wargames or rpgs or ccgs EVERY DAY. I had a basement dedicated to gaming, could easily leave stuff up. If I had known at the time that Piazio was doing adventure paths I might have actually considered one. At the time we could easily finish even every long adventures in well less than a month. Thats why we had the wargames, while we waited for the various people in our group to get ideas together for adventures we wargammed it was pretty awesome.

If you are looking to sell to people who have a lot of time to play D&D 1-20 adventure paths make a lot of sense. Now, there is a correcting factor. When I had a lots of time to play D&D I also had plenty of time to write my own adventures. However, I had many firends who did not and didn't even want to write their own adventures and still wanted to be DM.

When I got to college I could not possibly play D&D every afternoon. The game basically floated to a single session a week. However, we also had a lot more people comming and going from the gaming group. Stories that I could complete end to end in about a semester (16 sessions) would have worked best. (Sadly, at the time what I wanted to do was write a homeric epic and play it using D&D, but hey it was college and everybody is a crazy in college).

Revenge of the Giants/Red Hand of Doom type modules would have been best in my college years because they do actually end and in a timely fashion. These are actually what my group prefers even now. An adventure that covers 1 level feels kinda silly.

Anyway, 1-level cap for the people that have time. Shorter, but not to short story length adventures for the rest of us.

FrankTrollman wrote:To my knowledge, no one has actually disagreed with this.

I couldn't tell what Crissa was trying to say, which was why I asked for clarification.

FrankTrollman wrote:I think the key point I'm disagreeing with people is I don't think an Adventure Path should even bother going all the way to 20. It should just be a Heroic Adventure Path or a PAragon Adventure Path and leave it at that.

-Username17

I have mixed feelings on the issue. It's hard to do a level 1-20 (or 1-16 or whatever) campaign well, but I don't think it's impossible.

I really don't care what level a particular path peters out at - the time it takes to run it should be pretty well what it's designed at. Of course, you'll always have variances with the group that fights slower or talks slower - but I'm pretty sure you could design things around a session size.

-Crissa

Ideally, each (3.xE) issue would have one adventure for each level from one to X, and each of these adventures would be from a different adventure path that takes parties from level one to X. That way each issue would be useful to any level party for integration into any ongoing campaign, and customers would have to continue buying successive (or previous) issues in order to complete any one path.

From a business model perspective, that would probably do quite nicely.

A magazine of random adventures, where you have to buy multiple issues to complete a set?

I can't see how it could support a company.

The only problem is that there is no longer a news-stand sitting next to the gaming books.

-Crissa