Re: [DL] Scenarios

[Chris Nelson <chris2@pre-press.com>]

Allan Seyberth wrote:

> Adventures don't seem to sell well, I'm afraid.

Near as I can tell, there are a few main ingredients to a good selling
sourcebook.

Listed in no particular order:

New Equipment
New Magic (or abilities, or whathaveyou)
New Character Classes
New Rules

Lump this in with production value, and artwork, of course.

What doesn't seem to make an impact:

New Locations
New NPCs
Lots and Lots of Annoying Prose

This means that adventures, which are rarely anything except New NPCs
and New Locations, don't sell well.  It's not just AD&D, either.  Star
Wars suffers the same fate.  The best concept is to follow the Palladium
(first company that comes to mind) method and incorporate a set of
adventures into a sourcebook that already includes something off the
first list.

Or, you can follow PEG, and others, and release pure-adventure books on
the cheap.

By the way, I'd say Chaosium's only source of sales comes from
adventures, but that's because the game is so difficult to run.  Also,
it means they're not making much money.

Also, keep in mind at all times: IANASA (I Am Not A Sales Analyst), but
this seems to make sense to me.

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