RE: [DL] Scenarios

["Phalen, Pat" <Pat.Phalen@infores.com>]

>Near as I can tell, there are a few main ingredients to a good selling
>sourcebook.
>New Equipment
>New Magic (or abilities, or whathaveyou)
>New Character Classes
>New Rules

To summarize: Munchkin fodder...
Seriously, Books with rules simply sell better because it appeals to
Munchkin/Rules-Lawyers.  Scenarios are of limited value because only a GM
will buy them.  
AN *OVER* simplified example:
In a typical game group (~10 players) there is one or two people who are
*always* the GMs.  That means right off the bat that there is a good chance
that 80% of this group will buy little (or no) of the required gaming
material (figuring that the GMs are the folks who buy just about everything
that is put out).  Figure at best that everyone in the group will purchase
the core rules and maybe a source book for the character "class" they would
like to play.The rules Lawyer/Munchkin will be just about every source book,
so that they know the rules, know how to best min/max, etc.  Typically, most
munchkins are decent enough not to buy the adventures.  

So what does this all mean?
Basically, source books have a *much* larger potential audience than
adventures, which is why companies *tend* to produce more of them... 
I think that PEG does a decent job by adding adventures to the back of
source books (when space allows), plus material that they have provided on
their web site...

Patrick