Throwing out an idea

[Hermes Serpent]

Now, talking of publisher's output, what makes for something that provides a return on investment for the company and something for the customers?

With what is often suggested as a 'greying' RPG customer base, pre-written adventure material seems more popular than it did when I first started gaming. I was out of D&D when they pushed out all their various adventures but enough people seemed to have bought or played them to have favourable memories. However those players and GM's had hours, days and even weeks to spend of developing their worlds and prepping games.

Nowadays, with an older, even middle-aged, hobby base without more than 30 minutes prep time available, those published adventures are very popular and contributed to Paizo's growth as a company. However compared to a core rule book which companies may assume each player needs, an adventure only needs to be purchased by the GM. So lower sales and less profit for the same amount of written pages. Another drawback is that the company may need to push out (write, develop and test) an adventure on a very regular basis to generate the cash flow required.

The model that Paizo seems to use is to get a subscription base signed up to get every product that they publish to they get a decent monthly income which can be used, long term, to pay writers and artists. Now a company like C7 doesn't have the mailing list or the regular adventure system that Paizo had when WoTC terminated their magazine rights/licence plus they publish such a variety of products across a wide range of genres that makes it harder to use such a business plan.

Now I wonder if C7 could offer something like a bi-monthly scenario for their TOR line. It would be designed for maybe six or eight hours of play and could be linked, or not, to their main Darkening of Mirkwood campaign. A series of filler adventures - a raid by orcs on a Woodman farm, an attack on a Dalish caravan coming up the river from Celduin. Ideally they would be pdf only but we know that is not possible due to their licence terms so a 6-10 page 'adventure' offered on a subscription basis with a pdf option may be allowed under the terms of their M-e E licence. If the final printed version of 36-60 pages went out at the end of each subscription period after all the individual adventures had been published would that meet the licence terms? Would it be viable as a business plan? Would M-e E allow it?

I don't know but it would be a great way to continually generate interest in TOR while staying within the terms set by M-e E of only allowing pdf's of printed works in this line.

[Rich H]

Great suggestion Hermes but like you state I think there could be challenges around the PDF model and therefore producing periodical adventures may not be possible. Look forward to seeing if Jon or Dom add their thoughts to this thread, though...

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I know it wouldn't be official but I'd be more than happy to collaborate with anyone that's wanting to put together some adventures for TOR - we could work on a Loremaster fan compendium together.

[Beleg]

I think that would be a wonderful idea. Heck, I barely play cause I'm at university and nobody here likes roleplaying games, and I'd do it just to read them. I find the adventures published so far make pretty riveting reading as straight up stories anyway

[Mim]

This is a great idea. They've done several for cons - Words of the Wise springs to mind.

I'll be very pleased if they do something even close to this suggestion.