Costs of bringing RPG books to market

[DouglasCole]

This is a carry-over from another thread. Feel free to pick it up, or not, as you like!

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Though whoa. I sure thought Technical Grappling sold more than that, its a hot discussion topic and had favorable mention from TKD and everything

Nope. One way to look at it is that grappling doesn't come up much in games, perhaps because beating the bejeezus out of things is better mechanically supported, perhaps because the rules can be arcane or non-intuitive, and perhaps because the penalties in most games for kill rather than subdue are low.

But GURPS is a niche system, with maybe 1 player for every 20 of That Other Game. And detailed martial arts are a niche within that niche.

And detailed grappling rules are a niche within THAT.

I might have hoped for 750 sales, based on the data I could see for electronic sales of books like Tactical Shooting. 500 was well within my expectations.

[Kalzazz]

The 'grappling rules are incomprehensible' would I think be a big selling point for TG, since you would expect there to be a damage for something like TG that in theory makes grappling as easy as smacking someone with a sword

I did really think that more people used TG than actually did though, possibly due to seeing it heavily discussed on this forum (where for a while it seemed to be 'the thing'), and discussed on blog by you and TKD, and heavily discussed in the #GURPS IRC chat

[Polydamas]

For comparison, KotDT sells about 10,000 copies of each monthly issue (they quoted 17,000 readers in 2011/2012 and 1.61 readers per sale). They can still only afford to pay writers 3 cents a word.

They are one of the biggest and oldest magazines for roleplaying games.

Another good article is http://www.enworld.org/forum/content...ed-Very-Thinly Very many people want to write for RPGs, and are willing to do it for little money. Writing short stories for magazines has a similar word rate.

[Refplace]

Congrats Douglas!
Its been a few years since we could see sales stats for all the PDFs but if I recall 500 was a significantly good number.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

This is a carry-over from another thread. Feel free to pick it up, or not, as you like!

Nope. One way to look at it is that grappling doesn't come up much in games, perhaps because beating the bejeezus out of things is better mechanically supported, perhaps because the rules can be arcane or non-intuitive, and perhaps because the penalties in most games for kill rather than subdue are low.

But GURPS is a niche system, with maybe 1 player for every 20 of That Other Game. And detailed martial arts are a niche within that niche.

And detailed grappling rules are a niche within THAT.

I might have hoped for 750 sales, based on the data I could see for electronic sales of books like Tactical Shooting. 500 was well within my expectations.

One thing must still be considered - in my humble point of view ...

Even if some books, like Technical Grappling, are a niche (very specific optional rules) in another niche (martial arts optional rules) of a third niche (GURPS rules), they still are what makes the Basic Set more attractive.

To explain better what I want to mean : I love martial arts. I'm a (modest) martial artist myself. Now, GURPS Basic Set already allows almost everything I need to play martial arts in my games with as much detail as I want. I bought Martial Arts, of course, but I didn't (yet) read it from cover to cover and never used it (except a couple of rules here or there). And I will probably not buy Technical Grappling before a long time. Before my players want it, actually.

So, does it mean that this book is uninteresting for me? Absolutely not! It is precisely because this book does exist that I find GURPS so amazing. I know that I can buy it as soon as I will need it. Ditto for Tactical Shooting, Mass Combat or City Stats. I never needed them until now, but I know that they do exist and that I can buy it if I want too.

GURPS is a game with which you can add as much detail as you want, and that is part of what makes it so outstanding. Technical Grappling is an essential part of that sort of detail.

So, to summarize things: not sold a lot doesn't at all mean not important for the game. And 750 is a huge number for a niche in a niche of another niche. Some games (their basic rules) never reach such a number.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Gollum

So, to summarize things: not sold a lot doesn't at all mean not important for the game. And 750 is a huge number for a niche in a niche of another niche. Some games (their basic rules) never reach such a number.

I agree. I was stunned when I heard that 500 was considered a good number of sales in the Podcast I was tossing questions at. I figured if TG sold 500, then a D&D-based release should sell 5,000.

Nope. Or at least, not in the (small) venue I was lobbing questions into.

That has given me some pause in considering Dragon Heresy.

Not enough to STOP, but some pause in my expectations.

[Kalzazz]

If your at liberty to say, I know you wrote an OSR grappling rework article. How is that one doing?

I would think that there are so many many many different d20 variations out there, plus a giant amount of second hand stuff floating around for sale used that you have more competition even if you have a bigger total pool of buyers

[the_seeker]

I recently acquired Technical Grappling, and I like it. I'd be hesitant to use it, however, because it represents a level of complexity that isn't actually necessary and might not be welcomed by other players not because they couldn't grok it but just because it would be more rules to remember on top of all the other rules they are already trying to remember. For some, TG wouldn't be incomprehensible so much as just intolerably inconvenient.

That's a challenge for all authors. You might have the ultimate definitive solution for a given problem, and you might be able to explain that solution in a way the masses understand, but the more of a niche issue you're addressing, the less of a market it has for publication and therefore the less likely it is to ever be published. For some gamers, getting it right is the priority, but most just want to play. For them, "close enough" is close enough.

[Kalzazz]

TG is a case where I think more hand holding assistance in more page count would have really helped . . . . it is a system which I know can be super fun when someone who understands it is running it, but which despite having read cover to cover several times I still don't get. My group members haven't been wanting to try it since I don't get it and can't explain it to them. Shieldbunny actually was interested in it, and is the sort of person who reads RPG books and stats up characters for the fun of it, and likes wrestling, but when I showed him the book he gave up partway through and said it was giving him a headache

I have played using it online in GURPS chat though so I KNOW it can be very awesome

[DouglasCole]

While I do appreciate me some discussion of Technical Grappling, I'd like to keep this thread focused on the cost of bringing RPG supplements to market in print and electronic format.

Suffice to say: TG was written in maybe 2012, and my sensibilities have changed since then. The Dragon Heresy RPG has a variant of the Control Point system in it that takes full advantage of the SRD5.1 "Conditions," as did my article on using control point systems with Basic/OSR D&D.

I'll ping the Manor publisher on Grappling Old School, and invite him to join the conversation here.

dhc