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View Poll Results: DFRPG Future, as whished for by Forumites
1) Just make more. 37 22.56%
2) .pdf with POD support 43 26.22%
2a) Seperate line. 10 6.10%
2b) Integrate into the DF line 67 40.85%
2c) Finish whats available, and end further production of new material. 1 0.61%
3) Simply end all further production, and place resources in other projects. 6 3.66%
Voters: 164. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 02-18-2018, 11:40 AM   #81
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

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Originally Posted by David Johansen View Post
I wonder if there was a problem with the timing of post release marketing as a result of the game coming out late.
Possibly. But I think this all misses the point: cost overruns doomed the DFRPG's profitability. By the time it went to print, nothing but an absolutely gonzo, over the top, people-rioting-in-the-streets response to the DFRPG would have turned it to profitability. Different marketing might have resulted in somewhat better or worse sales, perhaps, but you can't engineer that level of response. What would have made it a success in business terms is things having gone better during development. Quibbling over marketing is rearranging the deck chairs.
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Old 02-18-2018, 11:54 AM   #82
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

I wonder .... if we include boosted sales for other GURPS products, does the DFRPG actually turn out to have been a profitable venture? Of course, how would we figure out "boosted sales?"
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Old 02-18-2018, 12:56 PM   #83
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

But, IIRC, DFRPG was not present at the PAX Unplugged convention last November. If its success is based on it being a "board game" I would have thought that SJG would have tried to have it played/demo'd there.

That may have been too late to save it though. It does seem that it was almost dead from the start.

Last edited by afschell; 02-18-2018 at 01:27 PM.
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Old 02-18-2018, 01:39 PM   #84
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

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But, IIRC, DFRPG was not present at the PAX Unplugged convention last November. If its success is based on it being a "board game" I would have thought that SJG would have tried to have it played/demo'd there.

That may have been too late to save it though. It does seem that it was almost dead from the start.
I think this is an exaggeration, and one to which I may have contributed unwittingly. The project certainly had a plan for a profitable and successful release. No business plans to fail, and SJG least of all.

At some point during the project's development, cost and delay hit a point where things were looking less favorable. To Matt's point, this point was probably well known and did not come as a surprise.

By the time it went to print, they took some measures to mitigate risk (reduction of print order by a third), and were probably hoping orders would set the world on fire. But by then, they probably also knew that's what'd take to recover the up-front costs.

But to say "doomed from the start" us inaccurate and unfair to the folks that DID, after all, make a beautiful, playable, well made product.
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Old 02-18-2018, 02:23 PM   #85
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A beautiful, playable and well-made product which sold out. As failures go, this one is pretty close to success. It was probably even, barely, profitable.

The problems seem to be that making good stuff isn't easy or cheap, and there's a lot of competition for a shrinking market (or maybe a market that experienced a little bit of recent growth after decades of decline).
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Old 02-18-2018, 04:04 PM   #86
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

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But to say "doomed from the start" us inaccurate and unfair to the folks that DID, after all, make a beautiful, playable, well made product.
True, I may have been a bit harsh. It is beautiful, playable and well made. I use it virtually every week when my group gets together.

But I do think that classifying it as a board game was a misnomer. In my opinion it's more a role playing game that uses a board than a true board game. And, as such, has a much longer sales tail than your traditional board game. Which, to me at least, means that it needs (or needed) a different support structure and marketing approach. Hopefully constant availability of the PDFs will suffice.
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Old 02-18-2018, 06:12 PM   #87
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

If DFRPG failed, despite being amazing and all that, what hope is there for future hardcover releases for GURPS?

Is GURPS dead (not dead dead just mostly dead)?

These are questions that popped into my mind soon after reading the news about DFRPG in the stakeholder's report.

It's just frustrating and/or annoying to be here some time after the release of this thing that was supposed to be amazing and be hit with the news that it failed.
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Old 02-18-2018, 06:37 PM   #88
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

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If DFRPG failed, despite being amazing and all that, what hope is there for future hardcover releases for GURPS?

Is GURPS dead (not dead dead just mostly dead)?
I'll bet a dollar that the official response is going to be something along the lines of "current market conditions don't support physical GURPS releases, so the game will continue to be largely digital for the time being." In short, the next several years of GURPS are likely to strongly resemble the previous several years of GURPS. People are still writing, and people are still buying PDFs.
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Old 02-18-2018, 08:30 PM   #89
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The PoD model makes it easier to get physical releases. I just think that trying to sell RPGs like they sell their board games is mistaken. RPGs do have a slower burn and missing the summer con season made it really hard to hit the market. I am not sure what to do with my extra un opened copy. I was going to do an unboxing for YouTube but now that I know the game is pretty much sold out I might hold on to it sealed just for the collection.
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Old 02-18-2018, 10:35 PM   #90
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Default Re: The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

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A beautiful, playable and well-made product which sold out. As failures go, this one is pretty close to success. It was probably even, barely, profitable.
What keeps slipping through people’s understanding* is that even if it did, turning a profit isn’t the target. The target is turning more of a profit than the project you had to set aside to do this one, which may have been a Munchkin reprint.

SJG has limited staff, and has historically been open about how filling positions is a lot harder than finding tasks to keep existing employees on the payroll. DF is a failure because it demanded resources that could have reliably been better used.

* I’m quoting you as a jumping off point in conversation, not necessarily as an example.
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