superior write ups

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by thalcos

Revised Litheroy mechanics? How are those different from the ones printed in the original Feast of Blades?

They've been revised.

[Archangel Beth]

What Andrew said. Certain of the attunements have been tweaked. (Which ones? I'd have to go back and look at the files, and they're not on this computer at the moment. *sigh*) They're hopefully more clear, and/or less abusive, now.

GURPS mechanics have also been added, in a box, for those who want to run it in GURPS. (Frankly, it could be a very interesting sort of thing to have going on -- with just the celestial NPCs -- in a GURPS Cops campaign. Or an Illuminati one. Or an IW one -- though it's all GURPS 3e, so there would have to be conversions.)

[tbug]

Originally Posted by milliken

As for a five-book adventure cycle, all I can say is that the going wisdom is that adventures sell poorly, and I think all the data available reinforces that. A lot of people don't want to spend money on stuff that has effectively one use; also, technically, only GMs should be buying adventures, greatly reducing the potential sales.

I've been thinking about this a lot. Enough has been said about what was wrong with the Revelations Cycle that I don't feel the need to go over it. If we'll agree that it wasn't implemented the best way that it could have been then we can discuss a cycle that's done well.

It's true that adventures sell poorly; a glance at the What's Hot list confirms this. I've bought all of the books except Anime and GURPS IN (and those two don't apply to my game), yet the only e23 adventure that I've bought is "City on Fire", and the odds are pretty good that I'm not going to run it.

I really want another cycle (done right this time). It sounds like the only way for this to happen is for the adventures to sell well, which I don't think they're ever going to do. At some point I might just start buying the e23 adventures even though I have no real need of them, but I'm not yet at that point.

I enjoy running adventures that other people have written. I almost always modify them extensively, but there's something fun about taking someone else's work and fitting it into my intricately-crafted story arc. It sometimes takes a lot of scheming to keep it thematically consistent, but the scheming is a big part of what's fun for me. That being said, occasionally the core concepts of the game are too far removed from what I'm doing that I just mine it for ideas or cool NPCs and then set it aside. (This is what happened with "City on Fire", which was a lovely scenario but has way too many Tethers in one place to fit with my game.)

Every other IN adventure being sold on e23 is available in a simpler form (much simpler in the case of "Strange Bedfellows") somewhere else that I've already read. Since I always do big rewrites anyway I haven't bothered purchasing someone else's rewrites. I may yet do this, but it's not a high priority for me.

If another cycle (or mini-cycle) were announced I'd be counting the days until it got released. Cycles are exciting, and they're the only way we're going to get answers to the Big Mysteries. I expect that if "Superiors: Janus" got released then it would sell well (including to me), but I don't think that it would necessarily generate excitement the way I remember everyone reacting to the announcement of Fall of the Malakim.

What's Eli up to? What's the real relationship between Janus and Valefor? What's Lilith's destiny? What's the real story behind the Grigori? Is there any hope for Gabriel? This is exciting stuff!

Who do we need to convince before a mini-cycle gets the green light? I just don't think that it's fair to judge how it would do by the current sales figures on the existing adventures.

[milliken]

Originally Posted by tbug

What's Eli up to? What's the real relationship between Janus and Valefor? What's Lilith's destiny? What's the real story behind the Grigori? Is there any hope for Gabriel? This is exciting stuff!

Who do we need to convince before a mini-cycle gets the green light? I just don't think that it's fair to judge how it would do by the current sales figures on the existing adventures.

I know the line editor would like to do some of this stuff -- the problem, as always, is cost versus benefit, both for SJGames and for the authors.

Even the e23 IN products that are selling well clearly aren't making a lot of money -- just multiply the list price by the number of sales, and we're not talking big bucks here, clearly. Considering the number of hours it takes to get a finished page written, the authors pretty much have to be doing this more for love of the game than for profit potential.

As far as who has to be convinced that something needs to be produced, that would be the e23 editor, the managing editor, and SJ himself. And I know that it's not always so much a case of "is this a good idea?" as of "can we spare someone to work on this?", at least on the editorial/production side -- SJGames has fairly limited editorial and layout resources, and they work across all the lines, including ones that make a lot more money than IN does.

If the company were run along Harvard MBA lines, IN would have been dropped long ago -- fortunately SJ seems to try to strike a balance between maximizing profits and serving as wide a range of customers as possible, including keeping some of the less-profitable lines alive. However, the company does have to run a profit to stay alive, so the resources will always at least be skewed to serve that goal first, which means they'll be doing the big-selling products as a priority.

In any case, I know there are some IN plans floating around, but executing them will require resources to be committed, and a lot of the resources are busy with GURPS 4e production right now. Which makes any major IN product (anything more than new Superiors, say) unlikely in the short term.

It's my impression that SJ is fairly pleased with how well IN is doing with the e23 products, so I'm guessing we'll see continuing IN support. But probably much less frequently than we fans would like....

---Walter

[tbug]

Thanks for the informative response. That was pretty much exactly the stuff I wanted to learn.

[milliken]

Originally Posted by tbug

Thanks for the informative response. That was pretty much exactly the stuff I wanted to learn.

Just remember that I'm not an official source of information -- I've got some connection with the company as a sometimes playtester and freelance writer, but if I actually knew specific information, I wouldn't be able to talk about it.

Okay, I'm married to the line editor, but I still don't necessarily know product details -- just mostly what she'd like to do, and she tends to say that here in public, herself. Most of the production and scheduling decisions are outside her purview, anyway.

---Walter

[Archangel Beth]

What he said, yeah.

(Does The Sorcerer's Impediments count at all? It's a freebie, but it is new. O:> )

[tbug]

It counts as being a cool resource that I downloaded and plan on using. I didn't include it in the list of products whose sales data might influence the decision to green-light a mini-cycle because I'm not sure that the freebies provide useful data for that sort of thing. You'd know better than I would if that's true, of course. :)

[Archangel Beth]

If people talk about it as a Cool Thing, and indicate that its quality would inspire them to get more Original Adventures, then I'll at least have some anecdotal data... O:>

[RadLilim]

Where do we need to mention this cool thing? I'm not necessarily the best at writting, and I'd hate for that to hold back my opinion on how cool the line is.