Mongoose Steele said:
By this logic, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is the worst play ever written.
Of this, you and I must wholeheartedly disagree. The same goes for the olf SW book about the Mos Eisley Cantina; I thought it was one of the best books ever produced for that line.
But everyone gets what they need to out of our products. We cannot expect to make everyone happy all of the time, nor are we pompous or arrogant enough to think that is the case. Simply put, I'm sorry you do not like some of the directions we have taken our products; I hope you get more positive from them than negative.
Cheers all,
Bry
I do and have, overall, enjoyed these products on the whole. My suggestions are intended, as I said, to broaden their appeal, not to make them "universally" able to make everyone happy. Criticisms of previous works are not, as I said, intended in the spirit of assualt, but rather as suggestions about the content I (as an individual only) would like to see altered or enhanced in forthcoming works.
While sales are, by no means, indicative of artistic integrity or creative ability (by the Gods, look at the popularity of American Idol!), they are one of few substantive means to evaluate appeal. On this basis, I would supplement my argument with the following figures.
(Most of the following are based on a single printing only, and are therefore understandably imperfect representations of sales, as is the source, Amazon.com, which is not necessarily representative of sales across genres, etc.):
The Original Source
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,177 in Books
Supplement featuring a minor character from above:
Conan RPG Titos Trading Post
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #606,957 in Books
(An argument might be made that there are fewer gamers, overall, than readers. A certainty. As counterpoint, the 3.5 edition of the D&D PHB is #6,433 in Books, though it lacks a suitable "base material" comparison, and serves only to demonstrate the marketing capability of an RPG.)
The Star Wars Comparison:
Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #179,670 in Books
The Original Source:
Star Wars Trilogy (Widescreen Edition with Bonus Disc) (1980)Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57 in Movies & TV
Again, an imperfect comparison due to the nature of different media and sales of multiple editions of Star Wars boosting its overall sales. The novelization of Star Wars (actually written by A.D. Foster) has so many editions as to make comparison book-to-book nigh impossible.
Liars use statistics and all, but the point should be relatively clear (if not proved) that there is inherently a limited market for products featuring minor characters from previous popular works. If X people like the original story, and half of them play the RPG, and a quarter of those play in or from Zingara, your best projected appeal is to 12.5% of the people who have read Howard in the first place.
If you publish something in the Conan world that contains
original material, you appeal to the percentage of gamers who are interested in this, but you may also appeal to two
other groups. Roleplayers interested in fresh material may be attracted (even for homebrewed non-Conan campaigns, provided it has lots of fresh material and doesn't rely too heavily on the Conan rulebook). A well-written such book may bring them into the larger Conan RPG fold and enhance future sales. Additionally, new material may be of interest to Howard fans who have not, previously, shown great interest in the RPG, but are attracted by the prospect of exploring new parts of the world Howard began to unveil (these would be pastiche fans and the like, in addition to hard-core Howard fans). Again, this expands your market.
I'm not a marketing expert (at least, that's not what my degrees are in), but it seems logical to me that the more specific your text, the fewer sales you will see. One need look no further than the D&D and Conan Class-book compilations (Tome and Blood, Song and Silence, Hyboria's "F"), which include new rules for multiple classes (rather than just one). This cross-inclusion (soldiers, nobles, and scholars in one book?) are linked far better in terms of marketing (take a commonly taken class, a rarely taken class, and a medium class), than by theme. Mongoose would never write a book just for the players of nobles, for example. It doesn't make fiscal sense.
Even the "pirate" book (Pirate Isles) included huge sections on ship-going and islands, not to mention extensive new spell lists, making it appeal far beyond the small pirate segment of the population. I see small-location books in a similar light to single-class books. It simply doesn't make sense to me, particularly if the location is somewhere that is somehow typical of the Hyborian age (Shem or Argos, for example). A place like Pictland, on the other hand, makes for a more interesting work because the Picts are a very, very unusual people with weird rituals, magics, new skills and feats, etc.
Consider how a GM is likely to describe the city of Shamar, a large Aquilonian city, to the PCs as they pass through on the way to an adventure (or even if the adventure is there). "It is a large civilized city on the Shirki river. It has the districts you'd imagine for a city its size. A market, slums, craftsmen, and so on. Where are you headed there?" All of this can be easily assessed from merely its location on the (RPG) world map.
The Aquilonia book tells us far, far more, for example that there are 4,209 workshops, homes, and warehouses, housing 11,590 craftspeople. A majority of this 2 page description is equally detailed, but useless to GM and player alike. If there are 600 craftspeople or 11,000, what difference will it make to any
game of Conan ever played? PCs are not, generally speaking, census takers, and the simple adjective "bustling" is sufficient to create an image of a marketplace in the mind of any player who has ever picked up dice.
The information portrayed here is not significantly different from what any player/GM would rightly assume lies in every Aquilonian town. 27 pages of that book are dedicated to these towns, and most of them share at least 50% of their material (how many similar marketplaces do we need to have described before we get it? Who cares that there are 61 guild barbers in Culario? As long as a PC can get a haircut, what difference do these numbers make anyway?).
Compare this to the broad cultural diversity of the tribes of the Pictish Wilderness (as described in the Pict supplement), and how wildly different it is to be captured by one tribe rather than another. Additionally, the new Pict skills and feats can also be used by individuals from other areas in the south, further broadening the appeal, and more importantly perhaps, the utility, of this book.
Example:
Compare this to knowing that there are 427 elderly and infirm individuals in the Aquilonian town of Cantrium, which, as far as I can tell, isn't even on any map. The town's location, its most important feature, is simply not provided, but I know how many people there get the senior discount in the 450 structures of the market ward? From a marketing standpoint, parts of this section are scandalously underserving the public. Given the $35 pricetag for Aquilonia, I paid (not including tax) $4.73 for that section.
Certain elements of this section are useful to real campaigns (the brief gangs of Sicas segment, for example), but a majority of it is detailing things that are simply of no use in a roleplaying game. Secret societies, interesting NPCs, adventure hooks, new items, and new uses for skills or even new feats might be unique to some of these towns, but the space describing the towns is occuppied instead with minute details that are simply too specific to appeal to the intended audience. Show of hands, here, how many forum-goers have needed to know, in the course of an actual campaign, that there were 8 haberdashers in Tanasul?
Again, compare these 27 pages of city details to the less than 2 pages of feats in the Aquilonia book. Now note that for free, anyone who can read this post also has access to:
http://www.aarg.net/~minam/towns.cgi
and
http://www.dmtools.org/gens.php?nav=towns
Don't tools like these make haberdasher counting seem a waste of time?
Decisions for inclusion can and should consider two primary factors, as I have extolled repeatedly: usefulness and appeal. Haberdasher numbers are not particularly useful, nor I imagine, are their numbers particularly appealing. I understand that the inestimable Vincent sought to be thorough in his depictions, but I think in some specific cases "thorough" and "descriptive" took control, leaving "useful" and "creative" in the lurch. This is not a universal complaint, indeed, the praised Pict book has the same esteemed author, but is instead specific to certain areas in many of the published Conan works. Too much space is dedicated to things that I believe are not of widespread interest. If anyone can make a good case for the inclusion of haberdasher quantities by city for every hamlet in Conan's world, I'm willing to listen, but I will continue to politely disagree. I'd rather that Mongoose utilize that same space to give me a sentence describing a unique dish in that town, a unique weapon, a unique character, or an interesting area that isn't just another standard market.
My argument was, and is, that each book should strive to provide information that is most useful to the largest number of potential fans/buyers, while recognizing that universal appeal is impossible. I think broadening the creative leeway of the writing staff, along with encouraging the crafting of unique situations for PCs is the way to improve sales.
Consider the following, as all MMO designers do when they are in the primal stages of creation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test
Ask yourself with each section of each new book, "does this appeal to gamers who are achievers, socializers, explorers, or killers?" Ideally, the answer is "more than one," but if the answer is "none of these," consider some editing and additions. My suggestions appeal to these groups specifically. Achievers (new items, skills, NPCs to overcome/outwit). Socializers (new and interesting NPCs or organizations). Explorers (unique or secret locations). Killers (new weapons, feats, bad guys to kill).
I understand, and understand well, the nature of demographics and attempts at widespread appeal. My suggestions are and continue to be aimed at improving the line's appeal, not only to me but to a wider audience.
Fewer sales means fewer Conan RPG fans, and therefore less posting to these forums, in response to the original poster's observation.
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