The Reply From Necromancer Games

"Do you believe that the competitive environment that now exists in the D20 scenarios market will result in a gradual increase, over time, of the rewards, both financial and magical, that scenarios offer to player characters?"

Not at all. I think both DMs and Players will be drawn to products that are both challenging, well designed, interesting and able to be expanded upon.

I hate to disagree with you--because it is certainly an interesting idea--but I see absolutely no evidence that producers will increase rewards to lure customers. Since the reward is so easily tailored by the DM either up or down, even if a company did as you propose, any reasonable DM would tweak the reward to a respectabile level and the players would have no way to know. That is not a paramater developers--at least this developer--would feel could cause return purchases. I don't expect people to blindly follow my modules, as I didn't follow the ones I purchased and ran back in the day. And since I can't count on that, it doesn't seem like a good strategy.

In addition, I am in pretty regular contact with the guys at a number of the other d20 companies and can tell you that neither Necromancer Games or any other developers I have spoken to have--to my knowledge--even given a thought to luring customers by increased rewards. But who knows, maybe John Nephew will write and tell you that you are right on the mark! But I doubt it.

Your theory sounds interesting on paper but I just don't beleive it works out in fact.

Instead, I believe you should take up the position of your co-workers. I believe you mentioned that some felt that producers makeing class books might "overpower" prestige classes and such to draw purchasers. I do believe that there is at least an incentive to make P-classes and other class related books appealing to players. I can tell you, however, that to my knowledge I do not know of a single company that has overpowered a class on purpose to draw customers and I have had lengthy discussions with a number of people on the subject of d20 supplements, including Ryan Dancey at WotC as well as Steve Wieck the President of White Wolf/SSS, John Nephew of Atlas, Chris Pramas of Green Ronin, the Troll Lord guys, Otherworld Creations and many others. At no time has any publisher I am aware of proposed the idea of overpowering to pull purchasers. Plus, again, that type of approach would simply be trimmed by the DM in game.

But I will say, there is atleast something to this last theory. Because unlike the module that a DM can tailor before the player encounters it, the player can flip through the class book, buy it and bug the DM to use it. So there is some incentive to power up a class to inspire players to purchase. But as I said, I just don't see a lot of that. Nor do I see that as a good business strategy.

I still feel the overriding purchasing decisions are the cover (believe it or not), the quality of the overall content, the perception of value for the dollar, the interior art, uniqueness of the material and reusability and expandability.

Publishers will focus on increasing those qualities. That is what I believe you will see. Better covers--take Troll Lords for example). Longer products--we have abandoned anything under 48 pages. Tighter and better writing. Better maps and interior art. That is all stuff the publisher can control.

So, while the second concept is at least plausible, neither of those theories have any basis in either actual practice or sound business theory.

Thanks for soliciting our thoughts!

Clark Peterson (www.necromancergames.com)

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