Hi,
I'm Kevin, and I work for a consulting firm that has been contracted by a big company, let's call them Sorcerers of the Inland.
They are looking ideas for monetization schemes for a game they make which I will refer to as Lizards & Holes.
I don't really care about this project, so hopefully you nerds can just do my job for me.
Thanks
pics or it didn't happen
monetization might be harder to do than streamlining. for instance, one might be spending too much money on political officers and consultants
>New expansion with cowboys and magic guns
>Make a D&D tv series
>Mountain Dew collab, something inspired by each class
>Doritos collab too why not
>Make 6e not suck ass
>Make 6e not suck ass
Now you're just being silly
>Make a D&D tv series
Literally impossible since at least '87, due to ever-growing copyright bloat. And at least few of the copyright holders won't allow it out of pure spite, no matter the money offered
Can someone draw that lizard but with tits?
add your own tits gay
uncensored now
The Sorcerers of the Inland sound like massive fags who died when they were purchased by Is-Sis. They should disband their company and surrender their IPs, including Wizardry: The Grouping to public domain.
Well, for any tabletop RPG, the important thing to remember is that anything they sell has to be better than what the customers could already make themselves. It's not like a video game where you can charge 10 bucks for a fancy helmet, since the players can just say they've got a fancy helmet.
Licensing into areas that are harder to copy is probably a better angle if they want to expand beyond just making high quality RPG content.
How about Magic Item cards, this company already prints cards. The rules could specify that you need to use the item cards to be considered in possession of the item. They could sell them in booster packs of 5 for $2.99, and the guy who runs the game would be the target customer for this. He could hand one out to each of the players for each session of play.
Honestly, not the worst idea, if only because a GM might want a deck of those as a way to hand out random magic items to PCs, and they could serve as a reminder and a shorthand for what magical gear they've got.
Of course, the risk you run is somebody just making a stack of labeled notecards and ignoring the official product. Even more would be the case where the GM is confident enough to just pick out magic items directly.
Not to mention a GM doesn't want to give a magic item card to a player only to have that player lose it or forget their sheet at home or rip it up when they get kicked from the game and so forth.
I think another prospect could be something like a random encounter deck, where each card has a very detailed encounter for a particular environment. Not just 2d6 goblins, but a small map of a watchtower, various monsters and what sort of scheme they're up to, and basically something that serves as a full-fledged plothook or mini-adventure on a notecard. Then not only are you selling something that could be randomized, but it's also something that can't be replaced as easily without a GM writing up their own adventure paths.
And you could make decks like that for all sorts of different environments, or even the same environment multiple times for different random encounters. Dungeon patrols, random city NPCs, random travelers, you name it.
>I think another prospect could be something like a random encounter deck, where each card has a very detailed encounter for a particular environment. Not just 2d6 goblins, but a small map of a watchtower, various monsters and what sort of scheme they're up to, and basically something that serves as a full-fledged plothook or mini-adventure on a notecard. Then not only are you selling something that could be randomized, but it's also something that can't be replaced as easily without a GM writing up their own adventure paths.
And you could make decks like that for all sorts of different environments, or even the same environment multiple times for different random encounters. Dungeon patrols, random city NPCs, random travelers, you name it.
Duuuuude... That idea is pure gold. Random NPC cards are the shit. Portray and maybe occupation on front. Back story, motives, hidden agenda, resources on the back.
How about inspo cards? Just full-art on the front, with maybe a seed of quest hook (or even just space for note-taking) on the back.
Raise the collectiblelity. Big adventures/dungeons take up four or even nine cards to assemble (think MtG x LotR panoramas).
I don't know if it'd do that great, but it'd be a lot better than the shit like spell cards they try to push.
A deck of cards already plays well into things like random encounters and random NPCs, but rather than rolling on a table and cross-referencing you're just flipping over a card from a deck.
Ideally you'd probably want to have all the info on one-side, just so you're not flipping back and forth, but you can fit a lot of info on a card. an MtG Saga could cover pretty much everything you just listed for a random NPC on one side without issue, especially if you condensed it down.
>Just full-art on the front, with maybe a seed of quest hook
Technically speaking they've basically got 20 of those with all the basic lands from the D&D MTG crossover set. That's why I think there's a lot of room, because you could squeeze in a lot of information alongside this sort of prose.
>Big adventures/dungeons take up four or even nine cards to assemble
That doesn't seem like as good of an idea, unless it's very disjointed. Mostly because people will either be forced to run those piecemeal if they're missing parts of it, or it ruins the point of having it as cards when it's not something you'd randomly shuffle into a deck.
The goal of having a random deck of encounters and plot hooks is that they could all become something bigger if the GM leans into it, but they wouldn't need to be by default. If they want to print a full-length adventure or dungeon, they should just do that rather than trying to squeeze it onto cards.
Besides, I think you could fit a lot onto a card. A three-story wizard tower would fit pretty well onto an MtG Saga card depending on how concisely you put a lot of the information. Although then again, perhaps it'd work better in that case to have a deck of random dungeon-tower rooms with some cards detailing an enemy mage in his study on the top floor. Then you just deal cards until you hit a mage and boom, instant tower dungeon.
I was actually thinking of your >pic related when I commented. 20? Did they make more than the initial run? Weren't there only 10?
My idea was to keep the backside specifically for DM-only information. The front is what the characters can immediately see without any rolls.
You're absolutely right about the panoramas from a shuffle up and play perspective. And also about
>If they want to print a full-length adventure or dungeon, they should just do that rather than trying to squeeze it onto cards.
I agree, but in the interest of entertaining OP: Forcing DMs to purchase multiple boosters to get a *chance* at completing the adventure they want to run is a way better monetization strategy than just selling them the book.
>Did they make more than the initial run? Weren't there only 10?
4 per color, pretty sure.
>My idea was to keep the backside specifically for DM-only information. The front is what the characters can immediately see without any rolls.
I suppose it depends what's meant to be presented, and what's reliant on having a screen or not. Personally, I think it would be nice if it were mostly on one side, if only because having it on both sides just adds to the temptation of the designers to make something way too wordy on each half to parse at the table.
>Forcing DMs to purchase multiple boosters to get a *chance* at completing the adventure they want to run is a way better monetization strategy than just selling them the book.
That's the thing though. If it's a good adventure, people are just going to give up and look up the full thing online. They certainly still could regardless, but what people would be paying for here is the format the cards are in. If the content of the cards is something that would be easier to have in a book or PDF, there's no point to the cards.
That does make monetization more difficult, since there isn't the same factor that TCGs have where you'd really want a 'Rare' encounter card over another one, because ultimately it's a stack of plot hooks that ideally shouldn't have anything deliberately terrible within them.
The only two concepts I can think of for adding rarity to packs in that way both of which I hate are:
A) just add some MtG cards to certain packs. Probably more flavortext lands to fit with the theme, although probably not basics if they want people to care
B) A plot hook that leads into a pre-existing adventure book and comes with a discount code for a PDF of said adventure book. Which is just a blatant gimmicky cash-grab, but might get people to buy a book they wouldn't have otherwise
>4 per color, pretty sure.
I didn't know. Sweet.
I've always wondered why they didn't make diptychs out of these.
>temptation to put something too wordy
Yeah... Hadn't thought of that. Probably best to start out with less space then.
PDF sharing is a problem either way. I feel like you're underestimating the "OMG I have to have the real thing simply because I can collect it" factor. We love the funko pop retard whales. 😀
B) doesn't need to be too bad. If one in ten "rares" had that code and it was like a $10 discount on a $30 book. Or maybe if you collect five different codes you get the book for free. You know a little "booster fun" of our own. That could be neat.
Knowing WotC they would probably do A) and put in something around which Standard came to revolve around...
How do you feel about a riff on B) where the micro-adventures sometimes have a clue or situation that (when followed) leads into the start of an adventure book? Like how the free LMoP leads into Hoard of the dragon queen.
>I feel like you're underestimating the "OMG I have to have the real thing simply because I can collect it" factor. We love the funko pop retard whales. 😀
Maybe, though I still feel like it would work better with things that are more easily segmented.
>How do you feel about a riff on B) where the micro-adventures sometimes have a clue or situation that (when followed) leads into the start of an adventure book?
That's basically what I was proposing with B, although it doesn't necessarily need to lead into the start of an adventure. Either way, it is probably the case where that could work out. I just feel like I'd end up rolling my eyes if I opened one.
>Knowing WotC they would probably do A) and put in something around which Standard came to revolve around...
Yeah, I figured that'd just end up as flavor-text fetches or some other standard-specific dual lands. Though it'd probably need to be something where they could fit enough flavortext on it to still serve as a minimal plothook card for the D&D side of things. Otherwise people might be annoyed if they pull a 'rare' card but it doesn't come with something the could use in a random encounter deck, even if it's just a neat vista.
Only issue there is it pumps up the printing cost, and therefore the minimum pricepoint/maximum cards per pack. While you could fit an extremely robust mini-adventure onto those, it means that a given GM would need to buy a lot more in order to have a functional deck of encounters. Especially if it's certain categories like wilderness encounters that really wouldn't require that much space.
Perhaps if they used those for 'dungeon decks' where it was for random encounters that would lead to some cave or a small tomb, since you could probably squeeze a small map (for the DM to reference and copy over to a mat or just sketch out) and some room descriptions onto one of those. Basically just pick related, but taking up half a Planechase card.
>although it doesn't necessarily need to lead into the start of an adventure
Interesting. This offers huge potential storywise: Let's say in the adventure book the group starts with a quest to retrieve a big black diamond from the nearby dungeon. Upon their return the quest giver says: "Good thing you got it before [BBEG]. He would've used it for a foul ritual." Quest giver then sends them on another mission.
There could be an adventure card where the group deals with a cemetery that's teeming with undead, because BBEG was actually able to use the diamond for the ritual.
The book becomes the "canon" storyline while the micro-adventures act as "what if...?" or deleted scenes material.
>Otherwise people might be annoyed if they pull a 'rare' card but it doesn't come with something the could use in a random encounter deck, even if it's just a neat vista.
A hundred percent with you on that.
>Perhaps if they used those for 'dungeon decks' where it was for random encounters that would lead to some cave or a small tomb, since you could probably squeeze a small map
Yes! One half would be the encounter (in the hex map sense) and the other a five-room-dungeon. Perfect.
What I meant by not necessarily leading into the start of an adventure is it could potentially drop you in partway through it. And of course, the obvious option that the GM just chooses to either not follow up on the full adventure path or does their own thing with it.
Honestly, it feels like the only reason WotC hasn't done this already is because their existing random encounter tables suck ass and I don't think putting them in card format would improve anything.
We're talking standard MtG cards here, but what about Planechase/Scheme sized ones? You can fit 3x5 one inch squares on these. Probably too small to be used as actual maps.
>They are looking ideas for monetization schemes
Sell minis in lego parts so players are forced to buy individual bodies, heads, limbs, and weapons as part of sets they mostly don't want and won't use or for heavy markups as individual pieces.
Thanks for the post, Kevin
No problem, thank you guys for the input.
These are some okay ideas, at least good enough to use as a initial pitch. I'll watch this thread until it dies.
why are you pretending to be me?
Make DMs guild membership pay to train the DM AI replacement for them.
Make the AI for players include a pay-for-nat-20 and other similar shit. Unlockable hats and silly voices, behind a monthly membership.
Make good adventure books without colossal mistakes in them and then sell them for money.
That isn't the kind of thing they hired our firm to pitch.
This is the worst fucking place you could ask. Go ask someone who actually cares about D&D and doesn't want to run it into the ground by going back to a 3.PF style game where the RP in RPG is thrown completely out the window in favor of buildgayry and content bloat.
Why would I ask people who care about the game how to squeeze more money out of the customers by adopting a hostile sales approach?
Include hypodermics with the next book release so customers can send vials of their own blood for a rebate. Then sell the blood.
Character creation is not realistic enough. We should be required to roll for all aspects of our body, mental, and personality attributes. Including our sex, gender, and sexual fetishes.
SELL A SEX SPLAT
why do you do this?
role playing games aren't about making money.
Hell, as far as I know, they have never even been profitable. They are always pet projects of students and undergrads. RPG's don't make money, they cost money.
>They are looking ideas for monetization schemes for a game
Fucking have a nice day Goddamn self declared shill
Do you know what its like to be forced to occupy a world you don't understand? Every time I see stuff like this I feel like a whipped dog. Why do you do this to me?