Quote from: Lesser Gnome;1068482Full disclosure: I am one of the owners at Frog God Games so I am both biased and someone who can definitively respond. I was also a customer before they bought out my one man company. My last book as a backer was the Blight for context.

I find most of the opinions in this thread to be accurate, thoughtful and, now, a bit outdated. In the last 18 months we have shifted our focus internally away from the large books that were close to a gimmick on a couple of them. We do have a loyal fan base that has come to expect large books and get very annoyed with the incremental drift toward titles that are both focused, with more emphasis on production quality than hard to carry, harder to efficiently use.

The truth is most of these have  already completed or will fund in Q1 using Kickstarter. We are shifting to books on the 200 to 350 page range. The books like Blight and Tsar solved a 2010 problem of Adventure Path focused customers asking for low cost, high quality softcover shorts which give feeling of epic story paid for a very modest price, over a 12 month cycle. Word to word or price to price comparisons are more apt when compared to a wide release episodic AP. Kickstarter and crowdfunding created a compromise that would produce similar experiences but the cost was upfront. The price made it look like the equivalent of a luxury good, the print runs made the per unit price high just to make a very thin profit in distribution channels. But the size and scope was visually impressive and that sells a larger number of books than I expected and I was a buyer who wasn't very price sensitive.

Swords and Wizardry has good sized audience that have strong opinions involving everything making a fragmenting an already limited market which is only now growing in sales and not only in players so the books there are always a projection risk but we love the game and the art and layout are shared between the versions.

Basically making books is expensive for small companies. Making PDFs only is almost as expensive. I saw that the impression was we combined PDFs with the hardcovers to charge more for a bundle. Not we began giving them with book as an attempt to avoid exasperation and dismissiveness toward releases which were at minimum a year long effort with strained resources. Hearing that is no fun.

The high retail cost of our books is coming down now. Deliberate planning, the decline of PF sales and the explosive popularity of fifth edition are letting us shift into more mainstream MSRP ranges.

We work very hard and are by no means getting more than 'ok' compensation. Regardless I am proud of our direction and improved releases. I hope you revisit your impressions of us as a company even if you ultimately do not change your mind.

Thanks.

Zach Glazar, Frog God Games.

Thanks a lot for sharing your perspective on this!

This is exactly why the needs of the hobby and publishers have never been in alignment.

You don't need a lot of books to PLAY rpgs, but publishers can't exist without selling LOTS of books.

Thus publishers become beholden to buyers who may or may not actually PLAY rpgs. "Aspirational players" is a good name for the collectors who don't game (or not much), and Kickstarter certainly caters to them. It's not just FGG by a long short. I'm a fan of CMON's boardgames, but its so obvious that Kickstarter has an army of people who just bobble from KS to KS buying the "all ins" and may not even play the game once when it shows. It's almost as if their hobby is the "community" that gathers during the KS.

And those people are CRUCIAL for the publishers to exist....but meaningless to the hobby.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1069702This is exactly why the needs of the hobby and publishers have never been in alignment.

You don't need a lot of books to PLAY rpgs, but publishers can't exist without selling LOTS of books.

It reminds me of how as a child I would buy tons of computer magazines ...right up until I got my first computer.

I think there's definitely a difference between utilitarian material designed for play, like my pile of Basic Fantasy (OSR D&D) adventures or Stonehell Dungeon that I've been running for the past 16 months, and material designed primarily to look pretty, like my Achtung! Cthulu stuff from Modiphius, or my collection of Paizo APs. In the latter case I have used several for play, often with painful results, and it is clear that their design emphasises attractive presentation to non-gamers over use in actual play.

I'm pretty sure at least 50% of our hobby is supported by the RPG equivalent of those people who sit around watching home shopping network with their credit card in hand.  Getting a shiny new book in the mail, and plotting out campaigns in their head that likely won't happen, is still a dopamine kick.

Quote from: sureshot;1068505How is making the PDF version of a book almost as expensive.

Art?

Quote from: EOTB;1069732I'm pretty sure at least 50% of our hobby is supported by the RPG equivalent of those people who sit around watching home shopping network with their credit card in hand.  Getting a shiny new book in the mail, and plotting out campaigns in their head that likely won't happen, is still a dopamine kick.

God bless 'em for helping to keep the lights on, and bless the folks who can churn out nine hundred pages of material like an uncapped fire hydrant of creativity.

My own goal is to slim shit down - I like making my own dungeons, but they get way the fuck out of hand.  Trying to get small, tight, and focused - I don't think one page dungeons are my style, but I'm increasingly appreciating the "less is more" approach.

I always try to make my products for people who would actually use them. Of course, a lot of purchasers might not, but that doesn't affect what I design for.

Quote from: S'mon;1069706It reminds me of how as a child I would buy tons of computer magazines ...right up until I got my first computer.

In the 1970s I subscribed to Byte magazine for a while; the computer magazines were full of do-it-yourself projects, hardware and software, for the feeble hobby machines of the time (and ads too). Much later when I looked at Byte, it was far thicker but just full of reviews and ads. Bookstores don't sell books about computer science much anymore; they sell books on using specific commercial software. Happily there's a more substantial do-it-yourself community in RPGs.

QuoteI think there's definitely a difference between utilitarian material designed for play, like my pile of Basic Fantasy (OSR D&D) adventures or Stonehell Dungeon that I've been running for the past 16 months, and material designed primarily to look pretty, like my Achtung! Cthulu stuff from Modiphius, or my collection of Paizo APs. In the latter case I have used several for play, often with painful results, and it is clear that their design emphasises attractive presentation to non-gamers over use in actual play.

Quote from: EOTB;1069732I'm pretty sure at least 50% of our hobby is supported by the RPG equivalent of those people who sit around watching home shopping network with their credit card in hand.  Getting a shiny new book in the mail, and plotting out campaigns in their head that likely won't happen, is still a dopamine kick.

Some stuff that clearly isn't designed for collectors (because it's free downloads on the internet) is essentially unplayable; some stuff sold back when (when collectors were less of a factor) was borderline useless. There seem to be a lot more campaign books/modules/adventure paths than there used to be; it might reflect that the average player has less time to make up their own stuff. So collectors aren't the sole driving force here.

I don't mind collector stuff if it doesn't take up all the oxygen in the room. I'm breathing OK; your breathing may vary. But regardless, the internet makes it easier to find games and players for unconventional stuff.