Quote from: Spinachcat;481547I am no fan of Pathfinder, but I acknowledge its success. Clearly Paizo is selling lots of books and PDFs. However, everything you could possibly need to make any character for levels 1-20 is in the free online Pathfinder SRD. And on the GM side, there are more monsters and GM stuff in the SRD than you'll ever need. It's all there. You don't need to ever buy a book...but Paizo is selling lots of books.

Why?

Could this money-making model work for a non-D&D game?

I honestly don't think it is a money-making model for D&D games, either, but it does help generate interest.

Here are my possible plans:  Make a very, very barebones document with task resolution and character generation.  Lots of charts and tables, very few paragraphs or lists.

Task resolution would include spells/skills/meta-quirks, but only the mechanics to resolve.  No lists, or no extensive lists anyway.  Maybe a shortish list of skills you would expect in any game or genre; literacy, weapon use, tech skills, and a few example skill packages like martial arts that incorporate hand-to-hand, weapon and defence skills as a demo of how skill packages work.

Character generation would describe how to create and the mechanics for improvement.  Maybe a demonstration level or two, but nothing extensive.  Examples on how to package skills/meta-quirks to make a 'class'.  Bog standard fantasy races; Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, with a few example racial skills for each.  Big, big caveats on both of these that none of it is engraved in stone, and actual published rules may modify, contradict or (very, very rarely) utterly discard certain parts.

Finally, a miscellaneous section for creating opponents that aren't just hastily cobbled together NPCs from the first two parts of the rules.  A couple of examples of special attacks and defences in a table or two, a broad idea on how many attacks and what range of damage is appropriate based on the players, convert to pdf, and drop it on an unsuspecting internet.

Wrap the whole thing up with zero art, slap a Creative Commons by-nc-sa sticker on it and send it out the door with a whopping $0 price tag.  Make your own content, or wait for stuff to get published.  Keep a few printouts handy; it should be kept to under 24pages, but with proper formatting, there will be no problems handing out the character generation part for everyone, as well as the task resolution charts and whatnot.  No worrying about someone forgetting their pdf/laptop, or simply not buying the book/pdf in the first place.

It's still in the very rough planning stages, but any kind of stripped down rules like that should absolutely be treated as marketing material.  Much like movie trailers show the exciting bits and video game demos offer a level or two for getting people interested, it should be fairly bare-bones.  Not even as much as most quick start games offer, just the essentials to get a complete stranger up to speed with the basics of getting things done at the table.

Quote from: Novastar;481614So when e-readers provide better bookmarking, faster page turns, and a cleaner screen, everybody will be aboard, right?

Possibly. But probably not.

Like I say, for works which I read from cover-to-cover I'm already pretty much completely converted to e-books. But there are too many things I do with RPG manuals that an electronic interface is unlikely to duplicate any time soon.

Partly it's the quick-flipping to a specific "region" in the book and then rapidly narrowing it down. Very good indexing, Google searching, and hte like could improve that. But more importantly it's the "multiple documents" problem.

A simple example from my game last night:

- A copy of the module flipped open to the current page.
- A copy of the map.
- A copy of the rulebook opened to the rules I was currently using.
- A copy of the Monster Manual I was keeping open to the two stat blocks I was using (often looking at both pages simultaneously).
- A copy of a different monster book open to a different stat block.
- A copy of the Spell Compendium flipped open to a spell that one of my monsters could use.

In addition to that I had my campaign status document and the combat log on the table in front of me.

This is not unusual. Duplicating this kind of utility is not just a matter of "better bookmarking" or search functions. It requires ubiquitous (and cheap) digital displays. That'll happen some day; but we're still at least a decade away from it. (Probably more.)