Captain Noble

The way I see the OGL playing out for D20 is very different. At the outset, there was such demand for product that D20 product sales were enormous. That made happy players, which in turn drove more sales for WotC. As it's gone on, the glut of products has made D20 publishing far less profitable; in a glutted market, though, WotC's brand (the D&D logo, etc.) is worth a lot to distinguish their products from the sea of D20 titles of unknown or dubious quality.

I know I've had some ideas for alternate settings and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I've also talked to a few people that don't like Mythic Europe and would prefew another setting. Sure, you can homebrew, but a lot of people like a shiny book that has a setting all worked up for them.

I guess I just don't see how Atlas would lose in any way.

Captain Noble

D20 works because it is D&D. GURPS works because, well, it is GURPS (I'm not sure you would really call that OGL, but there are a lot of different people who write wildly variant supplements for SJG, so its pretty close).

I love Ars Magica, been playing since 2nd ed and will gleefully continue for years to come. I have even run a variant campaign set in Harn (mainly to keep some history students from jumping on particulars). Still, I'm not sure that I would buy many "variant" books for AM. AM does not have a gigantic fanbase -- not tiny, but not all that huge either. For a variant book to do well economically, it would have to catch the imaginations of a pretty fair-sized chunk of the community as a whole or somehow bring in a LOT of people who have never wanted to play AM before. I'm not sure this is a financially realistic option at the moment.

Just a quick correction: in the twenty years GURPS has been out, there have been 3 non-SJ Games titles (Prime Directive, Conspiracy X, and IST Kingston). We have specifically not gone OGL so as to maintain more control over the material published that bears our flagship brand.

Which leads to another potential problem with any OGL arrangement, the distinct possibility that products released under it are going to be of substandard quality, or even offensive.

As to bringing in a gigantic fanbase, I wasn't imagining a huge increase in fanbase. I was picturing smaller publishers (who have fewer overhead) doing alternate setttings, adventures, and other stuff that Atlas would not be able to do financially. I do think that it would bring in more consumers because it would bring some diversity to the line. Everyone has different likes and dislikes, of course, and by having different options, I think that more people would be drawn to Ars.

Captain Noble

Let me give you an example.

We just shipped LAND OF FIRE AND ICE this week. At this point, three days after release, we are 2 copies shy of breaking even on our external costs (printing and freelancers); it has not paid for the time staffers on salary here spent on it (me doing layout, sales, packing orders, proofreading; Scott managing artists and designing the cover). This is lower than I'd been expecting, but the RPG market right now is really astoundingly sucky. (A couple of distributors decided there wasn't enough demand to justify them placing an order right now; they will wait until there's another release, because they also don't seem to need enough backlist to meet our very modest minimum order.)

If there were two Ars Magica books released this month, it is likely that both of them would lose money. Remember, they're competing for dollars with the dozens of Ars Magica books already available.

If anything, we need to have FEWER Ars Magica books on the market. Then they'd be making more profit, meaning more money to invest in making them better books.

Perhaps more books would drive sales of more core rulebooks. Maybe. If I had written off the value of publishing supplements, I'd be more inclined to take a risk and find out.

I am speaking from some experience. I know the sales figures of third-party efforts for ArM in the past, such as Mythic Perspectives, and how they compared to the sales figures we had at the same time. I also had the experience of being a third-party publisher for Ars Magica (and that was at a time when there was very little support for the game yet on the market, so there was a much larger potential market base -- as a 3rd party publisher in 1990/91, we were selling more copies of new releases than we sell today by a substantial margin, but we were still selling a lot less than LR or WW at the same time).

I bought Bishop's Staff ("the", not "a") recently and reading through I realised that it would have made an excellent candidate for the coriolis treatment. A small, self contained supplement with enough ars crunchy bits to be of interest to us lot, but with enough "fantasy" mystery to easily be adapted to the fantasy d20 setting of your choice.

I get the feeling (and I only really have a pool of 2 so it may not be statistically accurate) that many in the ars community look forward to any new release. It doesn't matter too much what it is, we just love more stuff that explores the world we choose to play in. Whether that has the occasional d20 aside in it or not won't bother most of us on the smaller releases. But we have to accept that even a slim book has costs and the sales figures from just the ars community may not be big enough to justify too many.

If black monks does do well (fingers crossed) I hope that we'll see a few more ars scenarios published thanks to the unwitting support of the d20 crowd.

Mark

Here's a thought: what about an open license for PDF products only? While this certainly would open up a wider possibility for crap products to easily be thrown out the electronic door by wannabe publishers, such less than stellar efforts would not seriously tarnish the image of Atlas Games or the Ars Magica line, whose 'official' ArM products would enjoy a much higher plane of distinction simply by virtue of being actual print books sold at games shops.

Benefits of an 'Open PDF' publishing arrangement would be:

1. Those dedicated ArM fans who have brilliant ideas and decent layout software could produce products dealing with many obscure bits of history/folklore/Mythic Europe that Atlas will likely never be able to cover in an official product.

2. Those who have longed for a thoroughly worked out ArM without the historical backdrop (I do not understand these people, but I have it on good authority that they exist) could provide such settings for kindred spirits to enjoy, possibly enticing those of other gaming persuasions to give ArM a second look.

3. It would bring PDF publishing a bit more attention from the ArM community, which would seem to be a good thing as a wider number of ArM's older 'official' supplements could continue to be re-released by Atlas in this format.

Any thoughts on something like this?

~Alex
pax

The major cost goes into the editing, proofing, artwork, authoring and layout. In order to ecomonically produce anything to the level that Atlas does you have to take into account these cost factors.

Business wise you can't have all of these factors as "freebees". Note you can in fanzines etc, but not with respect to a business venture. At the end of the day any serious publisher has to make a profit. The profit is what they make a living off. Its why they are in business in the first place.

Sure you do kill the overheads of warehousing etc and the PDF is cheaper to maintain. But there are other factors as well such as marketing and audience usage of PDfs.

It doesn't take people long to work out that a PDF version isn't as good as the bound printed book, in fact it will cost you (paper/ink/binding) more to print off a PDF and use it like a standard Printed Book than the book from you Local Game Shop.

Anyone in the business of publishing and its related industies is aware of these factors. So unless you have a large audience to sell to (d20 ? anyone) then I believe licencing is not going to happen. Its a nice idea. But not reality.

In fact you can damage the product reputation if a lot of very poor quality material is producted by a licenced publisher (and we have all seen that before).

Gary

While I understand your concerns, I think there are a few factors at work here that you may have missed:

1.The sort of costs you have listed for prefessional product are, no doubt, useful. But the world of PDF publishing has had some stellar efforts put out as a one or two man show. Yes, most of these stellar efforts have been D20 products, but the point remains that quality is achievable for one with the proper skills and tools. (Skills: being a professional illustrator and graphic designer, like me. Tools: all the professional grade layout software hibernating on my harddrive). As far as editing and proofing: Editing is useful, no doubt. But in my experience (I've had two articles published by Games Workshop in the past), it's not critical if one has good technical writing skills to begin with. My wife's criticisms altered and fixed my articles far more than the two or three sentences GW wanted me to modify. By extension, one who wished to publish a PDF product may very well have a few 'editor' figures he could turn to for objective criticism.

2. As far as business freebies: I actually *can* get most of those things as freebies, as I can either do them myself or turn to one of my design business buddies to carry a bit of the load here and there. I appreciate that my situation is uncommon, but I think it is far from unique. Most of the high quality PDFs I've seen were done by designer/illustrators, or people with close connections to such individuals. As far as the business side of things: I don't anticipate this taking off as a self-supporting business. I don't want to give Atlas a run for their money. I'd just like to see people have the legal right to publish (via PDF) their ideas for purchase by the general public, hopefully allowing them to see a little bit of financial return on the tremendous investment in time and effort such a project would entail. Perhaps such quality products would over time, and in the company of other similar products, gain a decent purchasing audience; from tiny acorns do mighty oak trees grow and all that....but the 'profitability' issue is really a non-issue here for me. PDF publishing is almost always simply about someone's labor of love. That wouldn't change here.

3. As for tarnishing the good name of ArM, I simply don't think that's a possibility. As you and I have both pointed out: Atlas' ink-and-paper books sold in the shops will always have a head and shoulders lead over even the most spectacular PDF product. Atlas' physical game publishing will always be percieved as the 'official core' of ArM. No one is going to confuse little Johnny's half-arsed PDF treatment of orcs in Mythic Europe with an actual Atlas Games ArM product, especially when you consider that any sort of Open Gaming License would inevitably require little Johnny to put a clear disclaimer distancing his product from theirs in the PDF itself. I really don't think Open Games Licensing carries the sort of ability to damage a reputation that more exclusive traditional licensing does. When most people read another lousy D20 PDF, they don't think: "Well, D20's a crap system now", they simply chalk it up to what happens when an open gaming license allows every Thom, Dietrich and Johann to publish a supplement. If there really was a need on Atlas' part for added protection, they should give the ArM Open agreement a distinguishing 'brand name' other than ArM: Green Ronin has done this with their Mutants and Masterminds game, creating a sort of open license for others to create supplements for their game under a licensed label that is different in name and appearance from the Mutants and Masterminds brand name...it's called something like 'M&M Open', I believe.

Anywho, there's some more thoughts on the matter.

Cheers.

Running off the costs of existing tools (equipment etc) used for "other" professional/business with a reduced team (1-2 people) really moves in the realm of semi professional publication in a way as you are really not looking at this from a real business prospective, fully costing and funding the venture, but supporting it with your own income from other professional sources. Now this is sustainable for a reasonable period of time. And its your business if you want to do this.

But I have found that in the past. There is a heavy atrition rate of the pdf style publishers. Sure you can constantly work all you non-paid time free time away for years if you like at a very reduced rate of return. But there will come a point where you will want to "get a life" or have some real return (money wise) for your efforts.

I can see why your want to have the use of an "Open Licence" to at least add a bit more validity to the product. But you seem to be wanting, the publications proposed, to be treated professional on one aspect and yet you are prepared to suppliment and effectively support it on the other, never really allowing it to open to the full market forces.

Also you can only rely on support from professional contacts for a "freebee" for just so long before they too will say, "hey look I'll do this for you but after all this 'paying work'". Now this can mean, as you know, that your "critical artwork" (for example) is delayed for weeks / months till your friend has the time.

Point taken with tarnishing of the product name.

One thing I think that happens when you allow PDF's for pay is that some of the fans who used to write stuff up and post it to the net gain an incentive to polish the book, make sure its understandable to others and not just themselves, and create a more readable layout. They've already invested the initial time in producing some rules they find useful; the ability to sell those rules and make $50 to $150 can justify the added time required to make them presentable. You'll have lots of turnover of course, but different people come up with different good ideas and this might help get those ideas out to the public.

I can certainly understand not wanting to fragment an already tiny market but it would be nice for hardcore Ars fans to have more resource material available.