On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Martin L. Shoemaker wrote:
> And I see D20 STL as a way for ME to make money by riding their
> coattails. If Wizards does their job right, D20 will have a HUGE
> brand name recognition factor, far larger than I could EVER make
> on my own. If I sell anything at all, I am sure my own small efforts
> will make me far more money than they will make for Wizards: if I sell
> a few books and maybe clear a few dollars, I'll bet my work sells
> somewhere between zero and one PHBs that wouldn't have been sold
> anyway.
Um, this is failing to weight the work that goes into your
efforts. i.e. WotC puts in a mostly one-time effort of writing the
OGL and D20 system license. After that point, they spend nothing,
while you and many people like you spend loads of time crafting
your module. You then release your module. For the hours that
you put into it, I am fairly certain that your module is very poor
pay. However, WotC gets their 0-1 PHB (if you believe that, and
I'm not sure I do) virtually for free.
I don't have much inside information on the market, but my
impression is that adventure modules will often *lose* money for
a big company -- i.e. with any decent pay, the hours spent writing
them are often more than the profits returned.
On the other hand, if you are set on writing adventure modules
anyway, then I agree that it may well be a benefit to you to make it
a part of the D20 SRD.
- John Kim
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