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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 10:35 am 

Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2013 8:36 am
Posts: 1554
What I want to see is a set of products that covers an idea (eg a race, region, country or secret faction) and that covers to such a point that there doesnt seem to be more to add.

let me deomonstrate what I'm talking about with an actual example:

I want product based on the Western lands (and by extension that covers Kio and Undir to some degree) Things that I would expect to be produced might include:
a Western Lands geographical primer
some new backgrounds for characters from the westernlands
a description of the history of the westernlands
a description of the current political machinations going on in the westernlands
some secret societies specific to the westernlands
a "mega adventure" set in the westernlands
some new stuff, like posions or alchemical items or unique weapons.

Out of that I could see in the terms of books
"The Western Lands" a Hard back (maybe) that has a bunch of the things from above
"The Sky People, The Origins of the Kio" a softcover that has a few of the things above OR minor versions of the things above
"The Water People, the Slavery of the Undir" like kio but for Undir
"The Scary thing Joe Thought Up" a Mega Adventure set in the Westernlands

and then Importantly module support, maybe 6 or 7 mods set in the westernlands over the next couple of years.

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 10:53 am 
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Location: Toronto, Ontario
acurrier wrote:
PCIHenry wrote:
I agree that there is an excited fanbase, but that doesn't equate to people producing material. If so, we'd be awash with adventures and that just isn't the case.

I'm not suggesting that everyone who plays Arcanis should rush out with book proposals, but I have a hard time believing that there aren't at least a small group of people in the campaign you could trust to co-author with you. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but a few names spring to mind for me quite quickly.


As (presumably) one of those small group of people, and one directly involved in the adventure writing/editing/releasing process, I can assure you that Henry's right: Just because someone's excited and passionate doesn't mean that they have the time, inclination, or ability to write something (either as an adventure or as a part of a sourcebook). Those who do have all of the above are the ones who are contributing... there's just so few of us, and those of us who do also tend to be the GMs, the forum contributors, the campaign staff, etc...

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 12:06 pm 
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I would love to see some smaller books produced aimed at players of certain types. These could be as small as 12 pages to as big as around 32 or so. They should be narrow in scope so that they are quick to turn out, but broad enough that more than 1 person will be interested. Some examples:

1) Sourcebooks for Major/Minor Cities that include some background, recent events unique 'crunch' (Backgrounds, Paths, Talents, etc) and some colorful NPC's that represent that area...
Examples: New Althre, Savona, Censure

2) Sourcebooks for Archetypes that include build/character ideas based upon different regions (How do the Arcane Warmages of Coryan differ from the Arcane Alchemists of Altheria, etc), with some 'crunch'.

3) Sourcebooks for Races that give some new history or perspective on a particular event or historical period, some colorful NPC's that represent different ideas, and some 'crunch' to modify characters with

4) A Historical Timeline that shows thing nice and visually with 'game hooks' if you want to run an adventure in a certain period of history or in a certain place.

5) Sourcebooks on Secret Societies with their motivations, key players, major safehouses, and some 'crunch' for characters playing those characters

Hope this helps!

John

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 12:10 pm 
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There are allot of good ideas on the board and more to come as well i am sure, however i want to emphasize the importance of the three major books that come out for almost every system of play in one format or another before you start to look at other books...

Arcanis has done a great job creating the first two books and with some polish i think that they have created an excellent system and one that can be expanded upon!

However The third book i feel has yet to be offered in full. We are many years into the campaign already and most company's push this third book out quickly, i am not certain why more effort hasn't been made to detail this book.

1. Players Handbook or guide or simply the players book. The book that tells characters a bit about the game and how to make characters and has most of the crunch in it that is required to play the game for the player.

The Arcanis's Players book has so much detail and crunch in it that you need a spreadsheet to truly create your character, it offers allot of freedom in creating your character in the beginning however in later levels i find myself often trapped in some of my builds and i feel like a book to expand on backgrounds and paths and perhaps even a new archetype or two would be great book ideas.

2. The Dungeon Master's Guide or Game Master Manual. The book with additional rules for the Guy running the game. I think the details here are great there are some rules which need better definition and they have been covered in many of the errata's yet there are still more to go over...

3 And last but not least the Monster Manual or Big Book of Bad Guys! This books gives players and game masters so much insight to the world they are in. Its importance should not be overlooked!

Within each entry you set the stage for interesting encounters yet to be made, give background on places far and wide and the things that inhabit them! It represents so many possibilities i cannot detail how many times i have paged through a monster manual and found an interesting creature which suddenly sparked an idea for an entire event much less an encounter.

In my opinion our current Arcanis game is lacking this third and very important book. Having a Monster Manual i believe will not only increase the interest in the game but i think you will find that it makes it easier for your player base to write events of their own whether it be a home game or writing for the ""Living" Campaign.

My two cents.

~Tony

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 6:48 pm 

Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:46 pm
Posts: 1353
I like Cody, Eric and others very much enjoy consuming information about the world. For me it is helpful to provide a deep and rich character background for the story, or more for the story itself. In terms of products, I'm going to focus on ones that aren't already being written such as the Kio sourcebook and the Ss'ethregoran Empire conversion.

1. Information about the Khitani Empire. I could see this as part of an updated Codex, or even as it's own source book. There's already a ton there to cover from the various ul families, the Sleeping Emperor that it could be a rich source of both story and crunch.

2. The Keys of Man - I am still as stoked about this story and finding out what happened to them as I was when Henry first mentioned the idea years ago. There's a part of me that wants this as a mega adventure or possibly ongoing series to purchase, and another that would be quite content if the current campaign simply led into that for the living campaign.

3. "Armies of Arcanis" - A guide to the Legions, Knightly Orders and similar organizations throughout the Known Lands. The Order of the Phoenix is a good example. I expect though that these would be better served to be presented as a single guide or series of guides to help increase sales.

4. Religions of Arcanis - There were some Paths that were excluded from the Codex of Heroes I believe in part because they were viewed as part of a larger work on the religions. This provides a great opportunity to highlight the differences between the Pantheonistic flavors, possible differences in the Western Lands and the ways that the Elemental Lords, spirits, etc. are worshiped.

There are a lot of other good ideas in this thread that I'd be happy to see as well.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul


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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 7:10 pm 
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Hat wrote:
3. "Armies of Arcanis" - A guide to the Legions, Knightly Orders and similar organizations throughout the Known Lands. The Order of the Phoenix is a good example. I expect though that these would be better served to be presented as a single guide or series of guides to help increase sales.
Paul


There was a call for writers for this about 2 years ago. I have 2,500 words sitting on my computer for the "Legion of Heaven's Blade". Mostly the crunch stuff with another 3,000 words of fluff to go. Stalled project for me currently, as I also haven't summarised a proper outline for approval.

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 1:02 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:17 am
Posts: 208
Harliquinn wrote:
I would love to see some smaller books produced aimed at players of certain types. These could be as small as 12 pages to as big as around 32 or so. They should be narrow in scope so that they are quick to turn out, but broad enough that more than 1 person will be interested.


I think PCI has tried this and it didn't go so well or maybe other things got in the way.
In the 3.5 day they did Holy Champions, small 8-9 page pdfs that expanded on a specific Holy Champion in detail. They got to 2 of 14 and stopped. Then in A:RPG they started The Fighting Orders of Crown a 12 page pdf that focused in detail about new material, they stopped after the first one.
Getting too specific might be why they stopped both of those collections fairly quickly.

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 11:28 am 
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The Vault wrote:
Harliquinn wrote:
I would love to see some smaller books produced aimed at players of certain types. These could be as small as 12 pages to as big as around 32 or so. They should be narrow in scope so that they are quick to turn out, but broad enough that more than 1 person will be interested.


I think PCI has tried this and it didn't go so well or maybe other things got in the way.
In the 3.5 day they did Holy Champions, small 8-9 page pdfs that expanded on a specific Holy Champion in detail. They got to 2 of 14 and stopped. Then in A:RPG they started The Fighting Orders of Crown a 12 page pdf that focused in detail about new material, they stopped after the first one.
Getting too specific might be why they stopped both of those collections fairly quickly.


That's fair. I think those are likely to appeal to the players though. Larger books with a ton of info usually are for DM's (Codex of Heroes the exception). One of the complaints I hear is there isn't enough 'new stuff' coming out for Arcanis, so people lose interest or it falls off their radar. Rather than 1 big book every 2 years, we need a lot of smaller books to keep people talking about Arcanis throughout the year.

John

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:19 pm 
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Thought that has passed through my mind:

Whole Tier Campaign Books.

Basic outline - Each book consists of a short Sourcebook Chapter (or, at least a Domain Document) followed by 5-10 adventure modules. Each book is designed to get a character through 1 whole tier of leveling.

Living Campaign - These adventures CANNOT be played by characters currently involved in the Legends of Arcanis Campaign. However, at the end of the campaign a cert is available which allows them to port their character into the Living Campaign starting at a certain story arch. For example: You finish [insert campaign here], and can now play any adventure set in A2-Coming of the Destroyer

Storylines - This is a good way of dealing with storylines which happen at the same time (or a similar timeline) to the Living Campaign, but in parts of the world which are not involved in that storyline. For example: While the Crusade rages, the Warlords of Almeric continue to fight! The Heroes become embroiled in this conflict, leading to one of these warlords eventually gaining prominence.

Who would write these? - While these stories, of course, will need guidance from PCI (Henry specifically), they are a great way for other authors to get into the campaign! James Zwiers will have the chance to expand upon the Pirate Isles and Hinterlands, the Invisible Kings can return to their old domains and update us all on the worlds there, new people can open up new domains that thus far have been barely touched!

How to monetize them - Each of these books can sell for between US$10 and US$30, and would come out initially as .pdf documents to help drop production prices. If successful in this format, limited print runs could be done for sale at Conventions such as GenCon and Origins as a way to hook new players into the campaign. Basically, it is the free dime-bag of cocaine to get them hooked into the world and the system.

Authorship and 'for pay' - This is something I personally have no real experience with dealing with, so I would leave this up to PCI. Perhaps the authors of the book get a percentage to total sales up to an agreed upon amount (like "we'll pay you $200 for this work, and you get $2 from the first 100 copies sold), paid yearly as a lump sum? As I say, though, I'm not sure how this works.

Future Books - Each book is set for a specific Tier (1.1 to 1.10, 2.1 to 2.10, etc), and require you to either A) have made a new character of the appropriate Tier, B) Have a character from a previous Campaign Book of a lower tier continue on to the new one. Each book gives the option for your character to be 'ported' over into the Living Campaign starting at a specific point, which makes them unable to play future of these Campaign Books with that character, but that does not prevent them from playing it with a new character!

Oh, and for the record: I, Cody Bergman, do solemnly swear that anything that I have said in regards to the format of this books is free for other people (such as Paradigm Concepts, Inc) to use freely and in whatever way that they so choose. Unless I am chosen by them to write in their stead, I give up any rights to this idea (as not-necessarily original as it may be) and agree not to be a dick and sue or otherwise harass them for using it to make Arcanis awesome.

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 Post subject: Re: Types of products wanted
PostPosted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 9:00 pm 
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Location: Ontario, Canada
Nierite wrote:
Thought that has passed through my mind:

Whole Tier Campaign Books.

Basic outline - Each book consists of a short Sourcebook Chapter (or, at least a Domain Document) followed by 5-10 adventure modules. Each book is designed to get a character through 1 whole tier of leveling.

Living Campaign - These adventures CANNOT be played by characters currently involved in the Legends of Arcanis Campaign. However, at the end of the campaign a cert is available which allows them to port their character into the Living Campaign starting at a certain story arch. For example: You finish [insert campaign here], and can now play any adventure set in A2-Coming of the Destroyer

Storylines - This is a good way of dealing with storylines which happen at the same time (or a similar timeline) to the Living Campaign, but in parts of the world which are not involved in that storyline. For example: While the Crusade rages, the Warlords of Almeric continue to fight! The Heroes become embroiled in this conflict, leading to one of these warlords eventually gaining prominence.

Who would write these? - While these stories, of course, will need guidance from PCI (Henry specifically), they are a great way for other authors to get into the campaign! James Zwiers will have the chance to expand upon the Pirate Isles and Hinterlands, the Invisible Kings can return to their old domains and update us all on the worlds there, new people can open up new domains that thus far have been barely touched!

How to monetize them - Each of these books can sell for between US$10 and US$30, and would come out initially as .pdf documents to help drop production prices. If successful in this format, limited print runs could be done for sale at Conventions such as GenCon and Origins as a way to hook new players into the campaign. Basically, it is the free dime-bag of cocaine to get them hooked into the world and the system.


I like the general idea of paid adventures, and I really like the idea of 'Play X and end up with X level'. i think what I would prefer to see is an adventure, or perhaps a several rounder that quickly overviews Arc 1 (and later Arc 2, etc). Instead of simply making a 1.5 cert and potentially miss out on the story, people would have the option of playing through an overview of events (perhaps from a different perspective than the PCs?).

I do not think it is a good idea to spend a lot of time making pay-to-play products for people unfamiliar with the system. The market for those adventures is the established players, most of whom would gladly spend $5-10 on a quality standalone module that is campaign legal.

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