Community Content Program: Hall of Champions

[Trechriron10]

This may be most relevant to Hall of Heroes so posting here...

 

Can we request and implement edition filters on DTRPG? It would be nice to focus search results on an edition you're looking for.

 

Of course, the products will need to be updated to utilize that. Happy to volunteer a few hours to help with that as well...

[steriaca]

Humm....thinking about price points.

 

$1.00: Good for single villains and other short subjects less then five pages long. It won't break the bank of most people, and it is easy to figure out who gets how much per unit sold (as for tge Dropbox, writer $0.50, Drive-Through RPG $0.30, Hero Games $0.20, othoe I may have the DTRPG and Hero payment switched around).

 

$3.00: Good for short adventures. Akin to the original 4th edition adventures of days of old. I'm thinking between 30 to 60 pages, including maps and artwork.

 

$5.00: Good for longer adventures and for small sourcebooks (like, say, WITCH). Also good for small Enimies books. From 60 to 120 pages should do.

 

$10.00: This is for major adventures of an epic scale, medimum sourcebooks, and good size Enimies books.

 

$20.00: Your creating (whatever) Hero campaign books at this price.

[GM_Champion]

2 hours ago, steriaca said:

Humm....thinking about price points.

 

$1.00: Good for single villains and other short subjects less then five pages long. It won't break the bank of most people, and it is easy to figure out who gets how much per unit sold (as for tge Dropbox, writer $0.50, Drive-Through RPG $0.30, Hero Games $0.20, othoe I may have the DTRPG and Hero payment switched around).

 

$3.00: Good for short adventures. Akin to the original 4th edition adventures of days of old. I'm thinking between 30 to 60 pages, including maps and artwork.

 

$5.00: Good for longer adventures and for small sourcebooks (like, say, WITCH). Also good for small Enimies books. From 60 to 120 pages should do.

 

$10.00: This is for major adventures of an epic scale, medimum sourcebooks, and good size Enimies books.

 

$20.00: Your creating (whatever) Hero campaign books at this price.

Steriaca,

 

One concern I can think of is that DTRPG frequently runs sales from 25-50pct off (by frequently I mean 3-4 times a year) and some gamers only buy during those sales.

 

For comparison, Paizo's own pdf-only 32 page organized play adventures are $4 each, and only sold on their own website so there's no DTRPG cut.

 

Third-party adventures (standalone 58-62 pages) run about $8 on average for same.

 

I haven't published anything myself, but my gut tells me that authorial output is worth a little more than you suggest, maybe another $1-2 on each price, minimum.

 

While the profit percentages between author, Hero, and DTRPG are likely set in stone, I hope the asking price is up to the author, solely, and that an author can choose the "pay what you want" option if they are concerned about price points turning off customers.

[mallet]

3 hours ago, steriaca said:

Humm....thinking about price points.

 

$1.00: Good for single villains and other short subjects less then five pages long. It won't break the bank of most people, and it is easy to figure out who gets how much per unit sold (as for tge Dropbox, writer $0.50, Drive-Through RPG $0.30, Hero Games $0.20, othoe I may have the DTRPG and Hero payment switched around).

 

$3.00: Good for short adventures. Akin to the original 4th edition adventures of days of old. I'm thinking between 30 to 60 pages, including maps and artwork.

 

$5.00: Good for longer adventures and for small sourcebooks (like, say, WITCH). Also good for small Enimies books. From 60 to 120 pages should do.

 

 

 

I have no experience buying fan made products off of DMsGuild or DTRPG or anything so I can't really know what price would be right, but if this is correct, then that is crazy. Any interest I had in contributing to the program is now over. 

 

$5.00 for a 60-120 page product? With layout and art? Considering that the writer/creators only get half that, $2.50. So for a 60 page book that only works out to $00.042 a page. so 4 cents a page? Really? Low price artists might charge $25 for a half-page picture. Assuming you ONLY have a half page worth of art, every 4 pages You would have to sell 160 copies, just to pay for art work alone (way more when you factor in cover art and more then one half page picture every 4 pages). 

 

At 120 pages for $5.00 you are only making $00.021 a page. 2 cents a page! You would need to sell probably 400+ copies before making any profit at all. 

 

By these prices (and as I said, I have no idea either way if right, wrong, normal, etc...) the only real product worth making are short 1-5 page projects. A 5 page product for $1 makes you 20 cents a page. that is 10 times the profit margin of a 120 page book. 10 times the profit margin for 1/24th the work. If you can sell a 2 page project for $1.00 you are making 50 cents a page. 25 times the profit margin of a 120 page book and doing 1/60th of the work. 

[Tywyll]

As someone who has self-published on DTRPG (I have a stable of OSR products), I'd say your pricing is fairly low (beyond the $1 offering, which I agree with).

 

If I were getting only half through a program like this, instead of the usual 70%, my pricing would more likely be something like:

$1 for one pages

$5 for a short adventures

$9.99 for a long one/source book

$15 for a major adventure/enemies book

$20-30 for a campaign book.

 

In part this would depend on how much I can source the art for, pay someone to do the lay out (if I want something fancy) etc. 

 

As for DT sales, luckily the author gets to decide whether their products are included in those. I assume even under this program an author would still have that level of control?

[steriaca]

I got the impression that we set our own prices. That might not actually be the case. And I was guessing on the various price points.

 

I might stick with the points for myself, since my plans are bair bones, no frills version. No art. No maps. Just me and my mispellings.

[Tywyll]

Oh, I assume we would set our own prices. I just felt yours were on the low end for the work involved. Now if your PDF is basically just a word Doc with little layout and no art, that's a bit different and I wouldn't expect to pay much for them. But the more work put into the final product the more I would charge at least. 

[steriaca]

Let me think of settings we could play in.

 

Official Settings:

Golden Age of Champions

Silver Age of Champions

Iron Age of Champions

(Modern Age of) Champions

Champions Beyond

Champions 3000 (I don't remember the official name)

Dark Champions/Dark Champions The Animated Series

 

Related Offical Settings

Strike Force

 

Unofficial Settings

Champions on the Range (Superheroes in the old west)

Champions 2050 (Champions one generation after the 2020 spell is casted)

Lucha Liberia Champions (wrestlers and superheros)

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, steriaca said:

Champions 3000 (I don't remember the official name)

 

 

Galactic Champions

[steriaca]

7 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Galactic Champions

Thanks. I owned that one once. Had a "League of Superheroes" feal to it without actually mimicking the team.

[Chris Goodwin]

It looks like the program is live, and the first few releases are starting to show up!  

[Spence]

37 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

It looks like the program is live, and the first few releases are starting to show up!  

Do you have a direct link? I am on mobile and the DrivethruRPG is specifically designed to prevent anyone finding anything using mobile.

[Guest Usagi]

This is absolutely awesome.  I may have to turn my setting into a publishable format.

 

EDIT: Just read through the guidelines.  Looks like fun, but I have one issue.  The guidelines say that any product produced for Hall of Champions must have the Hall of Champions logo on the cover in the corner.  Which would be fine, but good lord is that logo ugly.  Don't make me put that think on my covers.  It looks like the Hall of Justice (DC's Super Friends) performed an indecent act on the Sydney Opera House and this logo was the baby.  The hideous, mutant baby.

 

No, I'm joking.  Not about the logo being ugly, it's absolutely awful.  But it's not a big deal.

[steriaca]

So far, it looks good. I guess what I am doing on another thread (Champions 2050) would not be publishable in the Hall (as, ultimately, it is an expansion of the timeline), not like I was thinking seriously of doing so.

 

Right now I have lots of real life on my plate. I have to find a new, cheep place to live by the end of February, for example...

[segerge]

3 minutes ago, steriaca said:

So far, it looks good. I guess what I am doing on another thread (Champions 2050) would not be publishable in the Hall (as, ultimately, it is an expansion of the timeline), not like I was thinking seriously of doing so.

 

Right now I have lots of real life on my plate. I have to find a new, cheep place to live by the end of February, for example...

 

I thought the same about TASK FORCE, too, until I emailed Jason.  The worst he could do is say "No," and you might be surprised by his answer.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Golden Age of Champions

Silver Age of Champions

Iron Age of Champions

 

 

...Bronze age, which is what original Champions was, first 4 editions.

[Chris Goodwin]

21 hours ago, Spence said:

Do you have a direct link? I am on mobile and the DrivethruRPG is specifically designed to prevent anyone finding anything using mobile.

 

Heh, I'm not the only one.  

 

The product list is here.  The link Jason gave in another thread here is https://www.drivethrurpg.com/cc/28/hall-of-champions but I don't know if that's the general Drivethrurpg page for it or if that's a creator specific page.  Anyway, between these two links you should have it. 

[Spence]

A bit of a bummer.

 

The following types of content may be submitted as part of Hall of Champions.

Custom Settings, Proprietary Settings, Equipment, Characters, Powers and Hero Designer Character Packs. 

 

No adventures. 

The one thing I was looking forward to was adventures.

 

While you can have adventures in a setting book, most adventures are just that, an adventure.  

I have a introduction adventure I have used many times in the past.  It is just a stack of notes, but I had begun reformatting them into a usable format. 

 

I read the HoC guidelines and apparently the very thing I was looking forward to and wanting to write are not allowed.  Adventures are not included as permissible, unless you package them inside of a setting I guess.

 

From my read you also cannot actually use existing material.  My intro adventures, the ones I was planning to try and write up for HoC are all designed to take place in existing Champs settings using existing Champs villains.  But the HoC guidelines as written and as I read them, basically say no to adventures.  I was hoping that the guidelines would be like the DM Guild where you can use stat blocks and directly reference existing material.  My Champs intro adventures use CU locations and CU villains so that they can be used to directly tie into any CU campaign.   From reading the guidelines all of my adventures are not usable. 

 

A bit disappointing.  There are several settings and more settings are more of the same, settings. 

But there are very very few adventures and it looks like it is going to stay that way.

[Duke Bushido]

10 minutes ago, Spence said:

No adventures. 

The one thing I was looking forward to was adventures.

 

Well _crap_.  After posting in the "what does a campaign look like", I figured I'd rough up a poor-quality map (the closest thing I have to image manipulation right now is the photo tweaker in my phone: this is a crawl like you wouldn't _believe_.  It's like we have to get something from the _other side_ of the gelatinous cube..... ) for the Boneyard Scenario and tack it up as a freebie-- like you, I think the lack of adventures--- _any_ sort of adventure, but the broader and less specific, the better, I would think-- is one of the things most crippling-- most downright _damning_!-- of HERO right now in terms of attracting new players.  

 

 

That being said, I'm actually sort of _enjoying_ the nerve-wracking wreck I am becoming attempting to create a whole new image with software only intended to tweak an existing one.  

 

Anyone willing to make it look a little nice when I'm done?    

 

 

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, Spence said:

From my read you also cannot actually use existing material.

 

Something may have changed, but someone mentioned that existing stuff could be played with (to some degree).

 

 

Can anyone verify which way is which?

 

10 minutes ago, Spence said:

A bit disappointing.  There are several settings and more settings are more of the same, settings. 

 

There is a very weird thing with HERO, particularly the DOJ editions:

 

There are more settings than anything else.  That is, between "HERO" official settings and third party settings, etc.  Even going back through all the editions, settings nearly outnumber the old adventures from the early editions  (or maybe they actually do by now).

 

I still haven't found one I like enough to actually _use_ (though Tuala Morn from 5e comes close).  Adventures are the thing I would really like to see more of!  Once upon a time that wasn't true, but at this point in my life--  well, if I can finish the map and get back to the "what does a Champions campaign look like?" thread, you'll see what I mean!

 

 

10 minutes ago, Spence said:

But there are very very few adventures and it looks like it is going to stay that way.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

No adventures. 

The one thing I was looking forward to was adventures.

 

 

Its early yet, expect more in the weeks and months to come.  I have in mind a lot of old adventure rebuilds from previous editions as well as at least one Western Hero adventure/setting

[Lord Liaden]

I would have to concur that a lack of adventures would be a serious gap in what was hoped would come from HoC. If that is not the case I would hope Jason would clarify the point somewhere.

[Lord Liaden]

Just FYI, the project I'm working on is an expansion of one element of the official Champions Universe. While it will feature original characters, it's based on what's already been published. Jason signed off on that.

[Christopher R Taylor]

From comments I have seen here and elsewhere, many people are looking at rebooting old adventures to 6th edition.  Its a simple and rewarding project to get your feet wet publishing game supplements

[dmjalund]

would we call Champions 2050 the Diamond Age of Champions?

[Tywyll]

I suppose you could tack on a location and do some 'setting' detail and attach the adventure to it? Like you, I was super hoping to see adventures and I can't imagine a reason why they'd be forbidden. It must be a typo.

 

And what's the point of using an existing setting if you can't use existing characters? I took those restrictions to mean you couldn't publish their stats (which I understand). But maybe I misread them?