Re: [Re: Speed of Age in the Astral]

On Wed, 31 May 2000, Adam Miller wrote:

>         *Shrug* a lot of people like PS (not enough to make it profitable,
> appearantly (at least that's what Wizards keeps saying)).  I thought it
> was ok, might be interesting to convert into a SJ setting or as a
> stand-alone setting.  Doesn't matter to me, the only person I knew
> personally that loved PS was also popping home-grown mushrooms...(gamed
> with him only twice, thankfully).

I like PS; my wife loves it. We alternate running SJ and PS on alternate
weeks, in fact. I think the reason it wasn't profitable, though, wasn't a
matter of popularity, but a matter of production value. The overhead on
gaming supplements is very narrow, and books with high production values
(color art, glossy paper, lots of pull-outs) tend to cut the profit even
smaller. Witness the original Feng Shui core book from Daedalus: Every
page was high-gloss and a great number of them were in color. From what I
understand, the production costs were so high, the company very nearly
/lost/ money on every book they sold.

It's a paradox. A better-looking game will sell you more copies, but a
cheaper-produced book will make you more money.

Eric C. Thornber
Director, Parisian Asphalt Initiative
http://www.pave-france.org
Member, Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs