Is the Traveller Market Fractured

[bryan gibson]

regarding two comments, at the same time :

Rav -

I don't think COTI is unfriendly, far from it, but I do think we are very grognardy in our approach and that may put off a lot of people.

and S4

Consider too...rpg-ers at their local game store. One of them spies a freakin' cool looking book. Hey, what's this? They open it and see this incredible cross-section full color diagram of a starship, all sections labeled, drawn in 3D. One looks at the other, "Traveller? Isn't that the old-grognard game? Man, this stuff looks cool. Let's check it out."

These are both true, and also underscore my point, which is its all about that perception.

Please note: Its not MY perception ( different, being an insider) but is one thats common, and marketing wise is one that needs to be addressed. WE may regard COTI a freindly place,, buut then, hell, iots our hangout, so of course we see it that way.


Also to refer to mal's comment as well, as with S4, content is king. I don't look down on Vampire and WW players, its just not to my taste. But WW has also consistantly provided beuatiful product, high production values and consistant;lygreat content.

Also, relevance is all about market presence. When was the last time you saw Traveller in a store - any store. Sure, ypour FLGS may have it, but thats a specialty market - want market presence? I can walk into any Barnes and Noble or Borders in the country, and find WW, WOTC and all the D20 releass they do, whereas while T20 made a brief appearence in its early editions at such venues ( and sold quick, too, whioch says well for its quality) Alomst all traveller stuff outside of SJG is being released in PDF.

PDF has its virtu4es, no doubt, but most gamers will tell you up front theres no substitute for a hard copy.People that will but a PDF will almost always buy a hard copy, asided fom the few that either poormouth about spending more than twelve bucks or simply prefer electronic format.

And they usually printout anyway - which, unless you have a laserprineter, most folks find the cartidge and paper cost actually runs more than buying the thing outright.

where this drives the market remains to be seen, but its a fact that the big thing comes down to getting the stuff on the shelves.

 

[Klaus]

Presentation is key. The LBBs work cuz they mirror the minimal elegance of the rules. MT turned me off slightly cuz the larger format was not balanced with more artwork, and the layout seemed too dry. Not seen TNE, but T4 is pretty horrible to look at: walls of text, utterly unsuitable artwork and insulting diagrams.

GT presentation is fine, if a little bit busy for my taste. T20 is nicely presented (tho more art is always good), and the QLI and Avenger lines are a pleasant nod to the original LBBs.

BTW, the colour deckplans in Serenity are very nice, just a pity most of the rest are just stills from the movie.

As for Traveller in the local rpg store, here in Manchester it seems to be just me that's buying it. There's 3 shops, all with a bit of Trav stuff, Forbidden Planet, Travelling Man, and Fanboys. I've more or less cleaned out FB; all that's left now is TBH, T20 ref's screen, and TA1. I just got the Yian Caedee cat to replace my lost pdfs; it was reduced too. TM just has second hand stuff. Fanboys has examples of it all, but they don't look much looked at (dusty).

 

[Roger Calver]

I agree for Traveller to get back into the market place and attract new fans it needs to be on the shelves and that is books and not PDF, OK I buy the PDF's but if there is the option of a book thats what I get instead.
So how can people see its alive and kicking if the FLGS cant carry it.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by hunter:
I also take exception to your T20 is first and CT an afterthought on our materials. T20 was designed from the very beginning to be as compatible with CT as absolutely possible, particularly with regards to equipment, vehicles, starships, etc. Frankly IMO T20 is more compatible with CT in that regard than any other version published.

You shouldn't take exception. I wasn't trying to insult you.

Instead, consider my comment the true feelings of a potential customer (which, from a business point of view, should be invaluable to you).

I'll give you a clear example of why I feel the way I do:

I look through TA1: Personal Weapons of Charted Space, and I see, on pg. 38, the T20 rules under the section Searches And Avoiding Them. As a CT player, I say, "Where's the CT rules for that section?"

Under Weapon Scanners, same thing.

Take a look a the Laser Dot Pointer on pg. 20. It says, "This equates +2 to hit in T20, but only at close range."

Well, what about CT? Nothing is mentioned about how to use the pointer in CT.

The Heads-up Display "gives the user a firing bonus at any range: +3 to hit at all ranges."

Are we talking about T20 here or CT? I'm assuming we're talking about T20. And, if so, what's the bonus under the CT rules set (surely not the same as the +3 in T20....I'm guessing +1 at all ranges?)

You see, Hunter, this is what I'm talking about. As a CT buyer, what I see is T20 taken first, and CT added almost as an afterthought...or at least, that's the way it feels to me. I see instances where T20 rules are presented and CT is omitted--usually not the other way around.

As a CT buyer, it puts a milk-toast taste in my mouth about the product.

I feel the same for the "systemless" products. When rules are appropriate, I want to see them in CT format. Otherwise, I'm not really that interested in the product.

Hunter, I mean none of this as an insult. You shouldn't read me that way. I'm just giving you an honest opinion from a paying customer.

-S4

 

[hunter]

Frankly in-store RPG sales are dying and will continue to do so. The will always exist, but the days of selling 20,000+ copies in stores, unless you are WotC and maybe WW, are pretty much long gone.

Online sales are the bread and butter of the vast majority of the industry.

 

[Roger Calver]

Fair point but thats also where POD comes in, still theres nothing better than going into a shop and picking a book up and taking a peek.

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Supplement Four:
I wasn't trying to insult you.

No worries, I didn't take it as an insult.

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by RogerCalver:
Fair point but thats also where POD comes in, still theres nothing better than going into a shop and picking a book up and taking a peek.

Agreed on the taking a peek. But POD is problematic due to the high costs associated with the production. You cannot use POD and get your books into the distribution chains. There isn't enough margin unless you price the books astronomically high.

So we are back to Internet sales.

Don't get me wrong, I still plan to produce books for distribution.

 

[Roger Calver]

When I go to London I always make a point of visiting Leisure Games the largest games shop that I know of and it carries all lines possible even the smaller indy books but Trav is still limited and just blends in, more books make more chance buys and then more fans.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by hunter:
I already sell to the majority of the Traveller market. The vast majority of Traveller fans will buy Traveller material regardless of the system, with the exception of core rules. Supplements, adventures, etc. tend to sell across the board without regard to system.

Well, I guess there's not point to going 'round and 'round on this, but in answer to what you state above, I'd comment this...

That if non-core rule Trav books sell across the board without regard to system, those sales would stay the same if Traveller went to a single system.

QLI would lose new sales on future T20 items because it wouldn't be producing them anymore. But, they'd still be able to benefit from selling reprints of existing T20 materials (which, of course, would dwindle over time).

What QLI would pick up is sales of core rules and the single-system supplements, and these would be sold to a bigger audience than the existing T20 market.

Net benefit to you is that you'd sell more Traveller items.

No effect on sales of Non-core-rule supplements and adventures and the like.

Minus

Lost sales of future T20 products.

Plus

Sales of core Trav rules, supplements, adventures, and the like to a bigger audience than T20.

Equals

Net gain in sales and bigger market share for QLI.



I still maintain that you would make more money if Traveller went to a single-system game.

-S4

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by hunter:
[QB]Supplements, adventures, etc. tend to sell across the board without regard to system.

That's the thing, I don't think people really want yet another system to play with, they just want more stuff to add to their own games and more often than not there's not a huge amount of work involved in conversions.

The T20 era (990) is close enough to 1100 that I guess folks can just use that material as it is out of the box, so to speak. But you wouldn't be able to do that with T4 for example, or TNE because they're wildly different times to the vanilla CT era.

 

[hunter]

I'm failing to see how if I already sell across the board to the Traveller fan base, how having only one system is someone going to net me more sales or someone equal a bigger audience.

Then again I may just be slow today

 

[ravells]

Ah...Leisure Games...before I got married I used to live around the corner from LG - and was utterly spoiled. Mr Berry (senior in his 60s or 70s) was a sweetheart: always helpful and willing to go the extra mile. Mr Berry (junior)was a perfect sucessor as he knew all about the 'new' games.

That was before I had my resurgent interest in Traveller so I generally was looking at boardgames.

It's such a shame that instore game sales are dying (in fact the LG people confirmed this - most of their sales are through the web, and everytime I go into Orc's Nest the staff are packaging products which suggests the same). In the early 80s I remember going to a Games Workshop outlet (before they invented Orkz) and listening to a couple of guys talking about their campaigns - I was hooked after that.

Bryan: Maybe life has changed and people want fantastic production values, but I still find the old fanzines like 'Third Imperium' more evocative of Traveller and its ethos than any book with indestructible binding, breathtaking illos and perfect grammar and spelling. The fact that it was produced in an amateur way (and that goes for the LBBs by today's standards) makes them more appealing to me..maybe because it makes me feel like I could make them too. It's a bit like the early days of computers when you could actually 'look under the hood' and know what you were doing. Now you have to be a specialist. They were early frontier days then, and they have most definitely gone. But what we have now is also exciting.

For fan produced materials, advertising and distribution are no longer financially impossible with the internet. That suggests to me an entirely different financial model where the game system should be entirely license free but people have the ability to post up content (be they adventures or even a single design for a gun) to be downloaded at a cost.

Ravs

 

[Roger Calver]

Also with a lot of the smaller FLGS closing up (all now in Cambridge,I do miss Games & Puzzles) people now use the larger London ones those being LG & ON and so online or mail order.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by hunter:
I'm failing to see how if I already sell across the board to the Traveller fan base, how having only one system is someone going to net me more sales or someone equal a bigger audience.

Then again I may just be slow today

It's like this.

(I have no idea of what your actual sales numbers are, so I'll just guestimate round, big, numbers. You may correct my numbers to get me closer to the ballpark, if you like.)

QLI currently sells...

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">+ 50,000 units Across the board adventures/supplements/etc.
+ 10,000 units T20 core rules and supplements
--------------
= 60,000 units</pre>[/QUOTE]If Traveller goes single system, the sales shift would go more in this direction...

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">+ 50,000 units Across the board adventures/supplements/etc.
- 10,000 units T20 core rules and supplements
+ 1,000 units T20 reprints
+ 40,000 units Core rules and supplements for single system.
-------------------
= 81,000 units</pre>[/QUOTE]That's how you'd do it.

Maybe you don't think your sales for a single system Traveller would be as high as your current T20 sales?

-S4

 

[hunter]

You are assuming that a new single system would sell 4x what T20 sold. That's a big assumption, particularly in today's market. You would have to assume that the majority of those buying were new players to the game, and frankly there aren't that many new players coming into tabletop RPGs these days.

Odds are the new 'single system' wouldn't sell any better than any of the other systems that were out before it.

Most new games, barring a very select few brand names, sell more than 2000 copies. T20 was an exception to that.

Overall the Traveller market is probably about 10,000 or so fans that still buy. Bringing in new players that have never played before is not very likely.

What would put Traveller back into the realm of major sales, would be an MMORPG...and yes that possibility is being explored.

 

[MJD]

Someone mentioned yanking licenses - that isn't what I suggested though. What I was saying was that there needs to be an agreed baseline rules set that everything has stats included for alongside whatever else.

This links directly to a single set of assumptions eg jump fuel etc, and creates cross-compatibility.

Now, for my money the only baseline system that makes sense is CT or some updated version of it. The closer other versions are to CT, the more likely they are to be picked up by the hardcore CT fan types - who seem to be the mainstay of the traveller market these days.

 

[hunter]

I agree that CT should be a baseline for any new material.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by hunter:
I agree that CT should be a baseline for any new material.

We're all three in agreement on this point.

So...


If you were developing new material, to be called T5, why would you base it on one of the least popular segments of your market (T4)?

-S4

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by hunter:
You are assuming that a new single system would sell 4x what T20 sold. That's a big assumption, particularly in today's market.

I make that assumption because the CT/MT segment of the total Traveller market is at least 1/2 of all Traveller buyers.

Based on CT/MT, the new system would be selling to a larger number of people than T20 sells to today.

Odds are the new 'single system' wouldn't sell any better than any of the other systems that were out before it.

Most new games, barring a very select few brand names, sell more than 2000 copies. T20 was an exception to that.

Overall the Traveller market is probably about 10,000 or so fans that still buy.

I was actually thinking 10,000 when I wrote "100,000" earlier in the thread. I just didn't want to insult anyone by being wrong (figuring a bigger number was more flattering and easier to correct than going the other way), so I increased my guess by a factor of 10.

So, looking at my previous chart, making the numbers smaller by a decimal place, does this make any sense?....

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">+ 5,000 units Across the board adventures/supplements/etc.
+ 1,000 units T20 core rules and supplements
--------------
= 6,000 units</pre>[/QUOTE]If Traveller goes single system, the sales shift would go more in this direction...

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">+ 5,000 units Across the board adventures/supplements/etc.
- 1,000 units T20 core rules and supplements
+ 100 units T20 reprints
+ 4,000 units Core rules and supplements for single system.
-------------------
= 8,100 units</pre>[/QUOTE]Those numbers look a little more in-line with your comments.





Would you agree that core T20 sells to 10-20% of the total Traveller buying public?

And, would you agree that if T5 is an improvement on CT/MT, it will sell to about 40% of the Traveller buying public?

If so, those numbers above shouldn't be too far off.

-S4