Types of products wanted

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.

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

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 , 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.

I just got caught up on this thread and wanted to put my two cents in here.

Thanks to Akira over here, I got into roll20 as a basis for finding more campaigns and players to get my RPG fix going. At first I joined a 5th Edition DnD game and through that basis of players I started my own Campaign set in Arcanis, but I homebrewed Arcanis into 5th Edition. It just wasn’t cutting it for me, and finally we all decided to purchase the books online, and got them all into playing the new (better) system. Since then, they’ve been addicted to it as well!

That story aside it has led me to a few ideas that I would like to throw out.
– With the Campaign I am currently running, we are starting with the Crusades. I have made it clear to them that it is mostly a home game, and they can do whatever they like as far as where they go from there. What if; we get some impromptu adventures that are totally off script, and it turns out to work out pretty well. After the fact, I write out the adventure using there adventure as a base but still following the general context for how adventures are written in the Arcs? Then I could submit that as a possible canon adventure, in turn allowing others to try it? As well as getting them Living Campaign experience for it eventually?

– As far as sourcebooks and more content to sell goes, I think there is a large amount of content and writing from the previous 3.0-3.5 adventures that were written as well as the new Arcs, that could be utilized. Those adventures as well as older sourcebooks that haven’t been updated yet would make it easier and faster to bring out more content. An updated Codex Arcanis? That book has vital geography that probably hasn’t changed so much it wouldn’t take too long to update. Personally, I would love to get my hands on some of the older adventures from the previous Arcs and utilize them in my home game and update them to this system.

– I am currently working with two friends to write up the code for a roll20 Arcanis character sheet on that platform, mostly modding the already built Witchhunter sheets. My main point with that is if it does work out, and were able to recruit a few more, I just wanted to make sure that anyone who does end up buying your books online, is still supporting your system more than just playing it.

Thanks in advance,
Slade

We used to have 60 or so regular/semi regular Arcanis players in Victoria (we were nucking futz for it, seriously !!!), back in the day. I have literally run every module atleast 5 times just so that various different groups could get a play in before running it for there other side groups, and would run “catch up games” cramming three adventures into one Sunday after another to help new players get the depth of experience to level up and be on par with more seasoned gamers (the number of times I have lost my voice…..)

Everyone sorta drifted off close to the end of the first Living Campaign because releases were slowing down and certain story arcs were never resolved (or certain modules were recalled shortly after coming out), certain modules never came out, promised home game adaptations of the Battle Interactives never arrived, and most importantly new shiny things were coming out rapidly and regularly from other companies and for other rpg lines. Mark of Heroes got very popular and we lost 60% of our player base, then Pathfinder Society came out, and now nothing else for any other style of game or living game gets run here, except for that. to be honest I’m not sure if Arcaniacs can ever recover now, but I do love Arcanis and run it and use it as a basis and inspiration for many home campaigns (even when I hack it up and reglue it together)

Aside from the vitally important supplement books Arcanis fans have been waiting for (forever it seems), I think three things need to be done before Arcanis can become viable again

1) A Website that is updated, no longer underconstruction, and has a functional webstore (tie the Living Campaign pages right into the main site).

2) Rerelease all of the old campaign updated to the current ARG system….I don’t think this would be terribly hard, cut and paste and such, a few releases a month would reinvigorate things (and since the current campaign is so slow releasing as it is this shouldn’t interrupt). Sell them through the aforementioned revamped website for a few bucks to help garner some income.

3) A nice promotional poster with some art (maybe a picture of the continent ) with a short
break down about the setting and advertising for local events (so stores can have a nice visual way of showcasing the product and tie it directly to the Living campaign). (You’d be suprised how few game stores have open games anymore, or any rpg’s at all, mainly because companies don’t suggest they do so or provide simple basic support for them to more easily do so).

After we get some players again then new functional books need to come out. Shorter filler books akin to the Pathfinder Companion series would fit the niche nicely. Who doesn’t have $10 to blow !

It’s alot to ask for but “I think” it’s the simplest way of turning the game around and getting more people involved.

Speaking as someone who has put some time into converting some of the 3.5 stuff to ARPG and into 5ed, it is NOT as easy as it looks. Sure, the box text can be converted, but it takes up a fairly small portion of a written adventure.