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Marshedge adventure in progress for Jonstown Compendium--considering splitting it into two products?


Jex

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I've posted here a few times with questions about things I wanted to know for a RuneQuest adventure I was working on for the Write Your First Adventure workshop by the Storytelling Collective.  Well... I'm way behind on the adventure, partially because I haven't had much time this month, but partially because I... tend to get carried away.  The idea of the workshop was to write a simple, 3,500 word one-shot adventure.  I'm currently at over 12,000 words, and not nearly done.  (And the deadline is December 8, if I want to have the adventure included in their RPG Writer Workshop Bundle.  Which I do.)

However... I just had an idea.  (One of those ideas that seems really obvious in retrospect and that I feel kind of stupid for not having thought of sooner.)  As it stands, my "adventure" was actually going to be divided into two main parts.  The first half was going to be a detailed description of the village of Marshedge, where the adventure takes place.  The second half was going to be, well, the adventure itself.

So, the obvious-in-retrospect idea that belatedly occurred to me was... why not split these into two separate products?  It seems to me there are two advantages to this.  One is that it buys me some time in that I only have to finish half as much by the deadline--as long as I get the actual adventure done by the deadline, I can finish the detailed description of the village a little later.  The other is that if I later want to write more adventures set in Marshedge (which I'm considering), I can just refer the reader to the standalone product that describes the village, rather than having to duplicate all that information or refer them to a different adventure.

So... that's what I'm leaning toward right now, but I don't know if there's some disadvantage I'm overlooking to splitting it into two products, so I wanted to run that up the flagpole here for advice (particularly with those with experience publishing through the Jonstown Compendium or similar programs).  Am I better off combining these into one product, or should I be okay with my plan of publishing it as two separate items?

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I mean, even before I'd thought of splitting it into two products, I'd already written in my introduction that the two halves could be used separately:

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You are, of course, free to use one part of the book without the other.  You can have the adventurers visit Ten Spear Marshedge and use the information in the first half of the book without bringing in the Cult of the Shard.  Conversely, you can transplant the adventure into a different settlement and use the second half of the book without using the description of the village in the first half.  For that matter, feel free to change anything you want about either the village or the adventure, or both.  As is so frequently stated in RuneQuest materials, your Glorantha may vary.

If they're unequal, it's because they serve different purposes—one is a setting sourcebook, and the other is an adventure.  The thing is, I think each half does stand alone.  I intend the description of the village to be detailed enough to provide for other adventure seeds (and like I said I may end up writing more adventures set there myself).  And while the adventure does take place in the village, all the detailed information about the village isn't necessary for it; what's really needed for the adventure is in the adventure.  The few important NPCs from the village description that might show up in the adventure have a minor enough role their stats probably won't really be needed, and the characters who do play an important role in the adventure are fully statted there.  Similarly, the only location that's important enough to the adventure to be likely to require a map is going to be fully mapped in the adventure anyway.  The information in the village description can be used to supplement or add some depth to the adventure, but isn't really needed for it.

So, yes, I can definitely see them as two separate products—in fact, I think they actually work better that way.  I'm just not certain if this might be a bad idea from a marketing standpoint or something.  (Not that I know anything about marketing anyway.)

(By the way, if anyone might have any interest in following my progress on my adventure, I've set up a blog about it at https://www.tumblr.com/petrifact—though I'm a bit behind updating it, because I've been focusing on getting the adventure done.  Also, it has some major spoilers for the adventure, in case that matters.)

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I don’t see a problem: two recent JC releases were a setting plus a book of scenarios for that setting (Korolan Islands & Fires of Mingai). I’d just take extra care to be sure that the adventure stands on its own, since it’s coming out first, and from what you’re saying that isn’t an issue.

One thing to bear in mind is that sales of “sequels” are usually lower every time. Not everyone who buys Book One will necessarily pick up Book Two. If they’re a single volume, though, that’s not so much of an issue… 

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Thanks for the advice.  Yes, I'm pretty confident that the adventure stands on its own; I think I'll go ahead and make the two separate products.

As for the sales of sequels, one thing I'm considering when I have both done is putting the adventure and the village sourcebook together in a bundle, which might help.  Or maybe if I decide to write more adventures in the village, I'll go ahead and bundle the whole lot.  But I've got a while before I have to worry about that.

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On 11/27/2022 at 7:27 PM, Jex said:

So... that's what I'm leaning toward right now, but I don't know if there's some disadvantage I'm overlooking to splitting it into two products, so I wanted to run that up the flagpole here for advice (particularly with those with experience publishing through the Jonstown Compendium or similar programs).  Am I better off combining these into one product, or should I be okay with my plan of publishing it as two separate items?

As someone who has bumbled himself into a parallel quagmire with my latest project, I'd recommend against splitting yours into two releases. It doesn't take much to throw yourself off-track, or it can take too long to realize if your scope's more than you intended.

Maybe aim for a late December or a January release? I'm not much of a stats guy, but it seems to me that the month or so after Christmas does well for sales because folks have holiday cash (or a gift card) burning a hole in their pocket.

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Apologies for lateness, but...

I think what's best is what you wrote in your 2nd post - do the adventure book, but with sufficient village information as to make that work, and then do a more fleshed out Village book. So, a bit of both. What would also be good is if your village detail book also has an adventure or 2 (or at least hooks). A village book without anything extra isn't likely to sell quite as well as one with an adventure or 2 tied into it - especially if the various NPCs in the village are used (rather than always going back to the same one all the time).

There shouldn't be any need to go over the village information from the first adventure book, either. Just refer people back to it (after all, ppl are more likely to buy the first, and maybe the 2nd, rather than buy a 2nd and only maybe a 1st...)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I haven't posted here in a couple of weeks, but that's because I'd been focusing on trying to get my adventure done before the December 8 deadline for it to be included in the WYFA bundle—and then afterward I guess I was taking a few days off.  (Well, I was working those days, but I mean I wasn't doing much those days after I got home from work except catching up with sleep.)

The good news is, after pulling an all-nighter on the 7th, I did manage to get my adventure written before the midnight deadline on the 8th.

The bad news is, while I got it written before midnight on the 8th, I didn't get it edited, laid out, and illustrated, so... I guess it's not going to be in the bundle.  (I had considered tossing the raw text up on DriveThruRPG unedited to get it into the bundle and then planning on editing, polishing, and updating it before the bundle came out, but that was a terrible idea, which fortunately I came to my senses and realized before doing it.)

I did overshoot the recommended length for the Write Your First Adventure workshop adventures a bit.  The recommended goal was 3,500 words.  I overshot that by... about 25,000 words.  (It includes 32 stat blocks, though about half of them are for animals, monsters, or spirits that don't have stat blocks as complex as those of full NPCs.)

I'm going to keep working on the adventure, of course; it just won't get into the bundle.  It's all written (well... sort of; admittedly there are one or two bits that I really rushed through the night of the 8th so I could say I'd finished writing it, but they need a lot of revision), but I have to do a lot of editing; I have to make the illustrations (I don't really have the money to pay artists right now, and while I'm not a great artist myself, I'm hopefully good enough); and of course I have to get it laid out and formatted. Since I guess getting the adventure done before the deadline isn't an issue anymore, I guess I may as well try to get the book about the village of Marshedge done too and release them together.  (I still think they stand alone enough to work better as separate products, but at least it may be best to release them at the same time.)

If anyone would like to look over the adventure as it stands so far and give any comments, I'd appreciate it.  Since the plan is to sell it eventually on the Jonstown Compendium, I don't want to post the whole thing here publicly, but I can send a copy to anyone who's interested.

Otherwise, well, I guess at this point I'm looking to get the adventure and the Marshedge village book done... hopefully by the end of January.  I may make more posts here about my progress as I go.

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Since a deadline is no longer a factor, maybe revisit your decision to split the release into two separate books.  I think it might sell better.  Otherwise, you may get people buying one or the other, but not both.  I don't know how fleshed out your Marshedge is, but if it's mostly described for the specific adventure you're writing, it may make more sense as one volume.  People aren't afraid of larger books... many of the best selling JC titles are 100+ pages, some of them well in excess of that.

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It's not really mostly described for this specific adventure; it goes into details that aren't really important for the adventure, or don't factor in at all.  (Well, it will; since I've been focusing on the adventure I haven't written much of it yet.)  Plus once I finish these projects I intend to write other adventures set there, so I think it makes more sense to have the description of Marshedge as a separate product, so if someone wants to run one of the other adventures they don't need to buy the first adventure.  I do plan to make them available as a bundle when they're through, though.  It's not just because of the deadline that I decided to split the adventure and the village description into two separate products; I really do think they work better that way.

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