Yeah, print-on-demand and PDFs seem to be the way to go. Creators have to charge a decent chunk of change for PoD but some folk like myself value hard copies. I guess the little indies put out high-quality books in smaller numbers, but I don't know the particulars of ordering those sewn-binding nice books.I agree with Colville, modules are much better, and far less likely to feel like railroads.
However, the economics say you simply can’t make a profit printing modules these days. They are simply too expensive to produce.
The only way to make modules profitable is online only.
I guess we'll have to see what kind of adventures he produces for the MCDMRPG when that comes out!he may be making big books, but they are not adventures...
I like this idea in theory, but I think it might work better as a series of smaller products set in different areas aimed at different tiers of play. So you start by dealing with the problems around Phandelver in the apprentice tier, then move on to Waterdeep for the heroic tier, and so on. This reminds me of WoW where each zone has its own storyline and side quests – the Defias Brotherhood in Westfall, some necromancer Frankensteining it up in Duskwood, and so on. But that might feel a little too artificial.Coming into this conversation 9 pages in, so maybe this has been suggested already, but I feel like the ideal compromise solution would be books focused on a largish geographical area and include a bunch of small, self-contained adventures you can run within that area, spanning a wide level range. That would have the same consumer value proposition as an “Epic” or Adventure Path, as a single product that you could theoretically get a multi-year, 1st-to-Xth level campaign out of. But, since the adventures work standalone, the DM wouldn’t need to read and prep all of them in advance, and there wouldn’t be a grand overarching narrative for players to be disappointed if they don’t finish. I’d suggest calling such a book a “campaign setting,” but that term already means something else.
There are a few 5e modules I can think of that do actually follow this formula - most notably Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak, but they are usually restricted to low level ranges.
Hmm, talking about it has made me want to get back into that Building a Phandbox project idea…