RW and HL - How will the Content Market impact

[daplunk]

Hi Team,

A question if I may...

How will the RW Content Market impact on the HL Market.

Currently you see the PF Core Books in the HL Market. It contains everything you need to make characters using the options in the books.

In the future I suspect you will also sell the PF Core Books on the RW Content Market.

What I want to know is how will the two overlap given the applications talk to each other.

Will the RW content come with the necessary files for the embedded Hero Lab Portfolios that will come with the RW content?
Will this be the same content that can be purchased from the HL Market?
Will we need to buy the HL content and the RW content to get the full experience?

I know we are expecting information to start flowing in the coming weeks. I just have my wallet in front of me looking at the new 5e content (which i really don't need... but have to collect all the shinies!) and I'm sitting here thinking that while I would love the HL content, I would also love to have the RW content. Full race entries, etc.

I really feel like the products work so well together that I have started to think of them as one product, even though I know they aren't.

[Merion]

You raise a good point!

As a brand new HL user, with a way too small gaming allowance from his wife, I share your 'concern'.

I fear we will end up paying twice and hope we will at least get a discount. It would be very customerfriendly though, if we'd only pay once.

[DMG]

They're 2 completely different programs, requiring 2 completely different lots of data entry. At its core, RW is (very) basically data duplication, where HL is tons of custom scripting. (Which I'm sure you guys know )

At most you may get a discount, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

[AEIOU]

The information needed for RW is very different from that needed for HL as well. And depending on what type of gaming material you are talking about, the pricing could be wildly different.

Take the PHB for instance. While the narrative material is usable for both, it's presented in totally different formats. And the scripting crunch that HL needs is irrelevant to RW. I'd expect HL to have a higher price due to the complexity of the content.

Take a typical module/AP for instance. The narrative material is 100% applicable to RW but maybe 5-10% applicable to HL. And there may be a little bit of crunch for backgrounds or feats or gear or whatnot. I'd expect the RW cost to be higher due to the volume of formatting.

Some things will be easier to import. The monster manuals could theoretically be imported pretty easily via script. Modules may be challenging to automate. Manuals may be impossible to automate. That said, if they get are working from marked up files the importing could be a fairly easy matter. It would be nice if material is priced according to effort....

[daplunk]

Understanding completely the difference in the two tools...

Perhaps there will be packs of RW + HL content.

[rob]

More details are forthcoming, but I'll attempt to shed a little candlelight on the subject...

1. The way RW and HL manage and use their data is radically different. It's not apples vs. oranges. It's vegetables vs. minerals. So what we do with the data in the two products has essentially zero overlap whatsoever.

2. In an ideal world, RW and HL complement each other so well that they really should be two halves of a single whole. That's something we're actually working towards, behind the scenes. But it's a huge undertaking, so we're definitely not there yet.

3. Right now, RW and HL are completely separate products, using very different underlying technologies for everything. Consequently, we really can't share anything between them.

4. HL is targeted at both GMs and players. RW is basically just targeted at GMs. That's a critical distinction when it comes to the possibilities of blurring the line between the two products, and it has a profound impact on many of the decisions we have to make regarding the two products.

5. Pricing for both products involves some dramatically different factors that consumers probably won't immediately consider. It's very hard to purchase Hero Lab and have it be a solid substitute for the rulebooks. I know some people do it, but they're really relying on other sources for explaining all the rules (e.g. websites) and relying on HL for enforcing the rules for character creation. HL simply can't explain the rules in a holistic way. This means that HL doesn't directly compete with book sales, so publishers are happy to receive a royalty that allows us to charge a very low price for HL data files. With RW, publishers view the material as a direct competitor for selling the books, and that's quite appropriate. However, this means that publishers rightfully expect to receive a huge royalty, and that will inescapably be reflected in pricing.

6. The #1 factor for us when determining pricing is perceived value for consumers. I'm not going to claim that Hero Lab is cheap. However, I am very comfortable asserting that Hero Lab is an excellent value. Pricing for RW will be assessed the exact same way, except that we'll also have to incorporate the vastly different royalty requirements and potential market size (see below).

7. Beyond perceived value, there are two key factors that we always consider when pricing things. First, there's the matter of how much it actually costs us to put the material into place, since we have to actually make the money back if we expect to pay everybody. As long as we recoup our costs, we can then adjust the price up or down to reflect how much work is involved, which is something we absolutely do with all the HL data packages. Second, there's the question of how many copies we'll actually sell of something. An item we're going to sell to thousands players can be priced very differently from something that will only be sold to hundreds of GMs. That second consideration will loom large with RW, since everything sold through RW is really targeted at GMs instead of players. If there is one GM to every five players out there, then our maximum potential market is only 16% of what it would be if we could include players, which means we're going to make a lot less revenue unless we charge more. Once we start weighing these concerns, the challenge becomes somehow divining the best compromise in between. And since the RW Content Market is brand new, we have no real data to base anything on.

8. The content we develop and sell for RW will typically include all the HL portfolios which can be purchased separately for HL. The key difference will be that purchasing the package for HL also includes unlocked access to all the resources needed by the portfolios, such as monsters, items, feats, etc. The portfolios included in RW will be just the portfolios, so a GM with HL will still have to ensure he has access to all the necessary books within HL. Consequently, there will be huge value in having all the HL portfolios in RW for a GM that owns all the books, but that value will be greatly diminished for the GM that does not. Based on this, and erring on the side of caution, we're ascribing very little monetary value to the fact that the HL portfolios are included within the RW content. So that's going to be a big win for GMs that own all the books in HL.

9. The Paizo license turns everything on its head that consumers are used to. So that complicates everything in still different ways, since everything we do for Pathfinder content will be handled drastically different from all other content. It's a perfectly valid model for handling it all, but it's also something new and different that users will have to adjust to. [Note: This is a subject that requires plenty of explanation, so that's all I'm going to say until we provide the explanation. I'm just flagging this as yet another wrinkle to make things more interesting for us.]

I realize that none of this gives you any concrete answers about anything. However, I think this does offer a sufficient peek behind the curtain to understand many of the variables that we've been wrestling with and the complexities of figuring out a pricing model that consumers will perceive as fair and balanced. As I indicated above, our overriding goal is to provide perceived value, and I sure hope we achieve that. I'm sure you'll all let us know in the very near future!

[daplunk]

Thanks Rob, just enough of an answer to make me understand the direction you are headed which I appreciate.

I already suspected this was the case and pulled the wallet of for the new 5e shinies

I've already stopped purchasing new hard-cover books 6 months ago in anticipation for the Content Market; obviously in the hope that 5e gets the license it needs.

[kbs666]

Originally Posted by rob

8. The content we develop and sell for RW will typically include all the HL portfolios which can be purchased separately for HL. The key difference will be that purchasing the package for HL also includes unlocked access to all the resources needed by the portfolios, such as monsters, items, feats, etc. The portfolios included in RW will be just the portfolios, so a GM with HL will still have to ensure he has access to all the necessary books within HL. Consequently, there will be huge value in having all the HL portfolios in RW for a GM that owns all the books, but that value will be greatly diminished for the GM that does not. Based on this, and erring on the side of caution, we're ascribing very little monetary value to the fact that the HL portfolios are included within the RW content. So that's going to be a big win for GMs that own all the books in HL.

When the portfolio included depend on owning certain HL 'books' can those dependencies be made clear somewhere, preferably in the GM synopsis or in the source article or even in the stuff you can see before buying? I know I can go through each one and figure it out but if there was a consolidated list and better yet one someone could examine before buying a product it would go a long way to alleviating the almost certain complaints people will have about getting portfolios that don't "work out of the box" so to speak.

[rob]

Originally Posted by kbs666

When the portfolio included depend on owning certain HL 'books' can those dependencies be made clear somewhere, preferably in the GM synopsis or in the source article or even in the stuff you can see before buying? I know I can go through each one and figure it out but if there was a consolidated list and better yet one someone could examine before buying a product it would go a long way to alleviating the almost certain complaints people will have about getting portfolios that don't "work out of the box" so to speak.

This should typically be spelled out in the Additional Material section of the GM Synopsis. As long as the original material clearly documents the dependencies, which Paizo stuff always does, then we'll know it and relay it to the GM.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by kbs666

When the portfolio included depend on owning certain HL 'books' can those dependencies be made clear somewhere, preferably in the GM synopsis or in the source article or even in the stuff you can see before buying? I know I can go through each one and figure it out but if there was a consolidated list and better yet one someone could examine before buying a product it would go a long way to alleviating the almost certain complaints people will have about getting portfolios that don't "work out of the box" so to speak.

This is now built into HL actually. It was a change Colen did to support the community but the side effect is that HL tells you exactly which "Licenses" books you need to run a .por file.

When you open a .por you don't have a license for it says at the very bottom of the "errors encountered window":
HLLicense.jpg

This is just a quick example I did but if you needed other books it would show them.