Nice game. Now, what do I do with it?

Accepted wisdom in the role-playing market is that adventure modules don't sell. This would seem to be even more true of non-D&D games that of D&D, since the markets are generally so much smaller.

So, quite rightly, companies generally don't publish adventure modules.

Of course, it's also the case that most don't put an adventure in the core rulebook, because they believe readers would prefer the pages be used on something else. (They're probably right, too. I've never used the core adventure from any game or setting book I own, and would be reluctant to do so. Both because the players might well have read it, and also because the ones that are published tend to be either skeletal, excessively short, poor quality or, often, all three.)

The problem this raises is that it can be very difficult to think what to do with the shiny new game you've just bought. So, you have a group of players all keen to play Star Wars, characters at the ready - and you've no idea what they should do. Or you're wanting to run Babylon 5, but have no idea how to even start plotting a 5-year epic across the stars. (To their credit, both Wizards and Mongoose are very good at helping people in this regard - Wizards supply extensive support on their website, while Mongoose packed the B5 book with adventure hooks.)

This creates a problem. The easiest way to show how to use a new game is by providing adventures. However, you can't afford to publish adventures for your game.

This is the point of my rant where I should be offering a solution to the problem, but I can't. I just don't have one. Perhaps one solution is to provide adventure support on the web, firstly by producing one or two adventures for people to use when the game first came out, but later by allowing experienced GMs the opportunity to submit adventures for the bank there for use by others.

(The reason that would work is quite straightforward - how many GMs would like to break into the industry? Getting something published is one of the key ways to start, and hosting adventures in that way allows game companies to provide that. I'm sure there are all sorts of problems with that scheme, however, or else everyone would be doing it already.)

Anyway, I'm off back to the new World of Darkness...