Sorry, I was in such a foul mood last night - I had just helped my friend at Borders either pack up or destroy two cases of 4e material. The returns for the Christmas push. I don't like 4e, but seeing the stuff getting stripped or packed away for either shipping back or crushing makes me worry about the future of the hobby. Like it or not D&D has been the gateway product for as long as there have been RPGs.

The boxed Essentials starter sets were neither returned nor destroyed, yet - there were no directions on whether they are to be crushed or returned. Either way another case will be dealt with when he finds out - two full cases of unsold 4e material. Two box sets will be left on the shelf. By now Duncan will have gotten word either way.

Sad to say, the stripped Essentials does not bother him nearly as much as the boxes will if they have to be returned. (There is a delay on return - the store does not get credit until the warehouse receives the returned material. Stripped covers can be returned first class mail.) He would rather crush them than return them. Makes me cringe, just a little. The temptation to see if I can salvage any of the dice....

Some of the things getting returned strike me as odd - all the unsold D&D minis, all the dice, and all the D&D mini starter sets. The minis have actually been selling but because the line is being discontinued they are being returned.... At least those are likely to be sent elsewhere for eventual sale. But, you know, if you play the game then sooner or later you are going to want dice. But Borders is sending 'em all back. One problem is that both the dice and the minis are subject to shoplifting, even with the theft prevention strips.

The boxed sets of tiles are being kept, on the grounds that they have sold through and been replaced. For some reason they have been selling better than anything else in the Essentials line. (I wish folks could see what WWG can produce... it makes the WotC products look drab by comparison.)

If 4e is failing I cannot help but wonder/worry what WotC might come up with to replace it. Their recent releases do not fulfill me with confidence.

Having their position as top seller in the business be usurped by a product based on their own discarded system must gall.

And Borders got more copies of Bestiary 2 in yesterday, and again they sold before I could buy mine. They have gone through ten copies in as many days, and would have sold at least one more if they had the stock.

The Auld Grump

When D&D became a lucrative property and WoTC took it over it got a much-needed makeover from a group highly experienced in game mechanics. 3e and 3.5e did much to strip away the qualities that made D&D a mechanical nightmare (how many times a session do you have to consult a lookup table to determine a result? It's okay - I'll wait for you to count). With these mechanical improvements came a cost - no more could you publish your own material as "compatible with AD&D" willy-nilly. There was an official licensing system in place that did much to frighten away fan-based content publishing in even unofficial venues.
After WoTC sold to Hasbro I believe there was more corporate pressure for ongoing sales. After a person started playing D&D (1e-3.5e) there really wasn't much in the way of return business. The increase in popularity brought in new players who would usually buy a PHB and their purchases would end there.
Enter 4e - a further streamlined system at the cost of a much more prohibitive licensing system. Also added is a subscription model for the only legal (according to the new licensing system) computer tools, a breakneck release rate (1 new supplement every month), and a real push for customers to buy the product and keep coming back for more. I would imagine that this content churn is costing them an incredible amount to sustain, and the return on each investment is shrinking. I can just imagine an executive looking down the numbers, wondering why they are dumping so much into a very small or negative return.

The market's already given an answer, although "big business" is typically slow to take notice. Players and third party companies are more than willing to do the work of generating content for the game, keeping the game fresh and new. They want to play this game - many new players will later decide they want to try on their GM shoes, and will ask their friends if they want to play. The social marketing engine is already in full motion, and does much more than the multi-million dollar marketing budget ever has to draw players in.

This hobby needs to be open. It needs to have the ready circulation of content, tools, and customers to remain alive. The only workable business model I can think of in this market is similar to many open source software companies - little to no money in the "product", but support will cost ya. In this context that would translate to a relatively small development team that can release a new comprehensive campaign setting or cohesive mechanics option (think the old TSR "Complete" books) every 12 months or so, and a very small administrative overhead. Slash the marketing budget - the cardboard standees and large posters only serve to locate your product, not sell it.
The profit in that is very small - again, you're selling an average of 2 core books per player. Instead of trying to boost that side of the business focus on your computer tools - build a comprehensive rules engine that can be licensed for use in computer games. Sell computer tools that take care of not just visual but mechanical issues (don't just let somebody type a number into a box typed "initiative roll" - let them click a button to roll bloody initiative!). Sell miniatures (which GW has shown can have a MUCh higher markup than rule books ever dreamt of), terrain (the tiles are a good start but they need to invest in some good cartography work) - everything that takes playing this game from nerds huddled around a dry erase mat with paper tokens to a polished, fully-realized hobby.

Wow - this has been quite the rant. Looking back over it I can only hope that the message gets across - I don't want D&D to die.

It is worth noting that GW is hurting too - the churn is not building as fast as it used to.

But yeah, I don't want to see D&D become nothing but a license for bad movies and good computer games.

The Auld Grump

I finally got my own copy of Bestiary 2 - Borders sold through two shipments of five each before I could get mine. I got number fourteen, leaving only one on the shelf....

I cannot help but wonder why they are selling that many - Borders has sold more copies of Bestiary 2 than they did of the Monster Manual 2. And MM2 came out before the bottom started coming out from under 4e's sales. Borders (local) has apparently done similar numbers with the Advanced Players Guide, which I can more readily understand - everyone can use the APG, only GMs can use either the Bestiaries or the Game Mastery Guide. (The GMG has also sold about as many, but over the course of a much longer time.)

I am really enjoying having my Thursdays back - running four games was just plain dumb. Cutting back to two games a week is much more sane. But now a local game store wants to know if I would be willing to run Ghoul Wood as an in store campaign... looks like my players have been talking. To whom, I have no idea - these are folks who had never been to a game store, though I did send them to Game Geeks. (For the record - Game Geeks uses WW terrain - I got them hooked on CWU. As far as I know one of the owner's has had a Maiden half finished for years. Which reminds me, I still haven't shown him TLX, I think that I could hook him and land him right proper.)

The Auld Grump

Heh, the thing is that I have not run a 'shop' game since getting peeved with the manager at the previous local game shop. (I had done some terrain for a miniatures game, both for use in the game and as a prize. Left at the front desk, literally two feet from the manager, it 'walked off'. His reaction? He wanted to know how soon I could make replacement terrain.

This was unpaid - something that I had done to promote gaming, and when he allowed it to be stolen rather than apologize he wanted to know 'how soon'.

The reply was, of course, 'when Hell freezes over'.

The folks at the new store have nothing to do with the old store, but the incident took all the joy out of it.

The Auld Grump, plus, having a day off is really quite nice, eh?

Oh, Lords and Ladies....

I just discovered that one of the players in one of two games that I have dropped to biweekly has decided that he wants to run Pathfinder in the off week

And I'm invited to play.

I should be happy as a clam - I never get to play. Instead the first thought through my head was 'But, but, but I just got that day clear!

I really, really shouldn't be in another game - two a week is plenty.

But I never get to play.

You have no idea how torn I feel right now. Part of me wants to run all my games and play in this one, part of me wants to drop one game so I can play in this one, and part of me wants to say 'sorry, but I really need a day off.'

Dropping the same game that these folks are playing in seems like a really bad idea. Dropping the game that their kids are playing in.. ditto. I know that being in all the games is a bad idea. And there is no way that I am dropping my steampunk game.

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh!

The Auld Grump, like that, only louder.

At least if you've got to have a problem with gaming, the one you've got is not a bad problem to have.

Good luck sorting it all out. (Maybe you can manage an overlap while you find a way to wind up whichever game you most want to drop.)

Heh, the problem is that I don't want to drop any of them - I am having a good time running each game. One advantage of having run the short campaign for new players was it gave me some material that neither Pathfinder group had played yet.

It is the amount of time that causes problems - I am spending roughly eight hours a week planning sessions, on top of eight hours a week running sessions - one of the major reasons I allowed myself to be talked into running Kingmaker. Because it is already prepared I may be able to cut back a little on planning.

Plus, I still have a few sessions as a ringer in the Ghoul Wood campaign. (Not really counting that one, either way - all the work is done, and I am just running a single NPC, not running or playing.)*

I will most likely pass on playing in this game, but I am going to feel rotten about it. I want to be a hero, dang it! A paladin, a wizard, a swashbuckler, anything.

Maybe I can play for a short while? Not the whole campaign, just a scenario or two?

The Auld Grump
*For some reason it seems like ringers have fallen out of use - they were fairly common in the 'eighties. I once ran a convention game where all the characters were ringers, and each thought that they were the only one....

One way to have your cake and play with it too could be to still game twice a week, but switch the game with the player who also wants to DM from meeting once a week to meeting every other week, ie trade off with him. It's not perfect, but it would give you the chance to play without having to sacrifice your own game. It would also give you a bit more time to plan. If it takes 16 hours every two weeks to plan now (4 hours per session), then it'll only take you 12 hours every two weeks if you make my suggested switch. On the off chance that the new DM's game grinds to a halt, which often happens in my experience, then you can easily return to your old schedule.

Yeah, I have come to the same conclusion.

I really shouldn't, but I will.

The Auld Grump

Oi! The local Borders got a restock of most of the material that they just stripped and crushed a few weeks ago, with instructions to 'push it' from the corporate level of the chain. The manager apparently felt more like taking the stock and shoving it. He was not a happy person. Nevertheless, it is back on the endcaps of the RPG area. Where it was all through Christmas. And still was not selling.

The product was stripped because it wasn't selling - a forced restock is not going to make it sell. I think that someone at corporate level thinks that RPG = D&D, not that D&D is only one of several.

And Borders is wondering why it is in financial straits....

Ah well, not too long to wait on Ultimate Magic for Pathfinder. This is probably the first 'limited' appeal item for the game, everything else has been pretty universal, it will be interesting to see how this fares.

The Auld Grump

Finally got to talk with the one LGS in the area, and was pleasantly surprised to discover they're selling Pathfinder here.

The LGS has a small rack dedicate specifically to D&D 4e, and half a shelf for Pathfinder. The Pathinder section is pretty limited (core rule book, one Pathfinder Society book, one rules supplement, and several sets of one of the adventure paths), but occupies a prominent position in their RPG area.

They are selling more D&D books overall, but more copies of the core Patchfinder rule book. From their sales figures, D&D players are spending more right now, but more people are picking up the Pathfinder rules. They are disappointed with how slowly the Pathfinder adventure path modules are selling.

Overall, their view is that while they are currently making more money from D&D 4e sales, it is from a slowly shrinking pool of players. They still get new players coming in asking for D&D, but they are getting more D&D players switching to Pathinder and the number of new players asking for Pathfinder is increasing steadily. One comment I found particularly telling was "The people buying Pathfinder seem more satisfied with their purchases."

The problem at my local Borders is simply that they keep getting too much - they get six, then sell one or two. The restocks seem to assume that sales are what they were when 4e was new and shiny, and they are not.

And for some reason the Pathfinder keeps selling better than D&D - to the point now that I am wondering what is going on. Is there some slow migration to 3.P from 4e that I don't know about?

I have told the manager that he should possibly ask questions about the DDI to folks buying or asking about 4e - it could be that WotC is undercutting their sales.

It could also just be that the market is saturated for 4e, and the new customers are buying Pathfinder instead - the folks who were buying 4e have bought all that they wanted and are either playing along merrily or looking for something a bit different.

The Auld Grump

Getting back to the original topic, for the first time I have tried statting up a Summoner from APG....
...
...
...
Hee, hee, hee! damn but that was fun!
Making up a combat critter as your proxy in battle, and having a construction set to do it - it was a blast!

Not at all the sort of class I would normally play, but just sitting down with pencil and paper made it oh, so tempting.

The first I did up was called 'Combat Wombat' - a Ripper design, bipedal, claws, designed to get in and do lots of attacks. Even at first level it looks like it can deal out a fair amount of damage on low AC critters.

Next I ended up with a semi mechanical serpentine thing, capable of crushing opponents in its scaly coils. I like the flavor, not sure how effective - might make a decent low end villain.

I think that I will want to do up a Mount version next, not sure if I want to build toward a burrower or a flier. A mount will also require a rebuild of the Summoner, since he is the one who is going to be riding it. So he is going to need feats that support that.

Just plain a weird and funky class, and I have to say that it doesn't feel like anything else I have seen for either 3.X or PF. Maybe a bit like Necromancer in Diablo 2.

The Auld Grump

Well, just ran my first Pathfinder Society session. Prior to this I had not even read up on the rules for Pathfinder. About 4 hours with the PRD and pre-set module to work with, I had the rules and the system down.

By the end of night, I was officially on the LGS's list of Pathfinder GM's. And the Fiance can't blame me for it as she is the one that volunteered me to run the session.

It feels like old D&D, aside from a few quirks, like one initiative roll for an entire combat, and the double whammy you get when surprised and have a low initiative. Magic classes are a bit more powerful, but even basic combat got a power up, so I would call that about fair.