So, where's Ryan's opinion?

[2WS-Steve]

The early d20 glut wouldn't have killed stores. Early d20 was a boom and stores were suddenly making surprisingly good money off RPGs again. After that leveled off to the baseline for RPG sales, some stores were too slow to see that coming and didn't slow their orders down.

Many of the stores that came through this realized that it's expensive to have a robust RPG library and the turnover isn't as fast as for other products without the boom, so they trim to just the main lines from the big publishers.

Then the customer walks into the store, sees the same selection he'd get at Borders or Barnes & Noble, but without the cute grad school girls hanging out in the coffee shop, and turns around and leaves. And now there's a real RPG bust since the FLGS can't even sell the mainstream books.

 

[Delta]

The fact that a whole lot of badly designed, poorly marketed, and barely supported RPG products were released using the OGL/D20 license likely had little or no impact on most retailers.

Dancey's analysis here is unconvincing; I'm pretty skeptical. Among other things he has a very personal stake in this argument (he started OGL/d20), and he seems overly defensive, IMO. The fact he thinks that there can be a glut of "badly designed, poorly marketed" products and have "no impact on most retailers" doesn't pass a reasonability test, IMO.

It seems like every FLGS was hit hard by the rise & fall of d20. The argument that every FLGS store is poorly run, and therefore it's the managers' collective fault, also seems highly unreasonable. More likely is some endemic flaw with the publishing industry itself.

Personally, I place the lions' share of the blame at WOTC introducing d20 under Dancey, and then rapidly about-facing and rejecting the OGL/d20 philosophy after he was gone. In regard to 3.5E, they made a a lot of changes, they didn't warn publishers, they didn't warn retailers, and they rolled it out years earlier than their initially declared plans. The whiplash effect is what caught all the 3rd-party publishers & retailers. I think if either WOTC hadn't introduced d20 in the first place, or hadn't intentionally tried to cripple it shortly thereafter, the effect would have been far less pronounced.

 

[Zoatebix]

In the book trade, most retailers have the right to return unsold copies to the publisher in exchange for a full refund. I've always assumed this was also true in the RPG publishing industry.

To elaborate on TerraDave's response to this (at least I think that's what his post was), the three-tier distribution system for RPGs (which is based on the three-tier system for comics, which could very well be based on the system for alcohol in the US post-prohibition - beats me), there are no "stripped books" with the cover returned to the publisher to indicate no sale.

This gets into some of the details: http://www.hoboes.com/Comics/Creators/Legacy/distribution/ It's old and nota great read, but it's the best link I could find with a quick and un-thorough googling.

The the biggest distributor in Hobby-Games is Alliance Game Distributors, Inc. which is a subsidiary or somethin' of the big Comic distributor Diamond.

I'm not sure why I wrote that last sentence but I'm going post it anwyways.
-George

 

[Gilwen]

It seems like every FLGS was hit hard by the rise & fall of d20. The argument that every FLGS store is poorly run, and therefore it's the managers' collective fault, also seems highly unreasonable. More likely is some endemic flaw with the publishing industry itself.

I don't think that the arguement is every FLGS is run poorly, I'm sure many are ran rather well. But you don't have to run your business poorly to make bad decisions, mistakes, or to get caught up in the wave of a new market boom. I think a lot of stores made bad decisions early on about D20 and then did really pay attention to what was happening with the market.
There were definatly issue with the way WOTC handled certain things post Dancey but that's long standing risk that every gameline has and stores should consider that risk and it could happen with any publisher. At the heart of this issue I think stores that got hit hard by D20 got hit hard because of bad decisions or mistakes they made about the D20 market. They are many things to consider including problems endemic of the publishing industry and particularly the RPG segment. Those are risks though that should have been considered before going into business and should be continually considered after opening your doors, it's part of the sandbox your playing in and you should have ways in place to help mitigate or work with those risks.

The most successful stores I have seen are run by gamers who opened a business. They didn't open a game shop because they wanted a cool place to hang out they opened the shop with the intent of working in the industry they loved. They approached it like a business and had multiple way to move product out of their store and they multi-tasked. They found out how the industry worked. They didn't rely one single method of making money they sold a variety of gamer related items and types of games. they hold events at their stores, if they took trade ins they had way of getting rid of that inventory other than just sitting back out on the shelf. They also had ways of getting rid of inventory that no one wanted. Some of them didn't order items for customers with out a least a token deposit (non refundable if the item's weren't picked up), some of them didn't. They also didn't jump in the deep end of D20, they started out moderatly and built up their inventory on step at a time while paying attention to the reviews, industry, which publishers where bubbling to the top, and what their customers were asking for.

I think I'm out of pennies

Gil

 

[Ranger REG]

Then the customer walks into the store, sees the same selection he'd get at Borders or Barnes & Noble, but without the cute grad school girls hanging out in the coffee shop, and turns around and leaves. And now there's a real RPG bust since the FLGS can't even sell the mainstream books.

I don't know about the same selection. I hardly find any small print press d20 products on Border's bookshelves that I normally find in FLGS. Kinda hard to redeem those short-life coupons when they don't stock as much and special order usually takes at least 5 days (way past the coupon's expiration date), even in the early d20 days.

 

[RPGRealms]

To elaborate on TerraDave's response to this (at least I think that's what his post was), the three-tier distribution system for RPGs (which is based on the three-tier system for comics, which could very well be based on the system for alcohol in the US post-prohibition - beats me), there are no "stripped books" with the cover returned to the publisher to indicate no sale.

Right, the books are returned intact for a refund.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It is extraordinarily narrow to view the problems of FLGS has having to do with shoddy d20 products.

Irresponsibly so, IMO.