Why the D&D Miniature Line Failed...

[Echohawk]

In all seriousness though, I wonder if the rising price points were partially to blame. What did they start off as? $9.95 or something like that? At $14.99, that's essentially a 50% price increase in a span of... five years? 10% a year?

Harbinger boosters were priced at $9.99 (according to a sticker on the bottom of one of the boxes) and came out in October 2003, while Demonweb boosters are $14.99. That works out to an increase of about 8.4% per year for the five-year run.

Of course, there have also been some changes to the line since Harbinger. The first set had only 11 large figures (out of 80), and they were all rares. The latest set (Demonweb) has 17 large figures (out of 60), and three of those are uncommons. So on average you are getting more plastic for your buck now than when the line started.

 

[JoeGKushner]

in speaking of 'seroiusness', does anyone know why they bag them? Already being in the box, and being soft plastic, and having that paint blasted on, I can't see any benefit to it.

The cards, yeah. Lose carrds stink and all that. The minis? Not so much.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

in speaking of 'seroiusness', does anyone know why they bag them? Already being in the box, and being soft plastic, and having that paint blasted on, I can't see any benefit to it.

There's not a whole lot. But they are "collectible." Most traders, and even collectors, don't care, but technically a mini isn't mint if it's been handled directly post-production. In my 120-plus trades, I encountered a couple of people willing to give more if the minis were "mint in bag."

There are also some issues of product shifting that the bags mitigate, both through muffling sound, and by more fully filling the booster box. Also, the minis are much less likely to get tangled together and bent in odd ways, if they're kept separated. In later sets, when they started adding plastic "splints" to keep particularly "bendy" stuff (long spears, for instance, and even whole minis, if they're thin enough) in good shape, this would be more of an issue: let the pieces rattle together, and those splints aren't going to stay on.

 

[Echohawk]

I'm also guessing that the machine that packs the minis into boxes works better with bagged minis than it would with unbagged-and-hence-extremely-likely-to-get-tangled-together minis.

 

[AllisterH]

Reading this thread, it really shows how hard it is to gauge what people actually want.

For me, for example, I want things like "pig farmer" and "farmworker with hoe" as they are the most common "person" that my players meet during levels 1-8.

Having a large selection of these mundane minis was a godsend since it made easy to have "village mob/fairs/townhall meetings" and not have everyone look the same.

Similarly, the randomized nature of the minis meant that there WAS a more than decent chance of finding the right mini instead of simply having to use what was given.

As an aside, one of my friends DMs a 1e/3E-hybrid game and loves the wandering monster table (now there's something I never liked) and actually would buy the pack to surprise both himself and the players since he had become so familiar with the wandering table....

 

[Darkwolf71]

Harbinger boosters were priced at $9.99 (according to a sticker on the bottom of one of the boxes) and came out in October 2003, while Demonweb boosters are $14.99. That works out to an increase of about 8.4% per year for the five-year run.

Of course, there have also been some changes to the line since Harbinger. The first set had only 11 large figures (out of 80), and they were all rares. The latest set (Demonweb) has 17 large figures (out of 60), and three of those are uncommons. So on average you are getting more plastic for your buck now than when the line started.

Of course you're forgetting the fact that Harbinger boxes had 12 minis ($.83 avg) while the last set had only 8 ($1.87 avg). Average price increase per mini? Nearly 130%. This is not insignifigant and was one of the primary reasons I personally, haven't bought any of the recent sets.

 

[Garnfellow]

For me personally, my decline in interest was attributable to three separate factors:

• Price. For some reason $10 is a significant psychological inflection point for me. Anything $10 or less makes for a great impulse buy; anything over gets considerably more scrutiny. ($20, $50, and $100 are similar mental checkpoints for me.) At $10 I would grab one or two boosters on almost every visit to a game store (say a couple times a month). At $15 I stop and have to mentally justify the purchase.
• Utility. At a certain point (probably about midpoint in the DDM lifeycle) I had built up a good baseload of miniatures for my d20 games. Leading up to that point, almost every booster pack was a welcome addition to my collection. But once you've reached the baseload point, each booster offers gradually diminishing value. You don't need 12 hobogblins minis if you've got 8 hobgoblins and 4 half-orcs that can act as stand-ins. After a certain point I was really only looking for a handful of specific miniatures in each release that were either particularly cool or represented a monster for which there was no acceptable substitute.
• Quality. I thought the selection, scupts, and paint jobs of the minis started out pretty good and gradually improved over several sets before peaking and then really declining toward the end. The last two sets struck me as significantly lower quality than even Harbinger.

So if you add this all together -- higher price, lower quality, less value -- it's no wonder the minis line ran out of steam. But for a while there, it was a fantastic resource for my games. For at least two good years I spent a lot more on DDM boosters than on WotC books.

 

[pawsplay]

A point of view that I know many would disagree with. Having a rarer slot filled up with a figure like that had many complaints just from the RPG players (and the skirmish game players were even more against it).

Respectfully, I must say, those people have not thought it through. It would make it correspondingly more difficult to get one particular figure, but much simpler to avoid getting multiples. Farmer Brown would still be a cheap buy on Ebay. There are plenty of Uncommon DDM and SWM figures that sell for $2.50 or less.

The key point on whether something should be a Common is, "Would someone likely find something useful to do with this figure if they got one in every box for three or four boosters?" Farmer Brown fails on many levels. The only person would want such a thing is a GM who is planning a specific encounter with multiple opponents who look like Farmer Brown, who does not want the figures to look differently, who is dissatisfied with counters or flats for the purposes of the encounter, and who thinks its worthwhile to invest in plastic just to run that encounter. A niche market, I think.

 

[Echohawk]

Of course you're forgetting the fact that Harbinger boxes had 12 minis ($.83 avg) while the last set had only 8 ($1.87 avg).

No, I'm not. Harbinger boosters only contained eight minis. Here's the text from the side of one of the packs:

"Each Harbinger Expansion Pack contains eight random, plastic, fully assembled, hand-painted collectable miniatures complete with double-sided statistic cards for use with the D&D roleplaying game or for fast, head-to-head miniatures combat."

Are you not perhaps thinking of the starter packs? The number of minis in those dropped over time.

 

[Darkwolf71]

No, I'm not. Harbinger boosters only contained eight minis. Here's the text from the side of one of the packs:

"Each Harbinger Expansion Pack contains eight random, plastic, fully assembled, hand-painted collectable miniatures complete with double-sided statistic cards for use with the D&D roleplaying game or for fast, head-to-head miniatures combat."

Are you not perhaps thinking of the starter packs? The number of minis in those dropped over time.

Hm. Guess it was the starters. Well that's what I get for relying on memory. Although I could have sworn that one of the recent issues was fewer minis/pack.