D&D outside the U.S.

[huank]

Hello people of Enworld!

I'm starting this new thread, to see what D&D fans from places outside the U.S. experience when trying to find rulebooks or other D&D players. I thought about beginning this thread, because I know sometimes it's difficult. I mean, I live in Mexico City, which is one of the largest cities of the world, a lot of different people live in it and still finding 4e rulebooks has been very difficult. You either find some of them in small, almost abandoned hobby stores, which you have to buy two times more expensive than amazon list prices (I usually buy them from amazon and I have to wait at least for a month to get them) or you don't even find them at all. It's obvious that RPG's are not very popular in my country, maybe because not everyone speaks English and Spanish books are even harder to find, but I wonder how could this be changed or if maybe I'm just not well informed and there are small RPG guilds hiding somewhere.

So, come on and share your thoughts. I'm sure that there are a lot of people from other countries playing out there, that have the same problems and that think that it would be great if the hobby grew in our hometowns.

 

[renau1g]

I live in Canada and it's pretty easy, although we have fairly easy access to many products out of the US. I can order online through a variety of sellers or buy it at our FLGS or the national book retailer here. Amazon usually ships within the week.

 

[DarthMouth]

Well.. i'm from Brazil.

We have a bunch of books of D&D 4ed translated at our disposal .. and so was 3.5 and AD&D... with some serious delay (year or more and not all books are translated).. so i just buy the imported ones..

Its really easy to find those books around. Some national online bookstores sell them all easily, even the imported ones... but expensive.. Dark Sun US for about $55 dolars converted.. and our national translated Players HB for about $40 dolars. Alternatively.. we can buy from outside (Amazon / noble knight / etc) easily and cheap, (cause we dont pay taxes from books also).. so just put in those $20 bucks from shipping. This way.. i get the books around 15-20 days delay only. I cant complain here.

I think will not be that way for boxes thou. For those, we pay taxes (as toys), and i guess a Box like Gamma Ray will cost me around $120 dolars. ( i had to pay $80 bucks for my Divine Power cause i ordered some minis together, and the whole pack was taxed .. )

Not need to say that makes the hobby forbiden by many, and others just make some ilegal material by downloading some scans. And even so.. we have a lot of players. My city have around 2.5 million inhabitants.. its easily to find people wanting to play on some sites in internet.. but i guess around 0,5% of those have material.. With better prices, we should have for sure many more players.. Dices, we are paying around 2 or 3 dollars each.

But even the old books are possible to find. I got a mint Hollow World for $20 bucks .. In rule.. secondhand books are kind of cheap (or.. its not expensive as the new ones), when you find them.. Books from 3,5 are found easily around $25 bucks today...

Anyway.. we breed hardcore players as well.. i'm the newer from my group and i started to play in 1993. All those years, nothing is more sacred than our Sunday game. And we hope to still gamming on.. until we dont have more strenght to throw the dices

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, I am in Japan, and there are no real English FLGSs here at all. Of course, in Japanese, there is a thriving RPG market, but for English, it is very thin. Some stores (Yellow Submarine) will carry a bit of English stuff, but that was mostly years ago. One good ship up in Tokyo has an extensive used section on English-language RPGs.

So mostly, it is Amazon for me. Amazon Japan has a good selection of WOTC stuff, some Pathfinder and occasionally other lines, but they are very thin on the ground. Recently, Amazon here has started cutting back a bit, especially with the boxed sets, so that is going to be a problem for me.

But players is the hard part. I have a group of three, and we have occasionally had a 4th over the years, but none of them last long, and it is hard to find them in the first place. Thus, I do a lot of online play, via Yahoogroups mostly, as the time difference and personal preference makes real-tie playing unattractive.

 

[DK]

I'm from Italy and D&D was everywhere when I was growing up!

The first italian version was the red box about 20 years ago and you could find it in any toy store - it sold like crazy! When I was 12/13 almost every kid had heard or played D&D! Good old times! Most italians are familiar with the BECM set but not with 1st edition because it was never translated.

The second italian translation was 2nd edition but by then it was mostly available through hobby stores. It still had a lot of success.

There was a successful 3rd edition translation and the same guys now translate 4th edition. I'm not sure how 4th edition is doing because I now live in the US. Books are translated within a month or two. Books are available mostly through hobby store (every good size city has some - my city of 150000 people had up to 5 stores), but I know that some public libraries used to carry D&D books. Amazon does not have a italian store nor any other big e-sellers, so you have to pay for international shipping

 

[Aegeri]

I'm from New Zealand and I run 2 maptools games and one "tabletop" game. I've actually had no problems finding players in New Zealand and my maptools games are friendly for Americans in timing - so plenty of people to play with. My complication is books, because nobody directly stocks books where I live in NZ I have to order them in. This means I have an additional 2 or so week wait on any books.

It's usually totally worth it though.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Too bad, there is no German distributer anymore. Also it seems, that shops are not stocking as much if 4e as they did with 3rd edition.

It is quite easy to find players for 4e however. Its just, that there are so many good RPGs out there, that you practically have to run the one you like yourself.

 

[mkill]

I went to a gaming store here in Germany today. It was pretty well-stocked, but I noticed a range of books that were there 5 years ago already and obviously never sold. That's a bit sad. The German RPG market was always dominated by "Das Schwarze Auge", a local fantasy RPG, which I'd put at around 50% of the market. The game had a few problems with the change to 4th edition, a shoddy piece of design by committee in my opinion. I don't know about sales figures but I know that it was dropped by the publisher and picked up by a new company. The downfall of the market leader hit the whole market.

D&D was always only a running also, together with Shadowrun and Vampire. Most people buy the English books, and it seldom had a high-quality translation that could match the original. At the moment the 4th edition translation is in limbo. The shop had a German hardcover of Pathfinder, though.

As for Japan, I've seen Japanese versions of the D&D books, but I don't know about sales figures. I think the Japanese RPG community is very small, and concentrated around a few places like Akihabara, or boardgame clubs at universities. Most people would know console RPGs like Final Fantasy (which has D&D roots), but they've never heard of tabletop play. It has to work against a few cultural issues, for example, most Japanese have rather small apartments, and it is not as common to have friends come over. Most Japanese kids have to go to cram school in the afternoon and don't have as much time for stuff like RPGs.

There is a small but active RPG community among expats, though.

 

[Markn]

I like this thread. It's kind of neat to see where some of the regular posters are from.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Too bad, there is no German distributer anymore. Also it seems, that shops are not stocking as much if 4e as they did with 3rd edition.

Yeah, I'd really wish somebody would pick up the 4e license again, especially with Essentials coming soon - would make a nice entry point for people.

Cheers, LT.