Giving gaming products for Christmas

[RangerWickett]

I put the food tag on this thread, in the sense of "starving game designers hope they'll get paid...."

A news story on the front page had a quote from the annual State of the Mongoose:

The current RPG market is miserable. There really is no other word for it. I was talking to the owner of a certain well known RPG company just a little while ago, and he mentioned that he had sold a few hundred of his latest release. We agreed it was a good total in this day and age for the average RPG product (not saying his book was average but… oh, you get the point!). Then he dropped the bombshell; he had reliable information that his book had outsold the latest supplement of a very well known, not to mention market-leading, game.

If the top tier games are selling at these levels, then something is seriously wonky in the market.

It's the holidays now. Are there products out there that you want, or that you'd like to give to your friends? If there aren't, what should there be? Do you feel like you know what's out there, or are you lacking a Friendly Local Gaming Store (or Friendly Online Gaming Website) that can inform you and help you browse?

Me, I'm getting a friend a copy of Dread, but that's a few years old. Dice for another friend. Dungeon Command: Curse of Undeath minis game for another. Magic cards (and sleeves!) for a few. And I'm having a few ship maps printed out as posters for a friend who's fond of pirates. But no new book releases.

How about you?

 

[Gilladian]

I bought my older brother and sometime DM a copy of Admiral o' the High Seas for an early xmas gift. Another friend will get a copy of DungeonWorld, I think. That's about it...

 

[Morrus]

I bought my older brother and sometime DM a copy of Admiral o' the High Seas for an early xmas gift.

What excellent taste you have!

 

[Nytmare]

I both give and receive a ton of games over the holidays. Just looking at the table of as-of-yet unwrapped games, there are four RPG books (two sets of Savage Worlds, KAMB, and Living Caves 2000), two sets of dice, two scale maille dice bags, six prop potion bottles, and nine board games (Dungeon Fighter, Roll Through the Ages, Dixit 2 and Dixit Odyssey, Ghost Stories, X Wing, the Dominion base card set, Eclipse, and King of Tokyo: Power Up)

Tangentially, and forgive me cause I've been working lately so I'm way out of the loop on the newest news, but is the very well known market leader barely selling anything at the moment because of their upcoming new edition? Didn't a bunch of brick and mortar stores disappear practically overnight the last time Christmas and news of said market leader's new edition coincided?