Wizards of the Coast Says That China Tariffs Will Have Minimal Impact on D&D

Official Dungeons & Dragons products should largely be unaffected by the ongoing US/China trade war. During today's Hasbro earnings call, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said that the only Wizards of the Coast products manufactured and shipped from China are the D&D boxed sets. While this means that the upcoming Heroes of the Borderland Starter Set could have a higher price than usual (Wizards has made no price announcement as of yet), it does confirm that Dungeons & Dragons will largely be unimpacted by the ongoing trade war between the US and China.

Due to the large print runs, Wizards usually taps domestic or continental printers for its various D&D products. English language D&D books (at least the ones on my shelf) all have "Printed in the USA" in the credits page.

The wider board game publishing industry has been hit hard by the ongoing US/China tariff war, with products manufactured in China receiving a 145% tariff upon entry into the United States. Several publishers with RPG products, including CMON, have announced layoffs and changes to manufacturing plans as a result of the tariffs.

 

[MGibster]

Per the Wikipedia definition, no, not even Blackrock qualifies: it really is a term of fiction, even if the lampooning in Cyberpunk is based on real perceived trends: but "Megacorps" as such do not actually exist, not in Givsonoan terms.

Now I want a Cyberpunk version of WotC who sends edgerunners to your house when you use third party products or your house rules go too far astray of the orthodox.

 

[Mistwell]

Fair enough! In that case, it seems like the maximum direct effect of the tariff has already been achieved: trade is stopped. So if a publisher is trying to fulfill a Kickstarter in this environment, are we already at the point where they throw their hands up and quit? (Obviously it depends, so this question is rhetorical.)

There are other nations capable of making most of the products we're discussing. India for example does plastic injection molding as well as China, and has capacity in its factories.

I suspect it won't come to that, as I am hearing out of China they expect the rate to go down to 35% for products which are not considered national security interests of the United States. Of course we don't know that will happen. But I think it's one of the more likely outcomes of this whole thing.

35% wouldn't be "good" in my opinion, and would cost my business a bit more than we're used to. But it's a more manageable number than the current rate. I'm frankly not sure how companies were paying no tariff before all of this. I've been paying 29% from 2018 until this latest increase, though my products are definitely a different HS code than board games.

[Edit - I see the HS code for board games is usually 9504.90.6000 and that was listed as 0% before. Huh. I have no idea how board games got away with a 0% tariff all these years when most other goods out of China had some level of tariff on them, regardless of the Administration.]

 

[Mistwell]

The price of a container is below 3k$. It was nearly 6k prior to the election.
Traffic at ports is basically stalled out.
Only high ticket items are moving right now.

Not quite yet on the port stalling out part. We're at the tail end of the 20% additional tariff right now at the Los Angeles port (my last shipment arrived 3 days ago at that rate). New York lags a couple weeks behind Los Angeles. The rate is set when the shipment leaves China and books a docking slot with a port and runs 3 to 4 weeks. So while port traffic is somewhat reduced in reaction to the 20%, it's certainly not stalled out quite yet. It took us 2 days just to get a trucking slot, which is actually quite a long time relative to prior years. Companies seem to have scrambled to get their last orders on the water before the latest increase.

But that is coming. Probably days away.

 

[Parmandur]

Edit - I see the HS code for board games is usually 9504.90.6000 and that was listed as 0% before. Huh. I have no idea how board games got away with a 0% tariff all these years when most other goods out of China had some level of tariff on them, regardless of the Administration.

Probably a lot of factors: the relative lack of a local board game printing industry meant there wasn't much to protect, and letting small companies outsource actually increased competition and consumer options here (as we are seeing now with thr chaos in the industry). Also, not big enough to make a lot of income off of it.

 

[mamba]

Which is, really exactly what Brotherwise Games seems to be doing with the Cosmere stuff.

I mean, if I can come up with it in a minute, I hope 3pps have at least as good an idea

 

[bedir than]

Not quite yet on the port stalling out part. We're at the tail end of the 20% additional tariff right now at the Los Angeles port (my last shipment arrived 3 days ago at that rate). New York lags a couple weeks behind Los Angeles. The rate is set when the shipment leaves China and books a docking slot with a port and runs 3 to 4 weeks. So while port traffic is somewhat reduced in reaction to the 20%, it's certainly not stalled out quite yet. It took us 2 days just to get a trucking slot, which is actually quite a long time relative to prior years. Companies seem to have scrambled to get their last orders on the water before the latest increase.

But that is coming. Probably days away.

It's next week

LA County ports expect roughly 40% drop in traffic as Trump's tariffs continue

A report from the LA County Economic Development Corporation said the tariffs threaten $500 billion in revenue for the region and put 2 million local workers at risk.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[Cergorach]

There are other nations capable of making most of the products we're discussing. India for example does plastic injection molding as well as China, and has capacity in its factories.

Do you have an example of a miniatures or boardgames company that does their plastic mini/component manufacturing in India?

Plastic injection molding is a wide industry, injection molding boxes is something different from injection molding plastic miniatures. The US has had this same issue, companies have gone bankrupt trying to figure out how to do injection molding HQ miniatures well. Last time I checked Reaper miniatures has some production capacity stateside for their PVC miniatures, but the molds still got produced in China (and the last time I backed the production for the KS itself was also done in China).

Whith my limited knowledge there are currently four countries for plastic miniatures (HIPS/PVC), China, Japan, England, and Poland. With currently only China having the capacity to fulfill the US demands on production.

 

[Staffan]

Now I want a Cyberpunk version of WotC who sends edgerunners to your house when you use third party products or your house rules go too far astray of the orthodox.

From the Earthdawn 1st ed rulebook: "Besides, no one is going to stop by your house in the middle of the night to check on how you’re playing Earthdawn. FASA hasn’t finished checking up on all its Shadowrun players yet."

(I think the Shadowrun rulebook from the same era had a similar passage in it but referring to Battletech/Mechwarrior.)

 

[Staffan]

Last time I checked Reaper miniatures has some production capacity stateside for their PVC miniatures, but the molds still got produced in China (and the last time I backed the production for the KS itself was also done in China).

Reaper has been moving toward building up SioCast production domestically, but I believe this is primarily for relatively small production runs rather than the bulk production they've done in connection with the Bones kickstarters. Looking back at their previous Bones kickstarters, they ran them in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022. Looking at those intervals it looks like Bones 7 would be coming soon, but if I were Reaper I'd hold off on that for now.

 

[Cergorach]

Reaper has been moving toward building up SioCast production domestically, but I believe this is primarily for relatively small production runs rather than the bulk production they've done in connection with the Bones kickstarters. Looking back at their previous Bones kickstarters, they ran them in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022. Looking at those intervals it looks like Bones 7 would be coming soon, but if I were Reaper I'd hold off on that for now.

Siocast is Spanish, they use a thermoplastic for casting. They use specialized thermoplastic pellets (from SioCast), maybe they can get a replacement that works the exact same in the US... I've also heard from certain manufacturers that the SioCast machines are a PITA to operate/maintain/repair.

I would suspect they would use these for lower volume minis, as there's a lot more manual labor involved then running the injection molding machines for PVC. The metal molds are just extremely difficult to produce, the reason why they still went to China for those. Shipping over large blocks of metal isn't cheap either, nor without risk. Especially now...

Heck they are even moving over to 3D printing miniatures, for their Dungeon Dwellers RPG miniatures they are going 50/50 for 3D printing and SioCast.
Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ngeon-dwellers-roleplaying-game/posts/4294853

The last Reaper KS I backed was Bones 5, they already did a switcharou with materials with their Bones Black without going into much details what that was exactly... With Bones 6 it was completely unclear which mini would be produced in what material. That, getting even less bang for you buck (compared to previous Reaper KS), and the fact I was already drowning in Reaper Bones minis was a good reason not to back anymore. Apparently I wasn't the only one as they only raised about $1.8 million vs the $3.3 million from Bones 5...

I'm seeing old PVC sets for for example Pathfinder being out of stock and in the Bones Black material it's about 2x as expensive then the PVC stuff.