Concerning buying D&D 4th Edition

[ShadowyFigure]

I have, Ordered all three books from amazon, I'm buying 2 House Copy PHBS at £20 each on games day at the LFGS, But I have to say those who have downloaded the torrent and canceled there orders or arnt buying any are really cheep. May there d20's be cursed...

 

[drjones]

Have to agree on the 'game stores can be staffed by jerkwads' point but I have found that Misty Mountain in Madison, wisconsin to be well run which is why I have a phb on reserve there while still getting the others from amazon.

Gotta be a tough business though, nerds tend to isolation and love the internets.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

"The Dragon and George", FLGS in GLasgow (Scotland)...it's a pure time warp experience, guy who runs it is only in for the love of gaming
As my cousin keeps saying, he fully expects to find a portal to Middle Earth, or the Realms in the back of the shop

 

[scrumpyj]

I've pre-ordered from my FLGS, The Dragon's Den in Poughkeepsie NY. They offered a 33% discount if you buy all 3 core books. Slightly more expensive than Amazon, but they're a pretty amazing local resource, and I thought it was worth a few bucks to support them.

My only concern is that I had to talk to three different people to get the books with the slipcase, rather than the three separately, since no one knew what I was talking about.

 

[Farstrand]

This is connected to the same problem bookshops has faced for quite some time now.

They stock alot of books, and a few sells very well. This means that the mall or online business can order alot of the once that will sell well and press the prices down.
This means that the bookstores has to lower their prices, wich means that the profitmargin goes way down.

So I think that the whole thing starts with the producers not realising that they need all those other smaller stuff to sell aswell. Say PHB3 and so on, the prices there will be about the same on buy.com as they will be at the corner store. Becouse the online business won't buy as many of those so they will not be able to get the price down as much.

So I say we the customers shouldn't be the ones helping the stores. It is time that the publishers do their part. Maybe not letting the online stores get these huge discounts they get today. We have all heard, and I know it tp be true, that store owners buy the books in bulk for more then what the online stores sell them for. And this makes it hard for the stores to compete.

Well. I loved the small gaming store where I used to shop, and now it is closed.

/Farstrand

 

[DimitriX]

After reading all of the horror stories of people and their experiences at gaming stores (or lack thereof), I realize that I'm pretty lucky. So, I'll give my free plug for my FLGS:

Dragon's Lair in Austin, TX USA is really good. They're friendly and helpful (they even hire cute gamer chicks). They have a bunch of different products that covers just about every geek hobby out there. They hold regular events related to all of the hobbies. The store is big, clean, and has lots of space for people to run games. They have classes on how to paint minis and create terrain for war games. Hell, they even rent movies.

So, maybe you should contact them at dlair.net and ask them to open a store in your hometown.

 

[sabby]

Not buying the books, but I buy other stuff

I decided to not buy the books from my FLGS. The price difference and the convenience are too good to pass up this time.

Every now and then I make a pilgrimmage out to my local store (Pandemonium, in Garden City, Michigan) to pay my tithe at the holy ground of gaming, so this won't stop that. I still make a point to buy stuff from there, probably more Munchkin cards. I've been buying a lot of quick and easy boardgames and card games lately.

... I just go there a lot less. Now that I'm older, the people I play with have their own places. We've played with the same people for over a decade, so it's just easier to go to someone's house and maybe even eat something homecooked instead of pizza. It's changed.

And maybe in ten years, there will be less gamers. That's not really my job to advertise for the publishers, they need to do that. Over the last ten years, I could have just played the same books, since I already play with mostly the same people.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I do not agree with this whatsoever. Some of your other points are spot on, but rampant capitalism destroys souls. Just had to say it.

Fair enough; I can agree to disagree. But I've seen (or read the case studies on) other industries where the defense for failure to adapt was an appeal to emotion, or in extreme cases legislation ... and the end result was that the failure was harder and the recovery longer than it would have been had the industry decided to find a way to be competitive in the first place. I'd hate to see that happen to gaming stores. Better in my opinion to expose them to cold hard truth and force them to innovate than to coddle them to a slower, more painful death.

Large smelly men with no social skills whatsoever, not to mention retail skills, who ignore you when you come in, ignore you when you ask questions, and ignore you when you walk out. They will not help me find books, seem to have no knowledge about any aspect of the industry whatsoever, and when they do deign to take special orders they mysteriously either never arrive along with any record that I'd ever placed the order, or are sold off before I can get there to pick them up. These have been my experiences.

I see we've shopped at the same places!

 

[Pale Jackal]

I've never done anything but play Magic: the Gathering in a FLGS.

 

[JDragon]

Well, I'm 100% for supporting your FLGS, if that in deed is what it is.


Now if its not, then get the best deal you can, thats my thought.

I had a very good FLGS that I supported for almost 2 years after I moved to the area with 99% of my gaming purchases. But that was not enough and it has since closed. :-( The other LGS is not the friendly so I've opted to get my game stuff as cheap as possible with out having to wait or pay for shipping. This means using my book club membership for 10% - 25% off most my game books at the local B&N.

Now specifically regarding 4e, I have gotten to look at the full books and I'm 98% certain that D&D 4e is not a game that I have any interest in investing in or playing.

JD