D&D Minis on the Decline?

[PoeticJustice]

Shipping rates are a reality when buying online. Best to bid on multiple auctions from one seller.

I don't buy that many of these things anymore, so a bit more never kills me.

I agree with you; to a degree, there's going to be some dishonesty about shipping rates, but ebay actually has a way of reporting this kind of abuse, so there's no reason to put up with crap like shipping $20 minis in an old Axis and Allies booster or unsleeved cards in a business envelope.

Give bad feedback. Report them. Let the dealer know you must be treated fairly. If you're going to shell out 5 bucks on shipping then you want a good, sturdy piece of cardboard keeping your mini undamaged.

 

[Fifth Element]

It seems that 4E's whole point is to boost minis sales since it's about fighting more opponents and everything in the rules is about moving minis on a battlemat.

Um, no. That makes little sense. People who use minis already tend to have a lot of them, so adding a few more to the combats will have no effect. And those that don't use minis in 3E are unlikely to start doing so for 4E. 3E is already arguably mini-centric, though it is certainly possible to play without them, just as 4E should be.

 

[PoeticJustice]

Um, no. That makes little sense. People who use minis already tend to have a lot of them, so adding a few more to the combats will have no effect. And those that don't use minis in 3E are unlikely to start doing so for 4E. 3E is already arguably mini-centric, though it is certainly possible to play without them, just as 4E should be.

I happen to think that 4E was brought in line with the minis game to help boost numbers on both sides. From what we've seen, there are an awful lot of movement and terrain effects. Also, the restructuring of poison and saving throws match up a lot more closely than they did before.

In the end, though, it's all idle speculation. Nobody here will be able to definitively state why DDM 2.0 was developed the way it was.

 

[rgard]

I agree with you; to a degree, there's going to be some dishonesty about shipping rates, but ebay actually has a way of reporting this kind of abuse, so there's no reason to put up with crap like shipping $20 minis in an old Axis and Allies booster or unsleeved cards in a business envelope.

Give bad feedback. Report them. Let the dealer know you must be treated fairly. If you're going to shell out 5 bucks on shipping then you want a good, sturdy piece of cardboard keeping your mini undamaged.

It costs $4.60 (plus the 50 delivery fee) to ship a boatload of minis in a USPS priority mail box. The box is free too.

 

[Shazman]

Um, no. That makes little sense. People who use minis already tend to have a lot of them, so adding a few more to the combats will have no effect. And those that don't use minis in 3E are unlikely to start doing so for 4E. 3E is already arguably mini-centric, though it is certainly possible to play without them, just as 4E should be.

That might be true, but then why are the DDM 2.0 and 4E combat rules nearly identical? Why are they reinvisioning monsters for 4E? If you want a gargoyle mini that looks like the 4e gargoyle, you have to buy a DDM 2.0 gargoyle. Minis make more money than the RPG game, so it would make sense(even though I really don't like it) to try to get more people to buy minis for both games.

 

[MerricB]

Why are they reinvisioning monsters for 4E?

Why did they reenvision monsters for 3e?

New editions allow them to change things they're not entirely happy with, and this has been a long-standing tradition of D&D. You don't need to bring minis into it.

Also, the DDM 2.0 rules are like the D&D 4e rules; it's not the other way around. They've specifically talked about how they changed the DDM rules to make them more like 4e, because they'd found a lot of problems with D&D players who came to the DDM rules and then couldn't do things they expected to do (especially like the 5' step).

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Why did they reenvision monsters for 3e?

New editions allow them to change things they're not entirely happy with, and this has been a long-standing tradition of D&D. You don't need to bring minis into it.

Also, the DDM 2.0 rules are like the D&D 4e rules; it's not the other way around. They've specifically talked about how they changed the DDM rules to make them more like 4e, because they'd found a lot of problems with D&D players who came to the DDM rules and then couldn't do things they expected to do (especially like the 5' step).

I think it also worked the other way as well. There were some people who were DDM players, that were getting confused trying to understand the D&D 3.5E rules because the DDM rules were different in a lot of ways. Having said that, I imagine more people were coming from D&D to DDM than the other way around.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Shazman]

I think it also worked the other way as well. There were some people who were DDM players, that were getting confused trying to understand the D&D 3.5E rules because the DDM rules were different in a lot of ways. Having said that, I imagine more people were coming from D&D to DDM than the other way around.

Olaf the Stout

Maybe, but I don't see it. IMHO, 4E seems to be based on DDM 2.0. Everything revolves around movement and squares. Many character abilities result in "shifting" allies and enemies all around the battlemat. In my personal opinion, if 4E used static damage instead of rolling for damage, the two games would be practically indistinguisable.

 

[MerricB]

You only think that because the rules for DDM 2.0 came out before those of D&D 4e, despite 4e being in development far longer. DDM 1.0 does *not* have lots of shifting and sliding around.

All of this has come into effect because of the work done on 4e.

Cheers!

 

[Davelozzi]

Yeah, I bought DDMs for the first three years or so they were out but then stopped abruptly around the time Aberrations came out, as I simply had most of the bases covered and the new sets weren't really providing much value (I was buying for D&D RPG, not for the minis game). Since then, I've bought a few singles that I needed second-hand, but I don't see myself buying sets again. On top of that, the last few sets that I looked at in the online gallery really didn't look very good.