d20 bubble bust?- High Prices, too many books
- Thread starter Belen
- Start date
Bendris Noulg
First Post
I know that, in my own group, the only reason that two out of three of my players have Player Handbooks is because I bought them as gifts after 3E came out. None of them owned 2E books at all; none have purchased any of the 3.5 material.buzz said:
As such, I'm the primary purchaser in our group; my wife runs an Oathbound game and is assured to purchase that material and an occassional book of critters, but her purchases are well below mine in number and frequency.
At the same time, I think my purchases are starting to decline as well. I'm more in the market for material that breaks away from the norm (alternate OGL materials, like Bab 5, Conan, AU, etc., or alternate systems, like GR's Psychic's Handbook) rather than general supplements or adventures written to be adapted by general 3E/d20 games. I'm finding the alternates not only more interesting to read, but actually more compelling to extract components from and use in my own game. I've got far too many generic supplements that, while likely full of good material, just came across as "just another book of Feats, Spells, and Prestige Classes" and thus failed to inspire re-use by me and my group.
The primary exception being monsters; I never have enough monsters.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
It seems that there's a relatively large number of gamers who are "completists" -- they feel the need to possess EVERY book for their chosen game. I can see how, if you felt that way, you might be wearied by the very large number of D&D 3.5 books (especially if you also felt that way about 3.0, 2.0 etc etc).
I don't and never have felt that way, so I can't imagine complaining that there's "Too much" stuff. It's like complaining that there's too many TV channels.
More books! More publishers! More sites like ENWorld to help me filter out the crap and get to the good stuff.
As any market expands, filtering mechanisms (reviewers, communities, advertising) all start to pop up and help you sort through things. I think a lot of the gaming industry isn't used to taking other people's word for it that a given book is or is not worth buying. That, coupled with a low number of sophisticated reviews means filtering is pretty unreliable and difficult to make use of. But it's improving and the market isn't so big that you can't keep track of new releases pretty easily.
On another note, it sounds to me like game store owners could realise pretty large advantages in inventory costs and customer satisfaction if they were better informed on the market. Do people think there's much opportunity there? The prevailing wisdom is that running a games store is a marginal sort of business, but could margins increase enough with careful ordering that profits could improve significantly?
Thoughts?
I don't and never have felt that way, so I can't imagine complaining that there's "Too much" stuff. It's like complaining that there's too many TV channels.
More books! More publishers! More sites like ENWorld to help me filter out the crap and get to the good stuff.
As any market expands, filtering mechanisms (reviewers, communities, advertising) all start to pop up and help you sort through things. I think a lot of the gaming industry isn't used to taking other people's word for it that a given book is or is not worth buying. That, coupled with a low number of sophisticated reviews means filtering is pretty unreliable and difficult to make use of. But it's improving and the market isn't so big that you can't keep track of new releases pretty easily.
On another note, it sounds to me like game store owners could realise pretty large advantages in inventory costs and customer satisfaction if they were better informed on the market. Do people think there's much opportunity there? The prevailing wisdom is that running a games store is a marginal sort of business, but could margins increase enough with careful ordering that profits could improve significantly?
Thoughts?
buzz
Adventurer
arnwyn said:
Bendris Noulg said:
Wow. This sort of thing was true for the one group of semi- and non-gamers I ran an early 3e game for, but my current groups (all lifers) are, much like me, pretty much whores for gaming product. Granted, I'm now trying to figure out what titles I can bear to part with in order to make room for more stuff...
I guess I'm one of the exceptions.
Arnwyn
First Post
I guess my players feel that if they're not DMs (which is something they certainly don't want to be), then "what's the point?" of buying loads of stuff. I do have a policy that for anything that will be used IMC I have to own my own personal copy of, but I do have a substantial amount of stuff. They just aren't motivated to buy - I suppose for likely little payoff. (And they've all been playing in my campaign, regularly, for more than a decade.)buzz said:
Quite probably.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
I outspend my players by a factor of nearly 100 to 1. Most of my players do not own anything beyond a set of dice. That's a group of a dozen or so, across a couple of campaigns.
Prest0
First Post
barsoomcore said:
Possibly, but it takes a LOT of time to stay that well informed. (Then you have to hope that your local gamers are equally well informed). That time spent in product research is on top of all the other aspects of running a business. Ultimately there's MANY factors that could influence profits-- premium locations, active gaming community, competitive prices, friendly/helpful staff, online ordering, etc.
I'd say too little time and upfront capital are the biggest FLGS business-killers. Getting back on topic, the same could be said of d20 publishers.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Good point. Cause that's different than saying ENOUGH time is a business-maker. Hm.Prest0 said:
