How Do You Prefer To Buy Your RPG Products?

[Viking Bastard]

When I buy physical products, I prefer to go to a store (or the store, seeing how the country has the one AFAIK). As others have described, I just prefer to hold things in my hands before purchase. That tends to be mostly gaming accessories, not books.

But I don't do that often, as I mostly buy PDFs. I neither have the money nor the space for paper.

 

[Razjah]

To me the often terrible attitude of the people in the stores is more important then the price.

I agree. I will pay more from a physical store because I want to help keep a space for gamers to congregate. But, if that space is hostile or somewhere I don't want to be, I will take my business elsewhere. I don't think it is too difficult for game stores to maintain good customer service, but in many cases I have seen employees distracted by their games/painting/comic/internet/whatever to help. I appreciate some recommendations (Oh, Book X is new for System) can be good, or just asking things like "I see you are looking at the Shadowrun rules, if you want to see some more things in the sci-fi genre we also carry [insert other systems here]" Simple things like knowing if a system is generally considered "crunchy" or not can help when someone is browsing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It also depends on precisely why the employee is distracted.

If he or she is playing a computer game, that's bad. If, OTOH, the source of the distraction is a store-run game demo/hosting, that's fair enough. (Though they should probably arrange for additional personnel on demo days.)

 

[smartmonkey]

I used to vastly prefer brick and mortar, but Drivethru has my eternal allegiance. I buy a lot of RPG's just to read, and while PDFs don't have the same form factor, they're alot easier on my shelves and wallet. If I'm going to run or play something, I'll track down a hardcopy in my FLGS.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I'd preper to have my games giftwrapped and handed to me personally by Felicia Day in a bunny rabbit outfit.

 

[vonhist]

I understand and agree Razjah. Fortunately my local stores have good staff.

 

[Campbell]

Before RPG books started to disappear from the shelves of Barnes and Noble my preference was to shop there. I felt like I could really get a sense of what I was buying. I've never really been one for gaming stores because I largely prefer to game with friends - the network externalities were never there for me.

I've always been somewhat out of the mainstream of the hobby store market. The games I prefer tend to be disfavored by the hardcore gaming community and I quickly tired of having to justify my preferences - the last time I stopped by a game store looking for Fudge dice the owner of the shop felt the need to lecture me on FATE not being a real role playing game. Luckily shortly thereafter Evil Hat launched their FATE Dice Kickstarter.

I do buy my Magic cards at a local game store that focuses on that side of the hobby, but that's because I do value a public space and competitive environment for playing Magic.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

From another perspective, the change in retail habits has affected how we offer our own things. This is what I said in one of our previous newsletters.

Over the past couple of years we've noticed a shift in shopping behaviour, away from a standard retail model to one encompassing the use of crowd funding sites like Kickstarter, direct purchase from publishers and increased use of deep discounters like Amazon. To reflect and adapt to those changes we've made the decision that come April we're moving Innsmouth House away from carrying quantities of general physical stock and instead plan to concentrate on digital and special/short run pre-order items.

By doing this we keep our outstanding stock levels to a minimum which helps us manage our resources more effectively.

Which is what we're doing. It's simply a case of having to adapt to changing circumstances. Unsold stock is a big headache as we're taxed every year on it, so a move to an essentially "zero inventory" policy is the only really effective move.

Regarding my own purchase of RPGs, it's online these days except when I can pick up something directly from the publisher at a convention.

 

[diaglo]

i buy most of mine at conventions. but prefer to buy them at whatever method is cheapest, be it brick and mortar, online, garage sale, or auction.
i'm not against dumpster diving either.