NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gareman" data-source="post: 6761509" data-attributes="member: 4918">You're referring to my blog specifically here, so I thought I should reply. How do I know I'm losing sales? I talk to my customers. RPGs are especially a brutally idiosyncratic gaming category so it's imperative I understand what my RPG customers are playing, what they want, what they're waiting for, what direction they're going. I talk to them often. It's not uncommon to bring in an RPG product with ONE customer in mind, or carry an entire gaming system for 2-3 of them.Many will tell me they already have a Kickstarter product or have backed it and hope to get it one day. This became very clear initially when as a store owner, I attempted to back EVERY RPG project on Kickstarter. There weren't that many initially, so it was possible. I've since backed about 40 projects in this fashion. I can give you pretty nuanced numbers of my sales, but when it comes to sales I didn't make, you pretty much have to take my word for it. Believe me though when I say I'm not an outlier on this. I also want to say my position on Kickstarter has become more nuanced over the years. I won't back projects as a retailer any longer, mostly because I've been burned too many time (I'm owed over $600 in failed to deliver KS projects). But I will bring in KS derived products in distribution if they meet certain criteria. For example, funding that hits over $50K is generally a go. Boardgames with a 7.5 on Boardgamegeek are safe for a copy. And I do carry Reaper Bones after they've pretty much given the middle finger to the game trade.RPGs are tougher though and here's a secret: nobody in the game trade wants to touch them anymore. If you've got a KS derived RPG and you're not an established company, the consolidators have closed the doors. The amount of small press RPGs has diminished significantly *through the established channels.* It's partially the highly fragmented nature of today's RPG market but it's also a boom in board games that make the work to support an RPG just too much.  Anyway, it's a golden age for RPGs, but for the players, not the traditional sellers of such products.</blockquote>

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