Philosophical approaches of PFS and Adventurer's League

[Majoru Oakheart]

I see what you mean about undercutting the store on most products, however, the store doesn't sell scenarios so that product is exclusive to paizo. Expeditions are the same way, but since WOTC has no subscription model then players must get their products from stores (online or brick). I don't see D&D expeditions being sold by WOTC via PDFs as hurting the stores.

So is the current AL model trying to avoid undercutting brick and mortar stores? Is this also why they don't sell current products via PDF and only sell out of print products?

Yes. WOTC pretty much created the entire campaign to show to Brick and Mortar stores that they still support them. In the past at their retailer panels at GenCon, they've been criticized for not strongly enough supporting the B&M stores. Online stores like Amazon have large discounts, have broken street dates before and delivered books to customers before the stores were allowed to sell them. They were fairly vocal about the fact that their stores lived or died by D&D sales since they were the major playing in the RPG business. Of course, most of these complaints are about 10 years old now.

Over the years, WOTC has made a large effort to support the B&M stores to show that they are 100% on their side. I'm virtually positive that their decision not to sell PDFs of current products is entirely an effort to tell B&M stores: Look, we aren't competing with you. If people want our books, they HAVE to come to you.

Which is why the only place you can obtain Encounters and Expeditions adventures is through a store. It's also why the mods are free. It's to encourage as many players as possible to play D&D and to do it inside a store. It's to make it easy to find DMs since the DMs don't need any resources at all in order to run: Mods are free, you can run a game entirely using the mods as well as the Basic Rules online. So, players have to ask the store to get a mod and the store can deny the mods if they don't take place inside their store.

Whereas, with Pathfinder, you can order the mods directly from Paizo and then run your games days in a Community Center somewhere with entirely books you bought directly from Paizo and therefore never involve a store in your game at all.

WOTC wants stores to feel that they are the good guys.

 

[CapnZapp]

Here in Sweden the books are roughly 40-50% more expensive in a local friendly gaming store than the online bookshop, and the only way to get hold of AL adventures is to Google the password.

This good guy routine is so last year.

 

[Tyranthraxus]

That makes no sense at all dude, considering the Expeditions scenarios are FREE from participating stores.

And you do realise that Enworld has a pretty strict Anti piracy rule in place?

 

[MerricB]

That makes no sense at all dude, considering the Expeditions scenarios are FREE from participating stores.

The key word there is participating. Getting Expeditions, especially if you don't have a big Magic community to raise the level of the store, has been historically tricky: entry level stores could only do Encounters, which is very restrictive. (The program is now that you can get the Expeditions even if you can only schedule Encounters, but it wasn't always that way). Even so, I don't know how much of an in-store gaming culture there is in Sweden, which obviously affects things.

When you have to get things through a store, and the store doesn't want to bother, then you're stuck.

Mind you, the online-gaming component to D&D AL play is changing things. More will be coming in the future, I believe.

Cheers!

 

[frupton]

The key word there is participating. Getting Expeditions, especially if you don't have a big Magic community to raise the level of the store, has been historically tricky: entry level stores could only do Encounters, which is very restrictive. (The program is now that you can get the Expeditions even if you can only schedule Encounters, but it wasn't always that way). Even so, I don't know how much of an in-store gaming culture there is in Sweden, which obviously affects things.

When you have to get things through a store, and the store doesn't want to bother, then you're stuck.

Actually, you're not supposed to be stuck, even in this situation. Wizards has a process in place for people who want to play Expeditions but can't get a local store to work with them. The link's not the easiest to find, but it's here: http://dndadventurersleague.org/get-involved/

In the section on "How can clubs, military bases and schools....", in the last part, there is the following:

"Lastly, if you don’t have a store that can sponsor you, you can contact customer support by filling out this support form. Be sure to select D&D Convention Support under the products drop-down as well as all other pertinent information. Once sent off, you may qualify to receive a Convention Support Package (D&D Expeditions adventures). You will not receive magic item certificates.. All materials in the support package are delivered digitally, and are not for distribution outside of event use."

I'm curious if anyone has given it a try?

 

[MerricB]

I've received the download link from them for a convention I'm organising. Actually didn't need it - I was interested to see if there was any other support they could offer - but they did send me the link & password.

Cheers!

 

[pedr]

Here in Sweden the books are roughly 40-50% more expensive in a local friendly gaming store than the online bookshop, and the only way to get hold of AL adventures is to Google the password.

This good guy routine is so last year.

Hey CapnZapp - can I point you to the Adventurers League Europe Facebook group? The European Regional Coordinator posts there and would love to try to support AL play in Sweden. There are local groups in various European countries and it'd be great if Sweden was added to the list!

https://m.facebook.com/groups/682411271850059?ref=bookmarks

 

[aramis erak]

The key word there is participating. Getting Expeditions, especially if you don't have a big Magic community to raise the level of the store, has been historically tricky: entry level stores could only do Encounters, which is very restrictive. (The program is now that you can get the Expeditions even if you can only schedule Encounters, but it wasn't always that way). Even so, I don't know how much of an in-store gaming culture there is in Sweden, which obviously affects things.

When you have to get things through a store, and the store doesn't want to bother, then you're stuck.

Mind you, the online-gaming component to D&D AL play is changing things. More will be coming in the future, I believe.

Cheers!

Indeed.
Without regular access to Expeditions modules, the number of magic items is pretty slim... but, as I noticed in Corvallis last spring, many of the players have 2-3 magic items per character... and multiple characters. Why? because they find two expeditions sessions a week, and play a module at each. (And yes, they all have their cards for those items.)

Meanwhile, in Anchorage, where expeditions are rare, players seldom see any. The folder is thick with magic item cards that haven't been given out because the modules simply do not get played. And the store simply will not schedule a friday nor saturday D&D time... it's getting to the point where we want to get a club going to play at a mall on the other end of town... but there's only one game store of note. And they have a full schedule. 3 days in the next 35 do not have something scheduled. Warhammer, Pokemon, MTG, Shadowrun Missions...

 

[Z. H. Darkstar]

Meanwhile, in Anchorage, where expeditions are rare, players seldom see any. The folder is thick with magic item cards that haven't been given out because the modules simply do not get played. And the store simply will not schedule a friday nor saturday D&D time... it's getting to the point where we want to get a club going to play at a mall on the other end of town... but there's only one game store of note. And they have a full schedule. 3 days in the next 35 do not have something scheduled. Warhammer, Pokemon, MTG, Shadowrun Missions...

As long as the store is okay with it, there's nothing stopping you from running Expeditions off-site. The only caveats are that the games must be advertised and open to the public. I've started running games at conventions that my store is attending as a means of increased item distribution.

What I would like to see are rules allowing stores to run their own trading post to see excess certs enter circulation without the hassle and cost of getting Fai Chen to come to a local convention. All of my Rise of Tiamat certs are gathering dust due to scheduling prohibiting us from cracking open that book. In order to keep relations high with the FLGS, we have a kinda unwritten agreement to have at least one table running the current season material to encourage sales of the latest product.

One of these days I'd like to stop running my Slot 0 table as a means of creating Ferris Muellers who exist only as a pseudo trading posts. I'd like to have my DMs be able to use those Slot 0 games to further their own characters, instead of our liberal use of the lending rules. I will say that the Ferris Mueller Project has led to less items being left in the dirt, as Ferris may have something the player wants instead. It hasn't broken our magic item economy, as only one Ferris exists for each book/tier of Expeditions. The only things it has done are reduce the amount of fighting over magic items and reduce the amount of certs kept in the store, as every item traded to Ferris ends up like Cameron's dad's car...

 

[Steve_MND]

Yes. WOTC pretty much created the entire campaign to show to Brick and Mortar stores that they still support them. [...] Over the years, WOTC has made a large effort to support the B&M stores to show that they are 100% on their side. I'm virtually positive that their decision not to sell PDFs of current products is entirely an effort to tell B&M stores: Look, we aren't competing with you. If people want our books, they HAVE to come to you.

Tragically, the whole discussion here seems to smack of the attempt a few years ago to halt the "decline of the traditional newspaper," by various media outlets, and I fear that it is just as likely to work.

As much as I hate to say it, those days are fading fast, and WotC's not going to be able to stop it. B&M stores will never be able to compete against places like Amazon, etc., and they shouldn't try to. Local stores need to reorient themselves to take advantage of the stuff that only a physical store can bring -- the entire social and community aspect of gaming. Trying to prop up the sales end of it just isn't going to work when people can get the hardbacks and such for hal the cost online.

And I admire WotC for their apparent dedication here, but I feel that it's somewhat of a misplaced attempt.