Rappan Athuk: Reloaded SOLD OUT by wide margin!!

[Alzrius]

It shows a rather dreadful bit of mismanagement when making forecasts and determining an appropriate print run. Thumb down to Necromancer Games.

'Mismanagement'? As I recall, Clark himself posted and said that even by selling out the entire print run of 1,000, they were barely getting back more than it cost them to do this in the first place. Their forecast about selling out was absolutely spot on, and it's quite likely that the print run was determined by being optimal to what would make a profit. They knew exactly what they were doing.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, I think this was sort of a manufactured sell out, myself - they set a deliberately low print run, then took a bunch out to make that even smaller. Kinda obvious that pre-orders alone would account for 700 copies (even at that high price).

Yeah, many of their other products sold poorly, but they were either poor products (like Durbenford) or had poor advertising/word of mouth (pretty much everything they released in the last year), since they apparently no longer advertise, or give out review copies.

This, OTOH, is basically a flagship product.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Very unfortunate news, considering it's not even available in stores yet.

It shows a rather dreadful bit of mismanagement when making forecasts and determining an appropriate print run. Thumb down to Necromancer Games.

It is pretty easy to make comments from the gallery when you don't know what goes into making the decisions. The various parts of the decision making process indicated a print run of 1,000 copies for a $75 boxed set of something that includes a revision of previous printed books was the correct number.

Sales include online pre-orders through the WW website and a large pre-order by Alliance. The boxed set should be available in all good gaming stores, just not Amazon and places like that.

"Convention Reserves" are usually no more than 100-200 copies. I don't know what we'll have at the convention. Bill may have requested a convention hold of more than 100 copies. I'll find out.

While a "sell-out" sometimes raises eyebrows, please remember that if we sell every copy we make and there is only a demand for 10-20 more copies, then we printed exactly the right number of copies. Clark has already stated that if we sense significant demand for more copies we will reprint. Reprints (if made) will NOT have a signed and numbered certificate with them.

Patrick (one of those other Team Necro guys ...)

 

[philreed]

Well, I think this was sort of a manufactured sell out, myself - they set a deliberately low print run, then took a bunch out to make that even smaller. Kinda obvious that pre-orders alone would account for 700 copies (even at that high price).

I don't think that's very fair to Necromancer. I'm sure the size of the print run was simply White Wolf/Necromancer playing things conservatively (which should be expected in today's market). At only 1,000 copies I wouldn't be shocked to hear that they paid $10-$15/unit to have this printed -- and that doesn't even take into account production costs (and all of those new maps couldn't have been cheap).


I'm sure if they had known sales would be like this they would have bumped the printing to 1,500 or more units.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Why don't they just make more? Sheesh.

I pre-ordered on Amazon and now that they won't be getting any copies, I'll just go ahead and cancel the whole order (which includes other WW products, i.e., Bard's Gate).

 

[philreed]

Why don't they just make more? Sheesh.

They can't just print 50 or so more and it's a huge risk to print another 1,000 copies. It's not as if everyone at Necromancer planned for this to happen.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Why don't they just make more? Sheesh.

I pre-ordered on Amazon and now that they won't be getting any copies, I'll just go ahead and cancel the whole order (which includes other WW products, i.e., Bard's Gate).

I understand that you may be upset that you are getting the product that you wanted but maybe next time you could pre-order directly from the company so that you guarantee yourself a copy.

Seems to me that you thought that you could get it cheaper by going with Amazon. Price alone isn't always the best way to decide where to buy something. Amazon have been known to promise what they can't deliver many times before.

Olaf the Stout

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Very unfortunate news, considering it's not even available in stores yet.

It shows a rather dreadful bit of mismanagement when making forecasts and determining an appropriate print run. Thumb down to Necromancer Games.

It's not mismanagement. Their other flagship product, The Wilderlands of High Fantasy, didn't sell out, which was a blow because it had a narrow profit margin. They didn't want to repeat that. It's always really easy to spend someone else's money when it comes to stuff like this.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Bear in mind that they don't seem to have sold out of their other 1,000 issue runs, like Coils of Set. This was the right move.

And this is good news, I agree.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

There WILL be copies available through those game stores that order through Alliance (at least for a little while, you might want to pre-order with your LGS).

A "sell-out" for us means out of the warehouse. This does NOT mean the book isn't available (or going to be available). It does mean that Amazon isn't going to get any (at least not from us, and certainly not at a price where they'll want to honor the $25 price people have reported).

We should have 100 copies at GenCon.

Patrick