RPG Supply Rental Business?

[aco175]

@monsters.rent welcome to the boards. Hope your site does what you need it to.

 

[monsters.rent]

@monsters.rent welcome to the boards. Hope your site does what you need it to.

Agreed. If you have any feedback or anything in particular you'd like to see, I'd love to hear it

 

[Umbran]

Actually, that's the exact service we just launched: Monsters.Rent

It's still new and we're still getting it up off the ground but is this what you meant?

Note that you are replying to a thread that is 8 years old, and the OP hasn't been on this site since that time.

 

[monsters.rent]

Dang haha well I feel stupid lol

 

[pogre]

Agreed. If you have any feedback or anything in particular you'd like to see, I'd love to hear it

Unusual terrain that is painted would be a draw for me. A chance to rent a massive ziggurat or series of tree houses and platforms - I might go for that. Another thought I had is creating a complete set of terrain and painted monsters and NPCs for an adventure path.

A couple of years ago I was tempted to sell a guy all of the terrain and monsters from my Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign. He wanted to run it for his group - I just couldn't let go of the stuff. If he offered to rent it I might have gone for that.

Shipping might be too much of a killer though.

 

[Teo Twawki]

Loss of various components from a rented game would quickly make it ineffective for renting to the next person. First a single die goes missing. Or a player handout. Or a crucially important map. Or a page torn out of a book. Replacement plans would have to be considered.

I worked at a university library that tried this. The service didn't last a full semester.

It is a great idea that would face cost-effective problems due to loss, damage, and theft.

 

[davekeyes]

I've been running a Terrain Library ( www.terrainlibrary.com ) here in Lower Hutt, New Zealand for a few years, as a fairly casual community thing. A handful of different storytellers a month using bits of my collection, which would otherwise be gathering dust.

 

[GMMichael]

Hello ENWorld!

I've been out of the hobby for awhile and yet it's always in the back of my mind. Recently, I've been on an entrepreneurial kick and had an idea. I wonder why no business model seems to be out there for RPG supply (map, miniatures, books, dice) rental, only retail. It seems a fair share of the stuff ends up used a limited number of times (really, how often do you need to break out that black dragon mini or the Temple of Lolth map?) and then either ends up on a shelf or back on eBay.

Welcome back! I suspect the black dragon owner bought it more for personal pleasure than needing it for an encounter. I wouldn't know though . . .

Thanks for the feedback. My thought is less that any particular piece is expensive, and more that it gets expensive to provide variety as a whole. This is particularly true as a Dm, it seems. If you want a campaign with a climactic fight with fire giants in a volcano in one adventure and an aboleth in an underwater grotto in the next adventure, you seem to have to stockpile minis and maps to provide the visual aids. Granted, you can always play without any, but the product are available retail for a reason: players like the realism.

Okay, if you can figure out how to do Amazon's same-day delivery for this stuff, you might be on to something. Just don't go investing in Redbox kiosks. (But I hear they're real cheap right now.)

But I thought a web-based service where you could obtain materials for a given adventure just long enough to run it might be better than having to horde things just in case you might use them.

Actually, that's the exact service we just launched: Monsters.Rent

 

[Koloth]

Wonder if OP's rental idea worked out? Yes, I noticed the thread is a bit of a zombie.

 

[Lanefan]

While I'm not at all sure that a business built just on renting minis and terrain and dice etc. would work, I could see it working as a sidelight for an existing party supply rental business that rents tables, chairs, and so forth.