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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anubis the Doomseer" data-source="post: 1004801" data-attributes="member: 12455">Item 1 and 3 are both okay (actually the reality of 3 is iffy - the crunch books are usually bought by players looking for a third-party power boost).  Step 2, from the position of Hasbro is rather unfortunate.1. The mini market is honestly too small a subset of gamers to really risk the investment.2. You are already dealing with a highly over-supplied market.  Discounting for a moment those mini lines on sale to support wargaming (Games Workshop, MageKnight) you are still dealing with more than a dozen companies ranging from the individual artist/sculptor (see next point) to mid-sized rpg companies.3. The quality of existing product from rival groups is, quite frankly, of several orders of magnitude better than the proposed minis for D&D.  This will always be the case since individual artists, who are selling directly from their homepages, manufacture smaller quantities, some will even custom build minis.  And from my anceodtal experience with mini enthusiasts - quality is all-important.4. The pricing scheme Wizards will have to undertake to make this profitable is a non-starter.  Their marketing model - the randomized packs, is even less attractive.  Your competitors, Topps/MageKnight excluded, are allowing their customers to buy exactly what they want - no figgling with rarities, random packs, etc.5. I can't see why you contend that "minatures sell to everybody" when the average player will only need to buy a single miniature - the iconic representation of their character.  It is the DM who must buy minis and counters for the monsters, NPCs, cohorts, and others in the campaign.  Following this logic (that minis are a primarily DM-driven sales product) and the existing business model (that such optional DM-targeted product be supplied by third-parties who can take the risk and operate on the appropriate scale to match the consumer base), Hasbro's idea of producing miniatures is a contradiciton in its own business model.6. Last point.  There isn't enough unique in D&D to really require its own set of minis.  Outside a couple of iconic creatures (which companies, such as REAPER, skirt with generic variations - e.g. 'spider-centaurs' and 'vulture-demons'), why should I buy (or need to buy) Hasbro-specific miniatures when Ral Partha, Reaper, etc all produce the same thing - bearded human wizard with staff?All in all Hasbro is going into an already flooded market, their target consumer base already buys from the competitors who already support your particular rulesset/setting/genre with made-to-order or reasonably-priced, high-quality product, the size of the market and the nature of its desires makes the existing announced business model very unusual and likely a failure, and the quality of the announced product is below the existing average.In short, the move does not make sense from the point of view of such a large corporation.  Better to simply add a bit of support for mini/counter play in the rules and let the third party supply the miniatures.- Ma'at</blockquote>

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