Brian E. Harris's page

To be fair to Amazon, the core rule book seems to be particularly easy to damage (unless anything has changed since it was first released), after only two weeks of use ours had begun to split and the hard cover was seperating from the pages and spine of the book. The book does get heavy use (a gaming group of 5+, meeting weekly), but no other gaming product we have purchased has had similar issues.

1st and 2nd printings had weaker bindings. I know that Paizo has said that overall reports of issues are a small percentage, and that they haven't seen the issues reported, but as the owner of samples of all printing versions, and having examined the various copies that members of my gaming group have purchased, I can tell you that there is a SIGNIFICANT increase in binding quality with the 3rd and 4th printings.

My recently damaged copy from Amazon was a 4th printing, and the damage occurred prior to being put in the box.

I didn't say their business model precludes quality, just that you shouldn't expect it.

They are a discounter, you get what you pay for.

My primary complaint is not with Amazon, which is clearly a giant business success story. My primary complaint is with people who buy from them because they are cheap, and then complain about the service.

It's trivially easy to get Paizo products quickly, well-packed, and with fantastic customer service - if you can find this forum, you can probably find the Paizo store, too. If you choose not to go that route that's just fine, but your expectations should be in line with reality.
-Kle.

No.

A thousand times, no.

It doesn't matter the price. We're not talking Paizo Cola and Amazon Choice Cola. We're talking about the exact same product.

As such, regardless of the price, if it's being advertised as "new", you have every right to expect the same level of quality of the delivered product.

It's asinine to suggest that someone receiving a damaged copy of a book from Amazon should have to suck it up because they bought it cheaper.

Paizo is FANTASTIC, and I buy a bunch of stuff from them, but Amazon also has fantastic customer service. I'm not suggesting they're on the same level - Paizo has much more personal service, but then again, Paizo also doesn't sell at nearly the same scale as Amazon.

It's not unrealisitic in the least to expect undamaged product - and apparently, Amazon agrees, because they not only replace the damaged product on their own dime, paying for return shipping, but they're also re-evaluating the packing of this specific product to address issues.

Don't be surprised at Amazon not being good at packing, or at anything else for that matter.

Their business model is based upon being easy and ubiquitous and cheap - not on quality.
-Kle.

Oh, come on.

I'm not trying to turn this into an Amazon pro/hate war, but comments like this are just ridiculously fallacious.

First of all, DUH, Amazon's business model is getting stuff to you cheaply. Shocker! God forbid that a business tries to do things less expensively!

Secondly, Amazon does awesomely well in virtually all areas of their operation. It's one-off items like the CRB, which, if you own one, you know that it's a HUGE book. Now, I'm not saying that they don't ship other huge books, but the added weight/size to normal books, their normal packaging doesn't always cut it.

If their business model precluded quality, then they wouldn't be taking a book off their virtual salesfloor in order to figure out how to better pack/ship it, and overall, they wouldn't remain in business.

Back to your regularly scheduled bandwagon...

Well I guess sooner or later the mini business will change to CAD file sellers instead of selling real pewter or plastic minis. 3D printers will take it over. They will be cheaper in some years and everybody can print their favorite minis out by themselves. (not prepainted of course...)

Eg recently in Austria there has been introduced a 3D printer for only 1200 Euro and the size of a coffee-machine.

http://diepresse.com/home/techscience/hightech/662754/TU-Wien-entwickelt-kl einsten-3DDrucker-der-Welt

Someday, those 3D printers will even produce decent enough quality output to produce minis, too.

I am far from impressed with any samples that I've seen or have been exhibited from these deals.

I consider myself a pretty fast reader, and I know others have other styles/preferences, but I've always thought the "books are heavy to carry 100 with me at all times!" argument kind of weak.

Sure, it'd be nice to have my entire library at hand, but wow, I've never "needed" more than 2-3 books with me at any given time.

Just an observation.

The Pokemon CCG died? AND the games?

Jeese, all these cards I have must be zombies...

As for the games: 200 Million lifetime sales and the best selling game of all time doesn't really sound "dead" to me.

In relative popularity and sales compared to when Pokemon made all those WotC folks millionaires, it has died off.

To call it dead is a vast understatement, but it certainly isn't the behemoth that it once was, nor is M:tG.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see folks playing either game in public outside of a game shop these days, I just don't see it anymore around this area, and time was, I couldn't go anywhere that had a spare table and chairs (or a small empty spot of floor space) and NOT see people playing.

Those days are gone.

...

Thank you!

Brian E. Harris wrote:

I would love to buy several pre-painted plastic Bathalians

And why don't you? One of the first minis in the LE series.

I shall buy 4 of him shortly.

Thank you, good sir. I must have skipped over him looking at the Reaper page.

Dumb question - I have a copy of Mutants & Masterminds (Copyright 2002), and there's no D20 logo on it.

The game doesn't make any mention of the D20 STL, and it contains it's own character generation system and advancement system. It makes no mention of requiring the D&D PHB, like my Spycraft stuff does.

There's an OGL page in the back.

This is the 1st Edition of the game, isn't it? I don't recall M&M ever using the D20 STL.

My beat to hell copy of the first printing shows that they needed to look into thi two years ago.

For future reference, both to you and the others that have received (and apparently kept) damaged copies from Amazon in the past, you should be aware that they will accept returns.

They'll provide a pre-paid UPS or Fedex tag for you to ship it back to them on their dime for exchange or credit.

There's absolutely no reason that you should be forced to keep a copy that they damaged in handling or due to poor packaging.

I would love to buy several pre-painted plastic Bathalians, phase cats and some versions of your Tyrant of Darkness/Eyebeast/Conjunctivus...

I believe the Paladin was saying you could buy truckloads of $0.99 miniatures, not truckloads of miniatures for $0.99. And, if you're willing to buy s~+*ty commons nobody wants, you probably can. If it's a small truck.

Hrmm...

You've forced me to re-read his post.

He actually said "trunkloads of garbage" which is not what I want.

DRAT.

PaladinRS wrote:

...

This person has four posts, posts this invective, and you're wasting precious minutes of your lives replying? What in the name of God are you crackheads thinking? (and I say this lovingly)

Well, for me, I was really hoping to see links to these mythical eBay auctions selling "truckloads" of DDM for $0.99.

I wants me some more pre-painted plastic minis!

2) If the only way that you can sell undesirable product is to make people chase desirable product... well I call that "pushing crap".

I think this may be part of what confused me - I don't agree for a minute that they were selling "undesirable" product - just that the varying rarities and subject matter creates varying desirabilities.

I have no doubt that there are people that have zero desire for a gnoll or a troglodyte or some such other monster. To those specific sellers, those specific minis are undesirable, sure, but that doesn't equate to the company "pushing crap". The edition wars have taught us that much.

3) It obviously costs more than a dollar or less to make a profit off of single-sales. Since a company pursuing the artificial (as in "through artifice" not "fake") creation of rarity necessitates the need for a secondary market to sell the undesirable product at a loss... well, isn't that devaluing your own product, not just the competition's?

I don't think that there was a necessity for the secondary market - I just think it's a synergistic thing that promotes the primary market.

I'm sorry if this post comes off as haughty or rude, I don't intend it to be. It's hard to be clear and concise on the internet without sounding like an educated donkey. ;)

No, we're cool - I wasn't picking up what you were putting down. Now I have my hands full. :D

I'm a firm believer that supporting the competition to keep it healthy and to keep product top-notch is a much healthier and desirable attitude, as well as a more long-term successful scheme, than making the largest amount of money that you can in the shortest time possible.

I have no problems with competition, and believe it to be healthy, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if a competitor isn't able to compete. Bad product shouldn't be supported by anyone. Competition is supposed to encourage everyone to make things better, and eventually, some are going to fall by the wayside because they can't.

Brian E. Harris wrote:

I'm familiar with the Ema's fiasco...

I wasn't. Where can I find more info about that, as this is the first I've heard?

Offhand, I can't point you to direct links, but the gist was that Ema's was producing power cards that WotC felt treaded on their IP and trade dress, and after some discussion, the entire site was downed.

I hadn't been there for a while, and hadn't seen the 4E power cards, but apparently, they looked identical to the WotC-sold cards, so in this particular case, that's a big violation.

Sucks to see the entire website toasted, though.

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Hasbro did buy WoTC knowing full well D&D was one of their bigger properties after all.

Hasbro bought WotC because of Magic and Pokemon. D&D might have been a small bit of extra icing or sprinkles on that cupcake, but those other two were the real reasons.

What other good sites have been shut down or neutered like this, out of curiosity?

I'm familiar with the Ema's fiasco, but was curious if there was a bunch of others...

I do not appreciate your usage of the word inferior here.

My apologies for stating an opinion and not using masked curse words or insulting the staff of a gaming company while doing so.

I'll strive for irony next time, rather than a lack of appreciation.

I do wish that there were a different way. The fact that a secondary market immediately pops up for a particular marketing scheme just doesn't sit right with me.

It tells me that the company producing these minis knows that they are pushing crap product for a profit. Otherwise they wouldn't glut the market so badly that they devalue their own merchandise (as well as their competitors' merchandise).

I can get that you don't like the secondary market, and your purchasing preferences would rather be served by the primary market, but I don't really understand how you can come to the conclusion that the secondary market devalues merchandise or that the manufacturers "know" that they're "pushing crap product".

Further, why should sales of your product devaluing the competition be a worry, and not a goal?

Am I completely misunderstanding how capitalism and competition works? Isn't the concept to produce a superior product, one that drives people to purchase it over the competition, thereby "devaluing" the competition?

The pre painted miniature thing was a disaster for WoTC. I see trunkloads of that garbage being offered on EBAY for .99 cents.

Links please? I'm in a buying mood. Singles don't count, you said "trunkloads", so I'd settle for lots of 10+ actually selling for that little.

The people who use miniatures are going to want to paint miniatures. And they are all going to want to play Warhammer. Because its pretty much the best miniature game out there.

Don't want to paint. Don't want to play Warhammer. Warhammer is inferior to DDM, MonPoc, Hordes, WarMachine, HeroClix et al.

Drop this s*%#. Put your artists to work on pogs. Fire the moron who had the painted miniature idea. Promote someone who has the number for a printer who can do high quality die cut cardboard in their rolodex.

Pogs aren't even cool to the 3-year olds they were targeted to.

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is the way to go. If it is. Just point me to the post of ONE damn person asking for painted miniatures.

---> Paizo, would you please make pre-painted plastic miniatures?

Because I can link about 200 on your own damn boards of people asking for Official Pathfinder cardboard pogs.

Pretty sure we could exceed that, and by quite a bit, of people asking for pre-painted plastic minis.

Make the damn pogs and continue to destroy your competition. Sincerely. Whoever the brainchild of this abortion was needs to be let go.

You are going to make way more money off of this, and you could keep it all in house. Please. Listen to reason.

Is that what it's called these days?

Well, the implied assumption in Pres Man's argument was Joe Secondary-Market is only buying new cases direct from manufacturer, and not buying cheap from other dopes. If dude's buying Giant Frogs from OTHER consumers, then heck yes, he's making a profit on every damned thing.

Let's examine that (with DDM as an example).

Retail on a case of $14.99 boosters is $179.88 (12 boosters per case).

I don't recall what Alliance was selling cases for to the end market, but I'd assume it's probably around the standard 50% discount.

I can tell you that Internet-based discounters were dropping these things for $99.99 - $119.99 per case during the "up" market, so I don't think that it's unreasonable to assume an $80.00/case cost from the distributor to the primary market seller, but for the sake of math, I'll say $90.00/case.

A case of 12 8-piece boosters gives us 96 minis. At a buck a mini, that's $6 profit.

We know that a number of minis sell for well over this, allowing the extreme commons to be sold for under $1/each if desired.

A single $30.00 ultra or most-desirable rare and 11 not-as-desirable $5.00 rares gives us $85.

84 commons and uncommons averaging $1/mini gives us another $84, for a grand total of $169 return on $90 investment.

I'm seriously lowballing the singles pricing from that case, and I know that I made more than the retail price of a case lot by selling the unwanted portion of minis I got out of a case. Not always, but not infrequently.

The secondary market did a great job funding my purchases from the primary market.

Wait...Amazon.com can't figure out how to package a big, heavy book?

:boggle:

Sadly, no.

In some cases, it's definitely their lackluster packaging - a box that's too big, with a couple of air-filled packing material deals on the bottom or top (never both!), so the thing bounces around.

In other cases, the box is tight-wrapped in cardboard that has the tear-strip, but it has "bumpers" at the ends to protect from impacts. I've opened one of those, with the package not showing ANY damage, and found the book damaged, so in that instance, we're talking something that happened prior to or during packaging.

The latter situation has happened more than a couple times, so while better overall packaging is definitely a plus, I don't see it resolving ALL issues.

God no. The manufacturer would have to be an idiot to sell their miniatures at a loss. That $3.66 price point is, I have no doubt, carefully calculated to make an acceptable ROI. But I bet everyone at Hasbro from the North Korean slaves painting the miniatures to the CEO would love to sell the Heroslayer Hydra for the 40 bucks it pulls on the secondary market rather than the $3.66, and I'm just wondering vaguely why it's a nerd-crime for the game company to sell its product for X, but nobody bats an eye when random idiot Joe Secondary-Market sells for that much.

Because the secondary market for those hyper-expensive hyper-rares is far less than the secondary market for the more reasonably-priced minis.

I doubt very much that the primary market could have sold that hyper-expensive hyper-rare in any quantity to justify production.

I AM outright stating that the Secondary Market is reselling those 99 cent Giant Frogs at a loss because of the insane profits they're making on 40 dollar succubi and 17 dollar erinyes.

I'm going to have to disagree. I think that the secondary market was buying those Giant Frogs for a dime and reselling for 99 cents.

A quick look at MiniatureMarket's buy list (and I'm using them as they have buy-pricing quickly available - Paizo's buy list doesn't show buy-prices) shows that DDM seems to be at a premium right now, with the cheapest buy price at $0.15 (only one of those), and far more from $0.25 to $0.75.

There's a TON of HeroClix, and quite a few SWM selling for $0.20 and under (and quite a few selling for $0.10 and under).

Point being, at $1/common? There's profit being made. I don't believe for a second that the secondary market is selling ANYTHING at a loss, when it comes to singles.

Then Joe purchases another case from the manufacturer. The manufacturer makes another big sale, makes profit from the sale and continues to make business. Yeah, Joe is making good money of it, so what? That is called mark up.

EDIT: Are you suggesting that the manufacturer is selling the product at a lost in some assumption that the sellers are going to give them a share of their profits?

And another case. And another, and another, and another.

I have to ask, what's the difference between Joe Secondary-Market buying a case and reselling singles and Bob Primary-Market buying a case and selling boosters?

First hypothetical scenario: Joe and Bob aren't two seperate people. JoeBob is the primary AND secondary market seller. Paizo has done this - I just went and looked at store blog posts where they discussed opening up lots of booster packs to restock singles.

Second hypothetical scenario: Joe is buying FROM Bob, so that everyone is profiting - WotC from their sale to Bob, and Bob from his sale to Joe.

In the first scenario, less people are profiting. This is better somehow than more people profiting? Seems to me that the more people to profit, the more incentive there is to buy more product, produce more product, sell more product.

Maybe they can steal your guys new corner protectors you sent on the latest HB order. I liked those.

Heck, the styrofoam corner protectors they use for the CRB would be good, too.

Vic Wertz wrote:

We've verified that Amazon has an order in transit from our distributor.

Looks like I should read through *all* of my email before I pass stuff on. While it is true that Amazon does have an order in transit, they *also* have a reasonable number of copies in current inventory. The reason they've taken it off direct sale is that they've been receiving customer complaints about Core Rulebooks arriving damaged, so they're suspending sales while they reevaluate how they package customer orders that include the Core Rulebook.

Nice to hear something is being done about this.

LOVED the environmental books!

Dumb question: If entries became the property of WotC, so that we can't see Rich Burlew's entry, for example, how was Dawnforge able to be published if it was an official entry?

Surely it's not already time for a 5th printing?

The high-priced secondary market doesn't help a game at all because the only people buying there are those who are already buying the product to begin with.

The secondary market is NOT "high-priced". Some items are, but most are not.

From a post just today, from someone actually in the minis industry:

My guess is CC has the same problem we face with our Legendary Encounters line. The secondary market for DDM has made consumers think that a mini should cost a dollar, and $4-5 each is "outrageous".

And none of that money goes to the original company. New gamers don't buy anything on the secondary market because they don't even know to look for it. And even if they did stumble across it they'd be immediately turned off by the absurd pricing and jacked-up shipping.

While that money may not DIRECTLY benefit the original company, it does INDIRECTLY benefit the original company, because that secondary market is a product of the primary market.

Further, some of that money DOES go to the original company. Auggie's, MiniatureMarket, and most/all of the others were buying case lots and opening them to sell singles on that "secondary" market. Heck, I think I even saw Lisa claim that Paizo had done that.

And again, I point out: Absurd pricing and jacked-up shipping is a false claim. MiniatureMarket, for example, provides free shipping on orders over $75. CoolStuffInc. does it on orders over $100. Plenty of other sellers did and do provide free shipping.

As far as pricing of minis, when new minis were available in high supply, the only "expensive" minis were the chase rares. Old, out of print sets got more expensive as more time passed since their release, but that's to be expected - when demand exceeds supply, you see that.

Finally, the people buying on the secondary market did NOT only consist of those buying on the primary market. Quite a few secondary market sellers were doing a fair amount of business by assembling "encounter packs" for those that didn't want to buy random packs.

Lots of FLGS' were selling singles and "encounter packs".

So what companies do is jack up the price of the plastic minis to absurd levels so as to recoup the cost of the mold as quickly as possible.

So average of $1.87/mini is an "absurd level"? DDM medium/large boosters were $14.99 for 8, and huge packs were $21.99, making the average price $2.74 (with a guaranteed huge in every pack!).

That's absurdly LOW priced - and that's on the primary market. Commons and uncommons sold for significantly less on the secondary market when their sets were in print.

Heck, even Reaper's Legendary Encounters aren't priced at an "absurd level" - they're $3-$4 per PLASTIC mini.

None of this is opinion; it's history.

It's completely inaccurate or purposely misrepresented history.

Reaperbryan:

Who paints your pre-paints, out of curiosity? I've always wondered if this is a machine process, or if there's some outsourced group of painters?

Yes, we will have these on paizo.com and we are waiting for our first shipment to arrive before we can create the product and make the offering. I expect them to arrive sometime next week.

Excellent news! Looking forward to purchase!

Thanks!

Man, I didn't even think of the cost of oil equating to plastic costs (a big ol' "dur" on me for that).

Soo... pre-painted metal minis would be a more economically viable product, then?

In low volumes, quite likely.

So, the economic question for me is whether I consider ten-ish bucks for paint on a sculpt I'm not thrilled with to be good value for the benefit of NOT having to expend the time and effort it takes to paint minis.

For me, yes, absolutely.

Sure - and I never said the Reaper LE was a bad deal - it's not. It's just that it's the deal you're going to get if you want visible non-random packs of minis.

This is the disconnect, it seems.

A lot of folks seem want the relative cheapness of DDM - $1.87/mini in a blind pack of 8, when 8-mini boosters were $14.99 over the majority of the life of the series - rather than nearly twice the cost of $3.66/mini in a non-random visible pack of 3 orcs.

They refuse to accept that blind-pack randoms are ALWAYS going to be cheaper than visible non-randoms.

That's pretty pathetic, in my view. A former WotC employee seriously said that? I find it almost hard to believe.

I'm summarizing based on blog posts and other things I've read in the last 5 or so years.

Not that the campaign search was largely marketing--it clearly was even at the time--but that "tons of ideas that rivaled and exceeded Eberron in creativity were pitched and shot down by the powers that be"?

Based on memory, a comment referring to this brainstorming/idea-pitching was that it had taken place immediately prior to the announcement of contest. I don't want to suggest that it was during the contest or a contest entry.

The idea that anyone would grouse about losing this contest, or about how the winner made more money than they did, is just sort of sad.

Overall, the complaint's that I remember weren't about losing the contest, but about the overall situation.

In SKR's case, his comment specifically refers to the fact that they were paying out $100,000 to the winner of this contest (and I'm pretty sure the runner-ups got paid, too) while firing people:

Here's my chapter-by-chapter review of Eberron, WotC's new campaign setting book. While I was annoyed that one branch of WotC decided to have an open call for submissions to create the next campaign setting while there was a whole passel of creative people sitting in RPG R&D, and equally annoyed that this contest was offering a $100,000 prize while R&D (and the rest of the company) was doing layoffs. But I was able to put that aside and look at the book objectively ... after all, the material isn't what I was miffed about, it was the origin of the material.

I would like to point out that his is the only comment I can easily find at the moment, as various forums and blogs are long since gone or not showing in Google results.

He likes the setting, he doesn't complain about his ideas being better, and he was, by no means, one of the most vocal comments I have seen. He was quite objective in his positive review of the campaign.

Honestly, I don't find anything about his issue with the contest sad at all - I agree with it wholeheartedly. It's rather bogus to be firing people and using their salaries to pay for some contest.

Again, this is the general theme of the other complaints that I saw. These really weren't bitter spoil-sports complaining because they lost and someone got more money than them.

Any idea when you folks will be stocking these, or listing them in your catalog?

Invisimonsters

I fail to understand why people insist that pre-painted plastic minis cannot sell in the same manner and at the same price point as unpainted metal minis.

For the same reason that you're still buying metal minis. In low volume, metal is cheaper than plastic.

Plastic molds are reportedly more expensive, and don't last as long.

There's also a value perception issue - metal is "better" than plastic. Is it heavy? Then it's expensive, put it down. A lot of folks wouldn't pay the same price for pre-painted plastic as they would metal.

Yet again, this is why the secondary market is an important and viable solution for those that won't purchase in the primary market. You can buy exactly what you want. The only downside is that you're not necessarily going to be able to get that mini that you really want for a low, low price of only $4.99.

I guess what I fail to understand is the insistence of some that pre-painted plastic minis CAN sell in the same manner and price point (or lower price point) of unpainted metal miniatures.

I ask this with no snark or malice: Has there ever been an example of this happening to give people this idea? Surely, were it possible, someone would have done this at some point in the history of gaming.

I'm not sure I can think of any attempts to sell pre-painted plastic miniatures that tried to hit the trifecta of good, nonrandom, *and* cheap other than Legendary Encounters. Rackham's attempts with Confrontation and AT-43 fell afoul of unrelated problems - although they weren't, by any stretch of the imagination, cheap. Legendary Encounters recycles old metal sculpts, which I'm sure helps keep it cheap on Reaper's side of things, but I do wonder if the small size of the line indicates that it's "not profitable" or just "not profitable enough", which are two different ballgames. But they *do* sell.

Good joke! :)

As far as the minis go, Bryan from Reaper indicated that Legendary Encounters are selling "very well" in his post here.

He indicates that Reaper is expanding the line, and they have faith in it, which is awesome, but their seeming general dismissal by a lot of folks in these threads indicates that the line isn't meeting their needs - I would guess either in breadth of selection, or, more likely, price.

Now, that isn't to say that Reaper's prices are bad, by any stretch of the imagination. For the style of packaging (visible, non-random), I think the pricing is quite good. I just think that most people are completely unrealistic, and think that we should be paying, at most, a buck an orc/kobold/skeleton/whatever.

They want a huge gang of orcs, say a dozen of them, which is going to cost them $40+ from the Legendary Encounters list pricing. This is probably a shock when you consider that you were able to buy a dozen orcs from the DDM secondary market for $5 or $10 when they were plentiful.

I had a whole huge reply that I typed over, and I don't care to re-type.

I'll simply say, the market has proven your arguments incorrect and inaccurate.

The only way that pre-painted plastic miniatures will sell in enough volume to be profitable while still remaining affordable is random blind packs with chase rares - preferrably accompanied with a skirmish game to further drive the market and provide alternate uses for them.

If they'd sell any other way successfully, they would have.

DDM didn't start losing steam until they screwed up the skirmish game (conversion from 1.0 to 2.0) and all other attempts to kick-start it failed miserably.

Or do you mean that they effectively licensed these properties later?

I believe this is what he's referring to.

I'm fairly certain they never licensed out Ravenloft, and they ended the Dragonlance license when they were preparing to cut over to 4E.

-Ben.

Ravenloft got licensed out to Arthaus, an imprint of White Wolf, and published under the Swords & Sorcery line.

There's a lot of 3E/3.5 Ravenloft stuff out there, probably about as much as the Dragonlance stuff that MWP released.

I'd like to point out that by slamming WotC's creativity in those days, you're pretty much slamming a large chunk of the Paizo staff's creativity, since they were WotC's creative department back then.

I think more than a few people that were on staff at WotC when the contest that spawned Eberron came about have been quite vocal about it - specifically, how it was marketing hype (and successful marketing hype at that), and how tons of ideas that rivaled and exceeded Eberron in creativity were pitched and shot down by the powers that be in favor of this contest that paid out far more than the staff or regular freelancers ever got paid.

*You end up with a lot of extras that you don't need. Anything that isn't a rare or ultra-rare will typically have no trade value. With HeroClix, at one point, I had filled 5 case boxes with loose extra minis that weren't needed. Not only is that a lot of wasted money on my part (and a type of purchase much more difficult under the current economy) but also I ran out of storage room and ended up selling them at the Charity Auction at GenCon. The amount of money I spent per mini that was actually useful was absurdly high.

Extras/unwanted minis get sold, helping to supply the secondary market, subsidize your minis purchases, and fund additional minis purchases.

*Cost of collecting becomes so high that many gamers are excluded right from the get go; especially when the mini they want most ends up being a popular ultra-rare that goes for $100+ on the secondary market.

Unfortunately, this sounds harsh, but you can't please everyone, and I'd rather see some people pleased, than nobody pleased in an attempt to be "fair". Such is life in the collecting world.

*Many people will ignore the main product and juts buy the particular figs they want on the secondary market. The problem there is that the original company makes no money off an eBay sale, for example. That Undead Cyborg Gunslinging Ninja Dragon that just sold for $105? WizKids doesn't get a dime of that. When you start adding in chase figures, con-exclusives, purple rings and all other sorts of crazy crap, you're just pushing more and more people away.

The secondary market helps drive the primary market. This is something that people need to realize for many products. Michael Stackpole published a rant a long time ago complaining about the used book market, something publishers have actively tried to end at multiple times in history. They, too, don't get it. A thriving secondary market gives you a place to sell your unwanted wares, gives those who can't or won't pay retail a place to purchase the wares (and in many cases, be introduced to the wares in the first place, so that they can become primary consumers) and in the case of minis, provides an option for those that hate the random blind packs.

To claim that the original company makes no money off of the secondary market sales is ridiculous. The major minis sellers online were buying cases of minis by the pallet so that they could open them and supply the singles market, in addition to their purchases of minis from collectors.

The primary market made plenty of money from the sale of minis on eBay, it just wasn't a direct profit.

*HeroClix is a lousy model to base anything off of. They've almost gone under numerous times and was, at one point, essentially OOP for a year before NECA came in and bailed the game out.

Yet, it's still a product that sells, and it has always had a company around to pick it up. I wouldn't call it a lousy model - HeroClix has never gone under, the companies producing it have, and for reasons other than HeroClix. If the product wasn't marketable and profitable, NECA wouldn't be selling it.

WizKids, Tops, et al. had other products beyond just HeroClix/minis. HeroClix didn't kill those businesses.

*Randomised minis is basically like Wall Street speculation. Putting money into something without really knowing the end result. The heyday of prepainted plastics is gone. This isn't like when you had HeroClix, D&D, MechWarrior, Star Wars, Crimson Skies et. al. Most of those are gone now. the market couldn't aupport it during an economy far better than what we have now.

I think there's a lot of other factors that were resultant in the end of product lines like DDM/SWM. Others weren't popular enough to survive their attempts to cash in on the CMG fad (Crimson Skies is a great example).

I would point out that HeroClix is still thriving with a well-managed company behind them, and Monsterpocalypse still seems to be being produced, sold and played - and those don't really have the RPG market as a potential customer base outside the game.

I hope it all works out, I really do. But I'm afraid that the model is just going to follow the staus quo of what's always been done and has almost never worked in the long run.

Unfortunately, there's not another model that's a viable option.

As many have pointed out, visible non-random packs just don't work. It's those highly desirable "rares" that drive a lot of purchases, and ultimately, they subsidize a lot of the other minis.

If the visible non-random packs really would sell in the numbers that some folks posit, then Reaper's Legendary Encounters line would be far more expansive, and you'd probably see bigger packs for less money than we currently do.

Reaper's stuff is great, but you don't see the prices at nearly the DDM prices - per their website, goblins and kobolds are $2/each if you buy them in a pack of 3. Skeletons are nearly $3/each if you buy in a pack of 3, and orcs are nearly $4/each.

Back in the days of blind random packs of DDM, I'd pay $0.25 - $1.00 for goblins, kobolds, orcs, skeletons, bugbears, gnolls, etc.

I miss the good old days.

Can't wait to see what kind of MSH goodies you're going to unveil!!

I've set up a signed copy to ship out to you asap. Its going UPS ground so you will be able to track it once it ships.

Please keep the unsigned 4th printing by way of apology for our error!

Thanks for the quick response!

As for the 4th printing, if you're absolutely sure, then I'll have to pass it on to a new gamer so they can know the awesomeness that is Paizo and it's staff!

Thank you again!!!

Brian E. Harris wrote:

Folks, I know you're out through Monday, so I'll try to be patient.

USPS just delivered this order.

Instead of the signed first print that I payed $150 for, I received an unsigned fouth printing.

It was packed quite nice, with styrofoam corner protectors, which is great, but I'd really rather have signatures inside.

Please, please help.

Just wanted to let you know I am looking into this. I won't have an answer until our operations manager gets in, but I just wanted to let you know we will have an answer today.

Thank you!

Brian E. Harris wrote:

Why? Their posts don't threaten physical violence against another member.

Post the full thread and then lets review. And I stand my my donkey butt comment :-)

I'm not your research assistant, do it yourself. If you actually think this thread contains threats of violence made by anyone but yourself, you should be able to find them and post them.

Challenge time: You can't.

Include THEIR POSTS in your thread as well as mine donkey butt.

Why? Their posts don't threaten physical violence against another member.

Oh, and for the record, use of "donkey butt" to circumvent the filters? Double offense. You're still making personal insults, and you're avoiding the filters, both of which are against the rules here.

But, since you've already crossed the line into Internet Tough Guy mode, I suppose you really don't care about rules.

What I said was simply that people act differently on these forums than they would face to face. Growing up, I didn't talk to another man like people talk to each other on these forums. It is ridiculous...and I am not the one who needs to be banned.

Let's follow the trail:

I don't think a lot of you would be so sarcastic face to face. I am 6ft 210lbs and I know how to perform a rear naked choke :-)

What is sarcastic IRL? My point is that people have no idea who they are talking to on these forums and need to be a bit more civil about their exchange of ideas....because I know they wouldn't act like this in person to me....and it sounds like you as well.

Lets put this argument to the test...when would you like to meet? Do you ever go to Conventions?

I know how to book a flight.

I will see you there my friend....looking forward to it.

If you're really claiming that you weren't intending to insinuate that you'd beat someone up for something they said over the internet, that you were willing to travel to do so...I don't believe you.

bugleyman wrote:

Come find me, and I'll happily tell you you're acting like a moron to your face.

Did you read this thread Aaron? you think I am the one acting like a moron???? Go back and read it again...

So far, you're the only one to make or insinuate threats of physical violence against members of this forum, which I can only hope is grounds for immediate banning once Paizo staff returns.

Chill out.

In my experience, I am absolutely correct. In fact, you basically proved that. Why would people be going in during the holiday season? They are buying stuff for SOME ONE ELSE who requested something possibly from that store. They MEAN to go there. No one new is being introduced to the hobby or the location.

In fact, I basically didn't do anything of the sort, and you're wrong yet again. People walk into the stores, not knowing what the store is, actually ASKING the salesperson about the place, what it sells, because they saw the window displays.

Some are there for themselves, interested in the content displayed in the windows, others are there seeing displays that interest someone they're buying gifts for.

I have witnessed this myself on multiple occasions.

These ARE new people being introduced to the hobby/location.

Other smaller publishers do it.

Who cares? They do it in ways unacceptable to Paizo.