Can anyone explain to me the rationale behind making the character add on decks available at Gencon over the subscribers? Was it a case of they didn't know just how screwed they were with the printers?
I don't think that has been disclosed yet. Right now, all that is publicly known is character add-on decks were for sale at GenCon and there are now no Character Add-on decks in the Paizo warehouse.
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Thanks so much Hawkmoon. Any company or brand would be blessed to count on someone like you as their champion. No matter if its a rules query or organizational issue, you add insight, civility and diplomacy to the discussion without fail. And super quick to boot.
Paizo is lucky to have you as a fan.
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I don't think that has been disclosed yet. Right now, all that is publicly known is character add-on decks were for sale at GenCon and there are now no Character Add-on decks in the Paizo warehouse.
Base sets, add-on decks and class decks were available at GenCon. No idea how sales went but I got to think that most people picked up both the base and add-on when purchasing. So I'm inclined to think that the amount of base sets and amount of add-on decks they brought was not the same.
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Regardless, it's poor form to sell out of Character Add-on Decks at the convention before allocating enough to your subscribers.
It's similar to stores like Gamestop selling out of copies of a video game before you arrive, even though you pre-ordered it. What was the point of the pre-order if they're just going to sell off my paid-for copy?
Not everyone who received an e-mail earlier this month has been shipped to. I received an e-mail on 8/5 and my order is still "Pending." I'm hoping that it's just a problem with the Web site. We'll see if it comes this week. :)
Chief Technical Officer
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[reposted from here]
The reason for the lack of communication is that we didn't have even the most basic answers.
So let me tell you how everything was supposed to work. We turned the files for Skull & Shackles and the Class Decks a couple of months ago, and everything was supposed to be printed and in our warehouse by mid-July so that we could ship them to distributors, to subscribers, and to Gen Con so that as many people as possible would have everything in time for the August 14 release date.
In early July, it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, and we believed everything was running about two weeks late, so we made other plans. Instead of having everything come to our warehouse, we would have the printer ship directly to distributors, to subscribers, and to Gen Con, and everything would still be fine.
Towards the end of July, it became apparent that the things were coming out of the printer much slower than originally anticipated, so we would have to do an early set of shipments and a late set of shipments, but we believed that the early set of shipments would cover subscribers and Gen Con and allow us to ship distributors about half of their orders with the other half following in a couple weeks. And we still thought that first shipment would happen in the first weeks of August. We didn't communicate any of this because things like this happen *all the time*. There's always something—delays at the printer, delays in customs, trucks full of product catching on fire, you name it—and we usually work around it just fine.
In early August, we found out about the problem with the Class Decks, and posted a blog about it the very next day; at that time, we didn't realize that the problem extended to the Add-On Decks. At that point, we were telling the printer things like "as soon as you finish this many decks, send this many here, this many there, and that many there." The Monday before Gen Con, we finally got the S&S Base Set in our warehouse. And then Thursday, at Gen Con, I saw the Class Decks and the Add-on Decks for the first time. At that time, I believed that they were also just about to arrive in our Seattle warehouse, and every day since then, we've been expecting them. Well, they're still not here.
So the reason we didn't communicate with you last week is that we were trying to figure out what the status was—is stuff *really* arriving tomorrow?—and it wasn't until mid-week that we decided we needed to start acting like things *aren't* going to show up tomorrow. From there, we had to pull in a lot of people to solve the problem. How do we deal with these orders that have already been partially processed? We needed the tech team to tell us what they can and can't do given the technology and the limited time and we needed the finance team to get some questions answered by our credit card processor before we could even finalize a plan. So our plan came together at the end of last week. Then we had to figure out how to communicate it to the people who are affected by it. That involves coming up with multiple emails, because there are a couple of different situations, and coming up with multiple reports that ensure the right email is sent to the each person affected. It's a big deal, with a lot of moving parts, and it's taking a lot of people's time and effort behind the scenes, and even now, we still don't know when the missing product will turn up. Right now, we are focused on getting the word out, and make sure we can make everything as painless as possible for everyone. And then we'll be having a serious talk with the printer to make sure that this doesn't happen again six months from now.
I'm really sorry that people have been inconvenienced. Believe me, there's nobody on the planet less happy about this situation than I am. But please be aware that we are doing everything we can to make sure that people get their products as quickly as we can get them to them, and with as little frustration on your part as we can manage at this point. We really appreciate your patience.
Thanks so much for the update Vic, I'm sure everyone here appreciates it. Here's what I still don't get, and I hope someone here can also enlighten me - how did you have a sizeable batch of add-on decks already available for sale at Gen Con? Was the printing supposed to be done in two waves or were you slowly receiving shipments of the add on decks for the past couple of months and you decided to take them to Gencon assuming that the rest of the shipment was coming?
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Chief Technical Officer
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The Class Decks and Add-On Decks were drop-shipped from the printer and arrived at Gen Con just as the floor opened. I was quite surprised to see them, frankly. It was a relief, and at the time, I thought that was a good sign that they'd be waiting in our warehouse when we got back from the show.
We have never had any Class Decks or Add-On Decks in our Seattle warehouse. I don't even have a sample copy of any of them at my desk. Now the question is whether our first shipment of them will arrive from the printer before or after our truck carrying the leftovers from Gen Con turns up later this week.
Thanks so much for the update Vic, I'm sure everyone here appreciates it. Here's what I still don't get, and I hope someone here can also enlighten me - how did you have a sizeable batch of add-on decks already available for sale at Gen Con? Was the printing supposed to be done in two waves or were you slowly receiving shipments of the add on decks for the past couple of months and you decided to take them to Gencon assuming that the rest of the shipment was coming?
I think that the printer sent stock directly to Gencon and was supposed to also send stock to the Paizo warehouse. Vic said the first add-on decks he saw were on the 14th at Gencon. So they thought they would also get stock for the subscribers/pre-orders but they didn't arrive.
The Class Decks and Add-On Decks were drop-shipped from the printer and arrived at Gen Con just as the floor opened. I was quite surprised to see them, frankly. It was a relief, and at the time, I thought that was a good sign that they'd be waiting in our warehouse when we got back from the show.
We have never had any Class Decks or Add-On Decks in our Seattle warehouse. I don't even have a sample copy of any of them at my desk. Now the question is whether our first shipment of them will arrive from the printer before or after our truck carrying the leftovers from Gen Con turns up later this week.
Cool, thanks for explaining everything, much appreciated.
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I didn't realize the Add-on decks were also just arriving then. I knew the Class Decks had just arrived and they had a limited amount of them. In fact, the early access people and the press didn't get them because they had just shown up prior to the official door opening. (We saw Paizo staff putting them up on the displays as there were peeks into the hall.)
ughh!
Thanks, Vic, for telling us that. I think most of us were angry because of the silence. We knew something was wrong but not how or why or when. We know Paizo cares about it's customers and wants to get us our games.
