Thoughts on the D&D

Role-playing game continue to be in the doldrums for us, with sales down 22% over the last twelve months. RPG sales, if you didn't know, are really about Dungeons & Dragons, along with a large number of very creative games that from a sales perspective, are clever art projects. So is nobody playing the venerable Dungeons & Dragons? Is D&D 4 suffering, like so many hope it is? It's complicated but we may have had a glimpse of what's going on with the release of Player's Handbook 3.

PHB 3 was the first book to receive the early release treatment from Wizards of the Coast. No, it's not related to over-crowded prisons, the new program rewards core WOTC stores by providing books about a week and a half earlier than everyone else. All you have to do is have a very basic level of organized play to participate. In exchange, we beat out the Internet, the big book stores, and those who dabble with RPGs like comic book stores without organized play. So how many people came from these other venues to buy up PHB 3? Not many that I could tell, but a different group of players arrived and reluctantly picked up a copy, DDI subscribers.

DDI, or Dungeons & Dragons Insider is Wizards of the Coast's excellent online service. For as little as $6/month, when you pay a year up front, you get access to a host of useful tools which includes all the published materials. Unfortunately for us, many players have found the dead tree editions of rules to be rather obsolete compared to the electronic format. Unfortunately for WOTC, entire gaming groups often share one account, but that's a problem of their own making. Anyway, DDI subscribers came in, looked at the book, and hemmed and hawed about whether to get it, since it wasn't going to be available to them through DDI for a little while. And that's when a chemical reaction in my brain altered ever so slightly and I decided that I would no longer be the D&D 4 cheerleader. I stopped caring. Or more accurately, I've stopped carrying their water.

D&D is the undisputed leader of role-playing, no matter your opinion of its lack of creativity, the merits of THAC0 or what have you. It's the Microsoft of the RPG world (I refer to it as Office, since Magic would be WOTC's Windows, on the short list of profitable products). That said, I don't care what version anyone plays and I plan to support as many as possible. I honestly sell more discontinued 3.5 than most non D&D RPGs and I've decided to embrace Pathfinder. I've got 1E and 2E core books in stock, finding them more profitable than a lot of in-print options.

Paizo promises to be more retailer friendly this year. At the moment, they compete directly with us, both with their subscription model AND their online store which attempts to be the one stop shop for online gamers. Because of this, I've grudgingly carried Pathfinder since its release, but it has been rather half-hearted, mostly because I'm told by my customers how they already have that new Pathfinder book that just arrived in their mail. I sell a lot of dice to Pathfinder players. It makes me a little crazy. So I hope Paizo changes, as promised. I just ordered the entire Pathfinder line for the store, so I'm going to give them a second chance.

These two companies represent a stupid amount of the role-playing world. Both appear committed to retailer success while undermining retailers with a direct sales product that out competes us. Both have organized play programs (come play with us on Thursday nights). It bodes ill for the role-playing industry, but does that really surprise you?  Look at the shelves. How many of these publishers have day jobs? How many are owned by a bigger entity and essentially dabble with pen and paper gaming? How many have a much more profitable other business that propels them? It doesn't means we don't love them or their games (Pathfinder is brilliantly written, dammit). It's just a business fueled by passion and a lack of common sense. I'm intimately familiar with this model.

The New, New, New, New, New, Stuff

According to purchase order 5,887, arriving today:

Board Games

Merchants Board Game (Catalyst): Merchants focused on a theme of Old World trading in the 16th century. While the over-all theme of tall-ship trading remains unchanged, all new art has been generated, focusing the items traded towards an American market. A classic German-style resource management style of play, with rules that are read and understood in minutes, but a depth of play that allows for a lot of fun repeat play.

Warhammer Invasion LCG: Assault on Ulthuan
This deluxe expansion brings two new factions to the forefront of the war for the Old World. Assault on Ulthuan contains two core starter decks of forty cards, as well as two capital boards for the Dark Elves and High Elves. Players of the existing factions will find plenty to aid them as well; new cards for the other four factions, plus a handful of neutrals, bring a host of new strategies, tactics, and deck-building options for each of the six races in the game.

New from Last Week: Dixit 2, Dixit (restock), Cyclades, Mow, Canal Mania, Brief History of the World, Frontline D-Day, Tower of Mystery.

Classic Games: Restock of chess sets and cribbage. Large Kem card order arriving next week.

Jigsaw Puzzle: Ravensburger restock last week, including new Puzzle Stow & Go.


Role-Playing Games

Rogue Trader: Lure of the Expanse:  
You are a Rogue Trader, an explorer with a sacred mandate to venture beyond the limits of the Imperium in the name of the Emperor. Whether you live the life of an outlaw privateer, or as a scion of an ancient noble line, as a Rogue Trader you have the power and the tools to challenge all rivals for supreme control of the riches lurking in the uncharted reaches of space.

Now, you can bring the light of the Emperor to the darkest corners of the Koronus Expanse. Lure of the Expanse features three adventures set amongst the unexplored stars beyond the Imperium. Wealth and glory await those with the courage to venture into the farthest reaches of space.
 

Battletech: Technical Readout 3060,  Record Sheets 3075, Record Sheets 3060.

Pathfinder Restock. Because we just can't keep them on the shelves lately. Kingmaker: Stolen Land adventure path part 1 is still in stock along with Flip Mat: Swamp.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Game Master's Toolkit  (restock)



Miniature Games


Sale: We've got a clearance sale with buckets full of miniatures at 40-90% off.  This includes Reaper, a lot of "indie" minis, and even some 40K, Lord of the Rings and Warhammer Fantasy. Painting supplies have also been thrown into the mix, including Vallejo Model Color overstock.

Malifaux:

• Peacekeeper
• Canine Remains - Pack 1 (2 pack)
• Canine Remains - Pack 2 (2 pack)
• Base Inserts - Bayou - 30mm
• Base Inserts - Bayou - 40mm
• Base Inserts - Bayou - 50mm
• Rulebook and card pack restock

Warhammer 40K: Blood Angels (Friday): Codex: Blood Angels, Blood Angels Death Company, Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard, Blood Angel Baal Predator, Lemartes, Guardian of the Lost, The Sanguinor.

One of the key things about the Blood Angels is the duality of their nature - their noble intentions and desire to defend Mankind, pitted against their fight to control the Red Thirst (a genetic curse that drives them into an insane fury) that boils within them. The sculptors have done a great job of showing this on the models themselves: the Death Company appear sombre with skulls and symbols of death adorning their armour, while the Sanguinary Guard's armour is covered in angelic wings and wreaths.

Magazines: Miniature Wargames #323


Collectible Card Games

Yu-Gi-Oh: Absolute Powerforce SE: 3 booster packs and 1 of 2 super rare cards.

Religion and Role-Playing

I've spent some time studying religion academically and wanted to pose some scenarios for religious characters in role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons. More often than not, a religion is tacked onto a character or it's chosen based on the game mechanic benefit. Cleric used to be the most necessary and least desirable class to play, so it's not surprising that so many clerics are boring, as many were played under duress. Reading Gods and Magic for Pathfinder brought up a variety of non-standard scenarios for why someone would worship a god. Here are some ideas to make a religious character (or denier) more interesting:

City God. In ancient times, it wasn't unusual for a city to have a patron god. The god may be of something the city is known for, like commerce or agriculture, or there may be one "big" god in the pantheon with a different name in each city. As the fortunes of the city rose, the worship of the god spread. You might decide that your character strongly associates with his town and its deity. Perhaps he's not particularly religious but sees the faith as a means to power. This is a setting issue, so talk it over with the game master.

Local Temple. The idea that someone would chose their religion is a mostly modern invention (except for Dilettante below). In places like medieval Tibet, the local temple was essentially the feudal lord of the region. Those who were destined for a religious life practiced the local religion. Rivalry was not uncommon. Likewise, most people nowadays practice the religion of their family. This could be a wonderful background tie in for the cleric whose a seventh generation priest of the sun god. Likewise, a doubting Thomas can be fun; someone who isn't sure the religious life is right for them. Give them a secret vice. Perhaps plan a crisis of faith and work towards it, ending with a character class change or a re-invigoration of their faith.

Fallen Religion. Sometimes religions are expelled or discredited, often because their priests get too involved in politics. A disgraced cleric is an excellent role-playing opportunity. Perhaps his god died in a cosmic war, but he refuses to give up, choosing to worship general aspects of the god as his domains to gain power, but still venerating his god in name. Perhaps he worships a religion of a deposed empire, tolerated by the new rulers only because the populace would revolt otherwise. It's important to be somewhat obstinate about maintaining faith to provide the most role-playing opportunities.

Dilettante. The exception to local worship are those with power or money to travel and sample other faiths. Many modern religious sects borrowed extensively from other religions. A character might be a devout follower of a foreign religion or if motivated, may wish to include foreign ideas into an existing faith. Imagine a rich noble cleric who visits a far off country to study the ways of their sun god with hopes of returning to include those practices (possibly more powerful) in his home pantheons sun god worship. He may be looked on as a savior who can re-invigorate the faith, a heretic with incorrect views, or a pure opportunist, intent on raw power. Plan on how the character can plot their ascendancy across the levels. Attempt to rise in church power, create an inclusive new sect, or split the faith. The alignment of the religion will likely determine the outcome.

Pantheistic. One decision to make is how dedicated a character is to one god versus the entire pantheon. The Eberron setting, for example, frowns on a monotheistic dedication to a single god, unusual for Dungeons & Dragons (monolatrism is the correct term, since it's acknowledged that the other gods still exist). You can make an interesting character by mixing this up. Try a devout character who deviantly worships the entire pantheon or a "heretic" who chooses one god over all others. A character might choose to focus on a domain or two, like good and justice, taking inspiration from gods that exemplify these characteristics. Perhaps there's a practical reason why worshiping a single god or the pantheon is forbidden. I once played an Eberron character who worshiped a sun god of a slightly different alignment. He experienced such painful burning from the gods light during prayer that it led him to some extreme behavior.

Monotheism. Not venerating one god over others (monolatrism), but believing that there is one true god, whoever that is, would be an extremely controversial position. When faith is manifest in observable power, it takes quite a piece of work to deny the obvious. Go for it.

Philosophical Positions. Planescape provided a variety of philosophical positions about religion, readily integrated into a character background. Athar believe that gods are just really powerful beings and not worthy of worship. Godsmen took a normally heretical view that your goal should be to attain godhood rather than worship a god. Bleakers denied the existence or relevance of any religion, an astonishingly controversial position in a medieval world. These are excellent philosophies for non-religious characters, but imagine including one with a religious character!

Urban Choices. I like to give my cities tons of gods, Lankhmar style, with more gods than can be counted. At such a cultural cross roads, there will be some gods or even pantheons that rise to prominence, usually for political reasons, but veneration of other gods may be opportunities for someone without strong political connections or money. Perhaps the destitute character of the discriminated race finds a means to power and purpose through an obscure foreign religion.

Good vs. Evil. As much as possible try to stretch the reasoning for why a character would worship a non-normative god. What in his background drove him to worship the god of the dead? Was he so appalled by undead that he wished his ancestors to rest peacefully? Does he worship the god of pestilence and disease because he lost his family to illness when he was young? Don't just envision a well intentioned good cleric worshiping a "bad" god, what kind of deep character flaws can you give your cleric who worships a good god? Like anything in the game, it's often fun to come up with extreme examples. Heroes are already extreme, try to stretch it a little further.

 Baal, or whatever they call him in your town

Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods and Magic (review)

In preparation for a Pathfinder campaign, I've been reading Sean K. Reynold's Gods and Magic. This book is designed to be the pantheon for the Pathfinder world. Normally I find RPG religion books to be somewhat disappointing. The key with religion in fantasy games is they need to walk a fine line.

Religion needs to capture the essence of a faiths beliefs. It has to be realistic, yet coherent and accessible. Real world ancient religions encompass hundreds or thousands of years of adaptation and synthesis of clashing cultural ideas. They often don't correlate with our modern sensibilities. Anyone who has tried to create a pantheon for an RPG by reading real books knows that it's difficult to come up with a system that's both believable and that works in-game.

The standard D&D approach is a rather sterile affair, with simplistic gods with a portfolio, a preferred weapon, and some domains. There's little flavor or sense of realism as to why anyone would want to worship such a being other than the reward of raw power. It's an almost cynical approach to religion. Adding the necessary flavor isn't easy though without losing function. One of my favorite D20 books of all time is Book of the Righteous, by Aaron Loeb, a book on religion that attempts to balance usability with realism.

Book of the Righteous is a tome with very detailed information on every god in its pantheon, schisms in the faith, sample prayers, and even specialized holy orders. It's a fantastic book and I use it as my default pantheon for all my D&D campaigns. However, it's rather dense, and like a lot of books with too much information, the GM ends up reading it while the players just take your word for it. I love Book of the Righteous, but it's somewhat old school in its design philosophy, providing far too much information than necessary, as interesting and clever as it might be.

Gods and Magic strikes a balance. First, it's a small softcover book of 62 pages, compared to the 320 page tome that's Book of the Righteous. You honestly shouldn't expect much from this small book (also with a small $17.99 price tag), which is one reason why it's so surprisingly good. It's concise. Each god gets two pages, including artwork of their aspect and holy symbol. You get the usual game mechanics like spheres, alignment, favored weapons and how it fits in the Pathfinder world. An introduction explains the gods role in the pantheon and how they interact with their worshipers. Where we get a lot of creativity is in the church structure of each deity.

We're given information on how non-cleric worshipers participate, including druids, rangers, monks and paladins. Restrictions or allowances are thrown in. For example, certain armor may be worn by a class that might not normally be allowed and certain spells associated with the deity are available at a level lower. Each deity also has a low level signature spell to allow its clerics to add additional flavor to the game. Between the fluff and the mechanics, anyone playing a religious character is set to showcase their characters faith. There's more though.

The magic item section is full of interesting signature items that also match a gods portfolio. Thankfully, the magic items section takes the new spell philosophy and provides inexpensive magic items that are likely to see play at low levels. Most items are in the 3,000-5,000gp range. There's nothing worse than flavorful magic items that are simply too powerful to ever see use in a campaign. If I were playing a cleric, I would expect to eventually have one of these signature items, even if I had to make it myself.

Where this book really shines is tone. It walks the line of providing a clear pantheon, accessible to the game, without relying on clear cut answers that lose that sense of realism. Religion is vague by nature and one of the worst things a game book on religion can do is codify it to death so it feels like science. The gods are inscrutable for the most part, yet the writing gives us a feel for their place in the multiverse. There's a satisfactory calculated vagueness. The "Other Gods" chapter deals with a lot of realistic gods you might read in mythology, but wouldn't normally want to include in game. 

For example, Alseta, the goddess of doorways is very much like the Roman Janus. Does your cleric really want to worship the god of doorways? Of new beginnings and endings? Not really, but adding this god provides flavor to the setting without attempting to shoehorn the real world into game mechanics.  This section also provides various evil gods that are really just adventure seeds for the DM and racial gods that add flavor but aren't intended for general worship (at least not in this book). I was also happy to see a "Cthulhu-esque" section on alien gods, important for sorcerers and always good for some reality twisting adventuring.

Gods and Magic is a fantastic edition to your 3.5 or Pathfinder shelf. I'm sticking with my Book of the Righteous pantheon, but man am I stealing the great ideas in this little book. It's a well designed, modern approach to religion in role-playing games, providing flavor in a useful and creative format and readily accessible game mechanics. That it's a great read with typical high quality Paizo artwork isn't a bad thing either.

More on Turn Rates (Tradecraft)

Obtaining four turns of inventory was important to me, but in my head, I really didn't know what that looked like. I know a lot of stuff sells at one turn, and then there's a bunch of stuff over four turns to even that out, but how much of each? I spent a couple hours this morning crunching numbers and here's what I came up with:

Items Sold: Single turn items comprised nearly half of all items sold last year. Items selling 2-4 times were another 25% and the final 25% were items selling over four times. That wasn't too surprising until I looked at sales dollars.

Revenue by Turns: Looking at revenue by turn rate was where I got a surprise. Turns of 1-4 were 75% of items sold, but only 25% of my revenue. Sales over 4 turns accounted for 75% of sales, while only 25% of what we carried. This turned my understanding of turns on its head. Yes, an average of 4 is a worthy goal, and most of what I sell will fall far under that turn rate, but the revenue comes from much higher turning items well above that threshold. In fact, about half of sales are from items with over 20 turns and a quarter of sales are from items over 100 turns. And don't forget the handful of items that sell well over 2,000 times each year, such as Mexican Coke, bottled water and Magic 2010 booster packs.

This is an industry that prides itself on product knowledge and carrying the exotic and hard to find. We carry more individual items than a Costco. However, half of what I sell is essentially window dressing, a "merchandising" expense to drive the high volume sales. Yet, what would happen if a specialty store dropped that 75% of below average merchandise? Is it desirable to cut back on those items? Surely you don't want single turn items cluttering up your store. How much do these 75% single turn items contribute to higher turn sales?  Why can't a big box store sweep down and absorb the 60% or so of sales that meet their turn threshold?

Calendar and Forum Change

We've integrated our store calendar into our website using Google Calender. Please check it out. It's more useful than our old calendar, hosted on our web forum. If you use Google Calendar, you can copy Black Diamond Games events to your own calendar, add reminders, sync it to your phone or whatever clever Googly things you can come up with. I may also include Google Calendar links on the monthly event email. I haven't used a calendar for years, so if you have suggestions on how we can leverage Google Calendar, please let me know. Also let me know how you use BDG events with your calendar so we can better assist you. Michael did all the work, by the way. I just added the finished calendar to the website.

The web forum is gone. It has outlived its usefulness and it was a finicky, spam magnet piece of junk at best. The forum tab on our website now forwards directly to our Facebook page. Facebook might not be your thing, but with over 350 followers, it's where most BDG discussions happen. I'm pretty sure we have more followers than any other game store, and I've embraced Facebook as a major focus of our marketing. Several ads draw in new fans all the time, always local people with interests in the games we sell (or local friends of current fans).

There is probably more blog discussion on Facebook now than the blog itself (unfortunately divided between my personal and business blog import). That said, about two thirds of our old forum discussion was event related and unfortunately, Facebook probably isn't a great place for that conversation. There is no way to link Google discussions with calendars. We'll see how we can accomplish that going forward. Social media continues to morph and change and we're happy to experiment.

Thanks again for caring enough to keep up with store happenings!

Why Game Stores Suck, Part 2

The game store is not a flexible business model. It might sound like an esoteric argument, but I believe the reason for this is game products are priced using a manufacturers suggested retail price or MSRP. This is in contrast to "net" priced products, in which the manufacturer has a wholesale price and leaves it up to the retailer to come up with a retail price. Why is this important? MSRP is a retailer straight jacket. Even if you do everything right, become profitable, overcome the pressures from the Internet, and advance to a bigger store, MSRP is likely to stifle your business if you're in a higher cost environment.

There are many potential retail business models. If you look around at toy stores, for example, you can find high end toy stores in expensive areas, hole in the wall toy stores in junky malls, and everything in between. They can do this because they have control over their pricing. When confronted with high costs, they can envision a business model that adjusts with higher prices. The same toy will vary in price by five to fifteen percent or so, depending on where you buy. The retailer sets the price. The consumer decides if they're willing to engage. When you have a trade where the MSRP is enforced, like with books and games, you have a one size fits all business model with no flexibility.

Game store owners have a general idea of what their fixed costs must be to survive. These costs are based on a rather Midwestern series of assumptions about reasonable rent and wages. Game stores who want to be "pure" game stores, without diversifying, need to fit within these parameters of fixed cost assumptions or suffer the consequences (failure or diminished profits). MSRP defines where a store can be and who they can hire. There is no wiggle room without moving away from the game trade model in some way. Meanwhile, some costs rise disproportionately, such as credit card processing fees, electricity and health care (at least for the owners).

There is no ability for game store owners to increase their margins with pricing, as the MSRP dictates their pricing. They have no tool to adjust income, so they frantically bat at the flames of their ever increasing costs. When a product has an MSRP, customers become highly sensitive to this price. They'll certainly seek bargains, but most won't ever go above it. Only a rube buys over an obvious MSRP. Net pricing provides elasticity in pricing and allows stores to increase prices to match their business model. Prices float at a rough baseline instead of a hard number. This floating average can be the difference between failure and success.

So in urban areas, with higher costs, we generally have two types of game stores: The big, pretty good game store and the small, crappy game store. The big store is pretty good because they've managed to leverage their "economy of scale" to best deal with fixed costs and fixed pricing. Still, those big stores are not making as much money as you might think. All the ones I know make nothing like the profit percentages of Midwestern stores.

The small urban stores are often in bad areas (the Midwestern rent baseline) and suffer from being small. The distribution model for games also punishes them by providing an MSRP discount they can't fully leverage. Their cost of goods are likely higher than the the bigger store, especially during their formative years. Net pricing would fix that too. MSRP and the distribution model punishes new stores and reduces competition, another reason why you don't hear veteran retailers complain too loudly about it. So the crappy small game store is actually the Midwestern model gone urban. It plays by the rules, but the rules are against them. When I had a smaller store, it became clear to me that I had to move up or quit.

Regional income variances are not enough to overcome the fixed costs and fixed pricing associated with this model. MSRP is a one size fits all model that's more appropriate to the Midwest, with lower costs, especially rent and labor. The game industry suffers because of this. Larger retailers are poised to prosper, but not as much as they could with a net priced system. MSRP creates a kind of uniformity in what's possible in the retail game trade. It stifles retailer innovation and perpetuates game store stereotypes.

What's the solution? Not everything can and will be net priced. Books, for example, are dependent on the MSRP of the book trade. See where that has gotten them? Also, not everything is currently at MSRP. For example, jigsaw puzzles, classic games and mass market games tend not to have a MSRP. The caveat is that if a company sells direct off their website, their price is the de-facto MSRP. The solution will come from manufacturers who decide to promote the game industry with net pricing. They will simply not have an MSRP for their product. A few do this now, but it could increase if enough find this issue important. I think a thriving and diverse retail game trade is important, do they?

Finally, many game stores have identified the MSRP problem and have found innovative solutions. For example, diversifying into a broader range of games outside the hobby game industry can be successful. Focusing on classic games and puzzles is very difficult, but to the extend you can do it, it's much more profitable. Hobby supplies can be lucrative as well as toys if you have the market. Used games and the "entertainment model" of buying and selling at flexible prices has apparently saved a handful of game stores in the Midwest. Card shop have identified Magic singles as the method for boosting their margins. In other words, they run from MSRP and embrace flexible pricing where they can find it. Game retailers have identified that shrinking margins are killing them. They just don't agree on how to fix the problem. Many adapt without knowing why.