Blog @ Canadian Geek

There’s a number of challenges that face roleplayers these days.  The lack of time, the lack of ‘new blood’, getting/keeping a gaming group alive are just a few of the things that we find ourselves dealing with.  And that only covers face-to-face!

As primarily a play-by-post roleplayer, I find the time excuse (generally) to be moot.  With that said, it is easy to become overwhelmed if you join/run too many games.  But if you know what your limits are, you can organize your day to put in the 10-20 minutes to put up a post or a flurry of posts in a game or two.  The problem with play-by-post is the time.  Things aren’t always as fast as you’d like them to move.  For instance, I just ran a sample Star Wars Saga combat session, which took almost a month.  Granted, I did let the players ‘take their time’ because I was writing exams.  In both of my games, I’m trying to get a posting rate of 3 times a week, which I’m having difficulties achieving due to my players, when I really should just post without them if they are unable to notify me of their absences. 

When trying to get new people to play, some common responses are:

• RPGs are too complicated (”I don’t know all the rules” / “I can’t create a character” / etc.)
• RPGs are too boring (”It’s just a bunch of people sitting around a table munching snacks?”)
• RPGs are too time consuming (”It’s going to take hours, and we still won’t have gotten anywhere!”)

Yes, time is always a factor - but if its something you enjoy doing, you’ll find time for it.  Of course, if this is someone who’s never played before, you might want to introduce them into a one-shot in the system you’d like to play in or play a pick-up game that is designed for one-session play.  The point being - you can get somewhere in just a few hours.  Then, if you liked the one-shot/short-session game, try a multiple-session game.  Going back to my original statement - if you like it, you’ll find time to do it.

RPGs are boring…well, I guess I can’t provide an argument to that.  If you don’t like it, that’s fine - you don’t have to do it.  But really, how is ’sitting around a table eating snacks’ any different than any other thing you do with your friends?

Finally - the game is too complicated.  I won’t deny that many games are very complex.  There are some that aren’t.  Even with that said, once you learn one system, you generally can run pretty much any sort of game you’d like (to varying degrees of success).  If you learn the d20 system, you’ve got D&D, Modern, Mutants and Masterminds, and Star Wars pretty much covered.  Sure, each have their own ‘tweeks’, but the basic mechanics are the same.  The same goes for the World of Darkness games - you’ve got the full supernatural spectrum covered.  So, once you’ve learned something, you can play a range of games.  Of course, if you’ve never played, it can take some time to learn.  Personally, I think the best way to learn is to just start playing.  If you’re trying to introduce someone to gaming, help them to make them a character (ask questions like, what do you want to be good at, etc), or have the GM give them a character skeleton (allow the new person to customize by providing the personality and background).

These are just a few ideas to help introduce new people to games.  I certainly don’t know how to solve all the problems.  Hopefully, the gaming community can continue to discuss how to introduce new players to our hobby of tabletop gaming.

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I see on forums (forii?) across the webernet with people questioning how and why certain stores “only” get certain things, why things are missing, why one store gets books a week or two after another store, etc. I thought I would take this week to answer some of those questions instead of going on about how much I hate the “Christmas” season and, in kind, humanity in general during said season.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

“There were 2 covers for “Amazing Ultra-Men” but my comic shop only got the ‘B’ cover.”
“My comic shop didn’t get “All-New Fierce Guy” this week but Ted’s Comics did.”

Both of these questions have a simple answer - human error. Now, where the human error occurred, that can vary. First, there’s the store owner/manager/trained monkey who has to record the order, either in the old-fashioned pen and paper method that gets mailed or faxed to the distributor or entered into a data form that gets emailed to the distributor. They may miss a line or miss-type something that results in that book not getting ordered.

The second error could occur when the product becomes available and the peoples in the distribution warehouse are “pulling” product for stores. This is a pretty simple process, in essence, where good folk read a pull sheet and grab that quantity of a certain type of comic and put it into a box for Joe Retailer. What can get complicated is when you think about the fact there are 3500 plus stores in North America who are all getting their comics “pulled” at the same. Every week. All year long. And pull sheets aren’t sorted by title; they are generally sorted by code numbers, making the potential for boo-boo’s even greater.

It’s got to be a bit of a tedious process and I can easily see how Billy could have thought that he pulled 40 copies of “The Mighty Omegas” for Alex’s store in Wyoming but accidents happen and with several million comics a month being distributed across NA, fatigue and human error is bound to occur.

Oh, and then there’s the shipping companies. I have gotten boxes for stores in other provinces and other stores have gotten boxes for me. It happens.

“The latest trade of “Unbelievable Mutant Mommas” was supposed to be out last week but it didn’t ship. When’s it gonna be out?”

When it’s late, it’s late. We, the lowly retailers, don’t get always get updates when late product is going to finally arrive. Sometimes we do but with the sheer number of books shipping in a week/month/year that are running late, we just can’t remember them all and, no, there’s no quick reference master list with that type of info.

This kinda goes hand-in-hand with, “How much will it be when it arrives?” or “When you were selling this product 4 years ago, how much did you sell it for?” A good business person knows a lot about their product. An excellent business person knows an awful lot. But in the end, there’s only so much we can know and sometimes even less we can instantly access to give you some instant gratification. Sometimes, we need a moment or it may require some research and if it does, please be patient. If a busy business owner is willing to take the time to find it out for you, cut them some slack while s/he interrupts what they were doing to tell how much your $3 comic costs exactly (yes, it does happen).

“My store carries “The Excellent East Coast Bashers” but not “Ted Humphries - Squirrelly Avenger”. Why don’t they carry both?”

In short, there’s a lot of f***ing comics out there kid and we only have so much money to buy stock. The key to that sentence is that we BUY our product. Whatever you see on the shelf, we had to purchase and cannot return or exchange. Once it’s in our store, it’s ours forever.

Back in the day, newsstands (drugstores and the whatnot) all got their comics from regional distributors and could tear off the covers of unsold comics and return them for credit. While eliminating the risk of over ordering, the profit margins were small and with the extra paperwork to get credit for unsold product, the effort outweighed the return and many stores got out of selling comics.

From there stemmed the “Direct Market”, where retailers would buy the product outright for bigger margins. This led to stores being able to support themselves by just selling comics, assuming they were savvy enough to know what to buy and how much. These days most retailers cry out for huge margins and full returnability not realizing the absurdity of the request.

“Can you order…?”

This question can end a million different ways but the answer is generally always the same. If it had a street date of more than a couple of months ago, it’s no longer available. Most companies make their product, comic or toy, based on initial orders from distributors. Sometimes they make a little extra but there are very few distributors who “stock” merchandise. Once the product is released, that’s usually all there is. The exceptions to these tend to be trades and Manga, mainly due to their lack of collectibility, which are often reprinted and kept available.

There’s more (there always is) but you probably have better things to do. I don’t, so ask me what more you would like to know about this wacky, madcap industry called comics. Until then I shall remain your

Shepherd