Probably been asked but why can't I get a copy of this in the UK?

Even my usual fail safe of using amazon isn't working. Any suggestions of where I can get a copy that won't involve scary shipping costs?

Thanks

Perhaps get the PDF version? No shipping costs and maybe even a bit cheaper to start with. If you have to have a physical copy, print it out either on your home printer or the nearest kinkos (or whatever they have in the UK)

I assume its not available through Amazon.co.uk for the same reasons it is not available (new) though Amazon.com

As I understand it, Catalyst will not sell directly to Amazon, because in the long term the Amazon discount policies are bad for the RPG hobby. Steep online discounting, takes sales from brick-and-mortar game shops, which are key to the long term survival of the hobby.

Now if you can't get it from a local gaming shop, that is an issue I assume Catalyst would want to rectify. I would contact them through the website to ask about UK sellers. Personally, I would get the PDF if you cannot wait for the book to arrive through local distribution channels.

Or get both; I cannot afford to do this for any other games, but I buy the PDF books from Catalyst when they are released online, and later buy a printed copy from my FLGS. I like reading the printed copy, and searching the PDF copy. I also feel that keeping the SR publisher doing well is important to my future gaming happiness

Runner's Companion will be available in the UK soon. There appears to have been a little bit of a shipping SNAFU with the major distributor's order. It's either in the process of being corrected or has been corrected -- our logistics guy is on the road [rather: in the air] right now and I can't ping him for a quick status update.

I've seen the bool for sell on Ratcon (Dormund in Germany) one week after Gencon.

So it have to be an UK only Problem, because here you have no problems to get it...

cya
Tycho

I understand this. But...

My awesome local brick-and-mortar store just closed. The local franchise gaming store focuses more on the big bucks WotC products and strategy/war games, rather than a diverse selection of PnP RPGs. While they claim to order items, it seems to be only if a significant number of people request it. My local bookstores carry the Big Black Book but none of the other modules. While I would like to support my brick-and-mortars, economic realities are not making it feasible for me to do so. I've been ordering from BattleCorps (or snatching used copies on eBay) anyway so why shouldn't I be able to order from Amazon?

Supporting game stores isn't going to help the hobby survive. Putting out good product that's available for purchase from diverse vendors will.

I'm not...quite sure it works that way. I'm sure it has something to do with Amazon's discount (there might be another reason having to do with setting up pre-orders for books that aren't even finalized yet, but don't count on that explanation as I'm pulling it from my brain) but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have anything to do with brick n' mortar stores.

Frankly, it's on a store's own head to keep themselves afloat. Digital distribution is easier and simpler - point, click, fire up Paypal, receive. Very instant gratification-y.

Gamestores...well, there's a few in my local area. One's run by a friend, but the last time I was out there was like, two, three years ago. Just not convenient for me (try living in the middle of bloody nowhere). Another is about ten or fifteen minutes away, but they're a comic store first, game store second.

The third is kind of famous in these parts, but I'm an on-again-off-again fan of it. The plus is that it's a big store and they've usually got a great inventory of stuff (and they let us do meet-ups for another rpg board group I'm with), but the negative is that their staffing is honestly, ass. Some of 'em don't seem to give a crap that they're running a store. We've had two run-in's with the same member of staff that's alternatively ignored us and shot us dirty looks because we pulled another clerk away to help us with something. And don't get me started on some of the other customers...

I'm a tough kind of shopper anyway. I want clerks that know when to talk to me and when not to talk to me. If I've already said, "no thanks, just looking" they shouldn't come up to me five minutes later to ask again (which is why I rarely browse normal stores; I don't need help, go away, I'll ask if I need you). So being able to click and fire a web browser is that much simpler and easier for me.

This tangent entirely brought to you by my frustration with "we have to save the game stores!"

Wes: you're in Indy? Give me a PM and I'll ask a friend who also lives in Indy if he knows anywhere good to shop. If you're willing to make a drive, Cincinnati has some fine gaming establishments :)

Yargh! I was just in Cincy a few weeks ago.

I used to manage a game shop several years ago. Game shops ARE the lifes blood of the hobie if they all close down you will suddenly find it much harder to find people that play youre game what ever it is. I can tell you 100% for certin that buying youre books online hurts the local game shops fact is it hurts every game shop.

I cant tell you how many shops went under when WOTC started selling major brands like DnD and MTG in book stoors and walmarts. It was like cutting the throughts of the guys that got them where they are.

Ive also worked retail in the computer industry and ive met customers like you . They want mind readers for sales people. Get over it the guy youre POed at is getting paid minimum wage to deal with youre attitude and his mgr telling him he wants to see him in the customers face not standing around.

Not really. The Internet and word-of-mouth has worked just fine for me in finding new players. Buying online may hurt the game shop but it's not my responsibility to support forms of commerce that don't support me or what I want. I will go to the game store if I'm looking for an old or obscure title or just want to browse and try out and buy new games. But if I know what I want, why should I have to pay more for it? Am I not entitled to save money whenever I can?

Brick and mortar stores need to offer what online stores can't. A fun atmosphere, a polite and knowledgeable staff, and a diverse, specialized selection. I will pay a sticker price for that. If you run a store that's cramped, crowded, and uncomfortable with crappy, crabby employees why in the world would I want to shop there? It's a foolish business owner who hires employees or treats them in such a way that they behave like The Simpsons's Comic Book Guy. 90% of people shopping for games (not computers) tend to be intelligent, friendly and open-minded going in. We expect the same of our sales staff. If the store can't offer that, well, that's just too bad, isn't it? I'll take my purchasing dollars online and cut out the irritation factor.

Unfortunately it's a vicious circle. A well run store with a reliable customer base becomes the kind of place you want to hang out and shop at. However as online sales eat at the stores income (nobody gets rich owning a gaming store), quality of service and even facilities will suffer.

I.E. the stores need us, and we need them. The stores are the breeding ground for new players, and by far the best way for people to find games they have not heard of. The more stores, the bigger the hobby, the bigger the hobby the better the quality of both the available games and stores.

I know that can become a Catch-22 in smaller communities, If I did not live in a college town (which usually come with good stores), I would be as active as possible in running games at the store to help maintain a good atmosphere. If you do not help the store in your area it won't get better.

I don't want a mind readers - I want guys who realize that when I say, "no thanks, just looking" then it's just that: no thanks, I'm just looking. That's it. You can upsell me. Hand me a brochure with this week's deals. Talk to me about something new you've got. I'm fine with that. But after we've had this interaction, please just leave me the heck alone unless I come looking for you. That's all I ask for.

I've worked various kinds of retail. I worked in a diner for the last nine years as a cashier / seater and I've worked at Blockbuster as a customer service rep. Right now, I deal with cranky credentialing contacts for doctors. Customer service means giving a customer what they want or finding a way to do something they need. My want as a customer is to be left the hell alone until I need you.

Working as a Blockbuster guy, I understand having to upsell, trying to push product, trying to meet quotas. But in the end run, a customer is someone that you're supposed to treat with extreme nicety. If a customer says, "no thanks," don't push the fucking issue. You can quickly swing someone from "casually interested" to "mildly annoyed".

To bring this issue back on track, I don't go out of my way to visit the sorta-famous store down in Boston because I haven't found a good relationship with the staff. Once, as I mentioned before, I was trying to purchase dice with my girlfriend and the girl running the cash register got upset with us because we were pulling the clerk she was trying to show a funny viral video to away from her. Another time, the same girl gave me shit because my credit card said "Andy" and my ID said "Andrew". No shit. One time when we were waiting for friends there, one of the customers decided that my girlfriend was the perfect person to tell his "red dragon versus the Decanter of Endless Water" story to, very loudly.

Why do I want to put up with crap like this? To support "the hobby"? I support the hobby by buying the damn books. That's all that really matters.

My primary shop is an hour away and out-of-state. We go up there maybe once every month or two, primarily sells d20 books, and is rarely staffed by more than one person. And yet whenever we're there, we always end up purchasing something. They've got a great used section in the back (I found BT technical readouts there this weekend that had Maurauders in them! *glee*), their staff is friendly and welcoming, and they've always managed to sell me either a toy or a set of dice (prolly pink, the SOs favorite) before we checkout. Now that's the kind of place I can support.

I find out everything I need to know about RPGing via web fora, friends and conventions. I've rarely walked into a store and picked up a game out of curiosity. I don't have that kind of money to spend, especially when a professional core rule book runs $40-$60.

That Catch-22 can be broken by adjusting to meet the needs of an Internet savvy customer base. It's no longer about simply providing a product. A store needs to provide an enjoyable experience.

But I'm not one for Role-Playing Game Activism nor am I an activist for any niche hobby, like comics (my other passion). I'm a consumer and it's not my job to figure out how to promote a hobby. That's the publisher, marketer and retailers' jobs. We pay them, they give us the product. Hopefully it's a good one. Good product that's well marketed will sell. If the product takes off, great. Look at Pokemon cards. They appealed to their audience (children with disposable income) and they sucked them in (marketing via cartoons, games, comics, etc.). Whether we liked them or not is irrelevant as it was successful. If the product dies, well, it may have deserved it because the publishers didn't utilize a smart business model. Or it only appealed to such a small audience that it was no longer sustainable (bad product).

It's never going to be the 80s again with half a dozen RPG specialist magazines on the shelves and TSR, Steve Jackson Games, and GDW pumping out new setting modules and game systems every month that you can buy anywhere. Today it's about small companies, putting out a few select good titles and vanity press and indie games. D&D/WotC has managed to get a toehold in the mainstream because it focuses on collectible minis, video games, New York Times best-selling tie-in novels and other publishing along with its core PnP game systems.

If you run a brick-and-mortar shop you have to adjust and do what you can with the budget you have or you will die. It's that simple.

Paper RPGs will always be a fringe hobby, even more true now with MMORPG around.

I am not saying anyone should be happy with a poorly run store, but good stores are important to maintaining the hobby.

So you can bemoan the quality of your local store, and shop online, but that only makes the local store worse until eventually all you have is a book rack in a mega bookstore.

Or you can provide constructive feedback to your local store's management, offer to help with in store gaming, and shop there when possible.

As for the average clerk, it would be great if they were more knowledgeable and helpful, but with what a local store can afford to pay while having to compete with online discounters, you have to work with those who will work for a low wage. In some places that means high turnover, in others burnt out employees. Either way, if you abandon local stores the pool of gamers in your area will dry up over time.

Very true. I worked in a movie theater this past summer, and management basically requires you to annoy the hell out of customers. For a long time we had a policy that you had to offer the customer a combo. Despite the fact that the combos weren't any cheaper then buying the stuff regularly, despite the fact that most people started ordering before we had finished saying hello, despite the fact that we had to waste a bunch of time explaining what all the different combos where, thus making the crazy long lines even longer and crazier.

Even better was that if we slipped up and didn't offer, and the customer caught us, they got a free movie ticket, which means management was pissed at us. Granted it was extremely rare, but it was annoying, because it made everyone sound so artificial, and people would try and cut us off so we couldn't offer them a combo, then we'd have to ask them after they'd already finished ordering.

They eventually scraped that, but started up that we had to offer like 3 specific items. While they changed from day to day it still made for very artificial sounding greetings. I found I managed to upsell alot more when I greeted with 'Hey there, what can I get you?' as opposed to 'Hi, would you like to try a hot dog today?'

So yeah, management is very out of touch with the customers wants (Which is generally to be treated like a person and not an ad attack target, and not be bugged about buying a bunch of stuff they don't want) and the average worker gets caught in the middle. If they make the customer happy, management gets onto them. If they do what management wants, the customer walks away with the sense that they should have a bar code just stamped on their forehead already.[/rant]

We have two game stores in my area. One gets all my business..the other, I try to avoid stepping foot into if at all possible. Why is that?

Well, the first game store:
Staffed by gamers. The staff are friendly, and, when my Shadowrun and Battletech group comes in, they even tell us about new things that have shown up that we might be interested in. Heck, they put up a used Battletech book that came in for our GM because they knew she tries to track down alot of the older books. While they cannot get battletech minis, and Alliance is slow to send shipments to them, we know we can always get what we need special ordered if we have to.

The second Game Store:
Special orders were hit or miss with them. Half the time, you never got what you ordered. The biggest thing, though, was, one time when me and our GM were there, she had, in her hands, and ready to purchase, about 200-300 dollars worth of GW merchandise. She was happy, because the Tau army had just come out, and she really liked their aesthetic. Well, the clerk, who also happened to be the owners son, and who she knew also played 40K was hanging around, watching us like we were going to steal the stuff or something(He was ALWAYS hovering, watching us...it was disturbing). So, since he was near by, and she was having a hard time deciding on something, she asked him "So..which do you think is a beetter point investment: Hammerheads or Broadsides?" And, instead of answer the question, he began to go into a tirade about how crappy the Tau were, and all these stuff...So, she put the stuff back on the shelf, went to the other shop to buy her stuff. I know no-one in my group has been to that store since.