Guess what just showed up in my email inbox this week? If you guessed solicitations for the promo
packs for International Table Top Day over a month ahead of the event date, you
would be right. In case you missed the blurb in ICV2 last week, this year’s
International Table Top Day is scheduled for April 11 and we already know the contents
of the kits way in advance.
As has happened with the previous two kits, there are
problems with this one but not of Geek & Sundry, TableTop or PSI’s (the
company coordinating the assembly of the kits) making. Instead, we apparently
get to blame the manufacturers of the games getting promoted. Manufacturers we
are looking at two major problems here:
11)
Your game
was not on TableTop in season 1, 2 or 3 but I am getting promo items or a copy
of you game in the kit, which by the way I do not receive for free. I get to
shell out perfectly good Jacksons and Washingtons to pay for this kit
and I get promo items for such things as Reverse Charades, Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic
Carrot, Roll for It, Cash n Guns, Dead
Man’s Draw, and Where Art Thou Romeo. If I purchase the smaller of the two promotional
packs offered, with an MSRP of $250, depending on which distributor I place an
order with, I will pay approximately $1.60 to $1.75 per promo item. If I order
the more expensive kit, at $600 MSRP, the cost per promo item breaks down to
$3.15 to $4 per item. Granted, stores do
get full copies of some games, such as Dead of Winter, Council of Verona and
Geek Out (in the more expensive kit) which did appear on TableTop and which do
help justify the cost, but I am also getting copies of Clubs, Dark Seas and
Dead Man’s Draw, which have not appeared on the series. Still, I am not
particularly enthused about paying to get promotional items that I do not want
and cannot use but that pales in
comparison to
22)
I don’t get enough of a promo item to give one
away to everyone who plays in a demo of the game. I can understand getting one
of the Munchkin hoodies and one of the Krosmaster promo figures (no, not on
that one I can’t. They have enough promo figures floating around that I could
get two or more), but the rest of the promo items are cards. There is no reason
that I should get 1 Roll for It Promo Owlbear promo card or 1 Three Cheers for
Master promo card. Granted I don’t publish cards but from everything I hear
from publishers, they are cheap. Cheap enough that I should get more than one
in the box. Everyone who plays a demo of
your game that day should walk away with a promo item, not just one
person. Steve Jackson Games, Looney Labs
and Fantasy Flight Games did it right, including enough items so that everyone
who plays should get something. A number of the promo items are listed as “1
pack”. Is that one pack to give to one person or a pack to break up and
distribute to players? I don’t know and the solicitation doesn’t tell me.
I have already heard from a number of retailers who plan to
register as a location for International TableTop Day but who plan to skip the
kits altogether, contacting distributors and publishers directly to get promo
items to give away. Hopefully, next year
publishers will take a cue from events like Free Comic Book Day or Free RPG Day.
If you want me to spend money promoting your product, give me enough support in
the kit to justify the effort to promote your product. Otherwise, I will pick
the product I want to promote and contact those manufacturers for help.
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