Quote from: Bobloblah;731128Do you know anything about tooling? As it happens, I do. A miniature that only a fraction of your audience buys, and then, only one of, does not give a good return on the cost of the tooling (e.g. how many Liches do you need?). If the return is poor or non-existent, why put the money into it? The other edge of that sword is that if you ignore certain miniatures due to lack of profitability, your entire line may suffer because customers can't get exactly what they want. If you simply increase the cost of every individual miniature to cover the difference, you soon cross the threshold per figure that reduces sales. The best option quickly becomes blind-buy where you force everyone to subsidize less popular miniatures, while still keeping individual miniature costs low enough not to greatly impact sales.

You can rant all you want about "gouging," but the fact remains that without blind-buy, you are unlikely to ever see a complete line of D&D miniatures.

3D printing will fix that problem.

Quote from: Bobloblah;731134I'm fairly certain they still don't have anything approaching a "complete" range for D&D. Not to mention that they did most of that in metal, which has vastly lower startup costs, but far higher production costs.

It's pretty much complete for 1e-2e AD&D, certainly closer than WotC ever got for 3e-4e, which have huge numbers of weird critters - eg there were no 4e Dark Sun minis at all AFAIK. But yes the main thing is that Reaper make metal minis, where small runs are viable but you have to pay $5-$7 or more per mini.
By the time Reaper's second Kickstarter fulfils they will have an impressive range of unpainted plastic minis. These will be available for individual purchase. They are doing this by covering all the upfront costs with the Kickstarters, then they charge lots of money for unpainted plastic that has negligible production cost - I can buy prepainted metal minis from em-4 minis for less than the cost of Reaper's unpainted plastic Bones minis at my FLGS.

Their range isn't "complete" for AD&D 2nd in any real sense. I haven't looked at it with an eye to AD&D, but I'd be surprised there, too.

Their Kickstarters are going to benefit them immensely, and were brilliantly executed.

Quote from: Bobloblah;731151Their range isn't "complete" for AD&D 2nd in any real sense. I haven't looked at it with an eye to AD&D, but I'd be surprised there, too.

Their Kickstarters are going to benefit them immensely, and were brilliantly executed.

Ehhh... I think they covered it pretty darn well from Aboleth to Zombie.

They may have skipped the Peryton which is my answer to this thread:


http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=28981

But really how far into the insane do they have to go to be a complete line?

I think their website was even where I saw one of the original articles on making your own gelatinous cubes.

As far as WizKids goes.. how about more of a hybrid in the miniature line? Some blind sets for the more collectible "elite" creatures and some non-blind sets for orcs, goblins, etc?

I'll definitely take your word for it being complete. The last time I looked at buying miniatures from them was just over 3 years ago, and they really didn't have everything (or anywhere close) to what I needed at the time.

As for Wizkids, I certainly hope they do some pre-packaged sets. As I mentioned, all is not lost even if they don't, as there should be a reasonable secondary market.

Back to the original point, I think a lot of people are reading something into my posts that isn't there; I haven't said it's impossible to produce miniatures this way (non-blind-buy for the D&D RPG), just that it makes no economic sense for WotC, Wizkids, or someone similar to do so.

Quote from: CRKrueger;730359If it's a collectible series, they can shove them all up their ass, no matter how good they are.

Ditto.

Quote from: S'mon;730375You can just buy the individual figs from resellers like Troll & Toad (US) and Tritex (UK). Often the stuff you need lots of is Common and actually cheaper on resale. Also, chances are the initial PC figs release will be a non-random blister pack, as they did for Pathfinder - and those figs are noticeably higher quality than most of the line.

I will absolutely not go out of my way just to give someone my money.

Either sell them to me in a manner and at a price I like or go piss up a rope.

Quote from: Bobloblah;731151Their range isn't "complete" for AD&D 2nd in any real sense. I haven't looked at it with an eye to AD&D, but I'd be surprised there, too.

They have to rename a bunch of stuff for fear of copyright infringement, eg the Kuo-Toa are called Tiik, so checking everything will take you a long time! Obviously they're unlikely to have a Tirapheg or other piece-of-crap-no-one-uses monster mini. I'm not 100% they have all the classic AD&D monsters, not seen a Githyanki analogue yet AFAICR (But I had not really looked - Googling found this), but they certainly have a huge range. And they do a bunch of modern stuff like dragonborn. Overall they have a lot more and different minis than WoTC ever did.

Quote from: S'mon;731237Overall they have a lot more and different minis than WoTC ever did.

This I certainly believe! In fact, I'm surprised people aren't more upset about the prospect of dragging out the release of a "complete" range with an endless stream of variations on the same thing. To me, this is more about the company attempting to milk customers for as long as possible.

Quote from: Bobloblah;731139Sorry to keep splitting these into two posts.

Another point about Reaper: were WotC/Hasbro willing to accept the return on investment that Reaper has had over the years, they could no doubt release a line of non-blind-buy miniatures that would please everyone here. What's the expression that's been tossed around about publishing OSR material? You, too, can make dozens of dollars in the lucrative world of RPG publishing!

With minis that's at least hundreds of dollars (yes, I'm exaggerating), but what MBA holding the purse strings at WotC is going to go for that?

I'm sure Reaper makes a reasonable profit or they wouldn't be in business. Telling me that I have to accept random fugly figures because some Hasbro executive needs to finish paying for his 6th vacation home isn't much of an incentive to buy them.

I backed both Reaper kickstarters because I like the company. After the kickstarters the minis become available to buy individually. By going in on the KS yes there are groups of minis sold together. The difference is that for accepting the minis in such lots you pay way less than retail for them.

If Whizkids wanted to offer random minis for such a price break to pay for tooling then perhaps there would be interest.

I would rather buy from a smaller company that actually likes what they do then a megacorp thats only interested in squeezing every dollar out of the consumer.

Quote from: Mistwell;730516I am buying a good 3d printer in the next few months...minis are high on my priority list

When these get a bit cheaper, I suspect that minis will be on the short list of "the first industries destroyed by this new technology".

Quote from: RPGPundit;731288[strike]When these get a bit cheaper[/strike]When the resolution gets way, way better, I suspect that minis will be on the short list of "the first industries destroyed by this new technology".

FIFY - I've seen printed minis and they ain't pretty.  That technology has a way to go.

Quote from: RPGPundit;731288When these get a bit cheaper, I suspect that minis will be on the short list of "the first industries destroyed by this new technology".

Currently the home 3d printers are still not up to the levels one would like. Lots of issues yet to be hammered out.

BUT, they are inproving steadily and some of the 2k range home printers are getting darn good and the striation problems are getting less.

Big problem is cost. A spool of plastic can be 50-100 bucks to print off say 25 minis according to one owner I talked with.

That price may drop too. I've only looked at a few of these so far. Theres a site up with a good breakdown of the pros and cons of various models of printer.

High end 3d printers are still though cost prohibitive for good quality prints.

Give it say 5 years and I think the stage will be set. Possibly sooner at the rate of advancements.

I don't see why Wotc or Wiz couldn't just use the existing molds (thousands?) and pump the suckers out in a big box of unpainted basic minis- 20 orcs for $20 or somesuch.  MM Gigapack for $100?  Why not exploit the bought and paid for resources that already exist?

Quote from: Piestrio;731217I will absolutely not go out of my way just to give someone my money.

I'm unclear on how typing "goblin miniature" into a search engine constitutes "going out of your way" to buy something, but whatever. I'm sure your face is deeply hurt by the spiteful way you sliced off your own nose.

Quote from: RPGPundit;731288When these get a bit cheaper, I suspect that minis will be on the short list of "the first industries destroyed by this new technology".

Probably not, for much the same reason that home printers didn't wipe out the book publishing industry. 3D printers are potentially nice and versatile tools, but it's extremely unlikely that they'll be price competitive with the cost savings of mass production at any point in the near future.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;731295FIFY - I've seen printed minis and they ain't pretty.  That technology has a way to go.

If it follows the trend of pretty much every other piece of advanced technology in recent history, as it gets cheaper it will be simultaneously getting way, way better.

RPGPundit