The Death of the Splatbook

I shouldn't cackle, but the gifts just keep coming.

In Montreal, on the Rue St. Hubert, I had so-so luck with three D&D related shops within a block of one another ... although, to be honest, although there were role-playing products, and tables to play on, two of these were deeply involved in M the G far more than table-top RPGs.  Still, out of interest and market research, I spoke with the clerks in each.  Of course, there were no managers present.  Both spoke English adroitly and neither had any real knowledge of 5th Edition at all.  Pathfinder and 3rd were the preferred systems.  Moreover, neither had one clue about OneD&D ... they'd heard nothing about the company's announcement and didn't care, because both store clerks (and three customers) did not care what online said about role-playing.  For those interested, the stores were L'Expedition and Carta Magica.

This does much to restore my faith about things.  It was the sentiment I heard in the mid-20teens, and I'm glad to discover there's evidence that nothing has changed there.  These were game stores, in apparently game store central, whose business model did not include what people online said or thought.  What does that say?

I barely spoke to the third store; it was a cosplay design store and very nice, and I must admit I'm beginning to regret not purchasing this monk robe they had, while I had it in hand.  I've been thinking of something I ought to wear when starting my adventures in game cons again (I'm in negotiations for a space in Vancouver in Feb 2023, but I'm having trouble getting the company to respond) ... and a monk or peasant robe would be suitable for a writer, I think.  I'll finish this post by putting up some pictures I took, plus a link to the website.

In other extraordinary news ... I already mentioned the decision by D&D's company to revert it's proposals for 1s and 20s and how this promises the beginning of a lot of grab-ass revisionment on the company's part.  Today's hilarity includes this headline about the company's proposed "Netflix-style" model ... which is a profound association, given that Netflix tanking just now, as other services steal away it's content.  Netflix is planning on adding commercials to their paid-for content.  Does that sound like a company you'd want your new business model associated with?

Chris Perkins wants us to know that OneD&D is "in" ... and thus my cackling, given the response I've gotten from my readers of late and those of the brief investigations I did in Montreal.  "In" clearly means "in trouble," though I doubt Perkins knows it.  The article fails to address the obvious choice of the company to impose a velvet rope on its website, though naturally that's not how it's being sold.  But then, you're not supposed to see the truth behind the lie.

Clearly, Tasha's stuffed book of nothing did not sell well, leaving the company with huge stockpiles of unsold books ... convincing the company that they had to get out of the publishing business and into the "netflix" business.  So, instead of buying a book full of useless shit, soon you'll be able to pay the company every month forever for the same useless shit ... because it doesn't occur to the company that maybe the reason Tasha didn't sell was because it merely provided the same dreck the company's been providing for years.  But no more of that!  Splatbooks are sooooo 2021.

What's also not mentioned in the article is the collection of writers, editors, copyreaders and other associated publishing staff being fired from their jobs to save the company money.  They're not needed ... and is that not better for the subscriber?  You bet it is!

I'm stunned that as late as this, the company thinks that their online presence is so depended upon that by choosing to monetise D&D this way, it will automatically succeed.  I see the faces of those clerks in Montreal and again, a cackle rises up through me.  This is going to be such a bad idea.

Which is good for me.  I did my own experiment with a velvet rope years ago, moving some of my content to another blog and continuing to write here ... and I got hurt in page views and credibility.  I watch others try the same thing and watch the same disaster play out.  Truth is, making people pay for something unseen is a tricky process.  They've got to be convinced there's something there; I don't believe there's a mainstream of enough people who believe that anything good produced by the company behind a rope won't be made available for pirating in a month or two.  There's no sense to paying up front.

As someone chipping away at a splatbook presently, one that is NOT just a rehash of other existing splatbooks, I appreciate the company clearing the road for me.  Less competition is the most I can ask for.  Thank you, Chris-fucking-Perkins.  It's the first time I've ever had reason to appreciate something you've done.

Speaking of people stepping forward to make better products than the company, I give you the Boutique Medievale Dracolite.  I asked the owner if I could take these pictures and he assented:

The two robes I had considered were the ones at the front on the left and the light brown on the end at the right.

Mouthwatering stuff to be sure.  I'd taken my menu to Montreal but I didn't have it on me when visiting this shop, and it had taken me $30 in a cab one-way to reach the place.  So I wasn't ready to rush back to the hotel and spend another $60 doing a second round trip.  But I think the menu would have fit very well into their stock.  Maybe if I find myself planning a trip again, I'll drop in and see if a deal can be made.

There is a lot of money to be made in D&D.  Pity the company is too stupid to realise how.

Halloween is Nigh

My head is pretty much down lately.  I was given a day off in the middle of this madness we call Halloween ... a madness that I have been blessedly free of until these last three weeks ... and less than one week left, when it is all over.  Such is the experience of working in a costume shop.

Much of this month has been spent packing.  I've been fitting odd-shaped swords, bows with arrows, AK-47s, wizard's staves, 24-inch Captain America shields and other assorted items into Frankenboxes (where we make packages from the dead remains of other boxes), in order to ship them as far away as Sweden and Australia early in the month, and then progressively nearer as the time factor between shipping and Friday tonight, with the onset of ten thousand Halloween parties throughout the world.  I have the day off today because its more-or-less too close to party time to do much shipping.

And as October has progressed, so have the number of phone calls.  The calls we got at the end of September were different.  We were almost fully stocked, with costumes and accessories still arriving right through until yesterday (and probably today, but I'm not there).  The customers were cheerful, pleasant and sure of their costume ideas.  Not so much now.  The stock has trod its way out the door and more and more we have to tell the customers, "No, that's sold out."  Most take it well ... but there is an unquestionable air of desperation.  Impatient desperation.

When I go back tomorrow, it will be mostly parents calling.  Parents who didn't think to bring their kids in sooner.  Parents who were busy.  Parents who have been putting it off because Halloween is a chore.  We've already seen some pretty awful parents.  It is all part of the experience.

I'm slightly disturbed by parents who are anxious to find excessively violent costume ideas for their 5-year-old children.  I suppose I can understand Jason; the hockey mask is iconic and after decades of beyond-the-movie references the killer isn't any worse than Dracula or Frankenstein.  But Saw?  Okay, maybe Jigsaw, but some obscure character from the film?  I had a call like that just a few days ago.  Or what last year's Terrifier movie?  For a 5-year-old?  Just when did this near-infant child see this film character ... when they were four?

Some could argue with me, but I think that the kid has no idea, and the parent just wants to see the kid dressed as some obscure about-to-be dead character from Saw or as a freakishly murderous clown.  It's not a far cry from the parent who wants to dress their three-month old as a pink fluffy sheep or their two-year-old as Bonnie from 5 Nights at Freddies.  I'm saying that the line between, "I want to dress my children as my personal dolls" and "I want to let my children pick out a costume for themselves" is a pretty fuzzy line.

The other ask is the constant request for inflatable costumes for children.  Inflatable costumes are pretty cool.  For example, we sell this one for about $150.  That's a full grown man in the costume, because it's about 7 feet tall and 10+ feet long.  There are motors that inflate the costume and they weigh hardly anything, making them awfully popular.  And of course children want to wear them.

I hate to say it, but we basically sell this costume in

our store; only it is even more invisible.

However, the costume is basically a plastic bag.  Which reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch with Dan Aykroyd playing Irwin Mainway, a manufacturer who sells Halloween costumes for kids that are really dangerous and inappropriate.  I did my best to find a clip but I think it may be banned from the Internet.  Yes, it is really that irresponsible - Aykroyd at his absolute best.

Putting children inside plastic bags is not a good idea; the motor conks out and the costume begins to deflate and the child either doesn't notice or begins to panic.  Instead of doing the logical thing and opening the costume, they freak out, roll around on the ground and suffocate themselves.  Most parents wouldn't think of that ~ and most who did would think, "Not my child."

I get about ten calls a day from parents looking for inflatable dinosaur costumes for children.  Fun, fun, fun.

It's a real kick when I can say "Yes," to someone who has been looking all over the country for a particular costume.  It's fun, too, when I can boost someone's confidence by assuring that the costume will fit and it will look good.  We sell some very, very nice costumes.  No one took me up on my offer of giving advice about costumes this year, which is a shame.  I really have the inside scoop here.

Well, after a few days, we can put Halloween to bed and then it is Santa suits, Santa suits, Santa suits all the live-long day.  I've already had quite a number of those conversations ... and let me just say: if you're one of those people who buys your own $300 Santa suit so that you can dress in it every year and make kids happy, someone ought to erect a statue to you.

You're a damn hero.

Cosplaying

Keeping in the spirit of comic cons and fan expos (3 days left), it is a good time to talk about cosplaying.

The reader will find as old age approaches that everything that happens after the age of 25 will be thought of as 'new' whether it is or not.  For example, I still think of grunge music as 'new' - even though for many readers out there, it happened and died before being born.

[Well, sort of died.  There are still bar bands playing grunge music, thinking they'll be 'discovered' someday in a world now being run by Nikki, Taylor and Katy].

For an old fart like me, cosplaying has snuck up on me.  At least, the institutionalization of people wearing costumes as a means to emphasize their fandom for specific characters is a strange, new thing.  Like with the previous post, my childhood was also full of dressing in costumes, because that was something we thought was fun.  Hell, my whole Canadian generation was warped hopelessly by Mr. Dressup, who became a childhood institution for more than 30 years.  I was four when Mr. Dressup first aired.  [I went looking for an example of the show from back then, but it seems impossible to find anything on youtube predating the invention of VHS].

And I can remember a Halloween that predated excessive commercialism, predated the terror razor/needle/poison candy scare and predated parents chaperoning costumed children roaming from house to house.  These things are truly 'old' - long gone, never to be seen again.  But they did leave a lasting childhood association with costuming and the adoption of personalities.

That said, the first time I actually saw a DM dressed in a costume for role-playing I believe I associated the moment with a desire to vomit.  As I said yesterday, I was older by the time I began to play D&D and well past the compulsion to dress up in order to identify myself as a different being.  I had embraced theater and the arts by then and I knew from experience that the costume is only a very small part of the experience.  True character portrayal begins within.  After all, the most frightening monsters in our adult imaginations - terrorists, child molesters, serial killers, rapists - are terrifying because they look like anybody.

So on that level, yes, I confess, cosplaying seems a bit childish.  But let me rush to assure the reader that I don't think that it is, not for most of the participants.  I stick by what I said yesterday: cosplaying is free spirited lawlessness.  The same lawlessness I experienced as a child when we would pretend to be vampires and witches, capturing victims and burning them alive in pretend ovens.

[At 10 years of age, several free spirited same-age girls and I role-played some pretty intense scenes together - a bit beyond 'doctor' or 'house'].

If anything, I am deeply respectful.

This will seem like a big step to the left, but just go with it.  Some years ago, circa 2007, for a freelance story I was writing, I attended a meeting of transgendered persons to hear their views on the Alberta government's defunding a significant part of their reassignment process.  Because the meeting was more or less free and open, and because my 19-year-old daughter was interested also, I brought her along.  All told there were about 19 persons there.  The meeting's agenda was to lend support for those who would be most affected by the government's decision and to suggest strategies for the future.

It was an educational evening.  Not because either my daughter and I were new to the concept; she had gone to school for three years with a boy who was pre-op but living as a girl and I had known several persons in theater and film who were struggling with the lifestyle as early as the 1980s.  The educational part was the intensive fear associated with my role as a journalist.  It took literally hours of reassurance to convince most of the room that I had no intention of outing anyone or even giving details regarding their personal struggle.  I was there to get an overview of the problem and that was all.  Nevertheless, I could understand why several of the persons there who worked for the city or the government in particular were terrified to talk to me.

This sidebar connects to cosplaying because of two persons that my daughter recognized from Otafest here in Calgary - a Japanese Animation Festival that is a huge event each year (upcoming in November).  My daughter hadn't known that the two persons very much in love with each other were both transgendered; she did know that these same two persons were very dedicated furries.

"Isn't it amazing," my daughter said afterwards, "That two people who happen to be transgendered and furries can find love together.  The world is wonderful."

My sentiment exactly.

Cosplaying has become a community that supports individualism through copying the inspiration of other artists (who invent these characters).  It is a strange dichotomy.  I believe, however, that it does carry forward the most wonderful parts of the exploration into roles that we begin as children - the separation of guilt and repression, which are dumped on us at a young age, from desire and fantasy, that many adults have surrendered by age 30.

In three days I will be in an immense chamber with thousands of such people.  Is there any better place to be?