Ready To Play vs. Tournament Legal Play

I was at Fantasium a week or so ago, and saw that they had received the first shipment of the new WWE Dice Masters. They had the Campaign Box and both of the expansion boxes. And I love the Dice Masters games. They're good, and they're 100% cross-compatible. Which is nice.

It means I can field Ninja Turtles while my opponent has an army of Space Marines, and there are no hiccups or other issues.

Here's what I don't like, though:

The Campaign Box gives you three of each included character's dice.  The expansions give you two of each included character's dice.  In tournament play, you can have up to four dice for each character you include.

So, while you can play tournaments with just the base game, you might be at a disadvantage compared to someone who bought two base sets (or two copies of the expansions).  But buying two copies of these gets you a bunch of extra cards. Two copies of the base game gets you a bunch of extra cards and a couple of extra dice (and a bunch of extra Basic Action and Minion dice).

There are a few other oddities, too. Like Bret "The Hit Man" Hart has three dice in the base game, and two dice in one of the expansions. But the expansion dice are a different color.

It's frustrating. It's still better than the random distribution they were using, though. And it's dramatically better than what Fantasy Flight has done with their Legend of the Five Rings card game (L5R).

A tournament-legal deck for L5R includes 1 Stronghold, 1 Role, and then two decks of 40-45 cards each (the Dynasty and Conflict decks).  The Dynasty deck can only contain cards that are neutral or from a single clan. The Conflict deck can only be neutral or from a single clan or from a single other Clan puchased by using Influence.

I'm going to ignore the Conflict deck for a moment, here. Let's talk about the Dynasty deck:

The base game includes 20 neutral Dynasty cards and 15 Dynasty cards from each clan.  That's 35 cards for someone's Dynasty deck. There is no way to make a tournament-legal deck from the starter box. There's not even deckbuilding strategy involved, either. To play in a tournament, you need to buy more cards. And, unless you buy a bunch more, you won't have many options for deck construction, either.  Their expansions all include "play sets" (three of each included card), which is nice. But why doesn't the base set even include the ability to put together a single tournament-legal deck?

Let me put on my Grumpy Old Man hat for a second, here:

In 1993, when I bought my first deck of Magic: the Gathering cards, I paid $8 for a starter pack, and instantly had a tournament-legal deck in my hands. It wasn't a good tournament deck, but it was legal. Unless I had a banned card - but the banned/restricted list was still in the future. In fact, I played in a number of single-starter sealed deck tournaments. Because they were fun and viable.

Now, I know that a Magic starter is not $8 anymore. But it's still a whole lot less than the $40 that FFG is charging for their L5R starter. And WotC now produces non-random starters, too, so you know what you're going to get. And - yes - Magic is still mostly provided in random booster packs, where L5R (and Dice Masters now) are mostly sold as fixed starters and expansions.

It just throws up unnecessary speed bumps for new players.

With Dice Masters, you have limited options, but you can put together two tournament-legal sets from just the base game.

Honestly, it's almost enough to get me back into Magic.

Almost.

Customer Service

I have had several experiences over the last few months for which I would very much like to call out some of the excellent customer service I have received.

It's funny - customer service is something that we usually don't think about until something goes wrong. In gaming, that means misprints and damaged/defective/missing components.  When I order a product and it arrives in a reasonable time, it never occurs to me to even think about the customer service I've received, even though it was there.

The gaming industry is small enough that the publishers try very hard not to get a reputation for bad (or even mediocre) customer service.

So how do you ask for help when you want and/or need it?

Before you ask, do your homework - find out who their point of contact is. It doesn't do me any good to ask Atlas Games' web designer for help if I'm missing a pawn from my copy of Recess.

Here are a few simple rules:

Rule One: Be honest, polite, and respectful.

A few months back, my wife purchased for me (as a gift) most of Dominion. She bought it second-hand from a co-worker. There are now only two sets I lack, in fact. At the time she purchased it, there was a question as to whether the included sets were complete or not. So I sent a quick message to Jay of Rio Grande Games.

"My wife purchased (second-hand) a bundle of Dominion along with the expansions. Several pieces may be missing - is it possible to purchase single cards or other components directly through you, as needed to complete the set?"

It was only a few hours before Jay got back to me, asking what I was missing.  As it turns out, the sets were complete - but I am confident that he would have sent me any missing parts (possibly for a small fee, but that's only appropriate when I purchased second-hand).

And it probably goes without saying, but do your homework and ask the right person. Check the company's website to see if they have a customer service contact. If I ask the webmaster for a PDF, it won't do much good. Sometimes, you need to start your e-mail with, "I'm not sure if I have the correct person for this - if you are not the correct person, can you please forward this to the appropriate party?"

Rule Two: Don't be afraid to ask.

The worst thing a publisher can do is turn you down or ignore you. If this happens, you're out the ten minutes or so it took to type the e-mail.

As you may recall, I'm a big fan of the Bits and Mortar program. Now, I was browsing their site, and I realized that I have books from several of these publishers where I don't have the PDF versions. So I sent off some e-mails.

One publisher I contacted is not a current participant in the program, but their game had been distributed by another publisher who was a part of the program.

"I realize," I asked him, "that you aren't listed as a participant in the program, but I was wondering if you were considering membership or if you provide a discount code for DriveThru for people who have purchased print copies of your books."

I got the PDF. For free. It was accompanied by a brief note, "We are not currently running the bits and mortar program. However, as a gesture of goodwill and to say thanks for buying the game, I have sent you a Drivethru link to allow you to download a free copy."

If I hadn't asked, I wouldn't have received the PDF.

Rule Three: Be prepared to back it up.

The publisher may ask for some proof if you're asking for something for free that isn't a broken/missing/defective piece. Sometimes, they may ask for proof of defective or broken pieces.

I asked both Pelgrane Press and Mongoose Publishing for a variety of PDF files. Both are Bits and Mortar participants. In the case of Pelgrane, I'd had some of the books since before the program existed - and I told them that in my e-mail (Rule One). I didn't have receipts for any of these products.

Both publishers responded within a day or two. Both requested photos of the products to prove that I had them. This was easily done.

I had the PDF files within a day of sending in the photos.

Rule Four: Be as clear as possible.

Your e-mail should spell out what you have, then what you want.  Most of the letters I sent boiled down to: "I have X. I would like Y. What steps do I need to take?"

If you send an e-mail to a publisher that says, "I bought a book. Can I get the PDF?" The first thing they'll do is ask you "Which book?"  Or "I bought a game and it was missing a piece," they need to know which game and which piece.

If it's a missing promo, then it gets a bit stickier. Sometimes. This happened to me at GenCon a few years ago:  "I bought Mutant Chronicles at GenCon. It was my understanding that I was supposed to get a promo figure with that purchase - when I got home, I didn't see it in my packaging. Is this piece still available? If so, how do I go about getting one?"

An hour later, I had an e-mail from Fantasy Flight asking for my shipping address.

Some people will say, "I'm missing X, please ship replacements to:"  This is perfectly acceptable - just be polite. And remember that some publishers have a set procedure for replacement that they have to follow.  It's not the publisher's fault things were broken in shipping or misprinted or mispacked at the factory. Sometimes they have these procedures to they can figure out where the screw-up occurred (and prevent the mistake in the future).

I don't always get what I want, but I've found that - by following these four simple rules - I am successful more often than not.

Merchants of Venus

There was a bit of a stir last week at Essen, when two different publishers announced that they had secured the rights to the (out of print) Merchants of Venus game.

Stronghold Games has been working with the original designer, Richard Hamblen. Fantasy Flight Games has been working with the descendents of the original publisher, Avalon Hill (now a division of Hasbro).

So who legally holds the rights to produce the game?  That's the million dollar question.

Something that I haven't mentioned before, 

It's entirely possible that both publishers could do versions of the game, provided one of them doesn't use the original art and rules text.

Yes, really.

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

Of course, then one of them may claim the other has published a derivative work and another kettle of fish (which I freely admit to not understanding at all) is opened.

We could have another Scrabble vs Scrabulous situation, here - and there is some excellent analysis of that (now old and resolved) situation here. It may also turn into a Steam/Age of Steam debacle.

Personally, I'd like to see both versions hit the market - Stronghold has a history of doing an excellent job with their various reprints, and Fantasy Flight has done an excellent job of cleaning up and/or chroming their reprints.

But that's not likely to happen.

As one BGG user said:

So the situation on the rights of old Avalon Hill-games is as unclear as people always said, eh? Very bad for all involved parties and maybe no one really is to blame.

Here's hoping that it ends well for all - including the fans.

But you'll forgive me if I have my doubts of a positive outcome.