Friday I
bought a bunch of stuff. Well maybe not a bunch, but a lot. I get into
this mode where I need to buy stuff and I try not to. And it builds up
slowly and eventually it's just like something taking over my mind. And
so I give in to it and buy stuff.
First thing I did was buy 30 issues of Digital Hero, the Hero Games PDF
magazine. Each issue is 64 pages and seems to be roughly the same type
of content as the original Adventurers Club magazine. You buy 10
credits for $30 and there are currently 25 issues so I still have five
credits left. I spent a couple of hours cataloging the issues.
Today I bought all the PDF products on the Hero site. They had four PDF
books that vary from 112 to 250 pages or so. All written during the
Cybergames era for Hero 4 and occasionally Fuzion. Probably those PDFs
were the only ones written before Cybergames crashed and burned.
The current Hero Games also sells Cardboard Characters. A bit of a
misnomer because they're PDF files and most people will not be able to
print them out on cardboard. In any case, these pricey products have 12
stand up counters for $6 and there are three of them with figures drawn
from the current Hero Games literature.
There is also the one Hero Games PDF that they produced, Shades of
Black which is a 96 page adventure including full-color maps. It's $12
which is a good price for the content, if it had been a print product.
It probably would have been closer to $20 as a print product. But as a
PDF it was a bit too pricey (even though the content is worth it) and
currently most people do not want to buy PDF products.
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I also bought
two other products on the Hero store that I doubt are available in many
other places. Omlevex, a 3rd party supplement for Mutants and
Masterminds but with Hero stats also. It is a laser printed product (or
maybe a little better than that but still not a professional book). The
Kandris Seal is a PDF on a CDROM and it details a world that someone
created for the Hero system. Both are about $20 which is damned pricey.
Who said small print publishers could put out cheap products?
From Mongoose Publishing (actually RPG Now) I bought two Conan PDF
adventures. They are 15 and 16 pages, including the cover and the
one-page OGL license. $8 each. Wow. I'd rather companies not put out
PDF products that I'm forced to buy because they're so freaking
expensive. Then again, that could just be the state of the adventure
supplement market. Adventures sell poorly so realistically companies
may have to charge a lot more for them than their size indicates.
Finally I bought the Hellboy Director's Cut DVD and the soundtrack on
CD. So here's the problem with the movie industry. Nowadays with cult
movies you get the standard edition out fairly quickly, a special
edition a few months later, and an extra special edition (or in this
case director's cut) a few months later still. It's just a scam to get
people to buy lots of copies of pretty much the same movie and same
extras and maybe a few new things.
Paramount does it too with their Star Trek movie releases. I expect we
will see special edition releases of the regular series. Oh well.
That's capitalism. It's up the consumer to not go crazy buying the same
thing over and over again. Luckily I don't feel I have to buy multiple
copies of movies like I do with games, since games haven't gone down
that path yet.
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