Slitherine

Living in Scotland is rubbing off on you Alan...

AlanCutner wrote:At risk of bringing down more comments dismissing my views.

£32 is too much for me to spend on wargames rules

Its a full £2 more than it was 4 years ago Alan. Ridiculous, the bloody liberty. I'm sure people would be far happier with the sort of books we got with DBM and 6th edition. A nice drawing on the front and no pictures inside or any waste of time shit like that. Just rules. That got the youngsters wanting to buy.

IainMcNeil wrote:We are a completely global business and I think there is a lack of understanding of this in the FoG community! We have offices in Italy, France, UK, Canada and the US. We are not really a UK based company.

Does this mean that you consider tax voluntary, just like Starbucks? This means that you will sometimes let us pay VAT on books and sometimes not, even if you make a loss that year?
I tried to pay VAT on mine but it didn't give me the option.

Its a full £2 more than it was 4 years ago Alan. Ridiculous, the bloody liberty. I'm sure people would be far happier with the sort of books we got with DBM and 6th edition. A nice drawing on the front and no pictures inside or any waste of time shit like that. Just rules. That got the youngsters wanting to buy.

A shame you didn't consider my main concern seriously. We'll see in a year whether new players are drawn to this set of rules (not including v1 players coming back). If numbers are up I'll happily admit I'm wrong.

I did Alan. The main Warhammer and WH40K rulebooks are £45 each. The army list books are £20 each, they don't really contain that many armies and are very short on research, as if they were just made up to sell more. But I do believe it does all sell quite well.

Perhaps the Slitherine book is not expensive enough, and the rules are probably a bit too strict anyway.

$40 USD is a bit more than I paid for the V1 rules, but might be willing to still buy in.

I wish there were somewhere in the forums where I could find a concise list of the major changes, so I know what I'm getting into.

IainMcNeil wrote:All prices are without VAT/sales tax. .... Either way our site to be safe just tells you everything is ex VAT. ... This is all handled by the payment provider and not something we have any control over so we just display its without VAT!

You shouldn't be doing this as it is far from safe. I know that books are zero rated for VAT but for other products I'm afraid the above practice contravenes "The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (UK)" which states that:

Where a commercial practice is an invitation to purchase, the following information will be material if not already apparent from the context ....
(d)either—
(i)the price, including any taxes; ...

The full details. This has always applied to the internet.

There's a related article from August 2012 showing how the Advertising Standards Authority (UK) and Trading Standards (UK) are taking action against large hotel chains who quote prices ex VAT:

A Which? Travel investigation found that 11 out of 24 hotel chains included hotels that did not initially include VAT in their web prices. This breaches Department for Business Innovation and Skills guidance, which states that all prices given to consumers should include VAT and the total price must be displayed 'prominently'. ... They did not make it clear that the real price was 20% higher until a later stage in the online booking process.

The ASA has started a compliance action to get the whole UK hotel sector to fall into line with its code.

Trading Standards experts warn that hotels not including VAT in headline prices are potentially breaching the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. Martin Fisher, of the Trading Standards Institute, said that, to be sure of staying on the right side of the law, businesses should not quote VAT-exclusive prices in any dealings with consumers.

So you have a bit of work to do.

AlanCutner wrote:£32 is too much for me to spend on wargames rules (even if they have substantial changes over v1, which no-one has been able to assure me about). I accept others may be comfortable with it.

It's your choice what you spend your money on. If you think something is too expensive, don't buy it. But around £30 for a well produced large hardback wargames rules book is pretty much standard these days. FOG1 was a bargain compared to other recent rules releases, presumably because it was produced in very large numbers and discounted on Amazon.
One of the most popular recent rules releases is Saga, which is £25 for a 70 page softback. Yet it has been a huge success for Gripping Beast. If a game is good, people will buy the rules because they realise they will get many hours of enjoyment out of it.

Picking up on Alan's point. Is Saga only available from the supplier through POD/download or can you buy it elsewhere?

How many new players will now consider trying out FoG at this price, in the knowledge they may have to fork out the same amount (or more) again for v3?

Maybe I am being wildly optimistic but I would hope V3 will be way off in the future and it took four years to go from V1 to V2.
FOGR learnt a lot from FOGAM and came out as a much better game for it. I see no groundswell yet for a V2 FOGR nor do I believe one necessary even after two years.
I would hope V2 FOGAM has done the same and will last until the end of the decade. Or is that too optimistic?

There is nothing left to say. Buy if you want. Don't if you don't. The price is the price. If you think we are in violation of the distance selling rules you're wrong but I have lost the will to explain why. There is no way we'll make money out of this and we knew that from the start but the attitude of some people here is quite frankly insulting. I have not experienced this kind of behaviour in over a decade of making and selling games and from a community of educated people. Some of the FoG community has shocked and really disappointed me. I know its a vocal minority and there are many of you who are very supportive but it just wears you down.

Just to add to Iain's point, for all sorts of reasons a POD version will always be more expensive than a full print run. We have now done what we said we would do, to support the rules, so it is entirely up to players to decide whether or not the various options now available work for them.

Going forwards changes could now be much simpler to do and can be produced as often or as infrequently as you the players want them. we will certainly not be rushing these out, as contrary to some views expressed here, profit has not figured at all in our efforts to complete this project, this has for us been a labour of love. I know this is of little concern to some, but the time effort and sheer aggravation of getting to this point, not to mention the cost, has been considerable and when I reflect on all of this I now understand why Phil Baker was so always so grumpy:-)

Our aim to take the rules to electronic formats proved unpopular, and we responded to that criticism. There are some who make us wonder why we bothered, but nevertheless we are still working with our developer to improve several points where we think improvements can still be made to the electronic version and as these upgrades are ready they will be released FOC, as all patches to our games are.

In the end we believe that electronic formats are the future for tabletop rules systems. It is the nature of tabletop rules that that they need to be updated and revised after a period of play, especially in respect of points values for army lists, which incidentally was originally part of our plans.

A major factor in our original thinking was that to carry stocks of books is becoming prohibitably expensive and these costs include much more than just the print costs, that is only the tip of the iceberg. Additionally trying to find retail outlets to sell niche book products, or any printed books for that matter, is becoming increasingly difficult, a further factor influencing our thinking.

Well there you have it, it's now up to you guys, but we hope that many of you will continue to enjoy the rules and the stop press news is that due to the overwhelming number of preorders since we announced ensures my first task Monday morning is to reorder, so that we can get version 2 to you as quickly as possible.

Regards
JDM

Well done and thank you for persevering guys. It has clearly been a pretty thankless task.

As Don has already commented, the price of the rules is a tiny fraction of the money we spend on the hobby and going to events.

Ian and JDM, my only surprise is that it has taken you so long to express your frustration. Personally, I would have been telling some individuals to GTF some time ago.
It does seem to me however that those who object to the price have a wonderful opportunity to prove their point by offering to fund the printing and associated costs themselves and then providing the rest of of us with these hardback rules to us at a pittance of a cost while no doubt funding their proposed villa in the Caribbean. As a canny Scot, I will not be joining those no doubt willing to grasp this opportunity. If however they are short of initial funds then I can provide these through my new exciting loan company "Wanka.com" whose very reasonable 2300 percent interest rates are available.
John
P.s. Again as a Scot does this unqualified support entitle me to a discount on my already ordered rules?

jdm wrote:Just to add to Iain's point, for all sorts of reasons a POD version will always be more expensive than a full print run. We have now done what we said we would do, to support the rules, so it is entirely up to players to decide whether or not the various options now available work for them.

Well there you have it, it's now up to you guys, but we hope that many of you will continue to enjoy the rules and the stop press news is that due to the overwhelming number of preorders since we announced ensures my first task Monday morning is to reorder, so that we can get version 2 to you as quickly as possible.

Regards
JDM

Well done guys. Good to see that the pre orders are doing well and looking forward to getting my copy.

I suppose in all these things there's a spectrum of interest and some won't buy the product for reasons that make sense to them. It may have come across that people were moaning, and no doubt some find their glasses half full. It's also no doubt the case that something written on a forum can come across more harshly than when expressed face to face.

Certainly, the ideas circulating in the beta tests seemed to me an improvement on version 1 and the authors seemed to have a sensible list of things they want to fix. So I'm expecting the rules to work better than v1 as a result. The basic structure of the game is good - and the fact that the FOGR scene is thriving shows that the basic mechanics of FOG work to people's satisfaction.

Of course now we've done with moaning about the publication, we can get on with moaning about the changes in the rules "such and such was far better in v1". Hopefully by wild extrapolation from some freak occurence in one game.

Regards

Graham

>I wish there were somewhere in the forums where I could find a concise list of the major changes, so I know what I'm getting into.

There is. I posted a link to it a week ro three ago. It has been posted several times before, included of course at the point it was announced that v2 had been finalised and was going to be availabel imminently. And TBH it wasn't that hard to find.

On the other point...what also needs to be remembered is that whenever anything changes there is always a significant amount of grumbling. That's unfortunately human nature.

I'm just now reading through loads of old copies of Slingshot and they give the distinct impression the world ended in a cataclysmic fireball at the release of WRG 7th...then DBM...presumably also at the time of DBMM and FoG as well although I don't have those copies! Not to mention loads of moaning about rules amendments either not being issued, or being issued too frequently. And of course, whether you change the rules or leave them untouched they are inevitably still fatally flawed and you should have done the opposite.

And yet here we still are.

the stop press news is that due to the overwhelming number of preorders since we announced ensures my first task Monday morning is to reorder, so that we can get version 2 to you as quickly as possible.

That's good news.

Is the plan for the second batch to be ready for the 21st Dec too or will it be subject to the printer's schedule? And how will we know which batch we are in please?

I've pre-ordered so am not asking to cause hassle but rather I'm down for PAW 2013 and will need to advise the organisers of my intention to play a couple of weeks in advance of Feb (as will a few others here I imagine).

Steve P

Hi

I would also like to thank you for all the effort you have put in. The complaining minority on the boards are just that a fraction of the people I play with. In New Zealand we have our second Version Two competition this weekend and we continue to enjoy your great set of rules. At the moment we share a few Ipads among the players but are looking forward to the hard copies arriving.

Thanks alot
Shaun

Hello,

I also pre-ordered my POD copy !

Many players (me included) were upset when Slitherine announced a sole digital nonprintable version and thus requested firmly a printed version as well; however no one at that time expressed a caveat or cap on its price;
When Slitherine correctly responded with a POD (at a realistic price), some players complain now about the price;
I guess it is difficult to please every one; but at least I am happy now to have a choice : either a (cheaper) digital version or a book;

my 2 cents...
Thank you Slitherine,

Incidentally, is it possible to have an overview in V2 of all changes, as was done in the different béta versions ?
Cheers

I'd be willing to be bumped for one of those guys who needs a copy in time for their con. If you could just book me into a 5 star hotel until the second printing is ready.