I received the following email recently:
I thought I'd take the time to answer this publicly, since his questions are valid (although phrased a little impolitely).I recently attended GenCon 2005 and bought your new
"GenCon Exclusive" module "The Mask of Death". On the
cover it states "GenCon Exclusive" and now you are
selling it online and even printing more copies. I am
a very well respected player/collector of Dungeons &
Dragon items and bought this module with the knowledge
that these would be available at GenCon only. What you
are doing is ethically wrong. Next time do a favor to
the people who actually take the time to attend GenCon
and jsut make it available to GenCon attendies as the
cover states.
BTW: What is the original print run and how many are
you re-printing. Also are the ones you are re-printing
going to sate second print and have the GenCon
exclusive removed from the cover or are you just going
to scam the GenCon attendies who put faith in your
company to only sell these at GenCon.
DCC #20.5: Shadows in Freeport is the third time we have printed a module for a specific convention. The first time was DCC #3.5: The Mysterious Tower (Gen Con '03). The second time was DCC #0: Legends are Made, not Born (Dundracon '05).
Each time we've done this, we've had a few left over after the con. After Gen Con '03, we sold the last few copies of DCC #3.5 at GameFest Milwaukee, which was the next weekend, as well as a few off our web site. After Dundracon '05, we sold the last few copies of #0 on our web site. We've also reprinted #0 in a slightly different format for store distribution.
In every case, we have had loud, vocal requests to make the modules available to those who miss the cons. Thus, with DCC #20.5: The Mask of Death, I printed a little more than I thought I'd need for Gen Con. As it so happens, we did have some left over, and these were offered to our mailing list (an offer that we never posted publicly, as I preferred to give first dibs to the mailing list).
In a span of roughly nine days, we got a HUGE response, much larger than I anticipated. Normally when we offer something for sale, we have thousands of copies in our warehouse. In only one case in four years has a customer literally bought the LAST copy of something via an online sale. (In fact, that case was DCC #8: Mysteries of the Drow, where I pulled my copy from my personal collection to fill the order. Believe it or not, I don't own a copy of DCC #8 anymore!)
In this case, however, literally dozens of people were ordering #20.5 every day. I normally check stock levels weekly and post "sold out" notices to the web store as products near the bottom of their print run. With #20.5, I was taken by surprise. The orders came in very, very fast. We sold out quickly, and some orders slipped in before I marked the web store "sold out."
So: What to do with these orders? There are three options:
(a) Don't fill them and refund the customers' money.
(b) Ration out all the orders to fill as many as possible (e.g., if someone ordered 2 copies, give them 1 and give the other 1 to another customer). This still leaves many orders unfilled.
(c) Reprint a small number of copies and fill the last of the orders.
These modules are meant to be played. So I chose option a. For the dedicated fans who can't get con specials when they can't attend the con -- many of whom are on our mailing list and were the ones buying these copies -- this allows them to play a fun module.
For those who feel "scammed" by this situation, I offer this question: Are you actually playing the module? These modules are meant to be PLAYED, not sold on EBay for a profit.
Nowhere in the module does it say it will only be sold at Gen Con. It states that it was produced for Gen Con. Every other convention module we've done has been offered for sale online after the relevant convention (although in the past, the orders came in slower and we never had this problem). I've stated publicly before that we'll be reprinting con specials to bring them to a wider audience. As of Gen Con, we'd already announced that #0 would be available in a store edition (it was on sale at the show). With DCC #20.5, we explained at Gen Con (and it's stated in the module) that this is chapter one of a larger adventure, which will be released in full alongside "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising" when the movie comes out.
The original print run of DCC #20.5 was 200 copies. I'm printing 17 more for the fans in category a. The sum total of available copies is now 217. This module is still an exclusive, still available only to those who were at Gen Con or notified via our mailing list, and still has far, far fewer copies in print than any normal distribution DCC.
I hope that answers the questions. Evidently there is at least one fan who feels "scammed" because 17 more copies of the module are in print, but I believe the majority of fans are interested in playing D&D and sharing these adventures with their family and friends. We've had continual requests in the past to share these con specials with a wider audience, which is what we've started doing, both with #0 and #20.5. Jason Little, author of #20.5, ran the module at Gen Con for a celebrity gaming group that included Monte Cook and others (imagine being the DM for Monte! I'd be intimidated) and everyone had a lot of fun. It's a great mod, and I hope you, the fans, enjoy playing it.
