Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne looks at comments on his last column, and suggests ways Wizards of the Coast and Green Ronin could have avoided leaving money on the table.

I wanted to thank Daniel Urazandi of Bizarro World and Ted Yee of T&N Games for their comments on last week’s column (see "Daniel Urazandi of Bizarro World on 'Battle For Zendikar' Fat Packs Shortages" and "Ted Yee of T&N Games on 'Battle For Zendikar' Fat Packs Shortages").  While I agree it would have been nice for Wizards of the Coast to bump up the print run on the Battle for Zendikar Fat Packs (especially given the inclusion of the full art lands, which the company should have known would increase demand for the product), sales on past runs of Fat Packs have been hit or miss.  We still have Fat Packs from the release of the Magic Origins set on the shelf and the Fat Packs from the Theros block proved slow sellers as well, as some were still on the shelves at distributors the last time I checked.

Given the amount of money generated by sales of Battle for Zendikar, or as I like to call it B$Z, Fat Packs, Intro Packs, booster boxes and packs as well as singles, I find it hard to call the situation a debacle as some have.  Money left on the table, sure, but a debacle, hardly.

Speaking of money left on the table, I really wish WOTC would come out with a set of pre-printed character sheets for 5th Edition D&D.  Yes, I know players can print out a PDF of the character sheet for free from the Wizards website, but we also have people coming in on a regular basis asking us to print them out character sheets because they don’t have access to a printer or need them for the game they have running in the back room.  Having a pack of character sheets as an add-on accessory for 5th Edition to sell for $4.99 or $9.99 would be very helpful.

Like Wizards, Paizo Inc. provides free character sheet PDFs for the Pathfinder Society on their website.  However, Paizo also makes a Pathfinder Character Folio retailing for $9.99 that sells steadily enough that we endeavor to keep half a dozen on the shelf at any given time as too often in the past we have found ourselves out of stock when a customer came in looking for a copy.  Even more than a DM screen, a pack of character sheets would be an easy add-on to a sale of a Player’s Handbook or Starter Set.

Speaking further of money left on the table, Fantasy Age and its companion campaign setting TitansGrave book arrived this week to a collective "meh" from our customer base, and given the remaining in-stocks at distributors, a similar reaction from other stores.  Given the fan base that Wil Wheaton has, and his involvement in the development of TitansGrave, putting his name on the front cover instead of burying it in the descriptive text on the back cover seems like it might have been a good idea.

A better idea would have been to get this set of books into print while Wheaton’s TitansGrave series was getting posted on YouTube and the Geek & Sundry website.  We had quite a few requests for the combo of books, and Green Ronin has made the price point quite attractive.  However, the last new episode of the TitansGrave series released on August 11, meaning over two months have elapsed between the release of the RPG and the last episode of the series driving interest in it, and while there was lots of publicity for TitansGrave when new episodes came out, I have heard very little mention of it since then.  I do expect the game to sell; unfortunately, I don’t expect to restock at the same level as I would have had it hit our shelves in August or even early September.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.