jacko wrote:
please note, I'm not putting this up to start a fight, It's just an observation of how "growing the game" might not work.
I am looking for solutions, I am not passing any critism or judgekment anywhere.
(jacko sticks his head out of the bunker)
I'm not sure that the virtual sets "grow" the game.
(jacko ducks and waits for pause in explosions. and waits, and waits)
we have made the game very exclusive. I admit, I am in the middle of nowhere gaming wise. Our irregular group counts 3, thats 3. All of us being in the same room at the same time would be lucky to be once a year.
However we have had people say, "what are you guys playing?....looks cool...where do you get the figures?...what do you mean they don't make them anymore?...Download and print them out without the figures?... nah I don't need to get into that."
(jacko presents a white flag)
now I realise that other people have much bigger groups and are more well equipped than us, but we can't find anyone interested in joining us for love or money (or beers for that matter).
I am not craping on anything that the community has done or is doing, I just think that as we look to the future we make sure that we have not closed the door on late comers who could be really important to our game.
I'm all ready to hear that I am wrong. Does anyone know someone whose first set was DotF?
I've read this post 7 times and I just don't get it. How do V-sets "make the game exclusive?" How does it not take new players into account? The cards are free, courtesy of the generosity and support of the entire existing community. Even if someone can't get a printed set, they can download them right off the website. Vassal is free. The miniatures are easily purchased off sponsor websites, several of whom have banners running across the top of the pages on this site.
Shall we also give away miniatures to new players? And where do we procure these to do that? Even if we had the means to create new plastic figures, doing so would most certainly move us from legal gray area to clear copyright violation.
For all the claims and hypotheses you posit in this post, nothing about it suggest there is something we should be doing that we're not. Would you rather we didn't have the V-sets at all? How does that 'grow the game" or "help new players?" Without the V-sets, it's just another dead WotC game that will quickly be forgotten.