Quote from: HappyDaze;1125506Healthcare jobs are not as secure as you might think. Systems are losing millions of dollars each day right now as the money-making procedures are delayed and cancelled. As a result, systems are cutting back on a lot of future plans and burning reserves. While there is a lot of crisis coverage right now, there will be a sharp dip in healthcare work following the crisis phase until systems recover. During this time, workers will be overburdened and hiring freezes will be likely. Then, when they lift, those eager for jobs will have little bargaining power and may have to take much poorer offers than they otherwise could have.

Not only have they frozen elective procedures to save PPE, but they're building capacity to support anticipated demand, before it arrives. They're being forced to spend a lot of money, without any immediate increase in income. People are also skipping routine visits. At one practice, providers have dropped from more than 30 patients a day, to 4. And one of reasons people become general practitioners is the field is traditionally very stable -- while they don't make as much as some specialists, they typically get a very steady paycheck. So they're hurting because they're not used to their income fluctuating that much. And while the practice is just starting to do telehealth, they don't accept Medicare, and it's up to each private insurer whether and what they're going to reimburse for online services. So they won't even know if they're making money for a couple months. They've refused to do it so far, but they're eventually going to have to furlough most of their nurses, MAs, and support staff. And while many of the big hospital systems are looking for healthcare workers, the jobs are going to come with a high risk of exposure, so there's a strong incentive just to take unemployment and stop working, especially among those who are older. Which isn't good for the scale-up.

This is an exogenous shock to the economy. Even in the fields where overall demand is increasing, resources are being reallocated, it's hard to predict the demand, and resources spent to meet peak demand will be wasted if it's not sustained. Companies across the economy are being forced to act as entrepreneurs despite being ill-suited to it, and are making big gambles on the future. There will be some winners, but a lot of losers, and everything is very uncertain.

Quote from: Pat;1125510Not only have they frozen elective procedures to save PPE, but they're building capacity to support anticipated demand, before it arrives. They're being forced to spend a lot of money, without any immediate increase in income. People are also skipping routine visits. At one practice, providers have dropped from more than 30 patients a day, to 4. And one of reasons people become general practitioners is the field is traditionally very stable -- while they don't make as much as some specialists, they typically get a very steady paycheck. So they're hurting because they're not used to their income fluctuating that much. And while the practice is just starting to do telehealth, they don't accept Medicare, and it's up to each private insurer whether and what they're going to reimburse for online services. So they won't even know if they're making money for a couple months. They've refused to do it so far, but they're eventually going to have to furlough most of their nurses, MAs, and support staff. And while many of the big hospital systems are looking for healthcare workers, the jobs are going to come with a high risk of exposure, so there's a strong incentive just to take unemployment and stop working, especially among those who are older. Which isn't good for the scale-up.

This is an exogenous shock to the economy. Even in the fields where overall demand is increasing, resources are being reallocated, it's hard to predict the demand, and resources spent to meet peak demand will be wasted if it's not sustained. Companies across the economy are being forced to act as entrepreneurs despite being ill-suited to it, and are making big gambles on the future. There will be some winners, but a lot of losers, and everything is very uncertain.

Very much so. It's the result of the odd situation of having healthcare shifting to a "wartime" stance. The mercenaries are making out big (right now), but the strain on the system will felt for a long time afterwards.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1125489Worry when DriveThru goes under.

I think DriveThru will do fine. High Street game stores are fucked, as are mid-tier games companies dependent on giant lavish Kickstarted boxes of stuff from China - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/806316071/conan - I think this will hit boardgames harder than RPGs. But high-cost Minis makers like Reaper will certainly suffer.

As a financially viable market it's effectively dead. And if things go as I'm predicting people won't have time to engage these hobbies because they'll be too busy surviving. The state will no longer be there to take care of anyone, and the folks with the time to engage this hobby won't have the funds to invest in it. And hurricane season is right around the corner.

Quote from: S'mon;1125514High Street game stores are fucked, as are mid-tier games companies dependent on giant lavish Kickstarted boxes of stuff from China

Ironically the Chinese company which screwed me over contacted me recently eager to finish my 'case' and send me the 'generic' dice I (didn't) ordered.

In the meantime the company which stole my design continues to botch delivery. They've now gone through 3 manufacturers. #ShockedPicacuFace

Honestly, if this kills the physical market I might wind up in better shape and not even need to do a kickstarter; most of which was going to cover the cost of printing and shipping an initial run. As an artist with a degree in graphic design I was already doing my own art and layout work.

If I went all digital though; well, I've already been producing bookmarked PDFs optimized for viewing on tablets for my play testers, so it'd really just be a matter of filling all the blank spots I left for artwork in the layout and calling it done. With no printing costs, the sales needed to break even gets much smaller.

Also helping me is that I'd always intended my game to have an impulse buy (<$20) cost of entry. It's why I chose to split my book into separate Player's and GM's Guides. Even in bad times the gamers I know set aside a small amount of money for game-related purposes and I'm offering a complete system (hundreds of character options adding up to tens of thousands of combinations, mass combat, vehicles, structures and rules for building new monsters and traps/hazards are all included) for less than a trip to the movies.

This could actually be a great opportunity for me; doubly so if the economy bounces back strong afterwards.

Since the SBA loans will pretty much keep a business afloat for a couple months, if this crap ends soon any viable retailers will be fine. The ones that are poorly managed (95% of them from my estimate) will probably go out of business regardless. For whatever reason, FLGSs seem to be mostly run by people who have no business doing business. There have been four gaming stores in this area that closed relatively quickly, and uniformly they had no fucking clue what they were doing. One flat out refused to keep anything in stock..."We can order it for you!" Okay, fine, then it took like a couple weeks to come in, and it was 2x the cost of getting it from Amazon in two days. Refused to offer even a small discount. Refused to turn the fucking heat on when it got below freezing. Etc., etc.

RE: WotC, they're part of a megacorp, so that's up to Hasbro. I would not doubt for a second Hasbro lays everyone off and just turns D&D into a licensed property. Or they could keep everyone on staff. Who knows...smaller companies are probably doomed if, like the gaming stores, don't know WTF they're doing or have no backup plan.

Even in an economic downturn - which I expect to be deep but relatively short this time, a classic V-shaped crisis - there is a need for entertainment. People are not automatons; they need their comforts and distractions when times are hard. More than ever, they will want to be happy, and live their lives to the fullest.

Gaming will be fine: tabletop and VTT games are a cheap, fun form of entertainment where you don't actually need much buy-in to start playing. The segments of the hobby where gaming actually happens will do fine, and may actually pick up new enthusiasts. After being stuck home, there will be an explosive, pent-up need for socialisation and getting together when the dreary business of quarantines and curfews is finally over.

The game collecting hobby will probably suffer a contraction until better times return: like S'mon has said, elaborate Kickstarters with Chinese-manufactured components are the most likely to be hit. People will decide which book they are buying out of genuine interest, and which out of habit. It may turn out you can conduct miniature battles using generic figures... or pieces of cork, buttons, and whatever else. It may turn out you can do a lot with paper, pencils, some simple rules, and your imagination. Radical thoughts, but these are radical times.

Quote from: Melan;1125530It may turn out you can conduct miniature battles using generic figures... or pieces of cork, buttons, and whatever else.

At the very least you can do it with 2D colour printed standups - even with an inkjet you can do hundreds of 30mm figs for a few £, say 6p for a nice plastic base and 6p or so for the ink. There are some great looking 2D standups coming out currently, possibly a sign of things to come!

Of course nearly all RPGs are fine as theatre of the mind anyway.

Edit: Here's a paper minis Kickstarter I was thinking of - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tabletop-tokens/gtg-minis-for-tabletop-rpgs?ref=9n5wrf - personally I have thousands of minis, but I still find I like being able to print stuff for eg obscure monsters I don't want to spend £25 on for a 3D mini. Those are die-cut printed so still expensive, but Printable Heroes has a bunch of cool free stuff, eg https://printableheroes.com/minis/396 or https://printableheroes.com/minis/78

Quote from: S'mon;1125535At the very least you can do it with 2D colour printed standups - even with an inkjet you can do hundreds of 30mm figs for a few £, say 6p for a nice plastic base and 6p or so for the ink. There are some great looking 2D standups coming out currently, possibly a sign of things to come!

Of course nearly all RPGs are fine as theatre of the mind anyway.

Or 3D printable. Probably in reaction to the coronavirus, Humble Bundle just started a 3D printed terrain bundle. (The plague doctors can't be a coincidence.)

But I much prefer theatre of the mind. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words can create a million different pictures. I think painted minis and photorealistic printed battlemaps constrain the imagination.

Quote from: Brad;1125526Since the SBA loans will pretty much keep a business afloat for a couple months, if this crap ends soon any viable retailers will be fine. The ones that are poorly managed (95% of them from my estimate) will probably go out of business regardless. For whatever reason, FLGSs seem to be mostly run by people who have no business doing business.

In some respects, they have to be. There are some markets where you only find people in business that actually love whatever the interest is. Business people that seek dollars only go for better returns.

We have a lot of amusement focused retailers in PDX, FLGS, weird food pop ups, craft beer local chains and book sellers like Powell's. They often cheer about how progressive they are, but the fact is that they live on such tiny and transient margins that they are one pat on the back away from bankruptcy even in fairly good economic times.

I got an email the other day from Troll Lord Games talking about Kickstarter fulfillment. In the email was an explanation of how they're not actually seeing much business operations disruption because they've always used US-based printers, own some of their own printing equipment, and bought some additional supply runway when they saw COVID-19 becoming a crisis in Asia. That might be an interesting compare/contrast point versus the other companies/Kickstarters being disrupted by supply chain issues.

Quote from: Lynn;1125543In some respects, they have to be. There are some markets where you only find people in business that actually love whatever the interest is. Business people that seek dollars only go for better returns.

We have a lot of amusement focused retailers in PDX, FLGS, weird food pop ups, craft beer local chains and book sellers like Powell's. They often cheer about how progressive they are, but the fact is that they live on such tiny and transient margins that they are one pat on the back away from bankruptcy even in fairly good economic times.

I wanted to open a bar at one time, so I did a massive amount of research. Something like 80% of all bars close in 6 months of opening. 80%! Because the people opening bars think they can run a business and have no idea how. I decided to shelve that idea for a while until I got more business acumen and experience. So while I get where you're coming from (you're right, obviously), I just wish some of these people who were REALLY passionate about RPGs, for instance, would realize they should maybe spend 6 months or a year learning about finance, logistics, management, etc. Or at least fucking hire someone with that experience to run the damn thing. Myself, for instance, I took some MBA classes as electives as part of my current PhD just to learn how to do accounting properly. Probably gonna save myself from wasting $100-$200k.

Quote from: S'mon;1125514I think DriveThru will do fine. High Street game stores are fucked, as are mid-tier games companies dependent on giant lavish Kickstarted boxes of stuff from China - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/806316071/conan - I think this will hit boardgames harder than RPGs. But high-cost Minis makers like Reaper will certainly suffer.

Agreed. If the Kung Flu does cause a deep recession, Monolith will be toast and CMON is going to take a severe hit. Makes me wonder about how Asmodee proceeds during the mess. However, the Conan boardgame is good stuff. Fun game on its own plus a gazillion minis that are great for any Sword & Sorcery RPGing.

Quote from: Chris24601;1125523If I went all digital though; well, I've already been producing bookmarked PDFs optimized for viewing on tablets for my play testers, so it'd really just be a matter of filling all the blank spots I left for artwork in the layout and calling it done. With no printing costs, the sales needed to break even gets much smaller.

I highly recommend checking out how SineNomine does his Kickstarters. He prints nothing. Instead, he sells POD codes for DriveThru and everyone gets their dead tree and PDF combo. You will make less money, but no risk of capital. Most gamers want a dead tree copy so you get those sales to increase your break even chance.

I personally prefer all-in-one book games, but the separate Player Guide + GM Guide concept is heavily ingrained in the market so I don't see that holding back your sales.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1125561I highly recommend checking out how SineNomine does his Kickstarters. He prints nothing. Instead, he sells POD codes for DriveThru and everyone gets their dead tree and PDF combo. You will make less money, but no risk of capital. Most gamers want a dead tree copy so you get those sales to increase your break even chance.

That was basically my pre-existing plan. Write the book, do the Kickstarter for cost of artwork resources, sending the whole thing through a professional copy editor. Pledge awards would be various levels of PDF plus POD and a draft copy of the rules for immediate play (and to prove the product isn't vaporware for those pledging money to it).

What remains to be seen is how much the market impact will change the model from that. I'd like to keep that model, but if it ended up going all digital I'm already mostly set up to take advantage of it.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1125561I personally prefer all-in-one book games, but the separate Player Guide + GM Guide concept is heavily ingrained in the market so I don't see that holding back your sales.

I would have done an all-in-one, but I really wanted to keep the player facing material as close to a $20 price point as possible. I want players to be able to get all the options they'll ever need (my planned supplements are all of the World Book/Adventure Site variety) for a trivial cost of entry.

One part of that was that you can save significantly on printing costs if you use the 6x9 format (which also removes the need for separate PDF and printed layouts; though I do plan to include a free printer friendly PDF with every PDF copy that will remove all the artwork and put the contents of two of the 6x9 pages onto a single landscape 8.5x11 printer page).

That does limit your page count a bit if you want it to open properly (the Player's Guide clocks in at 350 pages and the GM's Guide should be in that ballpark... 700 pages in a single book at that size would have been problematic), but it does have the added benefit of reducing table space needed for the books and makes it super easy to lug them around.

While 350 pages sounds like a lot, the only rules players may need to reference in play are all in the first 20-ish pages and on their one-page character sheets. The rest of the book is all the options for building a character that only need to be referenced while creating and leveling a character. I'd go into detail, but that's quite a bit off-topic.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1125466If the Chinese Virus nonsense panic continues...

How can you still be this deep in denial? You're sounding like the black knight from the Holy Grail by now with this "it's just a flesh wound" silliness. Dude, it wasn't nonsense. It wasn't panic. It wasn't basically the flu. You were wrong.