Ah, subscription box services. A way to get people to pay for stuff that sellers can’t get rid of. Perhaps this one is actually worth it. But as for others? Every time I see one of those organic vegetable subscription boxes being delivered, I think to myself, “So that’s what they do with all the veggies that don’t get sold at the farmer’s market…”
Most of the stuff in this service is custom created by members of the community, this is not stuff they can’t get rid of.
The food subscription services seem like a whole other ball of wax (having to do with cutting out middlemen), but from what I’ve read, there’s more likely to be a promotional nature to the tchotchke services than it being about getting rid of unsold goods. (That is, often it’s things that aren’t even yet - or otherwise at all - for sale.)
They still seem pretty pointless to me, beyond the pleasure of getting to discover something new, but I’m not really into tchotchkes. The game stuff seems particularly problematic to me - I mean, game rules for games that one doesn’t necessarily play? Perhaps I’m missing something and it’s more narrow in the potential goods than it seems.
You don’t always have to use it whole-cloth. There have been plenty of RPG rulesets that I’ve only ever used a small portion of to incorporate into a pre-existing game.
And a lot of the time the world-building or the story fluff is worth the cover price on its own.
Likely offering more immediate gratification than subscription boxes for fishing tackle, …
Spoken like a true non-angler.
Since I was the reviewer linked in the post, I just wanted to mention that I reviewed the January package (they aren’t really boxes yet) and talked a little about the people who were supposed to be in the February package (which just arrived last week).
Except for the dice all of the stuff offered in the Mythoards that I have seen are original. There was another attempt at an RPG subscription service, the name of which escapes me, that did use remaindered books and supplements. It isn’t around anymore.
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Christopher Helton
This sort of thing is aimed at the type of person who wants to play a wide variety of new things, rather than just more of the things they already play.
I’ve got one of the cosmetic/skincare subscriptions, and it’s almost entirely sample sizes. Which is great for me, because I don’t really buy makeup and I’d never plunk down $25 to get a lipstick or a face cream without having tried it out.
Yeah, I guess if you’re willing to spend $25 just as a spur to spend even more money for full rule sets so you can make use of each of the supplemental rules… Seems like it could get pretty expensive, fast.
I just can’t get my head around the idea of subscribing to things like this. A random box that if I’m lucky will I like everything in it.
For $300 a year I think I would just rather just go buy the specific role playing stuff I know I’m going to like instead of trusting to luck with a grab bag.
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