Official ICE Forums
Gamer's Corner => Shopper's Guide => Topic started by: dutch206 on December 27, 2012, 06:31:11 PM
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I think his prices are highway robbery, but he does have a LOT of MERP books:
Wayne's Books (http://www.waynesbooks.net/?keyword=MIDDLE+EARTH&searchby=title&page=shop/browse)
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OOH! He's got a copy of RMSS "Martial Arts Companion" for sale too!
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I've got a good number of those and they are going to be sitting on his 'virtual shelf' for a very long time at those prices. I'd considered selling mine in the past at one point due to the values I saw put on them on ebay... at first. In watching them to see how they went... none of them ever sold. People weren't really willing to pay much more than a little over the cover prices in most cases. Seriously, who is going to pay $200 for Laketown?
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well, lets see how much I have taking dust on my shelves ::)
Can somebody add everything ( only once he seems to have several items twice at least ) except Palantir Quest ?
That's the only MERP book I miss along with the 2nd Edition Screen, I have all the rest. ( including reprints/reeditions and cover changes, no I won't tell you exactly where I live. ;D )
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I was surprised at the $ of the citadel books, I off loaded my copies back around 95 for about $50 to $70 a piece.
MDC
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:o $199 for Lake-Town? That is outrageous. I wish ICE could get the rights to issue PDF's of the MERP books just to put these jokers out of business.
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:o $199 for Lake-Town? That is outrageous. I wish ICE could get the rights to issue PDF's of the MERP books just to put these jokers out of business.
It won't happen...
The rights are in the hand of Middle Earth Enterprise ( Aka Tolkien Enterprise, Aka Saul Zaents ), and they are trying very hard to kill anything MERP related. At a time, a few years ago they were hunting down any site that hosted MERP PDF and sent in the lawyers to get the file removed ( when they could ).
Also I'm not sure ICE want's to comes again near that license.
First the price is probably more than what they can afford,
Second it will be so restricted that 99% of the old MERP books will be in the breaking the license category,
Third Warner Bros went to a lot ( like buying companies ) to secure all the licenses, I don't think they are going to let one slip away,
Last there's better things to do with RM. ( instead of being a licensee, ICE can be a licensor, RM is really adapted to modern computer games )
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Glad I completed my collection and don't have to worry about it now (and Guillaume, Palantir Quest was the last piece I needed, took me a while to find it at anything approaching a sane price and it was probably still 40 bucks with shipping; about what he's charging but in better condition). I never got into buying all editions/version of the same material, though (and I only have the earlier version of either Isengard or Riders of Rohan, not the one with more material).
I am planning to scan barcodes, etc, on my rpg collection so I can claim insurance if it should be destroyed, but man it's a lot of stuff.
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What's weird about that page is that the market prices have either changed a lot relative to each other -- which does happen, while Umbar, Ardor, etc were always a lot of money others varied a lot (like Trolls of the Misty Mountains did, say).
I am also sad this stuff can never be reprinted (not that, I think, ICE would do it even if they could). Tolkien Enterprises have obviously failed to prevent scans being available, but the unique combination of Tolkien Enterprises licensing and Christopher Tolkien's cooperation is probably unrepeatable anyhow. The "Middle-Earth backdrop adapted to make a fun RPG world with a variety of power levels" feel was just awesome and, while I love Rolemaster, there's always going to be loads of systems and the retrocloning movement means no sufficiently popular system can really die off even if it were to go out of print; settings, though, are awesome and can't really be cloned.
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The pirating thing (scans available on the web) is such a huge issue. For example, if you know how to look for PDF's online you can find a lot of people with unprotected, but unlisted, servers/web sites with all kinds of stuff on them - and they are the ones who don't even realize they are contributing to pirating. Funnily enough I tracked down a copy of my own book in this manner since I couldn't get it from the old ICE and I didn't really feel like scanning the thing myself (I figured I own like a dozen copies and wrote it to boot, so I didn't feel too bad about downloading it).
I've debated 'protection' on electronic copies of things with more than one company, but it will always come down to if they are willing to actually go after people for the piracy - which most RPG companies cannot afford to do. Steve Jackson Games used to state (not sure what their position is now) they were not worried about it because they had seen no decline in sales of their hard copies after the electronic copies were available... but that seems somewhat short sighted to me. The upside is someone can look at your (pirated) stuff before they decide if they want to buy it, so it COULD increase sales of hard copies to a limited extent. But, in my experience, people either want a hard copy or they don't. The cost involved in printing out full RPG books, combined with the hassle and quality issues, usually just isn't worth pirating a scan just to print out. So, imo, in reality they simply have no idea how many ELECTRONIC copies of their books they are missing out on sales for because it doesn't necessarily have that much to do with the hard copy sales... and in the future this will become a bigger and bigger issue. All just my own speculation though.
But, I'm not a fan of PDF's of RPG books. A novel I'll get an electronic version, because I can just read it on a tablet, but I want hard copies of my RPG books so they can be passed around the table, spread out for cross referencing, etc. The only reason I've found I like PDF's is because I can use them to print out portions of books in order to make my own. I have six individual binders for: Professions, Races & Cultures, TP's & Skills, Talents & Flaws, Open/Closed/TP Spell Lists, and Base Spell Lists. Last one I need to make is for Attack & Critical Tables, I just have not bothered because players keep copies of the ones they need in their own character binders. They are used extensively in character creation and a few are used for reference during play.
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It seems to me that not selling pdfs hasn't prevented really very good scans, in some cases, being available.
Interesting to see that WotC have recently gone back to selling .pdfs, for all editions, and without DRM. They actually can afford to sue people, and did about the time they pulled .pdfs last time, but I guess they've decided it wasn't such a good move.
Myself, I like .pdf and hard copy of a lot of books, which is part of why I'm a subscriber to Paizo (as I get both for the retail cost of the hardback, and I get the 15% AP subscriber discount on those subs, too). I'm finding that the OGL nature of Pathfinder -- which means there's an iPad app for the rules, plus at least two websites with good rules lookups (the Paizo PRD pages and also d20pfsrd.com) -- plus the great Paizp pdfs is lessening my former dependence on the books at-table although I still want them for reading. I am wondering if the open-ness of Mongoose Runequest (now called Legend) will produce similar benefits or whether the game is too small for that.
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It seems to me that not selling pdfs hasn't prevented really very good scans, in some cases, being available.
Interesting to see that WotC have recently gone back to selling .pdfs, for all editions, and without DRM. They actually can afford to sue people, and did about the time they pulled .pdfs last time, but I guess they've decided it wasn't such a good move.
Myself, I like .pdf and hard copy of a lot of books, which is part of why I'm a subscriber to Paizo (as I get both for the retail cost of the hardback, and I get the 15% AP subscriber discount on those subs, too). I'm finding that the OGL nature of Pathfinder -- which means there's an iPad app for the rules, plus at least two websites with good rules lookups (the Paizo PRD pages and also d20pfsrd.com) -- plus the great Paizp pdfs is lessening my former dependence on the books at-table although I still want them for reading. I am wondering if the open-ness of Mongoose Runequest (now called Legend) will produce similar benefits or whether the game is too small for that.
Actually if all you wanted was the electronic copy of a lot of Pathfinder stuff you can get it for free (and legally), well a good amount of it that is. There are android apps that have just about all the pertinent info in them for free on the android market, and they are authorized under the OGL from what I understand.
You know it's too bad with the MERP license because the ICE stuff was so much better than anything printed today. I remember a website back in 2000-2003 that had every MERP book ever published by ICE in PDF format for download for free, and they were apparently within their rights to do that. At least that is what a legal message had stated when a warning came out about Tolkien Enterprises or some other entity buying up all the licenses (Warner?) and that the downloads would only be available for a short time longer.
Bruce
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I am not a legal expert on that issue, however my understanding is that the site is legal, but the person who uploads the info is actually violating the copyright.
Don't kid yourself thinking that obtaining free downloads of copyrighted material as pdf copies is anything but cheating the businesses who try to provide you products.
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Any ideas what a shrink wrapped copy of ICE 8100 is worth, just curious as not planning on selling it, just haven't needed to open it yet.