Shadowrun Pub

General => Role Playing Games => Topic started by: Pimp-Boy 2000 on November 03, 2005, 03:50:25 PM

Title: Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Pimp-Boy 2000 on November 03, 2005, 03:50:25 PM
Superhero Gameland (http://www.superherogameland.com/): Low prices, but they shipped the Shadowrun 4th book I ordered in a motherblooming thin cardboard envelope.  No packaging materials, no nothing.  However, they did send me a new, intact copy when I complained bitterly to their customer service, and they were courteous.  Go ahead and shop here, but submit comments with your order to the effect that you want your item to be packaged properly.  Their shipping speed is also good.

Noble Knight Games (http://www.nobleknightgames.com/): Great selection (especially of out-of-print materials), great email updates that actually are interesting, awesome customer service, low prices, super-fast shipping speed.  Noble Knight is the best online gaming retailer out there.  One drawback is that despite the selection, you won't always find what you're looking for.

RPGShop (http://www.rpgshop.com/): RPGShop is the Wal-Mart of online gaming retailers, without all the evil.  They have decent and fair customer service, a decent selection (but ONLY of in-print items), decent prices, and decent shipping speeds.  Sometimes, their in-stock status notifications will be inaccurate.  A very average store, but not seriously lacking in any area.

Stiggybaby's went out of business recently.  Shame.

Do or Dice (http://www.doordice.com/): You know, I don't think I've ever ordered anything from this store.  Their selection is OK, I guess.  If anyone has a buying experience with this store, let me know.

CCG Armory (http://www.ccgarmory.com/): Mediocre selection, lengthy shipping times, and lacksadaisical customer service aren't doing CCG Armory any favors.  The only thing they have going for them is low prices.  I'd avoid it like the plague (and I do)!

********

More to come later.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Seanr451 on November 11, 2005, 03:26:45 PM
I've ordered many things from http://www.fairplaygames.com/

Low, low prices. And when Gurps 4e first came out I knew like 12 players that wanted to buy the books. So I emailed Fairplay and asked for a break on shipping for a big order. An hour later I got an email from the owner. Said he'd give us free shipping for a big order. So not only did all of the Gurps players I know save over $20 on the book prices we got free shipping too.

Since the shipping was free I figured it'd be slow, but hey you can't complain when it's FREE right? Nope. The books showed up TWO DAYS later. And they'd been wrapped and packed so well that even those idiots at the US post office couldn't have damaged those books.

I've ordered several books from Fairplay since then. Great customer service, great prices, fast shipping. What more can I say?
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Jester on January 15, 2006, 05:20:22 AM
I usally don't order anything from online. I like the idea of supporting your local game shop. And since I'm a repeat customer I get 15% off almost everything I buy from there
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on January 17, 2006, 08:09:56 AM
It's all about the hookups.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Jester on January 18, 2006, 05:25:31 AM
definatly
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on January 31, 2006, 10:14:26 AM
I prefer store shopping to online shopping because then I can look through a book to  make sure it's one I really want before I buy  it.  True, it can be difficult to find out of print stuff, but half the time I'm not sure what I'll be interested in until I see it.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on January 31, 2006, 10:24:23 AM
Horrah for Impulse buying!

That's how I got a $80 set of dice!

LOL

-RuskiFace the Pirate

(they are jade. pretty cool really.)
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on January 31, 2006, 10:43:58 AM
I'm not exactly sure how many dice I've got, but they'll just about fill two of those Star Wars slurpy cups.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on January 31, 2006, 12:53:59 PM
This is just one set.
made of Jade.

wouldn't fill anything larger than a small paperclip dispencer, or perhaps that 'secret' pocket that bluejeans have.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on January 31, 2006, 02:40:16 PM
...wow.  I don't have the money to buy *one* set of dice that expensive.  Even my comics I never spent more than fifteen on a single book.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on January 31, 2006, 03:03:18 PM
Well, it is a bit overboard, and to be perfectly honest, I didn't have enough money to spend $60 on one set of dice either... but, I did have a large disposable income at the time, was living at home, but working a wage-slave job... and I really liked DnD and so forth... so, it seemed apropriate in a way, to waste a paycheck on dice that are almost too expencive to use.
I mean... the super-geeks of wall street have their gold plated mercadies benz... what is the mercadies of RPG geekdom? My guess: Jade Dice.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on January 31, 2006, 03:19:06 PM
I think the most I've spent on dice was 25 on set of steel ones for my boyfriend.  Probably wouldn't spend that much on myself, though.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on January 31, 2006, 03:54:25 PM
well, that was the other reason I had a lot of money at the time.

LOL

No Girlfriend.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on January 31, 2006, 04:26:19 PM
At least my boyfriend is a fellow gamer.  I even have more than a year's experience on him ;)
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Jester on February 01, 2006, 05:20:43 AM
that's just crazy. I can't see spending that much on one set of dice. I've probably spent that much on dice but I have ALOT!
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Gabriel on February 01, 2006, 05:48:50 AM
I think the most I've spent on dice was 25 on set of steel ones for my boyfriend.  Probably wouldn't spend that much on myself, though.

So since you bought him thouse, do you ever comment on his "big brass dice"???? :o

Gabriel, Owner of many, MANY 6-sided dice....
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 07:20:25 AM
lol, the dice were steel, not brass
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 08:24:26 AM
Yea, between my brothers and friends, we had a good sized bean-bag-chair worth of dice.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 08:25:55 AM
Although if you want big dice, I do have a d20 the size of a pool ball
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 08:29:18 AM
That's bigger than any dice i've got.

the biggest ones I have are the size of silver dollars.

anyways, the longest dice to roll is always the D100

"Roll Percentile"
(Gingling sounds)
"NOOO! Not the golf-ball 100! Just use two tens!"
"Too late, I already dropped it."
"Well Pick it up."
"No, it'll jinx it. i think it's going to be good."
"Crap. I'm going to go make a samwich. if it stops before I get back I'll know you just grabbed it and put it on the 98."
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 08:40:37 AM
lol, got one of those, too.  Hey, did  you know you can roll for time of day?  Take a d10 and d6 for minutes, a d12 for hours, and an even/odd or high/low for a.m./p.m.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 08:46:41 AM
Whoa... I just randomly picked a time.
that's pretty cool though.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 09:00:06 AM
I can also prove a phone company is unlucky (if you're superstitious)
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 09:13:23 AM
*shrug* I'm not really, but go ahead anyways.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 09:21:42 AM
It's MCI.  Now, those letters are also Roman numerals adding up to 1101.  Then, if you look at the ones and zeros of 1101 as binary numbers, it comes to 13.

I was bored when I came up with that one.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 09:31:28 AM
No Doubt!

Waaaay to much time on your hands.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 09:38:06 AM
Why do you think I game?
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 10:44:51 AM
LOL point taken.

-RuskiFace the Pirate

If you enjoy numbers like that though, and you've got some free time, you should take up hacking.

it's a hobby that can pay for it's self!
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 10:47:28 AM
lol  Tried programming a few years ago.  Not fast enough to hack.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 11:53:28 AM
Hacking has nothing to do with 'fastness'
it's all about paitence.

you have to just sit, and look.

contrary to popular belief, typing over 100 wpm and being able to have the fastest computer on the trix' are not prerequisets for hacking.

The core of hacking, is getting computers to let you in.
once you are in, all the hard work, is done on their end.

mostly, you just sit there, looking for an opening.
don't have to be fast to do that. just need free time.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 03:51:41 PM
Ok, I never spent much time on coding.  I learned some C++, but it's been awhile and I'd need to go over the stuff again.
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 04:32:47 PM
*shrug* again, coding is something diffrent from hacking.
you don't have to be able to write 'hello world' in basic inorder to be a hacker.

Hell, You can be a hacker if you can so much as think linerally, and use www.google.com

(Just look at "JohnnyIHackStuff")

Hacking is more about having other people write the software, and then you using it in creative ways.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 05:03:19 PM
guess I hadn't thought of it like that
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 01, 2006, 05:36:34 PM
Well, I've had the liberty of spending a lot of time thinking about it, researching it, and of course, doing it.

I didn't get 'the pirate' on the end of my name by being good with boats. LOL

there is some crediance to what you say though. typing super fast, and being able to write killer code are things that every hacker dreams of.

but really, it starts out much MUCH simpler than that.

in fact, most of the hackers I know, I'd say that a good 95% of them got their start with computer games.

You'd get a game, and it wouldn't work. so you'd have to fix the system inorder to make it run. sometimes it was your fault, and sometimes it was the overprotectiveness of the copyright protection programs.

from there, you had to learn how to get by their security, so the game you payed for would actually work right.

beyond that, it's just a hop skip and a jump to using thoes exact same skills to getting programs you didn't pay for to run.

and then one step removed from that, to getting the programs you didn't pay for, to run in interesting ways.

it's a slow dance, but it's got a rythem that sticks in your head forever.

-RuskiFace the Pirate
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: AJStarhiker on February 01, 2006, 09:15:42 PM
sound like fun
Title: Re:Online Retailers: Love or Hate?
Post by: Ruski on February 02, 2006, 07:49:00 AM
*shrug* it's a good way to kill boredom.

-RuskiFace the Pirate