Ep 10: Year To Date

Today we thought we would share what a typical Dungeonland day looks like. We always start early, around 7am, and after Milly has been on her local walk the first thing we do is print off the previous evenings orders and any that have come through that morning. Every order is scanned by me then for anything unusual. That is things like remote addresses, purchases for multiples of the same item, or free gifts that need adding, and these are all circled in red. We highlight them just to make sure it prompts us later to double check the invoice so that it goes out in the correct way without any mistakes. Once we have them checked over me and Paul go separate ways. So I work from home. And my first job now will be the financial side of the business. Every transaction is recorded on a spreadsheet and detailed partly for us to keep a track on how we are doing, and partly for our accountants to record the things that they need to deal with later. Once that is done I start checking for messages including e-mails, posts on Discord, questions that come through from the item pages themselves and anything else in general that needs a reply that morning. I always take care of replies to customers first, then anything to do with suppliers and other businesses that contact us are replied to straight afterwards. Every morning we ensure 100% of our inbox is always clear and any messages that continue to come through during the day I will generally pick up and reply to pretty quickly as we go along. Once sales are recorded and messages are replied to it is time to place our orders for restocks. We send orders through to UK suppliers every day so as soon as something is sold out, or low in stock, it will get re-ordered. Though it may be that the supplier doesn't have stock right now and it will go on to a back order to come in at some time in the future. International orders are placed less often and what will usually happen is I will request a stock list from the publisher and go through it on a particular day in the month when it is quieter and just do a bulk order as we need it. Meanwhile, Paul is out picking stock and putting together orders. Our stock is stored in more than one location so what tends to happen is just before he goes I split the invoices into three categories. Two are locations, one is mixed orders. So for example, if you just bought a book, that will get picked from one place, but another customer that just bought a miniature, that is being picked separately afterwards elsewhere. The customer that bought both, it does take us a little longer as we'll pick at one location and then it will be held over until it passes on to the next location. Sometimes it may be I pick one area, Paul picks the other, and we combine later for those mixed orders. The end result though is all the parcels end up with Paul and he packages everything up. Once that is complete it all comes back to me and I begin to book them in with Parcelforce online. The picking, packing, and booking in all has to be completed as early as possible and is usually over before lunch time. We give it every priority we can so that we are left with enough time to get the parcels booked in before the driver appears to pick them up but just in case we don't have enough time, we'll process the Parcelforce Priority orders first, then Express, and the Economy are done last so if we don't make it in time those will carry over to another day. The driver is due at 2pm generally, but if he's having a quiet day could turn up as early as 12.30pm so time is of the essence, but we don't rush, as being focused and error free on the orders is the most important thing to us, rather than getting every order out. By this time its highly likely couriers are dropping off parcels now. And so the afternoon is usually taken up by unpacking, checking off, pulling out any back orders we might have in the delivery and then taking stock to its relevant location. Every item is weighed and its barcode uploaded at this stage if it is the first time we have had the item. As we start to clear deliveries its likely that sales orders and invoices are coming through from suppliers for our next orders. As Dungeonland is a cash run business (we don't take credit terms, that is just a personal preference we have to keep the business debt free) we pay our invoices immediately so we can get stock shipped out to us soon as possible. In some cases, there will be product on the invoice that we've not had before and so this will be created and uploaded to the website and marked as awaiting stock. We do it right away when invoices are paid rather than when the delivery arrives so that we can get the product live immediately when it does turn up and then those automated stock notifications can go out to customers who are waiting. That is typical of how a Dungeonland day works for us. Some days are different though, like for example Tuesday's, that is the day when we learn about all the forthcoming product that has been announced. So a part of every Tuesday afternoon is set aside for uploading and creating new listings on the website. And Monday's, well, they can be so busy with the weekend backlog that nothing else actually happens that day other than processing orders. It may be we carry on in to the afternoon after the courier has been to collect so that we can catch up a bit before the next day. Random events can often throw day out too, whether it is the broadband going down, the accountant ringing us up with something important, or learning something like a courier price rise is being implemented, and so on, it can really be anything. Typically though, by the time we are at 3pm we are tools down unless it is especially busy. We like to start early and finish early here as most of what needs doing has to be done before the driver turns up, he is like a countdown ticking away in the background each day. And by 3pm Milly is giving us that cute look you get from doggies to say, my turn now! And we'll take her out for her next walk and a play at that stage. A Dungeonland day! Is it what you imagined? We hope it was a little interesting at least and we thank you once more for taking the time to read it.

We've come along way since March 2020 when Dungeonland first began, and today, we thought we'd talk about how it was back then, what's changed, and some lessons learnt. And while we're here, we'll just cover off what happened after our last blog when we were looking out for a physical store. We went out and viewed a couple of local stores and some multi-purpose office locations too. Our decision in the end is that we won't be operating from either. Having looked into the costs, from the rent, to insurance, staffing, corporation taxes, and things like alarms and cameras, shelving, and potential repairs to premises and losses in stock, we came to a total cost that we just didn't believe a physical location could pay for. That meant it would fall on the website to support it and would likely mean raising prices to do so. Giving up the websites profits to support a physical location that in the end is more work for us just didn't make sense. So we have closed that chapter and decided to remain as just an online store. That may be disappointing, but it is probably a reflection of the world we live in today. Not many people go out to physical stores any more. So we know where Dungeonland is right now. But what about where it came from? If you've read our About The Team page you'll know that my last place of work prior to starting Dungeonland, was Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and Paul last worked at Royal Mail. When COVID struck, many businesses simply sent staff home without knowing when they would ever be needed back again. That uncertainty led to the decision to start a business. As roleplaying games had always been a passion of mine and as I also felt I struggled to find a good source for them online the idea of our own online store was conceived. The idea though, and how it looked, was nothing like it is today. We're in year four now, and things have changed a lot. If you visited us year one, perhaps you might remember this logo we had below when we first started out ...

Should we open a physical store? Well, tomorrow we are going to be taking a look at one. It's on Harrowside which is the southern most point of Blackpool where it joins St Anne's and just a few minutes walk from the seafront. One day before we view it, and if we are honest, we are interested but split down the middle as to whether this is something that can work for us. Writing this, we are going to go through some things in favour of having one, and then against having one, and see how that leaves us feeling before we go and see the store itself, which from our online viewing, it's a very nice tidy modern store. In favour, we have of course potential new customers that may walk in. And it would be great to get our items stored under one roof for our Parcelforce collections. We currently have stock spread across more than one location. It would also open up click and collect as an option for everyone who visits our website as opposed to how we do it just now, which is just for those with a local postcode to us. It may give us the opportunity to have a gaming space where we could entertain in the evenings. Something which is lacking around our local area. A store gives us a more real presence overall as it is something tangible for you all to see and visit rather than just web pages to browse. For those visiting the store it could also be possible to take advantage of the Bits n Mortar scheme where you get a free PDF with selected book purchases. This wouldn't benefit online though, as the scheme is to drive traffic to physical stores and not meant as a competitive edge for online businesses. I'm not sure the scheme would work for us as it does require our books to be sold at RRP also. That would mean a price rise of around 10 - 25% across our items. That's a lot. Is a complimentary PDF worth paying full RRP? We feel doubtful about that and it could have a real negative impact on those of you who do not have an interest in the PDF. What's not in favour? Well, it needs to be manned first. As team of two that is pretty maxed out already that is challenging for us. Employing staff is the biggest expense a business usually has and so we'd likely run it ourselves, at least at first, and that means longer days or less time to work on the website which is likely not viable given it would be the profitable part of the business. Something to consider. The real issue to consider though is likely cost. We aren't just talking rent. We'll have new energy bills, water bills, business rates, business insurance, alarm monitoring, and the list goes on, not to mention the set up of the store itself like shelving, security, and new signage, the latter alone itself could cost a grand just to have our name above the door. We've weighed these up and we know that as long as the website maintains its current course it can cover all these expenses. The website would pay for the physical store. And it would probably have to for the first year or two while it gets going, picks up some traction, and we learn what is working and what is not. The question is, do we want to change Dungeonland from being a profitable business to something that may end up breaking even to support a start up physical store? Food for thought. It also opens us up to other things, like crime and maintenance. Stores get shoplifted, broken into, and sometimes things just in general go wrong, like a shutter gets stuck and needs an engineer call out. We would have to assume we are going to incur some unexpected losses along the way financially and in stock. And that leads on to our inventory. It is around six thousand products at present and those would need to continue to tie up accurately in both our online and physical sales. That likely means more money to be invested too in software and equipment that will allow the store and website to work together. So where do we stand? Well, if we are ever, ever going to open a physical store it is now. We won't go back to look at this ever again, especially as we are all getting older around here. For it to work, I think we are going to need some negotiation and a good deal from the landlord of that store. If that can be done, and we can secure the store as we feel we need it. It feels possible if everything lands just as it needs to for us to make this happen. We're cool with the investment if it is right. If it's not right though, and we have any doubts or believe that the store may just drag down the website, then this week may be the end of Dungeonland ever looking to have a physical presence. Tomorrow, we will see what the Estage Agent has to say and how the landlord reacts to us. And the rest I guess is down to fate! It's very much an online world these days. And once again, we thank you for supporting Dungeonland in that world. Mark.

There have been quite a few changes over the first half of this year so I thought I would post an update on some of the key things that have changed around the Dungeonland website. The major change has been our decision not to take pre-orders anymore but rather just to have a register your interest option instead. There are positives and negatives to both ways of us doing advance orders but overall we think having a register your interest option instead has more benefits to both of us. It means you don't have to pay a deposit and will get notified on arrival of any new release that might interest you, and with no commitment to have to make the purchase later. And for us, it means the process is entirely automated and that saves us a lot of time that we can spend on other parts of the business. We can also track how many of you register your interest in individual products so we can adjust our orders accordingly. Our checkout had a lot of changes a few months ago and the biggest one of those was our switch from DPD to Parcelforce. The service we have received over the past three months from Parcelforce has been the best we've had from any of the couriers we've tried, we actually have done no claims at all with them, on thousands of parcels, which is brilliant for us and you. I expect Parcelforce will remain on our checkout as our first choice going forward and is unlikely to change now. Though customers in some of the harder parts to reach of the UK may see different options. We also added the optional packaging upgrades to our checkout this year. Now this started as a trial originally as we were often receiving messages from you guys after placing orders, or in the comments box, with special requests about how we package items. The packaging we used at the time was standard card book wraps, recycled card boxes, or standard size bubble wrap. Buying better packaging comes at a cost, the hard book wraps we use now for example cost us about £1.25 each to purchase in. We trialled giving you upgrades to various things but those book wraps and the thicker 2cm bubble wrap are the options we have kept with. Though I was nervous about asking for payment toward better packaging your feedback and response has overall been overwhelmingly in favour of it and very positive. We did receive one complaint from a customer who disagreed with it fairly strong at the time but as we've had probably around twenty or so positive comments that packaging option is now hear to stay. And it is always optional. If the service is not to your taste it can simply be bypassed and ignored. The only change we have made recently is to move this option from the checkout and on to the items themselves so you can now click on a checkbox when you add the item to your basket if it is something that is of interest to you. The vast bulk of what you are purchasing from us continues to be books and what you buy will continue to dictate what we order. For this reason, we have decided to discontinue a lot of the miniature range we currently carry. Most miniatures when sold now will not be restocked. It is likely in the long term we may just focus on a small range of painted miniatures for D&D and Pathfinder and the remaining range will gradually go into offers until it is all cleared through. Miniature sales have never made up more than about 3-4% of our business and have always been... well, a miniature part of it. A more streamlined range of miniatures and an increased range of books seems to be what most of your prefer based on your shopping habits with us. Social media is an area we are still working out what to do with (I've never been any good with that kind of stuff). It is likely we won't post on Instagram going forward. Just due to lack of time. We really want to just use one method of social media ideally and currently we are leaning toward putting more into Discord. At present though, we have three times as many followers on Twitter, so we will keep posting on both but ultimately one of these will become the main social platform we would like to use in future. Our e-mail newsletter is now gone. We finished sending those out around early April. Again, they take about a half day to create and we thought the time would be better spent elsewhere. So no more newsletters going forward, and no plans to change that at present. Thousands of you have signed up for Player Points since we started them which is amazing. Now this is the most expensive part of our website to run so it is something that has to be successful to stick around due to the high cost of us having it. As long as you tell us you like it and want it, we'll keep this in place. It is something that we will always be monitoring though as we need to make sure it really gets used by you all so that we can make sense of its overall cost to us. If you have any feedback on how the Player Points work or what you think of them let us know. We see a lot of people using them, but we don't get a lot of feedback around that area with it all being automated. We've just changed this week the amount of product that display per page too. Down from 100 to 48. On your PC we want to show you as much product as possible on a page, we're confident your PC can handle it no problem, but on a mobile, we are aware that the more product on a page, the slower it can be to load up. With around six thousand products in our store we don't want to set the product number low as you'll be cycling through hundreds of pages to get anywhere so we've gone with 48 per page for now to give you a good range on a PC and not too much hopefully for your mobile to contend with. For the first time too, we are now displaying the amount of product in stock. In the past items have always just displayed just as ' in stock' with no quantity information so you wouldn't know if we had one left or fifty of them, but as of now, you can see what we have. You'll probably find that with mainstream product we can re-order in quickly we aren't likely to keep more than ten or so around, however, with product that is more difficult to source we may order fifty or so to try and keep stock available to you for a while. You can also filter products now to show you ones that include a complimentary PDF. Local Fylde Coast customers can still get direct deliveries from us and for the first time we are delivering small orders to some areas though there will be a delivery charge if they are under certain amounts. Paul is the one that drives around to do our local deliveries and the more you spend of course, the more that offsets his petrol and time cost. On a small order it's not practical for him to be driving around for too long, hence the small charge for delivery on those orders now. For international customers so much has changed I would just refer you now to our shipping and checkout page. In the EU we are required currently to file accounts in each EU country if we ship any orders there. Completely impractical for a small business unfortunately. We will ship to a UK freight forwarder though as that way it is they who take care of the tax obligations side of exporting. As you know there are just the two us that run Dungeonland. We are very grateful that you keep us maxed out with business every day. We seldom rest, and are very active at work all the time. We thank you for that. On the flip side, there is a limit to how much we can process and that is sometimes the reason behind the scenes that we try to make things more automated, like pre-orders, or remove things that take us too much time, like e-mail newsletters. We never thought that Dungeonland would be anything more than a small niche business and though it remains small, it is becoming a larger size of small than we expected. To the point that we may incorporate the business soon to make our taxes more economical in the future. Dungeonland Limited is currently under consideration. I though, would admit to being a little overwhelmed by all the information and advise our accountant currently has to offer us. Business can be complex. For us, we like small and busy and hope to remain to stay small and busy, limited or otherwise. We thank you all for your ongoing support!

What do you think is the question that Dungeonland gets asked the most each week? Based on this episodes title, you can probably figure out what it is - when is my item arriving in stock? This is a question we get almost every day. And especially from customers who have pre-orders with us. Now on pre-orders, we do not advertise any date that suggests when it might be available. And there is a reason for this - we don't have one. On almost every product we do not receive any release date or arrival information. The exception, being the odd product by the big publishers, like Dungeons & Dragons for example, they always get a street date which is available on their website (or we can tell you). Pretty much everything else? We are flying by the seat of our pants. What a funny old aviation term that is. But totally appropriate here. It is an unusual industry. You can go to almost any other entertainment industry, like say, video games, or movies and so forth, and all the products have street dates. The items are shipped into the retailers ready for those street dates and they go live on sale everywhere at the same time. Very fair to all. Not here though. This industry is niche and items are sold, well, when they turn up in most cases. But it is when they turn up that is the issue that we are talking about. So, here is how it works for us, and hopefully you can understand why information is generally not forthcoming from us. I'd rather not be saying that, but this industry is what it is. For starters our products come from all different sources all over the world just now. We use trade suppliers all across the UK and EU and we purchase a lot of stock direct from publishers both large and small and in multiple different countries spread around the globe. Generally, what we have listed for pre-order though is what we have ordered from those larger key UK suppliers. That is because they are usually the ones that offer us a trade price upfront and information about the product so we can put that pre-order up. With some publishers we might not be able to work out a trade price until the stock is paid for and shipping (due to the exchange rate) and they may not want us to offer a pre-order as they may have a Kickstarter running and they are hoping to get their orders there first. So to sum up, if it is on pre-order, it is probably coming from a UK supplier. Now, you would think the UK supplier would offer us a release date or some information on when the item is shipping, right? Nope. They may put a vague quarter in the year they might anticipate stock but that would be at best. And most likely, they'll miss that quarter anyway. So we list the item for pre-order without any information of when it will ship. It is all we can do and is better than throwing up vague estimates that will only disappoint later. We do place an order day one with the supplier. That will put us top of the queue later when stock arrives with them. As customers pre-order we'll increase that amount based on your orders. This is why it helps if you order early on some titles (see our special order blog). Now when is that item going to ship? First, lets ask if this is a Kickstarter item or not. If it is, then Kickstarter fulfilment is going to happen first. If you are not familiar with Kickstarter, a quick search online will show you all about what this crowd funding platform does. When the product is funded, they'll start shipping to customers that backed them first. Only once that is 100% complete will they start to look at retail distribution. If the product is popular Kickstarter fulfilment can take months. That is not unusual. If you have ordered a product with us that does have a Kickstarter it is always worth checking their page as they usually do tend to tell you where they are in terms of completing shipments to backers. Eventually, we get to the point where the Kickstarter is completed or there wasn't a Kickstarter on the product and it is being funded probably by the publisher themselves. What happens next? We wait for the supplier to place an order with the publisher. This is the first step in several steps where we just don't know how long that might be. The supplier may place orders regular with some publishers, and not so much with others. It's going to come down to what demand they get for a publishers products. Suppliers take back orders from retailers for products and place orders once they have enough to take the process to the next stage. So, imagine your product has shipped now in its country of origin. Most likely the USA, this is typically where most of our books come from. That product could be out for days, weeks, or even months, before the supplier places that order for it. We often get customers saying to us, "my product is out in America" and we appreciate it probably is. But we can't tell you if the supplier in the UK has placed the order for it yet. They don't share that kind of information with retailers. And the distribution is going to take time. If you are lucky enough that your product is produced in the UK then the next stage will be it arriving in with the supplier and being distributed out to retail. Unfortunately though, as you probably figured already, very little is produced here in the UK. Most comes from America, China, and (oddly to me) Lithuania. Those tend to be the hot spots for book printing. And this means step two of your items unpredictable arrival time is going to be down to the freight time. And freight time can be weeks, or months, and again, is all rather unpredictable. Once the freight does arrive in the UK it will be subjected to customs UK clearance times and this again can cause delays and add more time to your item reaching the supplier. And that is the reason that when you send us a message and ask us - can you tell me when my item is due in? I generally break down and write you a lengthy e-mail explaining all the reasons above that I can't help. And I know it is frustrating for you not to know, because it is frustrating for us too that we have no idea when products are going to arrive. Any business dislikes disappointing customers and having no information for you is always disappointing. And at the time your question comes in, your item could still be at the publisher, on a freight journey, in customs, and so on, and we just don't know. Eventually though that freight comes in with our supplier and the moment their warehouse has processed it they are in touch with retailers to let them know stock is here and they are going to start invoicing. We pay all our invoices up front on day one of any stock arrival to get our shipments out first. That is as much control as we have. And once we have paid that invoice that is the moment we'll start to post on social media what is due in and we'll start contacting those pre-order customers to say their item is about to arrive in with us. And finally, you have your item! Thanks for taking the time to read this. I will no doubt be pointing a few of you to this page when I get asked that question again. And I always recommend that anyone who is interested to place a pre-order with us checks our pre-order guide first. We keep it as transparent and informative as possible so that when you place an order you know exactly what is ahead for your order.

From the outset we have had odd prices on Dungeonland. By that we mean, we don't end everything ninety nine, or zero, like most stores. All our items have a price tag that looks, well, a little random compared to some stores. For example this week we have Shiver Gothic which we have priced at £32.39. The price on Asmodee, one of our suppliers, is £39.99 RRP, a more traditional price that people expect to see. And most stores that discount the item, as we do, will probably end up at something ninety nine. So why do we price the way we do? To answer that we need to talk about how and where we get stock from. But first... I have to admit we were a little unsure of pricing this way. It sort of makes the store look like the prices are converted from another currency. Know what I mean? Like when you visit a store in another country and select your country on the drop down menu, than boom, all the prices convert to what they will roughly cost you if you make a purchase. That was a concern. We are UK based and all our items are in stock here in the UK. So we were cautious that people might think we were somewhere else outside the UK with the odd prices. But it seems to have worked out and you all seem to have got used to the way we do price things up. We do it this way part for our benefit, and part for yours, and here is why the pricing is what it is, and also, why it moves up and down so often too. Firstly, lets take a typical item like a Castles & Crusades book for example. We purchase these sometimes direct from the publisher in America, sometimes from a supplier in the EU, and sometimes from a UK based supplier. And hey, guess what? They all have, or end up at, a completely different cost price to us. When we import the book the pounds price against the dollar is never the same from one order to the next so the item price will fluctuate each time we re-order it. It's the same when we go to our EU supplier, the Euro price against the pound will vary each time and on top of that their price will likely be different to that of the UK supplier too. Even two different suppliers in the UK will almost certainly have a different cost price. So what we are saying overall is that each time the book comes into stock the price we paid will no doubt be different to the last time we paid for it. It could be more, it could be less. This is one reason we don't sell at RRP or any other fixed rate discounted price. If we did, our margin on the book would be up and down and all over the place, each and every time we ordered another one in. So what we do is we take the final cost price of the item and add on a fixed percentage margin for Dungeonland. And that, is our discounted price, no matter what odd number it ends up at. If the book sells out, we repeat the method on the price the next time it arrives in stock again. And if we re-order the book while we still have stock available then we take the two trade prices and smash them together into one average cost and apply the margin to that. So if we had one book left that cost us £20, and then got two more in that costed us £23, the cost price would be £22 for us (£20 plus 2 x £23 divided by 3). Then the margin would be applied to that final £22 figure. This ensures that Dungeonland always makes the same margin every book we sell. It also ensures we give you the same great value on every book we sell. You might ask though, why don't we just buy from the cheapest supplier all the time? The answer is that almost always, the books we order, are out of stock. So when they come in we tend to have to grab them fast regardless of who the supplier is. The sharp eyed of you might note that Cy_Borg for example fluctuates up and down in our store between £32 - £36 roughly. That is the effect of the price difference between two different suppliers we are buying stock from. Our margin is the same, whichever price the book is at. As the book has been so hard to keep in stock though, we grab what we can, from where we can, when it is around. So, you'll notice Dungeonland prices have the potential to fluctuate up and down every time a restock arrives. It also has an effect on pre-order prices. You see, Asmodee, are really the only supplier that takes pre-orders. Most of the others either don't, or just offer a few select products to pre-order. So when Dungeonland lists an item for pre-order it is likely that price is our margin on top of the Asmodee trade price. However, when the item ships, it may not be Asmodee who are first to supply us with stock. Depending on the item, it could be any one of a number of places and very likely at a different cost that could be higher or lower. And this is the reason we sometimes get new releases in and then the price moves. Usually though, it is downward, which is to your benefit. And one of the perks for our customers is that if we are able to source an item at a sale or clearance cost from a supplier we will still apply the exact same maths to it meaning you get the same deal from us, as we get from the supplier. So if we get it cheap, you get it cheap, we don't price it up above our margin in any way ever. And that's because we want you to find some great deals around Dungeonland. And that, is the reason for our odd prices. The constant moving trade cost to us combined with a fixed margin. Thanks for reading and we hope that overall, you do like the prices at Dungeonland. One things for sure, they'll always keep changing! And the maths every delivery keeps my mind well exercised...

As 2022 comes to an end and we begin 2023 we thought we'd take a look back and share with you what has been a very successful year for Dungeonland, but as usual, not without its constant learning curve. When we started the year Dungeonland was selling its RPG wares not just on dungeonland.co.uk but also on third party websites and marketplaces too, like eBay for example. By mid-year though, thanks to you guys and your support of the website we were able to leave those marketplaces all together. That meant two things for us. First, it allowed us to focus more on the website and spend more time developing it. And Player Points were one of the first things we added giving you 3% back on all your transactions. Three times as much as any of our similar competitors. It also meant we benefitted from an improved margin. Third party marketplaces all charge fees on transactions impacting any profit a business might make on there. At dungeonland.co.uk we've always sold lower than third party marketplaces as a result of their fees and in November 2022 we were able to reduce our margin another 5% giving you even better prices. This was possible because of the large increase of sales we experienced on the website this year and it was a bit of a thankyou for your support and our way of trying to help a little bit more with the constant price increases from inflation this year. And inflation was a big thing for all of us this year. We experienced a number of times where we sold a book, re-ordered it from a supplier, and the trade price was as much, and sometimes more, than we had sold our previous copy for. And this has impacted on the way we have had to present pre-orders this year. We are now only taking deposits and not full payments. This is largely because the initial price a supplier gives us is often not the final price they are charging when the item ships. Suppliers have suffered too from inflation and in particular, from a weak pound. It led to us selling pre-order items at times this year, at cost price in some instances. Dungeonland will always try and give you the best price we can. We try to balance our margin in a way that it gives you a competitive price while at the same time allowing the business to grow. This year inflation is expected to settle back down. Let us all hope so and eventually we may return to taking full payments on pre-orders for those of you who prefer that method. Pre-orders weren't the only headache from 2022 though. The Royal Mail strikes made a lot of businesses realise they couldn't just rely on the one courier anymore. There is a benefit for businesses using one courier. It means all your parcels are going through them, that means a better rate for the business, and that means a better postage price for the customer. The more we restrict your choice of courier and stick with the same one, the better value our shipping costs become for you. However, we understand most people like a choice of courier. And some people may not like certain couriers, or the courier may not have good coverage of their area. It's a tricky balance to get right. We want to charge you the lowest rate we can, but we also want to give you a choice. That's a balance we are still experimenting with and you can expect more changes to our checkout this year as we learn what you like most. What you did seem to like, according to the feedback we received, was the option to add your own bubble wrap types and packaging when you checkout. As a standard, we'll always pack your parcels the best we can anyway. That extra option though has proven very popular and is entirely your choice. Another great success last year was our partnership with the Dogs Trust and you helped bring our total donation up to £1,120.45 by the end of 2022. That was an amazing achievement and more than we had dreamed of reaching. In a tough year for people, it was incredible. And we thank all of you that contributed to that total. You were also great at supporting indie books. So much so, that some of our top sellers were indie books and some of those titles we shifted in their hundreds. Our focus this year will very much be on bringing you even more, and in larger quantities, to try and hold on to stock for longer as many of those indie books turn out to be one off print runs. We'll keep growing our RPG range this year and continue to bring you a select range of miniatures and dice alongside them. We are curious though as to the future of Dungeons & Dragons? We write this article shortly after the leaked OGL came out and there seems to have been a real public shift against it. The last D&D book we had, the Dragon Queen, was one of our larger sellers of the year, it did incredibly well. Right now though it doesn't appear as though you are all taking to Keys From The Golden Vault, the next D&D book, which is picking up a lower than normal amount of pre-orders. Maybe this year will be the rise of some of the other RPG titles and perhaps D&D may be set to lose some of its market share? If you are not playing D&D might we suggest some of the titles we played this year? We started the year continuing with the Forbidden Lands which looks like we'll be going into our third year of campaign. I must admit, I have become a fan of the Free League style of system. If you've not played it, it uses multiple d6 dice instead of a typical d20 or percentile dice. You generally add the amount of dice you have for a stat with the amount you have for a skill, adjust for any talents, and roll. The more sixes, the more successes. It feels less random, and makes the characters feel more accomplished and skilled to me. It also has a great setting and the box set is particularly nice, feeling quite deluxe. This was also the year we tried Pathfinder for the first time and I would recommend it as a real alternative to D&D if you are one of those people right now, looking for something else to move on to. I enjoyed the Pathfinder system and where the game really scores for me is the sheer volume of books and add-ons available. It's a collectors dream. I'd say the same about Dungeon Crawl Classics too, which our group also enjoyed this year, and features a multitude of books with fantastic artwork. Dungeonland starts 2023 in its best position yet. Your continued support drives the expansion of our RPG range, growing it more and more. As I write this we have over six thousand SKU's available now and that will continue to increase as long as you continue to shop with us. We are driving all the profits of the business right back into the business to fast track that growth as much as we can. What you may not know is we operate Dungeonland as a cash business. We never take on credit terms with suppliers or banks, we only take them with couriers (that is the only way they operate). So all the stock you see, that all belongs to Dungeonland, and the business is run on a daily basis free of any debt. That allows us to pump all the revenue of the business right back into it. And that's why every transaction you make with us, means a lot to us, because each purchase will grow our product range and allow us to add new features to the website. So once more, we thank you for your continued support. For helping us to grow this business, feed our family and doggy, and ultimately, for making 2022 such a great year of growth for us in a time when businesses in general have had a difficult struggle. YOU mean a lot to us. Genuinely. Every day we try to improve Dungeonland we start by thinking what you would want. We have come to learn and know many of your names, even if we've never spoken with you. And we look forward to supplying you more RPG product this year that may surprise and excite you. Thank you for your visit and for all your return visits. Now go discover your greatest adventure of 2023!

In episode three we are discussing how Asmodee actually works, in terms of ordering roleplaying game items. Based on what we hear from customers, you may be surprised how the world's largest supplier of board game products actually gets its RPG product to retail stores. If you don't know Asmodee, they are a multi-billion-dollar company, and the world's largest supplier of board game products. They are the biggest and most essential cog in the supplier chain that gets board games, and our roleplaying games, into the UK market. Some people complain that Asmodee have a monopoly on many of these types of products, and that may be, but without Asmodee, the fact is that many of the board game and roleplaying game products they supply simply would not be available in the UK otherwise. Asmodee carries a large range of board games, trading cards games, and various accessories in stock all year round. But what about roleplaying games? It's a smaller, more niche market, despite the success of Dungeons & Dragons bringing it much more to the forefront these days. Now we sometimes get customers coming to us saying they have seen a product on the Asmodee website, and can we order one in so they can purchase it. There is often an assumption we get from customers that if it's on their website, they have stock, and we can have it in a day or so. The truth is, Asmodee really only stock a few RPG games. Namely Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and beyond that, well... really only whatever this week's new releases are or key best sellers, like Mork Borg for example. There are thousands of RPG products listed on the Asmodee website available for retailers to special order, but they do not have stock. If you really think about it, why would they? Most of it probably doesn't sell too often for them and the cost of purchasing and storing that stock would be pretty phenomenal, especially when they already have a vast warehouse full of board games and trading cards and so forth. This brings us to how Asmodee actually really works with the majority of RPG products. The special order! So, let's say for example Dungeonland needs stock of the Delta Green slipcase set by Arc Dream. We place an order with Asmodee and that goes on to their special orders list. The order will wait there on the list until Asmodee have enough orders for Arc Dream product that they can place an order. That could be any amount of time, but it's reasonable to think that the more popular products the publisher has, the quicker Asmodee will build up more special orders from retailers and so the sooner the order will be placed. Once the order is placed by Asmodee with Arc Dream the freight process will begin and this can be a number of weeks again. Most of the time Asmodee advise on their special-order list about six to eight weeks to obtain stock. While fairly accurate in many cases, our experience is that it can be as much as a year sometimes depending on the product. It's also possible the product is out of stock with the publisher, which may contribute to delays. We know this is frustrating for customers as many of you in the past have asked us when an item is coming back in, and we inevitably end up trying to explain the situation above. We never actually know when stock is arriving. We special order it, the wait begins, and it turns up at some random point in the future. It's a slow process for customers and can lead to products being out of stock for fairly long periods. As a business, it is a difficult situation for us too, as stock turning up at random times with no notice means we cannot budget our spend on stock. We may have a week where little to nothing comes through, or a week where we are inundated with restocks and invoices from Asmodee leaving us with multiple big bills to pay. Over the last few years, we have learnt to manage this as best we can. It's a situation unlike anything we have seen in other businesses we have been involved with though. Generally, when a business wants stock, it orders it, pays for it, and gets it. But not here, not in the RPG world. And this brings us on to new releases for RPG products. You see, not all RPG new releases are considered by Asmodee to be 'stock products' and many go straight on to their special-order list. The most recent example I can think of being Savage Worlds Pathfinder. When a product like this is announced we special-order it, as does every other retailer if they want it, and Asmodee collate the orders ready to place with the publisher. Now at some point that order will be placed by Asmodee with that publisher, but we don't know when. And if we order additional stock of an item, like Savage Worlds Pathfinder, it may be delayed if our order is placed after Asmodee's order with the publisher. We effectively are waiting for them to build up enough orders again for another, later order. This is why a product like Savage Worlds Pathfinder ends up in short supply and sold out by us. Remember, Asmodee aren't stocking it in their warehouse, they have zero for general sale, all that comes into them, is what is special ordered by retailers. This is why it does really help when customers place early pre-orders. If that happens, we can get the right quantity ordered early. The more customers leave it late or decide to purchase on the day, the more likely we are to have no stock and be waiting on those special orders to come through again in the future. It's not a great scenario but at least Asmodee are offering the products, that's the main thing. Like we said before, if they weren't here, no-one else would be picking this stuff up to supply to the UK. And the cost of importing ourselves from the publishers is way more expensive. We've done it. Importing directly ourselves has proven slow, expensive, and left us with product that worked out much more costly. It's a process we still sometimes do, but only on products that are non-distributed here in the UK. Hopefully, this article helps customers to understand why products are out of stock at Dungeonland, and why often, they stay out of stock for quite some time. Every product listing that is sold out on Dungeonland has been re-ordered. If we are not re-ordering it, we remove it from the website. So, all those out-of-stock listings you can see, Asmodee has a special order for each one of them, unless it is a product that's not supplied by them. Some of our products come from elsewhere, in fact, we probably now use around twenty or so different suppliers around the world. But none of them have an inventory a fraction of the size of Asmodee. They are the largest of all our suppliers by some distance, and we are dependent on them for so much of the stock we all buy. That is the special order. Essential, but also, frustrating. Welcome to the world of retail for RPG games!

In episode two we are going to talk about our favourite tabletop RPG of all time, the amazing, and remarkable, Marvel Super Heroes Basic Set. From the moment we first played it we were hooked on the 80's world of Marvel Super Heroes, its villains, and incredible plots. My name is Mark. I am one half of Dungeonland. And at around eleven years old I was reading the UK run of the Marvel Secret Wars comic book. A story about an alien that comes from beyond and assembles a battle planet made out of fragments of many other planets for the mightiest heroes and villains of Earth to do battle on. The Beyonder, as he was called, was childlike and had no concept of good and evil. Though he had limitless power to give the winner, good or evil, whatever it desired. What followed was week after week of British comics, reprinted from their American counterparts, with the likes of Hulk, Spider-Man, and Captain America, in battle with Doctor Octopus, Ultron, the Lizard and many more. For an eleven-year-old child this was pretty much the most exciting comics had ever been. A whole bunch of well-known heroes facing off with a whole bunch of infamous villains in one big, massive scrap in the ultimate arena. I had never seen so much superhero combat before, and so many heroes and villains on one page all at the same time. It inspired me to draw my own superhero battles with my friends at school at the time. Secret Wars was also the platform that gave me an interest in Marvel, enough so, that when I stumbled across that Marvel Super Heroes Basic Set in Games Workshop, I had to pick it up and see what it was all about. At this point, I had been playing Dungeons & Dragons Basic with my school friends already and so the TSR brand was already becoming familiar to me. I knew I liked what they did. And so, seeing that the Marvel Super Heroes Basic Set was another TSR product I was totally invested. What was different though, was that my Dungeons & Dragons friends had no interest in the product. They liked their fantasy, and these superheroes didn't appeal to them. However, I had friends that were into comic books and were really into the idea of playing the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, despite that they had never shown an interest in Dungeons & Dragons. So, I ended up in two quite different groups at the time. I had my Marvel RPG friends, and my D&D RPG friends. Which is not unlike today, I still come across similar situations with either fantasy or superhero RPG groups. I've never been sure why they don't crossover for many others as they do for me. So, Marvel was very different to D&D in its ruleset. We had two rulebooks, a map, adventure, dice, character cards and counters in the original basic box set. What was striking was the system. Now often referred to as the FASERIP system. Characters were made up from Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. The unusual part though, and what was so comic book about the system, was that you didn't rely on numbers like in D&D for those statistics. You had words that translated as numbers. For example, the average non-powered human would be Typical in ability. Typical represented six. Above average and you were Good, which represented ten. And the peak of human ability was Excellent, which represented twenty. These configurations continued upward, and the more powerful characters had more points represented by more powerful sounding words. So, for example, Daredevil, who is a superhero but still human, may have Good strength, worth ten points of damage on a strike. But the Thing of the Fantastic Four, his strength was Monstrous, a whopping seventy-five points. What was great about this system was that as a child it was easy to memorize the words. If you looked at say Spider-Man for example, and it said Amazing agility, you knew as a kid right away that was fifty points. The game used only a pair of percentile dice, very different to D&D again, and these were rolled on a table where you would compare the ability level, like Amazing, or Excellent, and so on, against the dice roll to see your measure of success. Ultimately your dice roll would land in white (failure), green or yellow (successes), or red (critical). Yep, way back in the 80's, the Marvel RPG was already doing critical hits! What you needed to roll to get into the various colours depended on your ability rank. For example, the Thing has Monstrous strength, and needs to bend an alien steel bar to make an escape. You compare the rank of the Thing's strength to the rank of the strength of steel. If he's two ranks higher, his success is automatic, a rank above, he needs green, the same rank, he needs to roll in yellow, and if the steel is stronger, he needs red, unless it is two ranks higher in which case he is not strong enough. Actual steel, I think was a rank below the Thing, so he would likely bend it without needing to roll too high. For Daredevil though, he simply could not bend it and would have to use his other powers to help himself escape. It was a brilliant and simple system powered by the use of super powered words. Great for a young child or an adult to play. Inside the box we had a bunch of hero cards so we could already start playing with the Fantastic Four, or the likes of Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, and Captain Marvel. The included adventure, the Day of the Octopus, was a simple affair featuring Doctor Octopus as the main antagonist and was a fun frolic to play through. And if you wanted, you could of course create your own superhero to go on adventures with. I had a few at the time, Cats Paw and Super Heatwave. And I remember everything about them still to this day! The Marvel Super Heroes RPG was expanded on a lot by TSR. Probably only second to D&D in terms of just how much came out for it at the time. There were individual module adventures, books on super groups like the Avengers and X-Men, and the usual screens and counter products. We even eventually got an ambitious Secret Wars module based on the comic book itself including a roster of all the characters, maps of the locations, and a book of the full scenario to play through. Eventually, much like D&D, we got an Advanced box set, and later revised editions. The Marvel Super Heroes RPG was in publication for quite a few years. Eventually though I guess the demise of TSR, and even the fact that Marvel themselves faced bankruptcy later on, may have all contributed to its end. There was a second Marvel RPG released, but for me, it just wasn't the same. Maybe it was the game, maybe the timing, but I had no interest at the time. It certainly seems to be the original that is fondly remembered still among its now older fans. There was an innocence to comic books in the 1980's that made them quite different to the comic books of today. If you enjoyed that time period, or just want to go back and investigate it, then I would still recommend finding yourself a copy of the old Marvel Basic Set and giving it a go. It's easy to pick up and play and still a lot of fun. Superheroes in the 80's were less complex than they are now and the emphasis very much on fun. So, track yourself down a copy and give the old-school world of Marvel a go one day. I promise you, it will be excellent, or maybe amazing even.