Champions Villains Volume 3?

[Stonewall]

I see that it's been 3/4 of a year now since Volume 3 was released as a pdf (rpgnow shows that it was put on there in December)..any chance we'll see it in print anytime soon? or are we seeing the last of Hero Games printed material? 9 months seems more than just a backlog at the printer

[Hugh Neilson]

Go look in the Champions forum, Stonewall - there's an extensive thread on this...

I suspect the cold, hard fact is that Hero's printer issues, which have dragged out for some time and built up quite a logjam, have required Hero to prioritize which books in the backlog get printed first based on expected sales. Given this one hasn't been printed yet, I'm guessing that the sales of the first two Villains books have been relatively low - maybe not low enough to mean no more villain books are likely going forward, but low enough that other types of books are expected to generate more sales faster, so they get printed first.

I'm pretty sure Star Hero got prioritized for Con Season, and I suspect reprinting some core books that are getting hard to find will be prioritized as well.

[Lord Liaden]

Since Darren Watts recently posted on this subject to the thread Hugh alluded to, I figure it will save time and controversy to repost his response here:


Hey guys! I apologize again for any perception that we're somehow hiding things from you. Villains 3 is a big, complicated, *expensive* book to make, and so was Star. Hero is a small company struggling to make it through difficult economic times just like everybody else, and we only have the resources to get a book like that printed every so often. We picked Star first, and we're sorry if that decision upset anybody individually, but as somebody above pointed out, we have to make these decisions in part based on expected sales and we believed (and still believe) that Star was the "bigger" book. There's no further mystery to plumb here, gang- Villains 3 will be out as soon as we can manage it. dw

[hartm1967]

Thanks for posting that -- I hadn't seen Darren's comments.

I can only guess at what sort of cash outlay a book like vol. 3 would demand. Since the printing company has to be paid up front, and the print runs would be relatively small (thus a higher cost per unit), the amount of capital necessary has to be high. If each book costs $5 to DOJ up front, and the print run is 5,000 (both are just wild guesses on my part, no basis in reality), it would cost DOJ $25,000.

Hopefully, the sales of STAR HERO will prove substantial -- I did my share and bought both book and PDF! Still, I am very much looking forward to owning vol. 3 of the villains series.