D&D 5E Comment on the negative article by John Dodd

[Tony Vargas]

In the past, 'newbies' may not have been a very prevalent portion of the community, but that doesn't mean they don't count.

If the hobby is going to grow - or even just avoid dwindling away to nothing - it's going to need to attract and retain new players. Starter sets are an obvious way to do that.

But, I agree, how good the Pathfinder starter set is for unchaperoned newbies is probably not that important a consideration. D&D is the name that the mainstream knows our hobby by, so a new-to-gaming player wouldn't even be aware of the Pathfinder starter set, he'd get the D&D set. The Pathfinder set, perhaps, is more geared towards an experienced 3.x proponent recruiting new players - thus, perhaps, the higher price point.

 

[billd91]

Wow. This comment from you strikes me as "totally out of touch with your audience".

Instead of cherry picking a comment to get your zinger in, maybe you should look at the other posts I've been making.

Hell, just down the post from what you quoted, I've got this too:

A bit more seriously, why would we expect it to always be the ratio? Might it not matter from buyer to buyer whether the £7 is a big deal or not?

 

[jeffh]

Here's the comment I just posted under that review:

Intentionally or not, your review methodology is very tilted in Paizo's favour.

You didn't expose these players to the difference that is perhaps most important to a real-world purchase decision - price. Your language can also be read as trying to downplay this. Unlike some others, I'm not accusing you of doing this on purpose - I read you as saying the difference in *absolute* terms is not that large, which I disagree with but I see why someone with greater resources would regard it as true - but given that one is in fact over twice the price of the other on Amazon, your review is misleading regarding the *relative* difference.

You also didn't mention the very significant difference in how much adventure material is included - a 20+ hour mini-campaign in the D&D case versus an adventure that, as I understand it, most groups finish in one or two sessions for PF. In fact, the single, very unclear sentence you devoted to this general topic might give some people, especially those not already familiar with the D&D set, the impression that both are on the Pathfinder end of this particular scale. Again, I don't think you did this on purpose. It looks like the sort of minor mistake an editor would catch in a professional review, which happens to the best of us. But intentionally or not, the choice to do a one-shot favours Pathfinder by ignoring one of the D&D box's biggest strengths.

On the other hand, I've been making this point from the word go:
"While I thought that the addition of the character generation rules for free as a download was a good move on the part of D&D, I was almost universally disagreed with by the beginners, all of which were much happier to have a book in their hands to flip through and considered the lack of said rules to look through in the box to be a dreadful larceny."

Having this as a free .pdf is just not the same as having it IN THE DAMN BOOK, and no-one on the more D&D oriented boards will listen when I point this out so it does my heart good to see someone else making the same point.

Despite this, though, it was almost inevitable that this review would go in favour of the Pathfinder set as soon as you made the questionable methodological choices I point out above. Probably without meaning to, you played directly to Paizo's strengths.

 

[delericho]

And in a later post, he does mention the price difference of £7. Is that a small amount? Depends on how you look at it. In US terms, that's a shade under $12. That might not seem a small amount but I don't know how £7 feels to a Briton.

£7 is the price of adding my popcorn and drink to the cost of my ticket at the local cinema. It's the price of 2 novels in Tesco's "2 books for £7" deal (obviously ). It's usually the first 'reduced' price a DVD will drop to in that same supermarket (so a DVD that's been out for 3 months or so). Or two coffees at Starbucks.

So it's not a tiny amount, but it's also not particularly huge either.

It's also way more than the current price difference on Amazon UK: £14.92 vs £14.26. (Yep, right at this moment, the Pathfinder set is cheaper. It wasn't this morning - the 5e set moves around quite a lot just now.)

 

[Morrus]

£7 is the price of adding my popcorn and drink to the cost of my ticket at the local cinema. It's the price of 2 novels in Tesco's "2 books for £7" deal (obviously ). It's usually the first 'reduced' price a DVD will drop to in that same supermarket (so a DVD that's been out for 3 months or so). Or two coffees at Starbucks.

So it's not a tiny amount, but it's also not particularly huge either.

It's also way more than the current price difference on Amazon UK: £14.92 vs £14.26. (Yep, right at this moment, the Pathfinder set is cheaper. It wasn't this morning - the 5e set moves around quite a lot just now.)

But costs more pounds than dollars. What's that, twice the $12 US price?

 

[Mistwell]

Instead of cherry picking a comment to get your zinger in, maybe you should look at the other posts I've been making.

Hell, just down the post from what you quoted, I've got this too:

Cherry pick and Zinger? What is inaccurate about characterizing your reaction as "the cost difference is not that big a deal"? I thought it was a representative characterization of your position, and my response was not a zinger but instead a concise description of my reaction to your position. If you think the cost difference is not that big a deal (and that does appear to be your position) then I think you are very out of touch with your audience. $20 vs $35, or $12 vs $29, is a huge and meaningful difference for a significant number of people who play this game, and you can see that view repeated over and over again in this very thread. I mean look at this thread - a whole lot of responses, and not one person agrees with you that the cost difference is not meaningful. Doesn't that tell you something worth considering?

 

[billd91]

Cherry pick and Zinger? What is inaccurate about characterizing your reaction as "the cost difference is not that big a deal"? I thought it was a representative characterization of your position, and my response was not a zinger but instead a concise description of my reaction to your position. If you think the cost difference is not that big a deal (and that does appear to be your position) then I think you are very out of touch with your audience. $20 vs $35, or $12 vs $29, is a huge and meaningful difference for a significant number of people who play this game, and you can see that view repeated over and over again in this very thread. I mean look at this thread - a whole lot of responses, and not one person agrees with you that the cost difference is not meaningful. Doesn't that tell you something worth considering?

Check out delericho's post a couple of posts ahead of yours. The PF Beginner Box is a little cheaper than the D&D Starter Set on Amazon UK right now. And an earlier post put the difference at about £3. So, clearly to me this whole price difference thing is highly variable in both real terms and relative. And I think I've been making that point all along.

 

[Mistwell]

Check out delericho's post a couple of posts ahead of yours. The PF Beginner Box is a little cheaper than the D&D Starter Set on Amazon UK right now. And an earlier post put the difference at about £3. So, clearly to me this whole price difference thing is highly variable in both real terms and relative. And I think I've been making that point all along.

Talk about cherry picking, so far all of your examples are based on UK/EU pricing, though you're well aware the incredibly overwhelming majority of players are in the US and that those prices do not reflect either the MSRP of either book or the overwhelming majority of prices that most buyers (IE US buyers) would pay. Seems like that is the only variable you're citing, but calling it something else. And as you're in Wisconsin, seems like it's a bit disingenuous to keep doing it as if that is your perspective.

 

[billd91]

Talk about cherry picking, so far all of your examples are based on UK/EU pricing, though you're well aware the incredibly overwhelming majority of players are in the US and that those prices do not reflect either the MSRP of either book or the overwhelming majority of prices that most buyers (IE US buyers) would pay. Seems like that is the only variable you're citing, but calling it something else. And as you're in Wisconsin, seems like it's a bit disingenuous to keep doing it as if that is your perspective.

The reviewer was talking in UK pricing when he referred to the PF Beginner Box as being a little more expensive. As people were focusing on his lack of mentioning a price, and the thread was about his review, I've been writing my posts with his terms. There's nothing disingenuous about it.

 

[DaveMage]

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