Is TTRPGing an "Expensive Hobby"

[aramis erak]

And this is a good illustration of how we value things. I refuse to purchase snacks at a movie theater because the prices are outrageous. In the grand scheme of things, the cost of popcorn and a soda are trivial to me, but I simply cannot spend $17 for a large popcorn and Coca-Cola.

The finances of first run theaters SUCK... most only make a profit on concessions, not tickets. That's been true since the 90's. Unless the house is 90% full, it's usually break-even on attendance. So, to be able to pay better than minimum, they have to make it up somewhere... and concessions are where

 

[aramis erak]

I never played Warhammer but I've talked to people that have. I'm sure this varies by what group you play in, but I've heard that some groups that won't let you play with unpainted armies; is this true in your experience?

It's been absolutely true in tourney for decades; then again, the standard tourney format used to include a written rules quiz... it was quite possible to lose every fight and yet win the tourney.

I've not seen non-tournament format organized play, but I've heard that the rule for organized play was painted only unless purchased on the day of.

I've also seen some napoleonics tourneys, and those also had a painted only rule.

The folks I know who aren't tourney players generally want painted minis, too. Tho I somehow wound up with a raft of unpainted Space Hulk and Epic Scale...

As for expense... my player base for the FTF group drop around $10 on dice every other month, it seems. Once they decided they liked FFG Star Wars &/or L5R, they got two sets of the custom dice; before that they shared or borrowed from me. Most are college age; my wife, however, is more of a dice goblin than I.
One player has a nice brass set of standard sized polyhedrals; I want a machined aluminum mini-polyhedrals set or two... but not at Norse Forge's prices.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’d say that the return on investment is probably better than just about any other form of entertainment, although some video games may come out ahead. You could also argue that a month of a streaming service may be able to produce similar hours of entertainment.

But for the most part, many hobbies or forms of entertainment will fall far short of what an RPG can provide.

 

[Lanefan]

Older editions of D&D are cheap unless you want an original printing, in which case you are a collector, not just buying a game to play.

1e player's handbook is $10 for the PDF on DMs Guild.
Standard color hardcover print on demand is $18.
Premium color hardcover print on demand is $30.

I'm talking about buying the actual physical book from an actual physical store (or dealer's booth at a con), where I hand over money and at the same time get the book handed to me in return.

The books are out there, but are getting more costly as time goes on. Adventures even more so in some cases, and those I do collect...or did, until I got down to only having the real hard targets left that were beyond my budget.

 

[schneeland]

Thus, I do not consider TTRPGing "an expensive hobby" (though taken to extremes, like any other hobby, you can make it expensive). Rather, I would call it a "relatively inexpensive hobby, as hobbies go" though certainly "more expensive than chatting on message forums on the internet."

Tend to agree. Even if we mostly look at nerd hobbies, it's probably more towards the lower than towards the upper end for the average player.

If I look at my personal expenses for RPG products, things might look different. But I feel many of us who are passionate enough about the hobby to hang out on forums, are effectively buying war bonds for the RPG "industry"

 

[R_J_K75]

It's been absolutely true in tourney for decades; then again, the standard tourney format used to include a written rules quiz... it was quite possible to lose every fight and yet win the tourney.

So, I'm not crazy? Thank Crom!!! All day since I posted that I've been trying to remember who and where that conversation took place. That conversation did turn me off to the wargaming hobby. I was in a transition of having played D&D, not playing D&D then playing D&D again. Felt like I was being recruited by Heaven's Gate. Seems like a very dedicated following that has to adhere to the paint to play requirement.

I've not seen non-tournament format organized play, but I've heard that the rule for organized play was painted only unless purchased on the day of.

This does not surprise me.

Is this an expensive hobby? Only if you want it to be, as they say, tone is all in the fingers...

 

[aramis erak]

So, I'm not crazy? Thank Crom!!! All day since I posted that I've been trying to remember who and where that conversation took place. That conversation did turn me off to the wargaming hobby. I was in a transition of having played D&D, not playing D&D then playing D&D again. Felt like I was being recruited by Heaven's Gate. Seems like a very dedicated following that has to adhere to the paint to play requirement.

There's a reason GW calls it the "Games Workshop Hobby"... they work to extract maximum sustainable profit on minis... to the point that now, the rules are free in PDF...

This does not surprise me.

Is this an expensive hobby? Only if you want it to be, as they say, tone is all in the fingers...

In ASL (American Sign Language), it's in the face, not the fingers....

(My Brother in Law is deaf...)

 

[Mannahnin]

It's been absolutely true in tourney for decades; then again, the standard tourney format used to include a written rules quiz... it was quite possible to lose every fight and yet win the tourney.

That's definitely not true. I played in the Rogue Trader format tournaments and Grand Tournaments when they were at their apex of Army Comp, Sportsmanship, and Rules/Fluff Quiz scoring, and even when those things were at their height you couldn't win without winning at least some of your games.

The most famously extreme example from one of the Grand Tournaments, IIRC, was a guy who tied most of his games while maxing out everything else. And he was still the exception. In practice tourney winners still won their games and the "soft" scores were tiebreakers among the winning players, because the tournaments were almost always too big and the games too long for there to be enough rounds to produce a single player with a winning record.

A standard one-day tournament was almost always three rounds of 2 to 2.5 hours games. A weekend-long Grand Tournament was usually five, maybe six rounds, but could have a hundred or more players. I remember when Adepticon updated their Team Tournament to be five rounds over two days instead of four rounds crammed into one day. But again, 110-120-odd 4 person teams is too many to resolve to a single winner on pure win/loss without 6-7 rounds. (of course this is why games are awarded varying numbers of points based on VP differential or bonus points for secondary objectives).

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm talking about buying the actual physical book from an actual physical store (or dealer's booth at a con), where I hand over money and at the same time get the book handed to me in return.

The books are out there, but are getting more costly as time goes on. Adventures even more so in some cases, and those I do collect...or did, until I got down to only having the real hard targets left that were beyond my budget.

They're getting more expensive in absolute numbers but not in actual cost.

Again, $13 for the DMG in Nov 1979 is the equivalent of $52.83 today. The DMG today has an MSRP of $49.95. And discounted options are easier to access today than they ever have been. Amazon and Books-a-Million and online retailers with blanket discounts certainly weren't a thing when I was a kid. TSR never made the Basic version of their rules free, either as a PDF download or as an SRD.

If a person is paying more for D&D today than they were in the 70s it is purely because they choose to pay more. (or theoretically because they care so little about the cost that they never bothered to look into saving money).

 

[DEFCON 1]

One aspect that makes the whole premise kind of counter-intuitive is that unless you have a person with no knowledge of RPGs that actually goes through the effort of a LOT of research beforehand... it is only people who already know about RPGs and probably has spent a good amount of money on RPGs that knows how cheaply you COULD spend on RPGs. People with no or little knowledge of the hobby and try to find their way into it have a more likely chance of actually spending quite a bit of money because they don't know any better.

Few people who are relatively unfamiliar with D&D will know that there's a set of D&D 5E Basic Rules and an SRD you can download for free online to play the game. Most likely they will hear from someone with perhaps a bit of knowledge in passing (or they do a very prelim google search) that will tell them that to play D&D you'll need to go to a place like Barnes & Noble and buy a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, and a Monster Manual, possibly even a Starter Set or one of the big adventure path books. And that person... the person who has no idea that you actually DON'T need to get all of that to start with to get into D&D... they see the price tag of all that material up front and they do double-take at the cost (and possibly put all of it back on the shelf.)

Buying D&D is like learning to play D&D... while you could do it completely on your own just on a whim and try to muddle your way through... usually you will want to sidle up to someone who has more more experience with it and give you the true skinny before you jump in with both feet. And THAT person will be able to make it clear that most of that stuff a player doesn't actually need to get started in the hobby and you can save yourself a bunch of cash at the top if you learn the secrets of playing RPGs/D&D cheaply.