prices getting a little nuts?

[Mongoose_Matt]

I love this.
Secondly, I love the way posters who think prices are way too high just gloss over "the quality has gone way up".

Very true.

We could produce a Conan RPG in the style of those games that appeared in the 80's. A box set with a couple of maps and 64 page saddle-stitched booklets, no fancy borders, no amazing artwork, certainly no colour.

But people do not want that. Or, to put it another way, if _you_ believe that is what you want, you are in a distinct minority. When people pick up Conan (and the same applies to B5, Stargate and all the rest), they want to know time and effort has gone into its creation, they want the very best Conan RPG that it is possible to produce. Not a bunch of mickey-mouse artwork slapped in simply to break up the text because of a belief that presentation does not matter, only the rules. . .

 

[DanMcS]

The consumer is not getting ripped off. If anything prices are too low, but there is a vocal segment of the gaming population that got White Plume Mountain for 5 bucks, and think no gaming book should ever cost more than that.

That's not a failing of gamers, then. That's a failing of old farts. My dad has never picked up a gaming book in his life, except to toss it off the couch if I or my brother left it lying around, but he still talks about his "new blue suit" that he got in '85, and grumbled about how much suits cost for my brother and I when we were in high school. Old farts don't think prices on anything have gone up since they were in their twenties, but they have.

 

[NLP]

The consumer is not getting ripped off. If anything prices are too low, but there is a vocal segment of the gaming population that got White Plume Mountain for 5 bucks, and think no gaming book should ever cost more than that.

The fact that I spent $5.00 for White Plume Mountain has nothing to do with how much I am willing to spend on a game. But it still comes down to choices. I chose to buy M&M for $33.00 and Freedom City for another $33.00. And because of that money spent I did not spend the $20.00 on Vigilance: Absolute Power. So who suffered from that in the long run, me or you?

And when I consider that most of the same artist are doing RPGs today that were doing them 3 years ago I have to assume that the art quality has not gone down. The art has just gone to color and it is not worth an extra $10.00+ to me just to get colored art.

 

[alsih2o]

...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Speaking as an 'old fart', I can honestly say that, yes, I am a cheapskate. As a result there are things that I buy, and things that I don't buy. I will pay $40-$50 for a game. Spending $12 on an adventure on the other hand is a lot less likely, it just won't get used enough.

On the other hand, I have quite a collection of $15 - $25 supplerments like the Quintessential series by Mongoose and the Legends and Lairs series by Fantasy Flight, and have almost certainly spent more on this kind of gaming material than the others combined.


And I will admit, I actually prefer high quality black and white for my gaming books over equal quality color. But that's just me, looking at the art books I own most are b&w line art...

When making a gaming purchase I don't compare it with a book, dinner, or movie (I do compare it with a computer game, much the same price range), I ask myself how many hours do I think I will play this ? (Or enjoying reading it for that matter, time spent with the game is time spent with the game.) I even used to have a formula that I would use... Number of hours spent with item times enjoyment on a scale from 1 to 10, divided by the price rounded to the nearest dollar... That's what I call 'old school gamer think', all it needed was a roll on a table...

Seriously, the main thing I miss about the old, low priced, lower quality stuff is the impulse buying I used to be able to do. Now I have to set the money aside, and plan the purchase. Not to mention finding out if anyone else wants to play before hand. (I bought B5 even though my group is really not into SF.)

For that reason I would like to commend the Power Class series by Mongoose, inexpensive and frequently used! And yes, they were most definetly 'impulse buys', at least at first. (It doesn't count as an impulse buy if you know full well that you are buying all of them...)

But for the most part impulse buying has faded with the rising prices, at least for the gaming books. Miniatures on the other hand...

The Auld Grump, annoying players since 1976, and annoying dungeon masters since 1975!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

For instance, look at the first couple products from Bad Axe, the HoHF books. Half-sized, black and white interior, these are still the best d20 books I've bought, bar none.

Gorsh, shucks, I'm blushing.

(And, hey, as long as you mention it, it sounds like you missed the third product from Bad Axe, ELVES, which went from 64 pages to 80 pages, but kept the price at $9.95.)

I set out to deliver high quality at a decent price-- utility of content, cover, interior artwork, writing and editing. I think we meet that goal and keep raising the bar.

But I'll tell you this, if I didn't have my glamorous, high-payin' "day job," I'd starve. Prices need to go up. Seriously. I love what I do, but I'd love it even more if I could do it full time at full speed.

Wulf

P.S. Stick with us for Grim Tales, by the way... Our first "high-priced hardback..." (See sig!)

 

[Desdichado]

It still seems a significant portion of the posters on this thread are missing the point. Nobody's really saying rpg books are more expensive than they will pay, nor is anyone bemoaning the "fact" that they're being ripped off by overpriced books. What people are saying is that at the current pricing of books, impulse buys have shrunk to practically nothing. In a market which is arguably oversaturated thanks to the proliferation of 3rd party publishers (which one would think would lead to increased impulse buying) that's a bad thing.

Nobody is saying prices are too high and should be dropped so game designers have to stop tooling around in their Aston Martins and Ferrarris, we're saying that this is potentially an unhealthy sign for the industry.

 

[Desdichado]

Also, Baddaxe, when's that Grim Tales book coming out, anyhow? I've been looking forward to that ever since I first heard of it months and months ago when d20 Modern was new.

 

[DanMcS]

(And, hey, as long as you mention it, it sounds like you missed the third product from Bad Axe, ELVES, which went from 64 pages to 80 pages, but kept the price at $9.95.)

Nah, I got 'em all, I was just saying "couple" as an alternative to listing them by name and ISBN

I set out to deliver high quality at a decent price-- utility of content, cover, interior artwork, writing and editing. I think we meet that goal and keep raising the bar.

But I'll tell you this, if I didn't have my glamorous, high-payin' "day job," I'd starve. Prices need to go up. Seriously. I love what I do, but I'd love it even more if I could do it full time at full speed.

Prices are apparently close to or at what the market will bear. Maybe this industry /can't/ support lots of people full-time. The market is small, production costs are high. Heck, look at the old game companies- TSR pretty much went under, to be acquired by Wizards, which was supported by its cheap-to-produce, high-sales Magic and Pokemon cards. Even so, they got gobbled up by Hasbro. FASA is no more, WEG too, right? White Wolf seems to be doing ok, but they've been in the mode of producing thick hardcovers even longer than Wizards, and they do d20 stuff and some licensed products as supplements.

There are a lot of artistic endeavors that can't support a person, and that's sad, but it's not avoidable. Quite a few musicians and actors and painters have day jobs. Will RPG writing end up that way?

Maybe internet publication will be a sea change in the market, big publishers like Malhavoc are already doing all their products as both PDF and dead tree. Production costs are similar, since you still have to pay the writers and the artists and editors, but distribution/storage/printing is nil. We'll see in a couple years I guess.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

What people are saying is that at the current pricing of books, impulse buys have shrunk to practically nothing.

Just an offhand observation, maybe PDF is now the place for impulse buys? It works on me, anyway; I have probably bought 3x as many PDFs recently as bound books, mostly just because I see something that sounds cool hyped around here.

Also, Baddaxe, when's that Grim Tales book coming out, anyhow? I've been looking forward to that ever since I first heard of it months and months ago when d20 Modern was new.

Within the next couple of months. I am curious to see what you think; you strike me as a hard-to-please kind of guy, Dyal. It may be too fluff-light for the likes of you-- it's a rulebook first and foremost. (Though I will say I pulled in some freelancers to back me up on fluff, and they have produced some truly excellent and hook-laden material...)

EDIT: I'd also like to say, there is pretty heavy ENworld involvement in Grim Tales, from art, to design, to playtesting... Lots of folks from around here will be credited in the book. Should I "dual stat" their names with their ENworld logins?

/hijack

Wulf