Sean K. Reynolds talks RPG salaries, puts his on record.

[Dragonsbane]

Sure. I get it. But if you're looking for an explanation as to why game designers get paid very little, this is a good place to start.

Good point. I am surprised there is no business model for selling books cheaper but selling more of them. I wonder what the profits of Hasbro or Paizo are compared to their pay of writers. Maybe the problem lies there, in corporate greed? Or do they not make much money at the corporate level too?

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Good point. I am surprised there is no business model for selling books cheaper but selling more of them. I wonder what the profits of Hasbro or Paizo are compared to their pay of writers. Maybe the problem lies there, in corporate greed? Or do they not make much money at the corporate level too?

Hasbro is a bad example in that they have many products. 5e core books are also a bad example because they were created in house when the brand was not doing well at all and staff had been seriously cut. So the traditional best selling book (players handbook) was done when the brand was at a low and no one had a reasonable expectation of the future success of the game.

That is a core issue - to pay staff more you generally have to take a big risk on the profitability of the game. The smaller the publisher the harder this is.

There seems to be pretty stiff resistance once an rpg product reaches a certain price point. I mentioned the AL modules for me. If you look at the reviews of these adventures, they are often mediocre. Raising prices on bad products is doubly hard.

With the current price of shipping from Asia, raising prices may be a direct business need for survival for smaller companies, so we will see.

 

[Morrus]

Good point. I am surprised there is no business model for selling books cheaper but selling more of them. I wonder what the profits of Hasbro or Paizo are compared to their pay of writers. Maybe the problem lies there, in corporate greed? Or do they not make much money at the corporate level too?

You’re talking about economies of scale and marketing reach, and yes big rpg publishes like WotC and Paizo absolutely benefit from that. But let’s be realistic — they are not representative of the industry, most of which is a hundred times or more smaller. A small company often literally can’t sell a couple of hundred books, let alone a hundred thousand. There’s no magic wand (Kickstarter is the closest thing to one).

 

[Marc_C]

Hasbro is a bad example in that they have many products. 5e core books are also a bad example because they were created in house when the brand was not doing well at all and staff had been seriously cut. So the traditional best selling book (players handbook) was done when the brand was at a low and no one had a reasonable expectation of the future success of the game.

That is a core issue - to pay staff more you generally have to take a big risk on the profitability of the game. The smaller the publisher the harder this is.

There seems to be pretty stiff resistance once an rpg product reaches a certain price point. I mentioned the AL modules for me. If you look at the reviews of these adventures, they are often mediocre. Raising prices on bad products is doubly hard.

With the current price of shipping from Asia, raising prices may be a direct business need for survival for smaller companies, so we will see.

That is not only in RPGs. The price for MtG boosters hasn't followed the inflation curve. WoTC decided to cut one set from their yearly block of sets because of that IIRC.

To me one of the major problems is that gamers tend to be compulsive buyers. They spend a lot of money, per year, on far more games that they have time to actually play. The games just sit on shelves unopened or unused. Numerous low priced buys are still a large amount of money at the end of the year. $1000$ is a $1000 whether it's twenty smaller buys or five $200 buys.

 

[darjr]

As a note WotC has dropped the AL adventures, for this new season there aren’t any. There are the CCCs replacement but those are the templated form that anyone can write too.

 

[MGibster]

The fact that RPG creators are underpaid is very well known. That also connects with the discussion on prices of RPGs, as the two things are connected.

Quite honestly, I feel as though the $60 I typically pay for an RPG core book is well worth the price. They're much better produced than most of the books I bought in the 80s and 90s.

You’re talking about economies of scale and marketing reach, and yes big rpg publishes like WotC and Paizo absolutely benefit from that. But let’s be realistic — they are not representative of the industry, most of which is a hundred times or more smaller. A small company often literally can’t sell a couple of hundred books, let alone a hundred thousand. There’s no magic wand (Kickstarter is the closest thing to one).

You mean I can't just look at Beyoncé and use her as an example of an average singer?

 

[Jd Smith1]

nods As a grognard, I have wife/kids/house/shitloads of responsibilities. $150 for a game/book/videogame is just way too much for me. I don't know if I speak for the entire demographic. $50 for a core book? Maybe once in a while, but not often, and not for book after book of subclasses and options that apparently need to be "fixed" or streamlined or whatever in 2024. Thank goodness for cheaper PDFs!

There it is.

I love the Harn setting, but their prices are insane; you can drop a couple hundred bucks into it without touching bottom. I have forsworn other systems, and am sticking with just one or two rules systems and the settings I already own.

Meanwhile, I just bought Cyberpunk for my PS5 for $25, free shipping. Hundreds of hours of gameplay at my fingertips for about the price of one 5e core book. Before you say it is apples and oranges, let me point out that both are hobbies, and gamers frequently indulge in both., but with a single budget.

 

[Jd Smith1]

This is it. For various reasons consumers aren't willing to spend a lot on RPG books.

Combine that with a much lower number of purchases compared to other media types and there's just little in the way of revenue going around in which to pay people.

The only way the industry will change is if customers are willing to pay more, or if there is a substantial increase in customers.

Any other discussion is just wishful thinking.

Very true. Part of the problem with RPG books is that its not just a book. You have to buy a PHB, a GMG, a monster manual, and setting book(s) just as a start, and then come the splatbooks, expansions, improvements...it adds up very fast.

And the worst part is you can drop a couple hundred bucks into a system, and have it gather dust because the job or family doesn't let you have an evening free, or or finding reliable players in your area is tough, and so forth.

 

[MGibster]

w

I love the Harn setting, but their prices are insane; you can drop a couple hundred bucks into it without touching bottom. I have forsworn other systems, and am sticking with just one or two rules systems and the settings I already own.

I suppose value is in the eye of the beholder, but when I looked at Columbia Games' website it looks like the current edition of Harn retails for $50 with most of the larger source books going for $30-40. That doesn't strike me as being particularly outrageous. It's true that you could spend hundreds of dollars without touching the bottom but that's only because they have so many books available for purchase.

 

[aramis erak]

There are a number of factors people are prone to overlook...

• Like the super low bar to becoming published these days. If you are willing to use POD and/or PDF, no front money save the cost of software, and often use of software one already has for other uses (Pages and Word both are used often for generating the PDFs for some hobbyists - for simple layouts, pages can do a great job.)
• Like that many publishers are doing it as a hobby or a side job, and thus don't need it to deliver a "living wage."
• Like that the Corporate publishers tend to be in major cities, and thus have higher costs than they would if located in smaller ones; Wizards being in Seattle roughly doubles the cost of living; what would be acceptable in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, is poverty line for Seattle. Hell, relocating an hour away from the Sea-Tac metroplex can cut cost of living 20% or so...
  (Comparison of Seattle vs LG,W: https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/lake-geneva-wi/seattle-wa/50000)
• That salaries have not kept pace with cost of living increases in most places in the US... (Most salaries have gone up about double since 1987, while the actual costs of living have gone up between double and quintuple, depending upon location)
• That most of the corporate works are done as contract freelance work, not as employees.
• That the retrogaming movements have caused many older games to be rereleased in PDF... often cheaply...

Given those, people generally have a smaller fraction of pay to spend on their hobbies, and while prices have gone up less than cost of living, prices have gone up more than available funds have.... plus, there are orders of magnitude more games available. And dead tree costs have gone up.

Corporate game prices are actually down compared to 1987... not a lot, but down just a bit...
The AD&D 2E PHB was $25... which, per two different CPI based inflation calculators, works out to about $61 ±$1... MSRP for 5E PHB is $49.95 (call it $50)... an $11 difference..
the 1987 median personal income in the US was $26,464; the 2020 was $35.805. ¹ That's 135%; both inflation calculators displayed 140% increase in cost of living... doesn't seem like a lot, only 4% gap... but consider that the cost of publication has gone up for dead tree. Even for home printing... reams of paper that cost me $3 in 2010 are now $7 for the same brand, size, type and weight.

Mr. Reynolds seems to have done reasonably well for himself, beating inflation a bit...

¹ Real Median Personal Income in the United States