D&D General Kobold Press Going Down a Dark Road

[Maxperson]

really? How? There are 5 books at $40 a year (Amazon), for a nice round $200. How does that outstrip 120 per month?

Why are you deliberately ignoring what I'm saying to focus on D&D books only?

 

[teitan]

really? How? There are 5 books at $40 a year (Amazon), for a nice round $200. How does that outstrip 120 per month?

I am not talking about minis or other TTRPG adjacent stuff, those are not WotC products / profit or affected by the game design (only its popularity)

I’m always astonished, adjacent comment here, by how many people do not understand Wizkids isn’t WOTC and is owned by a wholly different company. People have told me Warlock Tiles are a WOTC product with a straight face.

 

[teitan]

Why are you deliberately ignoring what I'm saying to focus on D&D books only?

To be fair, he’s right.

 

[Maxperson]

To be fair, he’s right.

No. No he's not. When kids have literal crap tons that they want to buy and spend money on(like lunches and movies) each month and only $120 to do it, nearly two months of allowance(at the very highest end of the allowance range) is HUGE. Focusing on only D&D books like that is an attempt to distract from what is really happening in the lives of these teens.

For those who only get $30-$60 a month, that 200 is massive.

 

[Parmandur]

Why are you deliberately ignoring what I'm saying to focus on D&D books only?

Because the books are what are selling like gangbusters, to a mainly teen/tween audience...?

 

[Maxperson]

Because the books are what are selling like gangbusters, to a mainly teen/tween audience...?

Where is the WotC sales link that shows that it's mainly a teen/tween audience? And quite franlky, how would they even know? People who buy books don't submit an age.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's nothing "technical" or "stolen" about it. My entire premise is based on disposable income. That doesn't limit itself to 40+ no matter how badly you want to Red Herring it in that direction.

Calling something a red herring because you don't like it doesn't negate it lol.

My point is you're speaking for groups you aren't actually a member of.

In the 25-29 range I see people making enough extra to start affording D&D books. Not all of them, but more than a few. Besides, if you are now arguing that you have to be 30+ to afford D&D books, you are making my point even stronger. So sure, let's remove 25-29 from those able to really afford to buy D&D books.

As I said, your opinion here, is not realistic - that's an age range when a lot of people are seriously pressured for time and money.

As a parent and friend to many parents, kids don't get $30+ a week for allowance. At least not very many.

Suggestions that I see range from .50 to $2 per year of age, so a 16 year old would get $8-$32, with $32 per week being from families with quite a bit extra to spend. I also see from a NY times article that 80% of the 66% of parents that give an allowance, don't give an allowance. They have their kids work for the money by doing chores(5 hours a week on average, so paying kids about $6/hour), which isn't an allowance. So if we look at it, only 13.2% of kids actually get an allowance.

Regardless, even if we assume $30 a week as an income for a teenager, there are still books, games, movies, amusements parks, video games and more for them to spend money on in addition to D&D. $120 a month is piddly when it comes to disposable income. Me and my wife have thousands a month extra. When I say that between 1 and 5 Amazon packages arrive daily, that's not an exaggeration.

As I said (again), I'm talking actual surveys, not fanciful suggestions (many of them by non-parents or people who last had minor children 20+ years before!) about what you "should" give children.

Further, $120 a month is certainly enough to buying D&D books, if that's the concern. Especially as likely not everyone in the group will be getting them.

As for "if you do any chores at all it's not an allowance", ROFL is really the only answer to that. I haven't heard that argument since I was in school, and I last heard it from a kid whose hourly rate (in the 1990s) was about £100/hour given he did barely anything around the house but got £400/month "pocket money" (I know - I went to a pretty posh school so...).

You and your wife being able to blow thousands per month suggests you're in a very high income percentile. I won't ask what you earn, that'd be weird, but let's be clear, any household where the total income high enough to have multiple thousands genuinely disposable (even 2k) is probably in the upper 25%, if not the upper 15% of US households. It's not normal or representative, even if you think it is. People have weird ideas about this - famously in the UK, during our last election, a politician was talking about taxes and how they aimed to only raise taxes on the top earners. An audience member had a question - and it was one of those "this is more a comment than a question" ones lol - where the audience member said he earned over £80k per annum and was in the bottom 50% of earners lol. In the UK, that put him in the top 10% (or 11%, I forget) of earner. But the dude earnestly and honestly believed this - a guy with his own business, multiple houses, multiple cars, who went on foreign holidays multiple times per year, thought the majority of people earned more than him. He was profoundly wrong, but he still believed it.

But more to the point, it's irrelevant.

D&D is not a high-spend activity. It should never, ever become a high-spend activity. It will die out, frankly, if it becomes a high-spend activity. D&D is a game you can play for between nothing and a few hundred dollars a year.

D&D makes its money volume, not high spend. That's how they got to record profits.

And that's why young people matter more - because they'll recruit far more people into D&D, and keep D&D going, than you will, at your current position in life. There is absolutely a place for helping parents get their kids into D&D (and WotC is already doing that, I believe), but that also needs to be low-expense or people just won't do it (I also am interested to see how much it sticks, and how many kids whose parents taught them D&D never play again after college, say, but that's a question long down the line).

Also, if you believe all generations are the same, your argument is entirely moot. Why are you even arguing at all? Any content that is produced for D&D is fine by that logic. Seriously if you argue "all generations basically want the same thing", you really have deleted your entire logical basis for your argument. So probably reconsider that.

Finally, what exactly is it WotC should be making to access your spare thousands?

 

[Parmandur]

Where is the WotC sales link that shows that it's mainly a teen/tween audience? And quite franlky, how would they even know? People who buy books don't submit an age.

They've been saying consistently since the 90's that the main buyers of books are 12-24, there were documents in the 3E era that leaked outlining that.

I'm really not sure why you are ao hot to trot on this point, WotC is hardly the only company where this is a railiry: Warhammer way more aggressively builds their product line around the teenage audience doing most of the purchasing.

 

[Maxperson]

They've been saying consistently since the 90's that the main buyers of books are 12-24, there were documents in the 3E era that leaked outlining that.

I'm really not sure why you are ao hot to trot on this point, WotC is hardly the only company where this is a railiry: Warhammer way more aggressively builds their product line around the teenage audience doing most of the purchasing.

They don't have any way to know that, though. People don't input an age before buying D&D stuff. Any company can make a claim. Unless they can back it up I'm not just going to take their word for it.

And yet when I go to conventions, it's primarily the older folks who I see fielding armies of figures for Warhammer, Battletech and other miniature wargames.

 

[mamba]

Why are you deliberately ignoring what I'm saying to focus on D&D books only?

I am not ignoring things as far as I can tell. You said $120 a month outstrips what WotC is offering for D&D and as far as I can tell books (or their digital equivalent, which is not more expensive) is that.

What are you including to the tune of $1000 a year that I am not counting that WotC creates for D&D?

It's the medium and grog nards that tend to have most of the disposable income to actually pay for D&D products.

Is this including non-WotC stuff? Did not interpret it that way, and if it does then I am not sure of what concern to WotC this should be / how it is even supposed to factor into their game design