D&D General Kobold Press Going Down a Dark Road

[Parmandur]

Put it it this way.

When you (reading this) were 16, who bought your books?

Mostly libraries or peer to peer download solutions (I was 16 at a wild time, when the Internet was fairly new and my thinking about IP ethics was uninformed), but some books I just wanted to have, and I found a way.

 

[Maxperson]

How many people do you know that play the free base game? The argument that many play for free because the DM already has and shares the books is a lot stronger imo.

None. But I wasn't the one that made that argument.

 

[Maxperson]

of course not, there is only $200 worth of material every year that they even could buy, D&D is beat by just about everything when it comes to how much you can spend on it.

That's not at all relevant to the numbers in those articles. Teens spend about $60 a year on the category D&D would be in, and it has to compete with other things in that category.

So you are making the point that the disposable income has to cover everything you want to buy. Ok, then my point that this just means it becomes a matter of personal priorities stands.

Sure, but you can't even begin to say that everyone(or even a majority) of the teens who play D&D will prioritize it over all the other stuff. D&D has to compete with things that are generally much more important to teens, like clothing, video games and tech items.

If someone rather buys 2 pairs of sneakers or 5 video games a year than everything D&D, then that is up to them. I just fail to see how this is making any relevant point.

Because the odds are very much against people prioritizing D&D over everything else.

So? Do you think every teen is interested in D&D and spending half of their 60 bucks on a book a year? I am sure WotC would love that,

You think WotC would be thrilled that a significant chunk of their players only buy 1 of the multiple products they put out a year? Hell, can $30 even buy a D&D book anymore?

Going by your statistics they have roughly $2400 a year, so 200 a month, i.e. enough to buy everything D&D releases in a year in one month if they really wanted to. Tell me again how they cannot afford it. I'd argue those that don't mostly do not want to

No. The allowance guestimates by those articles is $1-$2 a week for each year of age. That's $15-$30 for a 15 year old. I've just been giving the upper end. That upper end is about $1500 a year.

I also love how you are cherry picking the $2400 from the spending articles, while simultaneously completely ignoring the spending percentages. That was fantastic.

 

[Maxperson]

My teenage daughter makes about 5-600 usd per month flipping burgers at Burger King. Good grief I made more than 120 dollars a month when I was a teen and I had to fight mammoths on my way to work.

Remember teen= 16-19. As in senior high school and university age. Where most of your income is disposable.

120 bucks a month? What planet are you living on?

The planet where people here are claiming kids get $30 a week as an allowance. I've never heard of it that high, but there are multiple articles out there that put it at $15-$30 a week for a 15 year old, though they generally have to do chores to get it.

You're also talking about employed teens. We're discussing the vast majority of teens who don't work and rely on allowance.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet they do spend it on D&D books, a lot on D&D books.

And yet nobody has offered any actual proof of that spending. None. Except to claim that WotC made a claim that they did, even though they couldn't actually get any proof of age on store sales because nobody asks that.

 

[Maxperson]

There are millions of people playing the game. Most have never been to a tabletop gaming convention, just by the numbers: the biggest cons don't even get a fraction of a oercent of people playing, and only the really dedicated.

So what. You'd think that some of the ones that are spending all this money would make it to a con. If teens are buying as much as you are claiming, it's very unlikely that it's only older people who have those armies. Especially since I see lots of teens at these conventions, so it's not like they aren't going to them.

 

[Maxperson]

LOL think about that a bit harder.

What do you think is discouraging people from going to those sort of conventions? I would suggest it's that's sausagefests (sorry guys) full of old men. Certainly when I was in my teens and twenties, I'd love to have gone to an RPG convention full of people my own age, but one full of decrepit ancients (i.e. people the age I am now lol). I literally wouldn't have been seen dead there.

They aren't discouraged. I see lots of teens and children, as well as women and minorities at these game conventions. It's not even remotely close to being all old white guys anymore.

 

[Maxperson]

You're really not interested in thinking about this remotely seriously? Those people cause others to spend money, and spread the game. This is like a virus, not a mining operation.

Right. The others with the disposable income. Now who are those again?

You've offered absolutely no explanation as to why you think a game that makes money on volume should be targeting high disposable income brackets.

I never said high. In fact, I included the 25-29 bracket despite that bracket NOT being particularly high in disposable income.

 

[Maxperson]

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

Then it's probably a good thing that I'm not doing that. I'm calling it a Red Herring because it's nothing more than an irrelevant distraction from the point.

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

Nope. I'm not actually speaking for any group, even my own. I'm just pointing out who has the vast majority disposable income.

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.

I couldn't find an actual survey, just a bunch of articles. Can you provide the link?

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.

Sure it's enough........................if you ignore all of the higher priority stuff teens like to buy and spend money on.

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...).

It wasn't an argument. It was an observation. If you are working for it by doing chores, it's not an allowance. It doesn't change the fact that you get the same money either way.

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.

I don't think that we are average. But it doesn't take very much to have $500+ a month in disposable income. It's just that most people put that income into streaming services and other subscriptions and/or fast food purchases, and end up with a far lower number to spend on other things like D&D

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.

That is bizarre. Reminds me a lot of the out of touch politicians and insanely wealthy people. Some of the things they say are pretty ridiculous.

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.

It's not irrelevant. It was to point out that with a bunch of competing priorities that pretty much every teenager has, $120 isn't going to go very far and D&D isn't likely to that high on most lists.

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).

Right. They will recruit people as they age into having the disposable income to spend on D&D. Then those they recruit will do the same. And over time the game will likely shift substantially as the company aims at those who are spending the money.

Also, if you believe all generations are the same, your argument is entirely moot.

How does "Has a lot of overlap" = "Is the same?" I'm curious as to how you got from one to the other.

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

I'd like a setting that's an actual setting and not the Spelljammer fiasco. I'd also like books with some real crunch in them, not a bunch of lore and a few new backgrounds, a few new spells, etc. Crappy settings and a bunch of campaign adventure books aren't going to do it.

 

[Maxperson]

Put it it this way.

When you (reading this) were 16, who bought your books?

My mother bought me the core three 1e books. Then I had to wait for birthdays and holidays to get other stuff I wanted.