What's Your Price Limit?

[Retreater]

I recently noticed that the Player Core and GM Core for Starfinder 2 are $70 each. That's $140 for basically the same material that was $60 in 2018. Add the monster book and that's $210 to get into Starfinder 2.
Yes, inflation. Yes, tariffs. I get it. Paizo can charge what they want. Maybe Starfinder 2 is even so good that it's worth $500. And yes, Archives of Nethys will be free. And yes, PDFs and Pocket rulebooks are cheaper.
But in the era of Shadowdark (which FYI I didn't love), Dragonbane, and Daggerheart when you can get a full game for $50-60, does $210 seem excessive? Does the very thick, three core rulebook model need to continue in the era of $210 games? (This might be the most expensive core system by a major publisher.)
I never played Starfinder 1 - my books went unused. But I did purchase them for study and consideration by my group. I can't see myself dropping $210 for that now.

 

[Celebrim]

$60 in 2018 is worth like $30-$40 today depending on the numbers you trust.

$70 today is like $35-$48 in 2018, again depending on the numbers you trust. I'm surprised they can sell it so low given what's happened in the last 7 years.

$80 to $90 dollars would be totally fair given the inflation since 2020. People are just going to have to accept the sticker shock. My savings lost nearly half their value. The only good news is so did my loans.

 

[Morrus]

TTRPG books are massively undervalued. The profit margins are non-existent, and creators get paid less than minimum wage for a book which took many people months or years to make, and which you can get months or years of use out of.

So, yeah, $70 doesn't pay for a hardcover TTRPG book.

WotC sells its core rules -- three books -- for, what $30 each? Depending on where you are in the world. But it's Hasbro and can print hundreds of thousands of them at a time, and so pays pittance for each book. And in doing so, trains the market what a hardcover TTRPG book is worth.

(This, incidentally, is why monopolies are generally prevented through regulation--unfortunately our little corner of the gaming industry is too tiny to qualify for notice, but make no mistake we are operating in the contrails of a monopoly, and the industry problems that causes are apparent).

The rest of the industry sells 0.1% of what Hasbro does if they're really lucky, and pays 10 times or more per book printed. And doesn't have worldwide distribution deals, if at all. And if they do have distribution deals, they're on much worse terms--like, 60% of the cover price is gone right there.

So a hardcover book? Really? For a non global-corp with massive economies of scale? It costs $100. That's minimum wage for the labour.

If you are paying less than $100 (and you are, because every company prices its books at $60 or so), it's because the company is not paying itself or its creators a living wage. Because they literally can't. And this is why the entire TTRPG entire industry is mainly people in their spare bedroom as a side job.

Sure, maybe the books aren't worth $100 to you. Maybe TTRPGs are not a viable business if you're not Hasbro. I'm not telling you what a TTRPG hardcover is worth to you... you spend your money how you want. Your priorities are yours. But I am telling you what it costs if people are paid fairly. And that's $100 for minimum wage.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I’ve moved to PDFs since a handfull of years, besides some core books for systems I really like. Part of the reason is shelf space, but price is a factor too - I would never pay current paper book prices just to check out a system like I did a decade ago.

 

[TiQuinn]

I recently noticed that the Player Core and GM Core for Starfinder 2 are $70 each. That's $140 for basically the same material that was $60 in 2018. Add the monster book and that's $210 to get into Starfinder 2.
Yes, inflation. Yes, tariffs. I get it. Paizo can charge what they want. Maybe Starfinder 2 is even so good that it's worth $500. And yes, Archives of Nethys will be free. And yes, PDFs and Pocket rulebooks are cheaper.
But in the era of Shadowdark (which FYI I didn't love), Dragonbane, and Daggerheart when you can get a full game for $50-60, does $210 seem excessive? Does the very thick, three core rulebook model need to continue in the era of $210 games? (This might be the most expensive core system by a major publisher.)
I never played Starfinder 1 - my books went unused. But I did purchase them for study and consideration by my group. I can't see myself dropping $210 for that now.

If it’s something that I want and will use, yes, I’ll still pay that price but I’m also selective about the things in that area. If everything is priced at the range, then yes, it makes it hard to justify given that there’s only so many games I’m likely to play at the table.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I only buy pdfs, and only products that I have a clear use for. I'm unlikely to buy a new system, although there are a couple setting books on my wish list, but its been a long time since I've seen something I would spent more than $20 for. There's one or two potential exceptions, but those are just maybes.

 

[Umbran]

(This, incidentally, is why monopolies are generally prevented through regulation--unfortunately our little corner of the gaming industry is too tiny to qualify for notice...

So, one of the legal eagles on the boards may correct me, but, it mostly isn't about "taking notice".

We (in the US, at least) do less to regulate monopoly itself than we do to regulate abuse of monopoly. For the most part, we watch for anti-competitive activities, so larger businesses are brought to task when they take specific actions that are designed, or largely have the effect of, driving smaller competitors out of the market. Just being very large in the market isn't usually enough to get one regulated, on its own.

And, yes, WotC is the 800lb gorilla in the space, and yes they can do things small publishers cannot in terms of pricing, and such. But I think we'd be hard-pressed to prove what they do is intended and designed to get others out of the market, especially when so many others are in the market, and still are after 10 or 20 years.

 

[Morrus]

So, one of the legal eagles on the boards may correct me, but, it mostly isn't about "taking notice".

We (in the US, at least) do less to regulate monopoly itself than we do to regulate abuse of monopoly. For the most part, we watch for anti-competitive activities, so larger businesses are brought to task when they take specific actions that are designed, or largely have the effect of, driving smaller competitors out of the market. Just being very large in the market isn't usually enough to get one regulated, on its own.

And, yes, WotC is the 800lb gorilla in the space, and yes they can do things small publishers cannot in terms of pricing, and such. But I think we'd be hard-pressed to prove what they do is intended and designed to get others out of the market, especially when so many others are in the market, and still are after 10 or 20 years.

What I meant by that was more than the segment that they have near ‘monopoly’ in isn’t an industry, it’s just a tiny part of one. Now if they had a near monopoly in “gaming” that would be different, but nobody is in that position.

 

[MNblockhead]

I have no problem paying that much or more for a TTRPG core book. But it has to be a very high-quality book to feel a desire to buy physical books. That means well-edited, professional layout, and great art. But all that makes it even more expensive to produce. I wonder if print game books are going to become more aspirational, collector items for whales, with more and more people gravitating to less expensive and more convenient digital formats.

The problem is that I would think paying for the art, good writing, professional editing and layout makes up the biggest portion of costs in producing a TTRPG, even if the people involved are not paid a living wage. And then the PDFs are easily shared, potentially meaning fewer people buy the books. I read a lot about how underpriced hardcover TTRPG books are, but I think it will be an even greater challenge to get people to pay higher prices for PDFs.

Digital content for VTTs are likely even worse for publishers. A lot of time and specialized skills are needed to turn your content into a format that makes for a good VTT experience. Many publishers can't afford to do it for one platform, much less for the multiple competing platforms.

Then there is strong community pressure for putting a lot of your IP into open gaming licenses.

I feel like it is only getting more difficult for even publishers with a strong fan base to make profits sufficient to sustain paying creators a living wage.

 

[SteveC]

I think this is a very good question, and it's an important one to discuss. And I'm going to say right at the start that this is only my opinion.

The latest Kickstarter that arrived for me was the offset printing of Ashes Without Number. I backed that for the book + PDF for $80. Will I play it? Maybe. And yet there's no way I will be picking up the Starfinder2 books. I haven't picked up the Pathfinder2 or revised books either, despite playing the system regularly for the last couple of years.

But there's more to the story than that: I have given Paizo a bunch of money for PDFs and Foundry modules, and so I'm very much a customer of theirs! And I've backed ... I think it's 20 projects in the past couple of years, for projects made by creators who've discussed their products with me on another site. So what gives?

I'm willing to spend about $80 for hardcover books to support a project or developer I care about. And if you discuss your project with me? I'm going to back it on the PDF level at least, provided it's, say, $40 or less. What I'm not going to do is buy physical books for Starfinder for $140, especially since they will be available online. I don't know if I'm going to play the game, and even if I did, I'd probably never crack the book open. And, in talking with my group of friends who are 30-60 years old and can afford RPGs, they kind of say the same things.

That may not be realistic or reasonable due to COVID, inflation, tariffs, supply chain issues, and everything else, but it's where I am.

What that means for people creating a product: either I need to have a relationship with you where I'm going to buy your products, you need to release them electronically for less, or you need to release the rules for free and get me to buy other materials. Otherwise, I'm going to pass.

There have been quite a few businesses in my area that had to close in the wake of COVID because people weren't willing to pay the prices they now needed to charge. And some of them were run by people I liked. I supported them, but not enough people did, so they had to close. Talking with a friend who ran one of those businesses, in the post-COVID world, they felt that the type of business they had was no longer viable. I'm going to put some RPGs into the same category. You might need to charge $80, $100, or more to make your product break even. If that's the case, I'm sorry, but unless you're Brandon Sanderson or something similar, you either have to find another model for making money, or ... good luck.