D&D 5E Auroboros Kickstarter From Warcraft Devs Has Launched

Reynard said:

I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

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RPGs are not a cheap hobby.

Reynard said:

I mean, a PHB is cheaper than a year of Netflix by quite a lot

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A month of Netflix is $9. You can watch as much as you like in that month. Most months are about 30-days long. Eight hours to sleep. Forty hours of work a week. That leaves you about 320 hours of free time a month. So a potential of 320 hours of entertainment for $9. Not practical, but people brag about binging hundreds of hours of shows a month, so clearly possible.

Unless you are using someone else’s books, you’ll need at least the PHB, which retails for $50. In a month of being an RPG hobbyist you might, if you’re really lucky, get to play in four 4-6 hour games. More likely is one 4-6 hour game a month. Far, far more likely is zero games. While you have the same potential 320 hours of entertainment, it’s not practical you’ll actually get anywhere near that and the buy in is 5.5 times higher. So say an average of 5-hour games, you’re looking at $50 for 20 hours of fun, 5 hours of fun, or zero hours of fun.

Reynard said:

and people still borrow other peoples' Netflix logins. People are notoriously cheap

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Most people are notoriously broke. They just pretend to not be. Especially working class people.

Reynard said:

especially when it comes to entertainment (which is one of the reasons that the arts are so devalued in our society, but that's a different argument).

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You’ve got the cause and effect backwards.

Reynard said:

But it is a simple, demonstrable fact that as far as entertainment goes, D&D is very inexpensive and can be totally free. People buy stuff for it because they want to, not because they have to.

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So demonstrate it.

overgeeked said:

RPGs are not a cheap hobby.

A month of Netflix is $9. You can watch as much as you like in that month. Most months are about 30-days long. Eight hours to sleep. Forty hours of work a week. That leaves you about 320 hours of free time a month. So a potential of 320 hours of entertainment for $9. Not practical, but people brag about binging hundreds of hours of shows a month, so clearly possible.

Unless you are using someone else’s books, you’ll need at least the PHB, which retails for $50. In a month of being an RPG hobbyist you might, if you’re really lucky, get to play in four 4-6 hour games. More likely is one 4-6 hour game a month. Far, far more likely is zero games. While you have the same potential 320 hours of entertainment, it’s not practical you’ll actually get anywhere near that and the buy in is 5.5 times higher. So say an average of 5-hour games, you’re looking at $50 for 20 hours of fun, 5 hours of fun, or zero hours of fun.

Most people are notoriously broke. They just pretend to not be. Especially working class people.

You’ve got the cause and effect backwards.

So demonstrate it.

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I am sensing that perhaps you haven't been particularly successful in finding games to play. You should try your local game store or hit up any of the numerous online play communities that use any number of free resources to play (Roll20, Discord, Etc). Now, run or play in 2.5 games per week (one is biweekly) for an average of about 10 hours total weekly game time. That is far and away more than I watch total television between 4 or 5 streaming services. Not that I'm trying to flex, I am just making the argument that your assumption that you will get little or no play for your $50 PHB is kind of a silly argument. it is especially silly when that PHB is optional, only costs $32 in reality, and you only have to buy it once, not monthly.

Now, it is possible that you are not getting you money's worth out of your hobby expenditures when it comes to D&D. That's sad and I wish you were having more fun, but it's anecdotal. it says nothing about the hobby at large.

Reynard said:

I am sensing that perhaps you haven't been particularly successful in finding games to play. You should try your local game store or hit up any of the numerous online play communities that use any number of free resources to play (Roll20, Discord, Etc). Now, run or play in 2.5 games per week (one is biweekly) for an average of about 10 hours total weekly game time. That is far and away more than I watch total television between 4 or 5 streaming services. Not that I'm trying to flex, I am just making the argument that your assumption that you will get little or no play for your $50 PHB is kind of a silly argument. it is especially silly when that PHB is optional, only costs $32 in reality, and you only have to buy it once, not monthly.

Now, it is possible that you are not getting you money's worth out of your hobby expenditures when it comes to D&D. That's sad and I wish you were having more fun, but it's anecdotal. it says nothing about the hobby at large.

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Thanks for the “concern,” but I’m currently running two D&D games and three Call of Cthulhu games and I’m playing in a DCC game. I recognize that I’m incredibly lucky. I also talk to a lot of people and bounce around a lot of forums so I see that most people just buy the books and don’t find games. Fewer people actually get to game regularly. And fewer still play weekly in even one game, to say nothing of several.

I literally don’t have time to get more out of gaming. I just recognize that it’s not a cheap hobby to be in.

overgeeked said:

Thanks for the “concern,” but I’m currently running two D&D games and three Call of Cthulhu games and I’m playing in a DCC game. I recognize that I’m incredibly lucky. I also talk to a lot of people and bounce around a lot of forums so I see that most people just buy the books and don’t find games. Fewer people actually get to game regularly. And fewer still play weekly in even one game, to say nothing of several.

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That makes the fact that we are having this discussion at all even more baffling. So, you know that RPGs provide a huge amount of entertainment relative to the expense and yet are still arguing they are too expensive.

Fascinating.

Reynard said:

That makes the fact that we are having this discussion at all even more baffling. So, you know that RPGs provide a huge amount of entertainment relative to the expense and yet are still arguing they are too expensive.

Fascinating.

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No. I realize that gaming is damned expensive. That I’d get far more bang for my buck just watching TV. And I also realize I’m incredibly lucky and have the ability to recognize that other people are not as lucky.

Reynard said:

Now, run or play in 2.5 games per week (one is biweekly) for an average of about 10 hours total weekly game time.

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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's freakishly high for an adult with a job and an SO and so on (esp. if the SO doesn't also play). Not in a bad way, but as you say, it's a flex, because it's like "Well I bench 450lbs and I'm not even that into weightlifting..." or something. Like it's that unusual.

Generally speaking, the only way you can get to that is with an incredibly dedicated normal gaming group, or by playing with strangers a whole lot, and that is something an awful lot of people don't like doing. It also involves a whole lot of extra costs you're ignoring if you're not playing online via Zoom or w/e, like transport, food, drink and so on.

There were times earlier in lockdown were we did get in 6 hours/week and that was astonishing, frankly, but now thing are easing up and people have other stuff they have do to, scheduling is once again the main issue (most of my group would rather play RPGs than anything else, but good luck getting them all on the day they haven't agreed to put the baby to bed or whatever).

Reynard said:

So, you know that RPGs provide a huge amount of entertainment relative to the expense and yet are still arguing they are too expensive.

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I think you two are arguing at cross-purposes really. In a sense you're both correct and both being pretty silly.

I mean, yes, D&D can, theoretically, for a few people, who really want to push things, be relatively cheap. It is not easy to arrange things so it's that cheap, and it's never going to compare well to streaming or MMORPGs or the like in terms of entertainment/hour. Also you're both showing your age here, if we want to talk cheap entertainment, Twitch and YouTube are both free and provide literally endless entertainment. As do a lot of video games.

But it's not a very helpful or realistic attitude.

Whereas @overgeeked is perhaps over-cooking it slightly in suggesting playing an RPG is an "expensive" hobby, because for a lot of people the only expenses are travel and food, and maybe a set of dice or a book or three, but some people in the group are likely to be bearing a much, much larger cost. If you're a DM for multiple different RPGs, that's going to rapidly set you back quite a lot of money, even with PDFs (I saved a lot by buying a £400 laptop which folds into a huge tablet-thing and switching to PDFs, it's paid for itself over a few years, and saves insane weight).

And you can easily make gaming into an expensive hobby, without even trying very hard, if you start using minis, maps, terrain, dice towers, lots of dice, fancy dice, and so on.

I hate to say it, but I think it's fair to say the answer is somewhere between "sooooooooo cheap! the cheapest!" and "omg expensive" here. It's easy and cheap to be a hanger-on, but it can get quite pricey to be a DM.

I think we can all agree it's generally cheaper than boardgames, at least, unless you're a total hanger-on for those as well.

Ruin Explorer said:

I think we can all agree it's generally cheaper than boardgames, at least, unless you're a total hanger-on for those as well.

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No kidding. Now THAT's a hobby I have never been able to quite get my personal bang-for-buck value out of. I figure specially paid for entertainment (so not TV or whatever) is at about $5/hour. That's what you pay to go see a movie. So if I am going to buy an RPG or video game or board game, I need to hit that ratio of time enjoyed versus dollars spent not to feel like I made a bad purchase. It seems like board games are the place where I consistently couldn't get there.

Anyway, I agree that I'm lucky having multiple play groups (and yes we play online exclusively now but only 1 of those was IRL anyway) and a spouse that doesn't mind me spending time with my hobbies while she spends time with hers. But I still think even if you are talking about one regular game totaling say 12 hours a month, a PHB STILL comes out as extremely good cost to entertainment.

Corrosive said:

It's all about who you know. Seattle is big on the old-boys-network.

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No.

Knowing and becoming friends with folks in your industry, networking, is not quite the same thing as a "good old boys" club. That particular term implies that you can only get into the gaming community as a publisher if you already are, or know, one of the so-called "good old boys". That the entrenched members of the industry engage in heavy gatekeeping to monopolize all the profit.

The gaming industry is not a "good old boys" club by any means. It's a small industry, and folks do get to know one another as they work on projects together and run into each other at conventions. Working with someone already in the industry, or helping them promote their product, because, 1) you know they do quality work, and 2) you like them personally is not being a "good old boy".

Sheesh.

Reynard said:

I'm actually just being salty for no particular reason.

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Ah, there we go. I was going to push back on some of your more salty comments, but . . . . no need.

Chris Metzen, huh? Looking forward to reading a whole chapter of lore on the setting's legendary hero who was tragically ::dramatic music::....corrupted!