D&D 5E (2014) Convince me to Spend the Money

[Mistwell]

The books are $32 to $36 online...it's a fair price. Personally I don't pay retail on RPG books of any sort, anymore.

 

[TexSIN]

I just got the pub and it looks great!

 

[Tellerian Hawke]

[...] But here's the thing. I am curious about 5e. But money is always tight and there's a certain psychological roadblock which prevents me from making impulse buys much over $30. I need some convincing. [...] So what does 5e offer me worth $150 dollars ($100 on Amazon) that wouldn't be better spent getting a new Core Rulebook (or maybe rebinding one of my old ones in leather), a copy of Shadow Run, and maybe the new edition of Paranoia when it is released? [...] Just tell me what 5e offers new that I can't get elsewhere or don't already have, that is worth the investment.

I have not (and will not) read 142 pages worth of replies, ha ha. So I apologize for redundancy.

But in my mind, it boils down to priorities. How important is your hobby?

Let me explain.

I basically have two hobbies: collecting airguns (not bb guns, I'm talking serious air rifles) and playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Of the two, D&D is more important to me than airguns.

THUS:

If I wanted a new D&D book REALLY bad, and couldn't afford it, I might sell one of my airguns in order to raise the money.

However, if I wanted the newest, greatest airgun, I doubt very seriously that I'd EVER part with anything from my D&D collection in order to pay for it. My 1st Ed. Deities & Demigods with Elric and Cthulhu is staying right where it belongs, on my bookshelf.

Having said that, I do spend a lot of money per month on frivolous things, like pizza, renting movies, etc.

And I am more than willing to forego pizza and movies for a month, in order to free up money for either hobby, should the need arise.

So my advice to you is: A) sell something you don't need, or at least, don't value as much as the books, and B) forego luxuries / frivolous things for a month or two. The money's there, you've just got to find it.

A person will ALWAYS find money / time / resources in order to obtain something important to him. The things that get forgotten are the things that weren't important enough to warrant the effort.

So, when you're sitting there watching TV a few months from now, and you think, "Man, I never did buy those 5E D&D books," don't worry about it.

Regret is something that you should reserve for those times where you try your hardest, and expend the most effort, and still come up short. But if you really need convincing, then it probably isn't that important to you to begin with.

Like I said, it comes down to priorities.

I hope this helps.

 

[Wicht]

Like I said, it comes down to priorities.

I hope this helps.

I understand prioritizing.

In this case though, the hobby is not "Play Dungeons and Dragons," but more broadly, "Play Games," so that the expenditure becomes but one possibility in a myriad of opportunities, each of which must be balanced against the other as to priority, value and desirability. Getting sundry reviews helps to clarify the perception of expected value so as to evaluate the order of priorities.

 

[Tellerian Hawke]

I understand prioritizing.

In this case though, the hobby is not "Play Dungeons and Dragons," but more broadly, "Play Games," so that the expenditure becomes but one possibility in a myriad of opportunities, each of which must be balanced against the other as to priority, value and desirability. Getting sundry reviews helps to clarify the perception of expected value so as to evaluate the order of priorities.

::::SAID IN COMPLETE JEST:::::
"Mayday! Mayday! We've been shot down! Mayday! May---"
**Heavy Gunfire**
Ennnngggrrrrrrrrooooowwwwww.... BOOM!


Ok, ok, ok,

So I misread the situation.

Ok, so it says (on yer profile) that you mostly play with family.

Is that a parents / kids thing? Or is it a you / your two cousins / and your uncle Bob kind of thing?

If it's all adults, i.e., 2 cousins + Bob, you could theoretically just all pitch in, and spread the cost around.

If not, it sounds like you have a conundrum on your hands.

The problem lies in this premise: one man's trash is another man's treasure. How can you trust reviews that you find on here to begin with?

Before anyone calls me crazy, just hear me out:

I'm not saying that there aren't a ton of good, cool, knowledgeable guys on here that can give you the skinny on any rule system you could name.

Of course there are!

But you sound like you want ROI* data, as if a gaming rulebook could truly be held to such an exacting standard.

Everyone who buys the D&D 5E rules gets something different out of it. Even among those who love it, everyone seems to love it for a different reason.

But even if 1,000 people love it for the exact same reason, that still doesn't mean that it's worth 50 dollars.

It's worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Even rare, collectible, one-of-a-kind items must adhere to this maxim.

I'm not trying to be snarky, or smart-Alec, I'm just saying, the value of the rulebook is subjective. You say you are curious about the book. Ah, the lure of the unknown! A statement like that tells me that the desirability is high, but you're worried about the value gained in comparison.

The problem is, you can't compare desirability (an ephemeral, subjective trait) to value (a concrete, objective trait.) The only caveat to this is for you to invent a "desirability scale" and assign a numeric value to it, but even then, such a scale is arbitrary.

You could develop a survey, and attempt to find correlations between desire and value, but again, you're in arbitrary limbo there, as well.

But I have one last suggestion! I do not intend to criticize your methodology without offering an alternative! Ha ha

Of the games you play, figure out:

Which one you play the most

Which one you play the least

Which one you spend the most on

Which one you spend the least on

These traits are concrete and measurable, and are not abstract in the least. You play Shadowrun 3 times a month, and D&D twice a month. Those are concrete numbers.

Your D&D collection to-date is worth $400.00 (i.e., the retail cost of all your books adds up to this number.) Your Shadowrun collection is worth $850. Again, concrete, measurable numbers.

If it comes to light that you play one game more than another, then THERE is where your focus should lie. If you want to measure the value of a game, then you have to measure that value using real-world statistics that will support your conclusion. So if you play Shadowrun twice as often as D&D, then just make it a fast rule: out of every 100 dollars you allocate toward your hobby, Shadowrun gets 66 dollars, and D&D gets 34. So it will take longer to save up for the D&D book, but that's ok, because you play Shadowrun more to begin with.

Ok, I am going to shut up now lol


* = Return On Investment

 

[Wicht]

No Worries.

In answer to your query, I mostly play with the wife and kids.

As for trusting reviews, I listen to what is said and try and attempt to gauge the amount that the person's values seem to coincide with mine. I have a pretty good "ear" for being able to identify this and it generally works.

and as for calculating what my gaming books are worth, eh... I would do it but then my wife would start giving me funny looks and make subtle innuendos about the other things we could have spent all that money on, like a college education for one of the kids*.


*I jest, maybe one year of college, tops. No more than two.

 

[Tellerian Hawke]

The reason I kind of "latched on" to this post and went all philosophical is because I struggle with this myself.

When I am looking at stuff on Amazon, trying to figure out if I want to buy it or not, I often find myself in the very same boat as you: Do I really want to spend my hard-earned money on Item Y?

And reading the customer reviews is MADDENING! Ha ha!

I'll be sitting there, trying to figure out if something is good, and one guy will say: "It promised next day shipping, and it took two weeks to get here." and it is accompanied by a 1-star rating. Meanwhile, everyone else is talking about the author's writing style, or how they like the soap's fragrance, etc. (i.e., they're talking about the good and bad qualities of whatever Item Y is.) But this one guy who didn't get his on time just skewed the whole rating factor. This hurts the item's value, without being based on anything to do with the item! Ha ha!

I'm laughing now, but when I'm face-to-face with that kind of thing, I'm crying! Or at least trying to anesthetize myself!

Therefore, I felt that it was important to say what I did, so as to at least offer the possibility of a different approach.

As for the value thing, just do that in secret. It doesn't need to be announced Just silently add up the costs, and make a mental note And if anyone asks why you're picking up each book and perusing the cover, just say that you're admiring the artwork Ha ha!

 

[clearstream]

I appreciate the work that goes into writing books and game material.

I also know that time spent is not necessarily synonymous with quality. If it was, Synnibar would be a masterpiece compared to 5e, where the designers spent only a piddling couple of years to put it together. Indeed, sometimes a persons best work is also their quickest work, when ideas just flow out naturally and intuitively.

But as a consumer, it still doesn't matter. When I am reading the actual material, it has to stand alone, for itself, and the time spent crafting it really becomes irrelevant. Perhaps my favorite part of the book is going to be the one chapter that got cobbled together in two days, rather than the complex chapter that took months to complete? Discussing the time spent is interesting as trivia, or as a marketing ploy, but its not really a factor in whether or not I am going to actually enjoy reading what was written.

Decent fluff can flow fairly quickly, but only the first steps of good mechanical design are quick. Good mechanical game design is a craft. The time spent crafting is absolutely relevant. I would not say that the period the design work is protracted over matters, but rather the experience of the team, their focus on the design, and their prototype-play-tweak cycles. Discussing the skill of the designers and time they spent is a good indicator of the likely quality of the mechanics. Simpler, more likeable mechanics often come from more time, while complex mechanics are often a result of an unpolished, early take on them. The correlation isn't absolute, but it's significant.

 

[Wicht]

Decent fluff can flow fairly quickly, but only the first steps of good mechanical design are quick. Good mechanical game design is a craft. The time spent crafting is absolutely relevant. I would not say that the period the design work is protracted over matters, but rather the experience of the team, their focus on the design, and their prototype-play-tweak cycles. Discussing the skill of the designers and time they spent is a good indicator of the likely quality of the mechanics. Simpler, more likeable mechanics often come from more time, while complex mechanics are often a result of an unpolished, early take on them. The correlation isn't absolute, but it's significant.

I don't actually know that you are right about this - some things come quickly, some come slowly; polishing can make things shine, it can also add complexity. It really depends on the designer, I would think. I know for myself, some of my best ideas came as a sudden insight; generally the ideas I have to labor over are never quite as good as the ones which just came to me. YMMV.

But regardless of whether you are right or wrong, it is still irrelevant to my actual enjoyment to reading the material. I have never, not once that I can think of, read a particular rule and wondered how long it took the designers to come up with that rule or mechanism. Perhaps you do, and if so, kudos to you. But its not a factor in my game buying, ever.

 

[clearstream]

I don't actually know that you are right about this - some things come quickly, some come slowly; polishing can make things shine, it can also add complexity.

I recognise that you prefer a pears-versus-apples approach to argumentation. Anything is possible. Sometimes I like pears, other times apples. But here we are speaking about the typical findings of the craft of game development. A field I've worked in professionally for decades. The question is not 'is X absolutely correlated with Y' but rather, 'is X significantly correlated with Y' so that observing X one is more likely to observe Y. You ask in your title to be convinced. Conviction in the case of something you have not experienced for yourself will typically require induction. Good induction means observing significant correlations. I would certainly concur with your sense that we cannot be certain based on design team's skill and effort that you will like 5th edition. But we don't need to be certain. All we need is a reasonable expectation. It is reasonably likely that more effort will result in a better, not worse, set of rules. Better laid out. Fewer errors. More checking of edge cases. Etc. We can acknowledge an absence of absolute correlation (X does not always produce Y) while still being capable of supporting the essential tools of conviction. Convince me to obtain X that I do not have? Induction is useful and relevant to that end.

It really depends on the designer, I would think. I know for myself, some of my best ideas came as a sudden insight; generally the ideas I have to labor over are never quite as good as the ones which just came to me. YMMV.

I think I would agree with your sense that 'forcing an idea to work' may not be the most fruitful use of time. But good design is a process that explores the design space (taking time and effort) and finds the fruitful paths. WotC have proved themselves good at doing this. I was very impressed with the background work they performed in preparation for 4th edition. I admired their courageous choice to venture into the unknown. It opened up design space. It turned out for me that 4th edition wasn't what I wanted. It is not a guarantee of enjoyment that someone worked hard on something.

But regardless of whether you are right or wrong, it is still irrelevant to my actual enjoyment to reading the material. I have never, not once that I can think of, read a particular rule and wondered how long it took the designers to come up with that rule or mechanism. Perhaps you do, and if so, kudos to you. But its not a factor in my game buying, ever.

I feel it is helpful to having a good discussion to point out the straw man. I did not say that you would or should read rules wondering how long they took to come up. The rules that are hardest and most effortful to come up with are paradoxically likely to be the ones that feel most natural and least effortful when you read them. But I didn't say that it was a factor in your personal game buying. For all I know, what you need to hear is that they used a particular shade of puce on page 13.

What I did say is that a rule set is more probably enjoyable if that set has been laboured on with time, skill and care. That is in the nature of an argument for convincing. Given a random player, more probably they will enjoy a rule set that was crafted with care, time and skill. If you are a gamer then it increases the probability that you will enjoy the rules to know about those things. It may not be a conscious factor in your game buying, but that is irrelevant. I didn't say it would be, or that that mattered. If 5th was shoddily put together then I would have pointed that out to you instead. I think you will come back to me on this - if at all - with evasion (ah, but my special tastes and situation require etc). Much as you have every other post in this thread. Basically trolling, but in a way that provokes some nice discussion so can be tolerated