d20 bubble bust?- High Prices, too many books

[BryonD]

Well, the bubble has been bursting for a while now. Prices are not just high now, they'vve been high for a while. Companies are not just dieing now, they've been dieing for a while. But d20 is still going strong. So, I think its just changing, not really bursting.

You are correct.
And people were predicting this cycle would occur from day 1, so it is not really suprising that it is and has been occuring

 

[Bards R Us]

Has the bubble burst or will we see a number of companies die out in the near future? Is the d20 market saturated with similar books and high prices?

There are too many books to keep track of. Personally, I buy from only a few companies now, as I just cannot afford to buy there products and still experiement with the newbs. Even the companies that are left are stretching the available wallet. I can afford Green Ronin, Fantasy Flight, and WOTC only. Heck, I can only afford those three companies at the Amazon rates!

Rules: Anyone else have enough rules to last a lifetime? It's getting harder to tell the difference between a lot of companies. Feats, Spells, PrCs have become so standard that they have completed saturated...everything. No only is it impossible to use a fraction of the material, but it is impossible to master any of it.

Price: The price of d20 products has been climbing in the last fews years. And this year we can expect to see a product reach 100 dollars! This is just nuts. Is this a symptom of massive discounting? For instance, I would not have bought "Complete Divine" at retail price. Instead, it was worth it because I got the book for $21 dollars from Amazon. Is this the reason price has risen so much and so fast?

It's too much. Anyone else feel this way? I feel like I am at the overload point. I love to buy RPG books, but the current market is completely frustrating. Heck, all of the FLGS in my area is cutting back to WOTC books only. You can order third party stuff, but this means that we're buying blind, and so few products get more than a handful of reviews.

Ok...so I am somewhat frustrated. I ramble....

Yeah I would agree that the market is pretty glutted right now. I do also notice the rising prices too. But I do think that $40 for a slickly produced hard-cover RPG book sounds about where pricing should be to strike a happy compromise between making it affordable to customers while helping publishers achieve better profit margins.

But imho, raising prices might actually be a good thing for industry to be healthier while lowering prices could actually indicate a deflationary spiral and struggling market share. Here is an article on Adrenaline Vault speculating on the declining prices on PC game products and how that they see that as actually being a bad thing!

They Mysteries of Computer Game Pricing

 

[diaglo]

my hat of d02 knows no limits

i still buy most of the products i can find.

but i complain everywhere i go about the pricing. always have. always will. from the purchase of my Original D&D boxed set ----> to present.

 

[Belen]

I forgot to mention Malhavoc. Monte will always be in the purchasing list.

The FLGS stores in this area are liquidating all non-WOTC products. At first, it was a 20, then 40% discount and I think they are about to lower it again!

It's not just that it is difficult to know what to buy. There seems to a new book every day with little in the way to recogize if they are decent. EnWorld used to help, but the news page is getting far more difficult to read.

Morrus- ever thought about giving each product a description/ heading? For instance:

Adventures

Vault of Dirk the Bold
Timeless Legend of Princess Babette

Source Books

Yet another elf Race
Elf races across the millennia
Sexy Elf Vixen's and their human playtoys

So on and so forth.....

 

[dren]

To quote Theodore Sturgeon, "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

Crap falls, the cream (hopefully) rises to the top.

Yes there is a proliferation of d20 rpg material out there, but the natural evolution of most businesses is to weed out the weak. Nothing to shed a tear about, unless of course, it was YOUR job that was lost. But new products will always get published, and worthwhile ideas will always stand out and get our attention.

Binge and purge...expand and shrink....boom and bust. These are business cycles, nothing to really worry about.

 

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

It's got to be tough going for a brick-and-mortar FLGS.
Online shopping has transformed the bookselling business.
Cheap universally available computing and the internet have completely transformed vanity publishing.
Combine this with WizBros' failing "one game to rule them all" stratagem and it adds up to a beating for your FLGS.
If I owned a FLGS I'd diversify into other products, set up an online store to feed the brick-and-mortar operation and push the staff like a drill sergeant to make that "F" in "FLGS" the core of our mission.
Ghostwind, why won't your shop special order anything a customer asks for? Is it because your suppliers have a minimum order, e.g., if Bob Customer wants a copy of "Diaglo's Guide to OD&D", you'd have to take 5 copies from your distributor?

 

[Belen]

It's got to be tough going for a brick-and-mortar FLGS.
Online shopping has transformed the bookselling business.
Cheap universally available computing and the internet have completely transformed vanity publishing.
Combine this with WizBros' failing "one game to rule them all" stratagem and it adds up to a beating for your FLGS.
If I owned a FLGS I'd diversify into other products, set up an online store to feed the brick-and-mortar operation and push the staff like a drill sergeant to make that "F" in "FLGS" the core of our mission.
Ghostwind, why won't your shop special order anything a customer asks for? Is it because your suppliers have a minimum order, e.g., if Bob Customer wants a copy of "Diaglo's Guide to OD&D", you'd have to take 5 copies from your distributor?

Online stores are an investment. I have been trying to get my friends to start one for their game store, but I do not think they even know where to begin.

 

[diaglo]

Online stores are an investment. I have been trying to get my friends to start one for their game store, but I do not think they even know where to begin.

yeah, has Amazon ever been in the black?

i know the first few years they were millions in the red. they owed everyone.

 

[swrushing]

Has the bubble burst or will we see a number of companies die out in the near future? Is the d20 market saturated with similar books and high prices?

i stare agape... astounded...

in my view, starting about a year ago maybe, d20 started its rebirth and its going strong...

i have a good amount of d20 money slated for spending in the next 6 months and a lot of it is going to green ronin.

basically, we have moved away from then "how many different flavors od dnd" and now we are seeing games which take more radical departures, both in rules and settings and themes, and who deliver with quality.

I use a lot more of the D20 stuff i purchased in the last year than i did in the earlier days.

Midnight was one, MnM another, even though it was less than my cup of tea, arcana unearthed and even the unearthed arcana did well, CyberNet OGL was good and useful.

In the next 6 months or so, i plan on spending on d20 future, MnM, Midnight, Stargate, and in the "really new" category Blue Rose RPG (GR), Black Company RPG (GR), Red Star RPG (GR) and those are just the ones i am planning on... i am sure there will be some impulse buys.

So, no, i don't see any bubble bursting... unless its to let a bigger bubble of stuff out.

Now, to be truthful, i am buying a lot less WOTC stuff, but then i did not jump on 3.5, so they lost me there.

 

[EricNoah]

There was a time when a person could afford to be a "completist" for a particular game or line -- that's not really possible with d20 nowadays. That may be a source of frustration for some. You literally can't have it all!