Game Pricing

[Storminator]

The problem with mail order is the basic cost of doing an order at all -- the time of writing up the sale, processing payment, packing an order, the cost of the packing material, and the minimum shipping cost. (E.g., sending a package UPS to a residence may be $5 for the first pound, but only 30 or 50 cents for each additional pound.)

LOL! I called for one of the cheap Touched By the Gods, and the guy who answered said, "can I transfer to you to our guy that does that? I'm doing a layout now that I'm trying to get out the door."

Taking time out from design to answer the phone?!? Yeah, there's a problem with doing your own mail orders...

PS

 

[nopantsyet]

what would i pay $100 for?

what would i pay $100+ for. here it is, my $100 answer. i've been working on a campaign setting the past few weeks and the more i get into it the more i realize i have to add. and it's only the size of australia...not the whole eurasian continent.

every time i work on some part i go through this, i wish i were a cartographer, i wish i were an artist; i wish i knew a dozen languages, could write like herodatus, and imagine like tolkein.

here's what i would pay big bucks for: do it for me. i mean an extensive and thorough
extensive treatment of a highly original campaign setting. not something that is introducing rules for this and prestige classes for that and eighty seven new spells and thirty three new feats.

i mean a set of several matching hardback and softcover volumes of everything about the setting: geography, climate, politics, history, religion, culture. with plenty informational flavor text--it must be well written. don't just show me a timeline. give me exerpts from histories, legends, and mythologies. don't just give facts, give npcs (living and dead) versions and opionions. don't just create a world canon; give me world apocrypha--the more the better. give me the prophecies of zantar the one-eyed madman who lit his hair on fire and uttered grim foretellings. give me the unutturable ravings of Stephihah the whore-prophetess.

it should include cities of various sizes. when you're selling a city supplement, it has to be a big city for people to buy it. not so with the uber-product. but why not include the village of thorax, so named because it was build in the overturned shell of a gargantuan beetle.

not only that, but there must be variety, but on a manageable scale. FR tries to be everything to everyone. this should be organic and interesting.

it cannot just be about the biggest and best or most representative. there must be npcs of all levels and types with personality. include minor flavor details like how the crippled beggar lost his legs in the service of a dark god who then abandoned him despite the dark oaths that were made, and how all of the local churches shun him and will not help him because of that.

have a creative theology. i know the history of humankind has not been so creative in its actual worship, but not all religions have to make sense, have game-real gods, or be a rehash of some known pantheon. work with morality, what makes evil evil? why is good usually not as good as it portends to be? now make that part of the theology.

never include the text: "adventure hook." if you create a thorogh setting, the hooks will come. but it should include a few adventures the dm can make use of. not a mega-adventure, it's more the side-quests and mini adventures that break up an otherwise fluid campaign. but make sure they are not level-dependent--it's easy enough to present multiple scalings of the combat opponents so the adventure can be dropped in at any level.

all maps should be in duplicate, one marked version for the dm, and an unmarked version for players. all in loose-leaf form for easy perusal. i have so many maps that i would use if only i could remember to get them laminated because they're so damned big and i don't want them to break at the folds.

also, it should have lots of loose-leaf art, both full-color and b&w for showing players. loose leaf so i don't have to crack the binding of the book to show it to the players.

all player information should be in its own volume, available separately so the players don't get the eighteen volumes of crunchy bits meant for dms only.

and most of all, it cannot be forgotten realms revisited. (not to bash fr--i'm a fan.)
there are some creative settings coming out, but they suffer from too many new prcs and feats that they don't come together as a setting. this must take setting creation to a whole new level.

so what's the difference between doing this all together instead of a series of books? individual books must have a solid focus; there's no room to include the comprehensiveness as well as flavor and details that make a campaign setting really work.

also, this stuff should be a good read. i like FRCS, but it's not a good read. it suffers from trying to cram too much information into a limited space and you can tell it got cut, abridged, and edited to death. otoh when i bought my first shadowrun rulebook, i read the first 20 pages over and over; that was short, but it created such a great feel for the setting.

granted a campaign setting is not a novel. but it should contain many of the same elements that we love about fantasy. reading it should evoke the same wonder that reading a good fantasy novel does. it should inspire that novel in our minds so we can recreate that sense for our players as they become acquainted with the world through the game.

anyway, i'd pay big bucks for that. hell, if i had the time i'd create that myself. once again, i applaud you guys who are doing this.

 

[JohnNephew]

LOL! I called for one of the cheap Touched By the Gods, and the guy who answered said, "can I transfer to you to our guy that does that? I'm doing a layout now that I'm trying to get out the door."

Taking time out from design to answer the phone?!? Yeah, there's a problem with doing your own mail orders...

Yeah, that was me actually. I often answer the phones. Most of the time if it's a mail order I'll take down the details and pass them to Alex (or even process it myself, if he's not in at the moment) -- as a rule, I think it's good for people to get taken care of by the first person they talk to, without feeling passed-around -- but I was in the middle of a bunch of stuff on UA2 so I hollered down the hall for him to take it.

 

[gubaru]

Re: sophisticated ready made adventures

Oh, and I disagree that a sophisticated ready made campaign can't be done for plot purposes. Take a look at say, Masks of Nylarthoetep, for instance.

I didn't mean to imply that it was impossible and I agree that Masks of Nyarlathotep is an excellent (and IMO the best ever) example. What I meant was it's hard to do. Masks is almost 20 years old. In that time, I can't think of any other story arcs that big that are as good.

What you describe is tempting and may well be worth saving for. At the same time, there are a lot of places where it can fall flat on its face. If anyone bites the bullet and does this, I'm very interested in seeing how they market it. It's going to take a great deal of effort to get over the skepticism most people will view it with.

 

[Lady Dragon]

Its refreshing to see a publisher this honest.

Anyhow I would like to pose this question on the pricing issue to any publisher who would like to answer.

Let's say for the sake of argument that a publisher was going to publish the ultimate book say a 600 page all color hardcover with superior paper ,leathette cover,gold edged page.And the content is every gamers dream material written by the industry's best writers with art by the best artists.So how much would you charge and is something like this even feasible?

 

[bondetamp]

USD100?

Well, it would have to be pretty.

Good quality writings too, of course, but I demand good quality writing in a USD10 book.

With a product, say a campaign setting, that was not only awe inspiringly pretty, but also came with lots of extra goodies that I knew would be helpful in a game, I can see myself picking it up and looking at it longingly every single time I visited the gaming store until one day I had enough money to actually buy it.

The quality of the binding should be flawless. There are several books in my book case that, while I like the books and enjoyed reading them, really won me over by having a binding that told me it would outlive my grand children. A leather backing would be awesome. The feel and not least smell of leather is incredibly evocative. When I lovingly caress a leather bound book I can't help but think that it is a literary master-piece handed down over generations.

Which is why I was so disappointed when White Wolf made their Limited Edition stuff in fake leather. Had it been real leather I would have picked it up in a heart beat, but fake leather? Pfft, I say. Pfft!

The interior should be just as good. It should be Planescape or Birthright pretty, with mood oozing from every page. One should be able to open the book at some random page number and promptly forget about the price. The art, layout, fonts and everything down to the fabric of the paper should make you feel so strongly about wanting to run this campaign that every purchase made the next several weeks will be scrutinized on a basis of how much it will hold you back from finally getting the 100 bucks needed to make the purchase. It should be so good, that even if you can get a more plain book with the same writings at half the price, you'd still happily part with the extra $50. Hell, even if you never plan to actually play the game, even if you hate D&D fiercely, you should need to own this book just to look at it.

People buy Mickey Mouse figures for several hundred dollars, why should one balk at spending the same on a product like this?

There should be a feeling that nothing was saved to make this the ultimate gaming product.

Cool extras would be very helpful in getting me to buy the book. Most important to me would be a CD with helpful extras. With this I'm talking about a database with all kinds of stuff like monsters, characters, cities etc. indexed in a way that made it possible to modify and add entries. It would be very nice if it also was compatible, file-wise, with other major software like PCGen, Campaign Cartographer and the presumably upcoming Mastertools. The software could be unique, but with an option to import/ export a lot of different formats.

One the CD there should also be lots of players’ handouts with setting information etc. A book like the one I’m talking about is not really one that one will want to loan to the players. I know I can care for a book properly, but I’m less sure about my friends.

Personally, I wouldn’t care about sound files, as I haven’t been happy with any gaming related sound files I’ve heard so far. But if other people want them, and they’re not so expensive as to take away other aspects of the book, I couldn’t really care. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find a gem that I can use for the sound when Windows starts up on my machine.

In today’s marked, I’m expecting perfection+++ from a $100 game book. At $50 I’d merely expect perfection+. Take a look at some DVDs. See what kinds of extras the movie companies put in and how well received these are.

 

[Ranger REG]

I believe JK Rowling is a pagan and I very much doubt she's concerned that RPGs harm children! She merely doesn't want to see a Harry Potter RPG, at least not before she's finished the book series.

Couldn't she just allow us to use the "world of Harry Potter" without Harry Potter as a game character (NPC)?

You see, I have this distaste for novel characters being converted into game characters.

 

[S'mon]

Couldn't she just allow us to use the "world of Harry Potter" without Harry Potter as a game character (NPC)?

You see, I have this distaste for novel characters being converted into game characters.

I expect she could - I haven't read the books BTW. But I think she doesn't want her world being detailed by others, eg by games publishers, at least before she's finished developing it.

 

[Storminator]

I'm seriously wondering about these $100+ items discussed here. It seems to me like people are willing to pay 3 times as much money, but only so long as they get 10 times as much product. What game companies really need to find is how to get 10 times as much money for three times as much product.

600 page source books with a dozen prewritten adventures aren't likely to improve profit margins, especially once you factor in limited print runs. I think one of the keys is to get away from adding more words to products. I really liked Kenzer's "boxed picture" idea, where I can just show the players a pic and set the scene, and I think having gaming terrain (and fold up props) would add a lot of value without adding a lot of cost. I don't think you get all the way to $100 bucks that way, but you can certainly start to get away from a $10 adventure.

I've been looking at Dwarven Forge this week, and seriously considering dropping a couple of hundred bucks. I don't think I have time to make my own blocks ala Hirst molds, but I've got money. This is the sort of product that can start to run a hundred bucks.

PS

 

[Voadam]

$100 items

I really liked my 2e D&D CD, the one with all the core books and complete books and core rules supplements on HTML. I think I got that for about $15 and the Dragon archive for $25 after discounts. I also really like the WotC ESDs, I've gotten four or five at a time multiple times.

For $100 I would like all the ESDs once they are out, or all WotC d20 material (yes all of it!) on CDs including adding dragon from the end of the archive until 10 years later. I wouldn't even mind having a year delay on each dragon issue for them to pdf them and make them available for CD owners to download.

John Nephew, if all of the ars magica stuff was available as ESDs that would interest me. A CD set with the complete books including out of print ones and previous editions (such as the demons supplement) would be great. The option to pick up individual titles cheaply as electronic files would also interest me.

A complete electronic set of all the old stuff from people with lots of stuff would be great.

I couldn't care less about theme music and I am not really interested in popup scenes, minis, or counters. I would probably avoid a single big item if it cost $100 no matter how cool it seemed. I don't think I've ever spent more than $30 on an individual rpg item.

My bookshelf space is getting more and more cramped and I am finding that I really like cheap electronic versions more than bulky physical items.