delericho
Legend
My purchases have dropped off sharply in the last few years. Almost the only thing I get nowadays in my ongoing Pathfinder Adventure Path subscription.
Part of that is purely that I didn't adopt either D&D 4e or Pathfinder, and that saved me buying lots of supplements for a game I wasn't going to play.
Part of it was the realisation that I had enough material that I could never buy anything again and still wouldn't run out - and that even if I only ever ran published adventures in published settings, and didn't repeat myself.
Part of it was a simple change in tastes - I'm now of the opinion that most RPGs are far too complex and ornate even in the Core Rulebooks alone. When virtually all RPGs are now supported with extensive lines of thick hardback supplements, that just looks to me like horrendous bloat - in order to justify all those pages they have to fill them with stuff, and that stuff clogs up the system.
Part of it is that companies produce the wrong things. Almost all RPGs would benefit from having more published adventure support, but virtually none of them receive adequate support. And many games would benefit from "useful but dull" items like power/monster/equipment cards, but there seems to be little market for them so they don't get produced. (And, in the case of "Black Crusade", which is the latest game I tried but rejected, it was screaming out for both an expanded setting book and some sort of "Monster Manual". As yet, there is no sign of either.)
And part of it is purely price. Now I do get that this is somewhat unfair - RPGs have at worst kept pace with inflation, or may even have dropped in price relative to inflation. The problem is, though, that my income has not kept pace with inflation, and with getting married this year (and my wife not currently working), my expenses have risen significantly. So the cost of RPGs as a percentage of my disposable income has risen sharply. The bottom line is that I simply can't justify spending £27 for a published adventure for "Black Crusade".
Now that last isn't directly an issue for publishers - they need to produce their products at the price point to maximise their profits. That's not only the way it is, it is the way it should be. I would much rather see products being produced even if I can't afford them, than see them fold by trying the cater to me. But it does remain the case that I've been priced out of the market.
Part of that is purely that I didn't adopt either D&D 4e or Pathfinder, and that saved me buying lots of supplements for a game I wasn't going to play.
Part of it was the realisation that I had enough material that I could never buy anything again and still wouldn't run out - and that even if I only ever ran published adventures in published settings, and didn't repeat myself.
Part of it was a simple change in tastes - I'm now of the opinion that most RPGs are far too complex and ornate even in the Core Rulebooks alone. When virtually all RPGs are now supported with extensive lines of thick hardback supplements, that just looks to me like horrendous bloat - in order to justify all those pages they have to fill them with stuff, and that stuff clogs up the system.
Part of it is that companies produce the wrong things. Almost all RPGs would benefit from having more published adventure support, but virtually none of them receive adequate support. And many games would benefit from "useful but dull" items like power/monster/equipment cards, but there seems to be little market for them so they don't get produced. (And, in the case of "Black Crusade", which is the latest game I tried but rejected, it was screaming out for both an expanded setting book and some sort of "Monster Manual". As yet, there is no sign of either.)
And part of it is purely price. Now I do get that this is somewhat unfair - RPGs have at worst kept pace with inflation, or may even have dropped in price relative to inflation. The problem is, though, that my income has not kept pace with inflation, and with getting married this year (and my wife not currently working), my expenses have risen significantly. So the cost of RPGs as a percentage of my disposable income has risen sharply. The bottom line is that I simply can't justify spending £27 for a published adventure for "Black Crusade".
Now that last isn't directly an issue for publishers - they need to produce their products at the price point to maximise their profits. That's not only the way it is, it is the way it should be. I would much rather see products being produced even if I can't afford them, than see them fold by trying the cater to me. But it does remain the case that I've been priced out of the market.