D&D 4E So why does the 4e DMG costs the same as PHB?

[JoeGKushner]

It's almost 100 pages shorter than the PHB.

Why does it cost the same?

 

[Incenjucar]

The value of a book is not determined by how long it takes to read it or how much paper it takes up.

 

[Darkwolf71]

The value of a book is not determined by how long it takes to read it or how much paper it takes up.

While that's all pretty and philosophical, I'm tossing a BS card on it. The OP has a pretty valid question. Perhaps someone from WotC can find an answer? (I mean. Not holding my breath or anything, but still...)

 

[RangerWickett]

It's fairly simple economics.

Lower number of sales, since you need one DMG per group, and several PHBs, means that to recoup their investment they have to charge more.

 

[Morrus]

While that's all pretty and philosophical, I'm tossing a BS card on it. The OP has a pretty valid question.

No, it's not BS at all. If it were, I'd release a 30,000 page book tomorrow full of my own inane ramblings and every one of the 50K+ people here would buy it. I'd retire a millionaire.

Except that won't happen, because the cnotent of the DMG has more value than my 30,000 page ramblings.

I mean, if all you want is more pages, it can be accomodated. Especially with big font sizes. And lots of




white space.

It's worth what the contents are worth to you.

 

[catsclaw227]

It's almost 100 pages shorter than the PHB.

Why does it cost the same?

I recommend you email someone at WOTC. I can't imagine that anyone here not affiliated with WOTC will know the answer to this question.

 

[Umbran]

Why does it cost the same?

I doubt they are working with each book as an independent item, when in a large sense they aren't. Sales of the three books are linked to a large degree. At this point, the proportional sales of the three books are probably pretty well known and correlated, so they can set a simple, even price on all three. This probably makes a lot of bookkeeping through the supply chain simpler.

It would also allow them to underprice the PHB slightly, and make up the difference on the DMG and MM. Basically cutting the individual players a buck or two of slack, and make up the difference on the DMs.

Or, merely speculation: the decreased page count drops the price per unit, but the decreased size of the print run raises it somewhat, and the two effects come close enough to cancelling out that the difference comes out in the wash.

 

[brislove]

The simplest and most important reason.

because they can.

the logical reason is economics as others have said, but the ultimate reason is that they can

 

[Darkwolf71]

No, it's not BS at all.

Well, no. It is BS. Although, it requires a couple of assumptions that I didn’t bother to point out. We are talking about two books of similar quality that address a similar topic. (Playing and running an RPG.) With a significant difference the number of pages.

It’s not as if one were the equivalent of, I don’t know, a text by a renowned PhD on his topic of specialization, and the other more a kin to ‘a 30,000 page book <snip> full of my own inane ramblings’.

Not even close… I hope.

 

[Spinachcat]

Here's the real answer: DMs are suckers. They could double the price and sell just as many. We buy the DMG, the MM, the MM 2, 3, 4, 5 and all sorts of books, minis and dice while we are lucky if the players buy their own copy of PHB.