Halivar
First Post
The only reason anyone would pay MSRP is out of loyalty to their favorite FLGS. I buy through Amazon and I have never paid MSRP for a gaming book. And I buy many.
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D&D 5E The cost of D&D 5E (it ain't so bad!)
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
"Digital version" and "pdf" are not equivalent. They haven't announced their digital offerings yet.
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
I wonder what oppressive DRM they may have if they do do pdfs. There will be a certain amount of pirating of books no matter what they do, of course (even without pdfs, short of giving them away free), but there is probably also a price point for the books at which piracy increases and the publisher tries to counter with some form of DRM.
I'm wondering if the $150 point for the core books is below, at, or above that increased piracy point.
Halivar
First Post
If they were going to go the DRM route, I think we would have seen it in the preview materials on D&D Classics by now, if only as a testbed. No, I suspect there will not be any more DRM than a watermark.
Kinak
First Post
Fair enough.
The point I was trying to make is that entertainment isn't that expensive in our culture. Finding free or extremely cheap entertainment is very easy.
I like GMing, but I have to do quite a bit of it before I feel like I've enjoyed GMing $150 more than the same length of time reading library books or playing free video games. We end up talking double digit sessions before you hit the payoff, which is longer than a lot of games last.
Beyond that, roleplaying games are widely available freely. You don't need to be a pirate to run a game of 3.5 or Pathfinder or 13th Age or Fate with a $0 investment. And that's not getting into the games we already own.
Paying $150 to GM for years is obviously a great value, no question there. But paying $150 to GM for years when you can GM for free is a very different value proposition.
Don't get me wrong: it'll totally be worth it for some people. But the math is much more complicated than $150 divided by the number of hours played under the best case scenario.
Cheers!
Kinak
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
I'd hope so. Though with D&D Classics, those out-of-print products aren't being sold alongside the physical ones, so a digital sale isn't a potential loss of a physical sale. With 5E, though some customers will buy both, I'd expect a large number of sales will be either-or.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
Correct: in 1977 the PHB could be had for $10, the MM was the same. The DMG was $15 when it came out in 1979. Correcting for inflation, that makes the DMG cost in 2014 dollars....$48.98.
The 2E AD&D book were $20 in 1987 which, when corrected for inflation is worth $41 in 2014.
3.0 PHB was $20, but iirc that was a loss leader. The later books were $30, I thought. That's $27 and $41, respectively.
4E, at $35 apiece, translates into: $38.54.
So while The books have certainly increased in price, that increase is not nearly as dramatic as it first appears, once you factor in inflation. And for that you're getting a full-color high-glossy book that is twice the size of the original AD&D books. In a world where paper costs have soared in the last decade. That's not the worst value in the world, IMHO.
To contextualize for those too young to appreciate the numbers, consider this: the average cost of a gallon of gas in 1979 (1st DMG) was 0.86. That's eight-six cents, yes. And that's following the OPEC crisis and a 20 cent rise from two years earlier when the PHB came out. In 1987, the average cost of a gallon of gas was 0.95. In 2000, that gallon was $1.17. (Of course, after that, things went a bit crazy).
Another comparison: average movie ticket prices:
1979 (DMG): $2.50
1987 (2E): $4.00
2000 (3E): $5.50
2003 (3.5E): $6.00
2008 (4E): $7.10
2014: (5E) $8.34
Why are you reinventing the wheel. Look up in the thread, this was all done, and done extensively, by someone else already, with all the math and the inflation calculator and versions and totals and everything.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
And again, I disagree. I just explained the cost to see a movie. It's fair for me to say that movies are a reasonable form of entertainment. You can get cheaper, you can get more expensive, but it's your average level of entertainment.
And I think, for most people, it's really not. If you cannot afford the $100 this will be through Amazon, or $33 for just a PHB, or whatever digital offering they give you, then you probably are not a major part of their target audience anyway. If your standard is "free", then they really shouldn't care much about you, because they wouldn't stay in business if you were their target audience.
If I bought physical copies of books anymore, I wouldn't really hesitate with the price. It seems well in line with the middle class American income. I'm more curious as to what a digital offering would look like, if there is one. I would probably scoff at $150 for the three copies of the books as PDFs. That seems a bit excessive. I'd considered $20 or so a piece for digital offerings to be right on target (although I think at best it will be $35).
I disliked the size and cost of the core pathfinder book, considering it was a basically an edited version of the SRD. But since they also put their PRD online, I think it's a wash in terms of cost ($50 core, $10 PDF, $0 PRD, average cost of $20 each for three different formats).
I think most other gaming products are lacking the necessary material to be considered complete. I hate making NPCs and Monsters from scratch and getting books for those in other game systems is often times a long wait or never forthcoming. At least with D&D the books come quickly and are of high quality. We all judge those criteria different though, and thus put different amounts of value on products.
I do wonder though, who their primary target audience is based on the price and book cover art. It feels to me a like like middle-aged American gamer, but I could be wrong and I haven't spent much time pondering it either.
Anyway, $150 (less on amazon and various other retailers) isn't a big deal to me, but I appreciate those that don't have the budget for it and hope that an SRD/PDF version is available soon after release at a reduced cost for those that need access to it (myself included).
Cheers.
I disliked the size and cost of the core pathfinder book, considering it was a basically an edited version of the SRD. But since they also put their PRD online, I think it's a wash in terms of cost ($50 core, $10 PDF, $0 PRD, average cost of $20 each for three different formats).
I think most other gaming products are lacking the necessary material to be considered complete. I hate making NPCs and Monsters from scratch and getting books for those in other game systems is often times a long wait or never forthcoming. At least with D&D the books come quickly and are of high quality. We all judge those criteria different though, and thus put different amounts of value on products.
I do wonder though, who their primary target audience is based on the price and book cover art. It feels to me a like like middle-aged American gamer, but I could be wrong and I haven't spent much time pondering it either.
Anyway, $150 (less on amazon and various other retailers) isn't a big deal to me, but I appreciate those that don't have the budget for it and hope that an SRD/PDF version is available soon after release at a reduced cost for those that need access to it (myself included).
Cheers.
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