D&D 5E The cost of D&D 5E (it ain't so bad!)

[Kinak]

The comparisons with people's other leisure activities is really interesting, because only free RPGs compare well to mine.

I read hours a week from my library for free, I have more legal anime streaming than I can watch for free, we borrow a friend's NetFlix account for access to decades of American TV and cinema, and anything that NetFlix won't stream is usually in the library. Internet access is a sunk cost in our case, because we need it for work.

So buying any RPG book is splurging for us, pure and simple. When the awesome week of vacation we just took ran under $300 and dinner at some of our favorite restaurants runs around $10 per person, $150 in entertainment had better get us something pretty awesome.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The comparisons with people's other leisure activities is really interesting, because only free RPGs compare well to mine.

I read hours a week from my library for free, I have more legal anime streaming than I can watch for free, we borrow a friend's NetFlix account for access to decades of American TV and cinema, and anything that NetFlix won't stream is usually in the library. Internet access is a sunk cost in our case, because we need it for work.

So buying any RPG book is splurging for us, pure and simple. When the awesome week of vacation we just took ran under $300 and dinner at some of our favorite restaurants runs around $10 per person, $150 in entertainment had better get us something pretty awesome.

Cheers!
Kinak

Similar here - I pay for my own Netflix but that's £6.99/month for well, as much TV as we can watch and more. I buy low-price games, because £0.50 to £7.50 (or so - pretty much my limit these days) is usually decent value, or play F2P ones that are really F2P. If I buy RPGs it's usually in PDF form and under $(not £)20, and that's rare. $50, which thanks to VAT and gouging will likely be £40 in UK reality, is a lot - £120? For a single RPG? That's crazy. Of course I have people in the group who have been known to drop that on lunch (bloody lawyers, doctors and traders!), but they all want to keep playing 4E!

EDIT - I have a faint hope that you REALLY only need the PHB, if that, and monster and treasure stats will be in some sort of free online compendium, with the MM and DMG being luxury products, but I doubt it.

 

[Mistwell]

Not everyone thinks paying to park is a normal thing. And adding in the costs of popcorn and drinks is BS since the cost of the books doesn't include Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

LOL I am explaining what a single night out to the movies costs me, not what it costs you.

I pay for parking, because I need to pay for parking to go to the movies. I live in an urban area. It's part of life for me. If it's not part of life for you, that's fine. And I pay for snacks at the movie, because it's part of the experience for us.

Morrus said it costs him $150 to go to see Godzilla and he thought maybe it as different in America. Well, for me, in Los Angeles, it was even more! Movie + Parking + Snacks + Babysitter was about $163 for me.

But hey, if you want to subtract out the cost of popcorn and drinks, it STILL cost me about what all three of these books will cost me! The point being, these books are ridiculously cheap forms of entertainment relative to a 3 hour common alternative form of entertainment where I live (a movie).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

LOL I am explaining what a single night out to the movies costs me, not what it costs you.

I pay for parking, because I need to pay for parking to go to the movies. I live in an urban area. It's part of life for me. If it's not part of life for you, that's fine. And I pay for snacks at the movie, because it's part of the experience for us.

Morrus said it costs him $150 to go to see Godzilla and he thought maybe it as different in America. Well, for me, in Los Angeles, it was even more! Movie + Parking + Snacks + Babysitter was about $163 for me.

But hey, if you want to subtract out the cost of popcorn and drinks, it STILL cost me about what all three of these books will cost me! The point being, these books are ridiculously cheap forms of entertainment relative to a 3 hour common alternative form of entertainment where I live (a movie).

Er, actually Morrus said it cost him $50, not $150. Also, that you are happy to blow insane money on a mediocre movie doesn't really have any bearing on anything - just that you enjoy wildly overpriced entertainment and are well off enough to not give a sod about the cost.

 

[Mistwell]

The comparisons with people's other leisure activities is really interesting, because only free RPGs compare well to mine.

I read hours a week from my library for free, I have more legal anime streaming than I can watch for free, we borrow a friend's NetFlix account for access to decades of American TV and cinema, and anything that NetFlix won't stream is usually in the library. Internet access is a sunk cost in our case, because we need it for work.

So buying any RPG book is splurging for us, pure and simple. When the awesome week of vacation we just took ran under $300 and dinner at some of our favorite restaurants runs around $10 per person, $150 in entertainment had better get us something pretty awesome.

Cheers!
Kinak

Kinak, unless I misread you and you're saying you watch NetFlix at your friends house, you're not "borrowing" your friends NetFlix account, any more than torrenting these books directly from your friend who buys the PDF is "borrowing" the books from them. I think anyone is going to admit that illegally obtaining them, like it seems you're doing with NetFlix, is cheaper.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Kinak, unless I misread you and you're saying you watch NetFlix at your friends house, you're not "borrowing" your friends NetFlix account, any more than torrenting these books directly from your friend who buys the PDF is "borrowing" the books from them. I think anyone is going to admit that illegally obtaining them, like it seems you're doing with NetFlix, is cheaper.

I'm similar to Kinak, though, just I pay for Netflix. £6.99/month for that amount of entertainment is several orders of magnitude ahead of D&D played at the suggested rate.

Moving away from $/hour (which I feel is a bit misleading as intensity, memorable-ness and so on all play in to perceived value of entertainment), I will say that, at $50, am I very definitely going to be expecting a quality bloody book and not a lot of wasted space and so on. The DMG in particular would have to literally be the best the DMG ever written to justify that, and unless Robin D. Laws is one of the authors, I have might doubts that it will be that (indeed, the usual standard of DM advice in D&D products is mediocre-to-bad* by industry standards - though 4E was a massive improvement over 3E in this regard - in some books it actually reached the standard of "good advice"!).

* = 1E/Early 2E DM advice was frequently beyond bad and into the realms of "actively harmful to good play and pleasant play experiences", with Gygax' unofficial guide to DMing (I forget it's name) being pretty much nadir here, but not unrepresentative of some junk in Dragon and other books - Complete Villain being a notable exception.

 

[Mistwell]

Er, actually Morrus said it cost him $50, not $150. Also, that you are happy to blow insane money on a mediocre movie doesn't really have any bearing on anything - just that you enjoy wildly overpriced entertainment and are well off enough to not give a sod about the cost.

Hey, RE, I didn't see Godzilla. I took the movie he mentioned, and checked the price for an upcoming evening at our nearest theater in 3d. Because I was offering him a comparison based on his question concerning prices in America.

I did however see Grand Budapest Hotel at a different theater, for a lower price, and it cost about $90, and it was well worth it. Getting out with my wife every once in a while while the babysitter watches our kid is important for our marriage and worth every penny of that $48. And the movie and snacks were worth the $42 for the two of us ($14/ticket, $13.80/snacks, free parking). I don't think it was ridiculously overpriced, and it was a very good movie.

I am not well off enough to not give a sod about the price - I care about the price, I just thought it was worth that price. I cannot do it every week, but I can do it every three weeks to a month. And I don't think it's an abnormal expenditure for entertainment in the city I live in, for people around my age with a family.

I am not trying to say a single 20-something in small town Oklahoma spends the same on entertainment as a family-man 40-something in Los Angeles. I am just saying that I am the later, and in that context this price seems extremely cheap. Everyone is free to explain their own perspective - I just think it's weird that people seem upset that my perspective is different than theirs. I never said my perspective was representative of theirs. Just that it's likely comparable to the guy I was actually replying to - Morrus, a middle-aged guy with a wife in urban England.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm similar to Kinak, though, just I pay for Netflix. £6.99/month for that amount of entertainment is several orders of magnitude ahead of D&D played at the suggested rate.

Moving away from $/hour (which I feel is a bit misleading as intensity, memorable-ness and so on all play in to perceived value of entertainment), I will say that, at $50, am I very definitely going to be expecting a quality bloody book and not a lot of wasted space and so on. The DMG in particular would have to literally be the best the DMG ever written to justify that, and unless Robin D. Laws is one of the authors, I have might doubts that it will be that (indeed, the usual standard of DM advice in D&D products is mediocre-to-bad* by industry standards - though 4E was a massive improvement over 3E in this regard - in some books it actually reached the standard of "good advice"!).

* = 1E/Early 2E DM advice was frequently beyond bad and into the realms of "actively harmful to good play and pleasant play experiences", with Gygax' unofficial guide to DMing (I forget it's name) being pretty much nadir here, but not unrepresentative of some junk in Dragon and other books - Complete Villain being a notable exception.

What if I ordered you a copy along with mine from Amazon, you paid me just the actual cost of the Amazon purchase (free shipping), and I ship it to your through my work at no charge. Would it be worth it then ($33-$38 I think)?

Please note - this is not an open offer to everyone. Just talking to RE here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What if I ordered you a copy along with mine from Amazon, you paid me just the actual cost of the Amazon purchase (free shipping), and I ship it to your through my work at no charge. Would it be worth it then ($33-$38 I think)?

Please note - this is not an open offer to everyone. Just talking to RE here.

Wow, er, if that's doable, probably. Will PM you about it.

 

[Morrus]

Hey, RE, I didn't see Godzilla. I took the movie he mentioned, and checked the price for an upcoming evening at our nearest theater in 3d. Because I was offering him a comparison based on his question concerning prices in America.

Actually, I was only referring to ticket prices. There was travel, dinner, etc. too, of course. For the pair of us for the whole evening, I guess it came to about £100, or whatever that is in dollars. That said, it doesn't always cost that - depends on if we eat out, where we see it, if its in 3D or IMAX, etc. and I can't exactly do that every night, and we *can* go see a movie somewhere closer, not eat out, have no snacks, and just spend £20-30. But like you say, one evening (dinner and a movie) for my wife and I is about the same as the three core rulebooks.

If we go out to eat somewhere Sharon likes, as opposed to where I like, it costs about 7 billion times more, and I have to ask her what all the food is.

For some reason, I put "buying a thing" and "doing a thing" on two entirely different cost scales, though. I have no idea why, but I think I'm willing to pay more for entertainment than buy an object - I'll spend money to see a band, but I won't spend that on a CD, for example. I'll spend money to see a movie at the cinema, but I wouldn't spend that much on the DVD. So the comparison between a night out and some rulebooks doesn't really work for me.

Just that it's likely comparable to the guy I was actually replying to - Morrus, a middle-aged guy with a wife in urban England.

Hey, I'm not middle-aged for a whole month yet!