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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kabouter Games" data-source="post: 7710148" data-attributes="member: 6788812">It absolutely is. People who think TTRPGs are expensive make me shake my head at how indescribably parsimonious some people can be. They clearly have no other hobbies. At all. Except maybe reading library books. Every single hobby has a cost-of-entry as well as maintenance costs. TTRPGs have a very low maintenance cost and a relatively low cost of entry. $50 to $150 to get started, for books and dice (and a few minis if you want them), and practically zilch to maintain, unless you count pop and Chee-tos. If you want/need to play online, you can play on Roll20 for free - I run a weekly game there and haven't paid a cent. That's fantastically inexpensive for a hobby. If you (not you, Valdier, the colloquial "you," the people you and I are sternly talking to) think it is expensive, just look at what other hobbies cost.I'll show you. Let me break down one of my others: Music. I'm a percussionist. I'm classically trained, but we'll leave the cost of my education out of it, since I'm not doing it professionally. Just for the essential gear I'll need, I need: Drum kit: $800; Cymbals: ~$1000; Hardware: ~$500; Sticks, heads, etc: ~$300.That's just to let me play in my basement with an instrument that's worth picking up the sticks in the first place. If I want to play out with a band, add in a set of gig bags (~$200). Maybe I'll need to add a set of mics for gigs - those run about $600 for a set of mics worth using, plus cables and all. Okay, now it's really loud, and I care about my hearing, so I need a set of in-ear monitors and the system to make them work. There's another $400.Now add in lessons, travel expenses, etc. All to play, what? Three gigs a month for $100 a toss? Yeah, that'll pay me back in never.Add it all up, and the cost of entry for having the hobby of playing drums in a rock-and-roll band, to start, is upwards of $3000, probably pushing $4000 once you start figuring in the different odds and sods you need once you've figured out that the first stuff you bought isn't exactly what you required.Ah, I hear you cry, but that's exceptional. Okay. Let me give you another: Swords. I used to practice historical European martial arts. You know, the guys who complained about why the D&D longsword, well, wasn't? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> Anyway, a high-quality weapon from a reputable supplier like <a href="https://www.darkwoodarmory.com/" target="_blank">Darkwood Armory</a> is between $400 and $500. Protective gear will run at least another $200, probably closer to $300 if you do it right. And that's about half of what something like Kendo will cost you. Just to start. Not to do, which means weekly lessons and sparring at about $50 a pop. Just to start.Yeah, you're still saying, but that's also exceptional! Okay. Let me give you another, for a thing I wouldn't do if you threatened to behead me: Golf. An entry-level set of golf bats is $200 at my local <a href="http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/c/golf-equipment" target="_blank">Dick's Sporting Goods</a>. Shoes, another $50. A couple dozen balls? $15. A round of 18 at the nearest public course to me? $20. That's $300 just to start, with crappy gear at that.Imagine in this space a picture of a middle-aged guy looking from that cost list to a free PDF he downloaded from Wizards, plus a free dice app, both of which are on his phone, plus the character sheet he wrote out on the back of a piece of scrap paper using a pencil that cost him a quarter.Now whine about how expensive TTRPGing is. That middle-aged guy? He makes this face.<img src="http://i1160.photobucket.com/albums/q484/drcranquis/Tumblr%20Gifs/eye_roll_house.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />So yeah, cry me a river about how $pendy TTRPGing is. It's the least-expensive hobby I've ever had.Cheers,Bob<a href="http://www.r-p-davis.com" target="_blank">www.r-p-davis.com</a></blockquote>

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