What's Your Price Limit?

[Deset Gled]

I think it's understood by many that a big reason people balk about TTRPG prices is that the costs are largely up front. That $210 buy-in mentioned in the OP sounds like a lot. But if you average the cost of a book set over the length of a campaign, the $/hour is pretty good. Of course, I think a lot of us also have a collection of RPG books that we own and have never used. So being a little discriminating about what we buy into is understandable.

I'm sure the business logic of VTTs is to convert payments into more of a subscription than a lump sum.

 

[cranberry]

Hard cover has gotten too expensive for me to purchase on a regular basis, and my bookshelf is already clogged with books.

So, I only purchase digital content now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That $210 buy-in mentioned in the OP sounds like a lot. But if you average the cost of a book set over the length of a campaign, the $/hour is pretty good.

But that's not quite right, is it?

Because I think it's relatively uncontroversial to say the vast majority of TTRPG books purchased don't get used for actual campaigns, thus dropping $210 is a much bigger issue than it would be from a $/hour perspective (which to be clear, is an sketchy metric, so let's not get too deep into it) if there was certainty. Certainly I wouldn't get into a niche RPG like Starfinder 2 for $210. Like, no way.

Also, we're discussing hardcovers and so on, which are @Morrus outlines are unprofitable, with thin margins or are actively loss-leading. But is that how most companies make most sales revenue (we know it's not how they make most profit)? I mean, I don't know, I genuinely don't, but I'm presuming not, because personally I have over the last 10 years about a 50:1 Digital:Real book purchase ratio, and I know for a lot of other people, it's at least 5:1, and many people purchase both the physical and digital versions of books (sometimes multiple digital versions). Which is presumably how the business keeps running at all!

For me the price limit is dependent on a number of factors, it's quite flexible:

1) How likely am I to actually run/use this RPG/RPG product?

If this is low, then the price limit goes downwards rapidly. Like, I bought Daggerheart digital because I didn't expect to actually run it. But after I had run it, and it was a big hit, I bought the physical copy.

Starfinder 2, for example, the odds of running it are low at best, so the idea of dropping $210 on it sounds insane to me. It seems to me like Paizo have been very self-indulgent in the format they've chosen there too. Does it need to be three books? I rather doubt it.

2) What am I getting? Does it have good art? Is it generally high-quality?

Like, the value of what you're getting matters. Good art, for me, will really significantly raise the price ceiling. If it's a physical product, the perceived quality and number of pages does really raise the price limit a lot potentially. Anything that's "digest format" absolutely lowers the limit a ton for me lol. As does anything like the demented "3 64-page hardcovers" approach of modern Spelljammer. You're giving me something I actively don't want. That has actual negative value.

3) Is it by someone - i.e. a person or company I know and like/respect?

This is a smaller factor but still matters - I will definitely pay more for, and feel better about paying more for a product from an author/company I like. Like say, Grant Howitt and Rowan, Rook and Deckard, I buy most things they make in PDF at least. Whereas WotC? Pfffft. Actively lowers how much I'm willing to pay - they're a massive corporation and they've managed to destroy all good will I had towards them over the last few years (I don't hate them or anything, but like, they get no more breaks than McDonalds' would, say), and they absolutely don't need my support.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think expensive books make sense, for all the reasons that were stated, and I don't necessarily shy away from them, but after about $35 or so, they go from potential impulse buys to something I need to think about and often save up for.

I bought both the 3E and 5E Ptolus books -- each of which cost more than $120 for their hefty books -- but I've used Ptolus non-stop since 2006, which made getting the 5E update an easy decision. Similarly, I went in with fairly low level purchases on Shadowdark and Pirate Borg initially, but the second time around, knowing how much I'd already played both games, it was a lot easier for me to commit to saving up for three-figures pledges for each.

But if you want me to grab a physical product without thinking about it nowadays, it should probably be a $5 Mothership pamphlet adventure. And even then, I'm still trying to get stuff I feel that I will probably use. (So lots of corporate shenanigans, labor strife or exploring derelict ships.)

 

[The Firebird]

I think it's understood by many that a big reason people balk about TTRPG prices is that the costs are largely up front. That $210 buy-in mentioned in the OP sounds like a lot. But if you average the cost of a book set over the length of a campaign, the $/hour is pretty good. Of course, I think a lot of us also have a collection of RPG books that we own and have never used. So being a little discriminating about what we buy into is understandable.

I'm sure the business logic of VTTs is to convert payments into more of a subscription than a lump sum.

For me, something like 10% of the stuff I buy ever hits the table. Of that, a lot of it is a one shot, or a few session campaign. The challenge for me, as a buyer, is that there is just too much content, and I will never come close to playing it all.

This is a challenge with reviews as well. You definitely can get enough out of a read through to say something. But I'd really like to see reviews of games from people who have used them more extensively, and those are hard to find. They typically aren't going to be the reviews coming out on launch.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am having the same feeling as @Whizbang Dustyboots here who beat me to it. Up to some price points, there will be impulse buying. Even the sum of these impulse buying is huge, it will feel painless. That's the model of, say, mobile games micropurchases. People wouldn't necessarily spend 30$ on a mobile game because they could get an AAA game for this price tag, but will happily spend 20x5 dollars on it.

With RPG book the price tag under which people buy is higher, but it might be somewhere between 30 and 60 USD. Paying 3x30$ books feels less than paying a 90$ bundle. Above a certain threshold, consumers, even if they don't have to save to buy it and can easily afford it, will think of the expense as "some money" and will start thinking and considering if it's worth it, especially for entertainment. Even if they could spend 21 10$ movie tickets over 2 months, they'd still balk at a 210$ dollars bundle of books.

This "let me think about it" price might be under the price of commercial viability, the price and the cost aren't linked (people accept to buy expensives things that cost little to make, and can refuse to buy cheaper things that cost a lot to make).

 

[kronovan]

Well...a LGS in my Canadian city has the SF2E Player Core and GM Core preorders listed at $104 CDN. So I imagine when the Bestiary arrives it'll be an equivalent price, making for a GM's overall buy in cost of over $300 - ouch! The stores here in Canada that are focused more on online sales are listing it at $79. Don't know how those stores manage to sell so close to the USA MSP considering the exchange rate, but somehow they do.

I played SF2E in the playtest via VTT and really enjoyed it - currently enjoying PF2E Remaster too. That said, at even a lower cost of $240 for the trio, I don't plan on buying the books. I might eventually buy the VTT DLC when there's a sale, because with Paizo giving you the PDF free with VTT DLC purchases, I'll then at least also have it on my tablet for table play. But as I think about it, $200 is really the upper limit of my comfort zone for core books.

 

[sevenbastard]

I would pay $99 for a 5.75 PHB that was true to my vision.

Basically I'd pay more for a book if I thought the game was going to be great. A lot of time im taking a risk so low price point or not at all.

 

[payn]

I recently noticed that the Player Core and GM Core for Starfinder 2 are $70 each. That's $140 for basically the same material that was $60 in 2018. Add the monster book and that's $210 to get into Starfinder 2.
Yes, inflation. Yes, tariffs. I get it. Paizo can charge what they want. Maybe Starfinder 2 is even so good that it's worth $500. And yes, Archives of Nethys will be free. And yes, PDFs and Pocket rulebooks are cheaper.
But in the era of Shadowdark (which FYI I didn't love), Dragonbane, and Daggerheart when you can get a full game for $50-60, does $210 seem excessive? Does the very thick, three core rulebook model need to continue in the era of $210 games? (This might be the most expensive core system by a major publisher.)
I never played Starfinder 1 - my books went unused. But I did purchase them for study and consideration by my group. I can't see myself dropping $210 for that now.

If im a dabbler, its PDFs or archives of Nethys. If im really into the game then its worth the purchase price. You can barely find board games for less than 60 bucks anymore so I dont think the price is outrageous.

 

[Bill Zebub]

TTRPG books are massively undervalued. The profit margins are non-existent, and creators get paid less than minimum wage for a book which took many people months or years to make, and which you can get months or years of use out of.

So, yeah, $70 doesn't pay for a hardcover TTRPG book.

WotC sells its core rules -- three books -- for, what $30 each? Depending on where you are in the world. But it's Hasbro and can print hundreds of thousands of them at a time, and so pays pittance for each book. And in doing so, trains the market what a hardcover TTRPG book is worth.

(This, incidentally, is why monopolies are generally prevented through regulation--unfortunately our little corner of the gaming industry is too tiny to qualify for notice, but make no mistake we are operating in the contrails of a monopoly, and the industry problems that causes are apparent).

The rest of the industry sells 0.1% of what Hasbro does if they're really lucky, and pays 10 times or more per book printed. And doesn't have worldwide distribution deals, if at all. And if they do have distribution deals, they're on much worse terms--like, 60% of the cover price is gone right there.

So a hardcover book? Really? For a non global-corp with massive economies of scale? It costs $100. That's minimum wage for the labour.

If you are paying less than $100 (and you are, because every company prices its books at $60 or so), it's because the company is not paying itself or its creators a living wage. Because they literally can't. And this is why the entire TTRPG entire industry is mainly people in their spare bedroom as a side job.

Sure, maybe the books aren't worth $100 to you. Maybe TTRPGs are not a viable business if you're not Hasbro. I'm not telling you what a TTRPG hardcover is worth to you... you spend your money how you want. Your priorities are yours. But I am telling you what it costs if people are paid fairly. And that's $100 for minimum wage.

A reporter interviewed an RPG designer who won the lottery. The reporter asked the guy, "So what are you going to do with all that money?" The author replied, "I guess I'll keep writing RPGs until it's all gone."


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